The carriage ride from the Imperial Palace back to the Lin General’s Estate was full of suffocating tension. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

The vehicle itself was not the standard, spacious family transport they had arrived in.

Lin Feng, wielding the absolute, unquestionable authority of the Vanguard Commander, had simply commandeered a sleek, heavily armored military transport carriage from his own retinue.

With a few curt, unarguable words to their father, he had arranged it so that General Lin, Xuan, and the three half-sisters would return in the primary carriage, while he and Ji’an would ride alone in the Vanguard transport.

"My brother is exhausted from the performance," Lin Feng had stated smoothly to the General, his hand resting a fraction of an inch too heavily on Ji’an’s shoulder. "The noise of the siblings will agitate his meridians. I will escort him back in quiet."

General Lin had agreed without suspicion, his mind still reeling from the emotional devastation of the flute and sword dance.

And so, Lin Ji’an found herself trapped in a confined, dimly lit, velvet-lined box with the man who had just casually admitted to breaking the fundamental laws of the cosmos to save her soul.

They sat on opposite benches; the only illumination came from a single, glowing spirit-pearl set into the ceiling.

Outside, the rhythmic, heavy clack-clack-clack of the armored Spirit-Stallions’ hooves against the obsidian cobblestones of the capital highway echoed like a metronome counting down the seconds to her execution.

Ji’an did not speak.

She sat perfectly rigid, her hands folded tightly in her lap, staring with unwavering intensity at the brass buckle of Lin Feng’s knee-guard.

Her mind, usually a chaotic mess of thought and sarcastic retorts, was currently a smoking crater.

The revelation from the lotus pavilion had not just shifted her worldview; it had completely rewritten the fundamental code of her existence.

She wasn’t a random office worker from Earth who had tripped into a pedestrian crosswalk and woken up in a web novel.

Earth was the dream, the fake sanctuary created for her.

Apparently, Lin Feng had sought out the Grand Oracle of the Star-Seizing Tower.

He had paid a "price" to activate a forbidden soul-displacement array, launching her fragile, dying spirit out of the toxic wasteland of the Lin Estate and across the boundaries of dimensions, and planting her into a modern, safe, spiritually dead world where she could grow up without the threat of starvation, abuse, or demonic beasts.

’My apartment. My culinary school. My promotion to Head Chef at that fusion restaurant in downtown,’

Ji’an’s internal monologue spiraled, a cold sweat breaking out across her forehead as the memories of a life that was essentially a magically-induced witness protection program flooded her mind.

’It was all real. But it wasn’t my origin, but an exile. A safe, comfortable, and beautiful exile.’

And then, the truck.

The classic, cliché, stereotypical isekai truck had hit her on her way home from a double shift.

It hadn’t been a random accident.

The original host’s body, her true body, had finally succumbed to the stepmother’s abuse and the freezing courtyard.

The body was dying, the tether had snapped taut.

The cosmic array had reached its limit, violently ripping her hardened, adult soul back across the multiverse and slamming it back into the vessel right before the heart stopped beating.

’I am her,’ Ji’an thought, the realization settling like a block of solid lead in her stomach.

’I am not an imposter. I am not a parasite. I am the girl who used to cry in the dirt. I just... don’t remember and grew up somewhere else.’

She slowly dragged her gaze up from the brass buckle, moving past the heavy silver plating of the Vanguard armor, until she met Lin Feng’s eyes.

The Commander was not looking out the window.

He was not resting, sitting completely still, his broad shoulders taking up a terrifying amount of space in the carriage.

His dark, silver-flecked eyes were locked onto her with intensity.

It was a gaze that devoured, the look of a starving man who had just been handed a feast and was currently calculating exactly how to guard it from the rest of the world.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

The silence between them was not awkward; it was heavy, anchoring, and deeply, uncomfortably intimate.

’What price did he pay?’ The question burned like a live ember in the back of Ji’an’s throat.

She looked at the faint, silver scar cutting through his left eyebrow. She remembered the stark white hair of their father, General Lin.

In the cultivation world, nothing of such cosmic magnitude came without a catastrophic cost.

To subvert the cycle of reincarnation, to move a soul across the boundaries of the Heavens... it required a sacrifice of equal measure.

What’s more, she somehow felt like... Lin Feng was hiding something more, even from her.

A past she doesn’t remember...

Ji’an didn’t believe he sent her soul away just because he was afraid of her being bullied. Perhaps there was something more than that, which caused him to take such a drastic decision.

But what could it be?

Also, did he sacrifice a portion of his own soul? Did he sacrifice decades of his lifespan? Did he burn his own karma, damning himself to catastrophic tribulations in the future just so she could learn how to cook pasta in a different dimension?

Ji’an opened her mouth, the desperate, clawing need to ask the question practically choking her.

But as her lips parted, the carriage suddenly jerked, coming to a smooth, definitive halt.

The muffled shouts of the estate guards echoed from outside.

"We have arrived, Commander," the driver called out, opening the heavy wooden door.

The spell of the carriage was broken.

Lin Feng broke eye contact first. He stood up smoothly, the heavy armor clanking softly, and stepped out into the cool night air.

He didn’t offer his hand because he knew she wouldn’t take it.

He simply waited on the cobblestones as Ji’an scrambled out after him.