Chapter 1

Ning Shu was suddenly standing in the middle of a busy street.

Car horns blared around her. A cheap speaker somewhere was running a sales pitch, the one about the boss skipping town with his sister-in-law, all bags thirty yuan.

But the sounds ran together and arrived in her head as one flat hum.

Not far off, a Mercedes came roaring toward her. It did not slow at all. It came straight at her.

Ning Shu's eyes went wide and she threw up her hands to shield herself. But the car passed through her body and drove on to the far side of the road.

She was still standing there. Several more cars went through her. She looked down at her own hands. They were turning clear.

Then it came to her. She was dead.

On the big screen over the shopping district they were broadcasting the funeral of the film star Ning Shu.

The mourners were her parents and her family. Her mother wore a long black dress and kept pressing a white handkerchief to her eyes. Not one tear came. All she could manage was to hold the shape of grief on her face.

Ning Shu let out a small scornful breath.

Too lazy by half. With all those cameras on her, she could at least have rubbed an onion on her eyes and made it look real.

Her death had held the front page of every entertainment magazine for days. She trended almost every day.

"Bottom-rung actress Ning Shu, who became famous out of nowhere in the last year or two, died suddenly the day before yesterday. Cause of death unknown."

"A source says Ning Shu was this year's Golden Osmanthus winner for Best Actress. A pity."

"Word has it Ning Shu died at her backer's secret villa deep in the mountains."

"Who is this mysterious backer? The question of how Ning Shu died only gets murkier."

…

All of it stopped on the seventh day after her death. The talk went quiet and disappeared.

That evening the thin moon had only just come up over the willows.

A visitor arrived, unasked, at the mourning room laid out in Ning Shu's house.

He wore a black suit cut close. His brows were hard, his nose high, his mouth thin.

He brought a cold, killing wind in through the door with him.

But there was a white gardenia pinned at his chest. Under that cold moonlight it looked soft, and easily crushed.

The moment he stepped in, every camera in the room swung to him.

There was nobody there who did not know him. He was Lu Zheng, head of Lu Properties, the man whose hand covered all of Jiangcheng.

Lu Zheng paid no attention to the startled looks. He walked straight to Ning Shu's body, stood and looked at her for two seconds, then took the white gardenia off his chest and laid it gently by her head.

He raised his eyes to the room full of reporters and said, low and steady:

"One. I am her mysterious backer. The guessing stops here."

"Two. Ning Shu died at my villa. She fell. It was an accident. The autopsy report will be made public shortly."

So the truth was out at last, and for a moment the room was full of feeling.

But the next second he did something that left every person there staring.

He lifted the white cloth from Ning Shu's face, took hold of her jaw, bent down, and kissed her.

He was kissing a dead woman.

Hard, fierce, wet, and… suffocating.

The kiss went on for what felt like a century. Then Lu Zheng slowly raised his eyes, looked at the face that had undone him, and finished his list in a voice only she could hear:

"And three. Alive, you were mine. Dead, you are mine. Don't think of running…"

---

Ning Shu's eyes snapped open.

"Aiya, she's awake at last. Thank the Heavenly Master."

Her grandmother's voice came muttering in at her ear.

Ning Shu frowned a little and looked around her. Everything was strangely familiar. The old carved wardrobe, the hard wooden bed, sunlight coming through the small window, fine dust drifting in the air.

This was…

This was the room she had slept in as a child, out in the countryside.

This was her grandmother's house.

Ning Shu snatched the mirror off the bedside cabinet. The girl in it had pale skin and a young, unfinished face, with a pair of big black eyes that shone.

She looked like a little porcelain doll, her skin so soft it might bruise at a pinch. Nothing like the heavy paint she used to wear.

It was her own face, from childhood.

Back to childhood. Reborn?

Then Ning Shu looked at the kind old woman in front of her and nearly cried. This was her grandmother, dead these many years.

Ning Shu threw her arms around her and held on tight.

"Aiyo, this child…"

"Grandma, this is so good!"

To wake up and see you. To be alive again. It was so good.

Once she had steadied herself, Ning Shu asked, "Grandma, how old am I this year?"

"Muddled child. You've just turned twelve."

"Twelve."

Her mind worked quickly. What had happened when she was twelve.

That was the year she finished primary school. She had been living with her grandmother in the village, and her parents in the city were about to take her back to start middle school there.

And her wretched life had begun the day she went back.

Her mother had been the prettiest woman in the village. Then she married into a rich family in the city, which counted as a long step up in the world. To make her place there safe she wanted a son. The first child was a daughter. That was Ning Shu.

Her husband's family were not pleased. To spare her mother-in-law the irritation, her mother sent Ning Shu out to the countryside when she was one year old. Later she got the son she wanted, and after that she paid Ning Shu no attention at all.

Ning Shu lived in the village until she was twelve.

When it was time for middle school, her grandmother argued and coaxed down the phone until her mother agreed to take Ning Shu back. Schools in the city were far better than in a country town, and her grandmother wanted her to have a future.

But once she was in the city, the wretched part started.

Life was a good deal more comfortable, but she was living on other people's charity and getting looked at sideways every day. She was not happy for a moment.

The family badly preferred sons. They all doted on her little brother and nobody paid her any mind. Her marks fell apart. She did not get into an academic high school, only an arts school, and she came out of it doing bit parts.

She knocked about the entertainment world for a few years. Scandal got her trending a few times, but she never had one piece of work she could point to. Every film she led sank. She became box-office poison. No director would cast her. She was doing so badly that at one point she wanted to kill herself and be done with the whole wretched thing.

The day she jumped into the sea, she met Lu Zheng.

Lu Zheng was holding a party on a yacht, and they fished her out of the water. That was where her life turned.

The moment he saw her face, even Lu Zheng, who had spent years in that world, felt his heart lurch.

She was too beautiful. It stopped the breath. He was caught the instant he looked at the little mermaid they had pulled out of the sea, caught so thoroughly he could not get himself free.

He spent a great deal of money making her a star, and she became one. But Ning Shu began to see what was underneath. He had to own and he had to conquer, and he went to extremes about it. She would not be good. She would not love him. In the end he shut her up.

And on the day she got away from him, she fell down the stairs and died.

Since she was back, Ning Shu swore to herself that this time she would keep a firm hold on her own life. No more drifting wherever the water took her.

She was going to stay well clear of Lu Zheng.

Once Ning Shu was awake, her grandmother set about preparing the fruit and the pig's head to offer the Heavenly Master, to thank him for bringing her back from the dead. Her aunt helped with the tidying, talking as she went.

"Even the doctor said the child fell off the cliff and couldn't be saved. And the Heavenly Master brought her back."

"Of course he did. We'll have Ning go and burn a stick of incense for him later."

Her grandmother was a feng shui master, well known for miles around. She read bones and told fortunes, turned away trouble and drove off bad luck, and people thought a great deal of her.

In her last life Ning Shu had not believed her grandmother could really do any of it. She had always thought it was a trick to fool people. Only now, reborn, was she starting to believe that there was nothing in this world that could not happen.

She made up her mind. She would learn the art from her grandmother, and start her life over.