I stood outside the corrugated iron roof of the old warehouse, my whole body feeling as if it were on fire.

I raised my hand to touch my cheek. The skin was smooth, whole, and completely untouched by the horrific, deep burn scars that had ruined my previous life.

In that past nightmare, I had merely asked Professor Tran from the capital a few harmless questions about the upcoming university entrance exam. For that innocent act of ambition, Tran Vi Dong’s mother had cruelly grabbed my hair and forced my face directly into a blazing charcoal stove. I could still vividly remember the sickening smell of my own burning flesh and the searing, agonizing pain—a pain so intense it made my soul twitch even now. It was ironic; at that time, they treated me so badly that we didn’t even have enough corn cakes to eat, yet in that horrific moment, I had actually smelled my own flesh roasting.

My legs, too, were still intact. They were not yet shattered, as they had been on the day I went to the orphanage to visit the children, only to be brutally beaten with a heavy wooden stick by Tran Vi Dong’s father until I was permanently disabled.

Now, it was the summer of 1978. The weather was so stiflingly hot that the air itself felt heavy enough to suffocate a person. But from the narrow gap in the abandoned warehouse door, the loud, ragged panting of a man and a woman drifted out into the humid air, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Brother Vi Dong… please don’t… if my father finds out—”

The neatly knitted shirt on To Huong Hong—the daughter of the union leader—was violently ripped open, revealing her stark white neck and trembling shoulders. She half-pushed against him, half-yielded, her body forced down onto a dirty, discarded wooden crate.

Thick blue veins bulged dangerously along Tran Vi Dong’s neck. Sweat soaked his military uniform, turning the olive-drab fabric dark and heavy. He stripped off his shirt with raw, unbridled aggression and lunged toward To Huong Hong.

“Hue Thu! We have to hurry and stop them!”

Vuong Que Lan, a nurse from the veterinary station, grabbed the rusty door frame. She was hyperventilating, jumping on the spot with exaggerated anxiety, her two braided pigtails swaying wildly to the rhythm of her panic.

“Mr. Vi Dong is already a deputy chief! If this story spreads out…”

I stood absolutely still, looking at her with eyes as cold as a frozen grave.

In my previous life, when I was undergoing a catastrophic birth and bleeding out on the edge of death, I had begged Vuong Que Lan—a woman I had treated like my own biological sister—to call for medical help. Instead, she had sat there calmly, filing her nails, looking down at my writhing form with utter disdain before coldly interrupting my desperate cries.

“Hua Hue Thu, your husband took so much veterinary abortion medicine from me and poured it down your throat, but why aren’t you dead yet?” she had whispered with a venomous smile. “Just die quickly. As long as you die, your husband can help me get promoted to chief nurse.”

That cruel, cold-blooded, and ungrateful face was forever burned into my memory. Now, watching her pretend to be an honest, worried friend made a wave of intense nausea rise in my throat.

“Hue Thu! Why are you still hesitating?!” Vuong Que Lan urged, her voice hushed but her eyes sparkling with malicious glee. “Mr. Vi Dong is a recognized fighting hero. If something happens to him because of behavioral problems, his bright future will be completely destroyed! If the political commissar finds out that you just stood by and watched, he will punish you severely!”

She deliberately lowered her voice, but she was practically vibrating with excitement. She was afraid this scandal wouldn’t be loud enough.

Our two families had been neighbors for decades; we had grown up in the same military compound. Vuong Que Lan was lazy and incompetent, always abandoning her duties halfway through. Yet, she harbored a deep, festering jealousy because I excelled at everything I touched. She had prayed for years to see me stripped of my dignity, disgraced, and dragged through the mud.

She knew very well that with my small frame—weighing less than fifty kilograms—trying to physically stop Tran Vi Dong, a heavily muscled soldier out of his mind on an aphrodisiac drug, was like throwing an egg against a stone.

I clamped my teeth down hard, holding onto the door frame as the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I summoned every ounce of willpower in my body to stop myself from reaching out and strangling Vuong Que Lan right then and there.

“You’re right,” I said, forcing my voice to tremble with fake panic. “Let me go in and stop them!”

I grabbed her wrist tightly, looking utterly frantic. “After all, To Huong Hong is an unmarried girl. It’s best not to let too many people know about this kind of shame. Quickly, go call my mother! Tell her to bring two secretive female guards to help us handle this quietly!”

I deliberately made myself look terrified and desperate. “Remember, Que Lan—absolutely do not alarm anyone else! If this gets out, it will ruin everyone!”

Vuong Que Lan’s eyes lit up instantly. She nodded with fake earnestness, her mind already spinning with wicked possibilities.

“I understand! I’ll go right now!” she gasped.

She turned and sprinted away so fast her feet barely touched the dirt road, running faster than a soldier responding to an emergency battle drill. Anyone watching would have thought her own house was on fire.

In my previous life, it had gone down the exact same way. This matter could have been handled quietly, but Vuong Que Lan had intentionally run through the residential quarters, screaming at the top of her lungs, bringing the entire military command, the political officers, and dozens of gossiping neighbors directly to the warehouse.

They had burst through the doors just in time to see me struggling under Tran Vi Dong. In his drugged, mindless state, he had mistaken me for his target, pinning me down on the icy cement floor and forcibly taking me while the crowd watched in horror.

From that fateful moment, I became the infamous “spoiled woman” of the entire military unit.

“What’s the point of her pretending to be noble? She went to that abandoned warehouse all by herself!” “She was probably already unchaste. Why else would a hero like Tran Vi Dong even look at her?”

Those malicious rumors were like invisible daggers, flaying my dignity piece by piece.

My father, an old and honorable political commissar, was so overwhelmed by the sudden disgrace that he suffered a massive stroke on the spot, leaving him bedridden and paralyzed. My mother, unable to bear the crushing weight of public humiliation and relentless harassment, drank a bottle of concentrated pesticide in our backyard, dying in agony. My younger brother’s coveted admission to the elite military academy was revoked overnight, ruining his life before it even began.

To “save” what little reputation my ruined family had left, I was forced to marry Tran Vi Dong. And that was when my true descent into hell began.

Every time I got pregnant, Tran Vi Dong secretly spiked my food and water with heavy doses of veterinary growth hormones and abortion chemicals obtained from Vuong Que Lan. The fetuses grew unnaturally large, turning every labor into an agonizing, bloody torture session. Every time I lost a child, I had to endure heart-wrenching physical pain and deep emotional despair.

Yet, the neighbors only mocked me further. They claimed I was a promiscuous woman who couldn’t keep her legs shut, whispering that I suffered from a dirty, infectious disease that caused me to rot from the inside out.

Desperate to secure a better life for me, my paralyzed father used his remaining political connections to clear path after path for Tran Vi Dong. My family poured everything into pushing him upward, eventually securing his promotion as the youngest deputy leader in the military region.

And how did he repay us?

When I finally went into labor with twins, my body racked with severe complications, Tran Vi Dong locked the front door from the outside. He sat in the living room drinking tea, deliberately delaying taking me to the military hospital for twelve agonizing hours.

As I lay on the blood-soaked bed sheets, screaming until my vocal cords tore, I bled uncontrollably. My precious twins suffocated inside my womb.

When he finally opened the bedroom door, he didn’t look at me with pity or regret. He stepped over the pool of my blood, leaned down, and whispered into my dying ear:

“If it weren’t for you meddling in other people’s affairs back then and stopping me, I would have married the captain’s daughter! I would have been the son-in-law of the Union Commander! This agonizing death is the retribution you deserve!”

I had died unjustly, drowning in my own blood while my heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

Now, Heaven had given me a second chance.

I watched Vuong Que Lan’s retreating figure as she sprinted toward the administrative building, not toward my mother’s quarters. I knew exactly what she was doing. She was going to fetch the Political Commissar, Commander To—To Huong Hong’s powerful father—and the entire propaganda division. She wanted a grand spectacle.

The corners of my lips slowly curled into a freezing, razor-sharp smile.

Vuong Que Lan, Tran Vi Dong, To Huong Hong… since you all want a grand drama so badly, I will make sure you get the performance of a lifetime.

Instead of going inside the warehouse to play the self-sacrificing martyr, I walked casually around to the back of the building. There was a small, high-placed ventilation window that overlooked the interior.

I picked up a heavy wooden beam resting against the wall, propped it quietly against the rear fire exit doors, and jammed it securely into the handles. I locked them inside from the outside.

Inside, the sounds grew more chaotic and frantic. The drug Tran Vi Dong had ingested was an extremely potent, black-market aphrodisiac originally formulated for breeding livestock. It wiped out all human reason, leaving only primitive, violent lust.

To Huong Hong’s initial fake resistance had turned into genuine terror. She realized Tran Vi Dong wasn’t just flirting; he was completely out of his mind.

“Vi Dong! Stop! It’s me, Huong Hong! Let me go! Aaaaghh!”

Fabric tore violently. Metal crates clattered against the concrete floor.

I stood under the shade of a large banyan tree fifty yards away, folding my arms across my chest, calmly waiting. The summer heat radiated off the ground, but my blood was as cold as ice.

Ten minutes later, the ground seemed to shake as a large crowd hurried toward the abandoned warehouse.

Leading the charge was Commander To himself, his face dark with fury, flanked by four armed guards. Beside him was the Political Commissar, several senior officers, and behind them, a mob of curious workers, military wives, and hospital staff. And right at the front, leading the pack like a triumphant hunter, was Vuong Que Lan.

“Commander! Political Commissar! You must hurry!” Vuong Que Lan was shouting, her voice echoing dramatically across the compound. “I saw Hua Hue Thu running toward the warehouse! I’m afraid Comrade Vi Dong and Miss Huong Hong are in terrible danger! Hue Thu was acting so strange—she might be doing something desperate out of jealousy!”

She was trying to frame me before anyone even stepped foot inside! She wanted everyone to think I had orchestrated a scandal or attacked the Commander’s daughter.

My mother, who had heard the commotion from afar, was running behind the crowd, her face pale with worry, clutching her chest. “Hue Thu! Where is my daughter?!”

Vuong Que Lan reached the main sliding doors of the warehouse first. She turned to the crowd with a look of fake horror and grief.

“Everyone, prepare yourselves! I tried to stop her, but Hue Thu wouldn’t listen!”

With a dramatic flourish, Vuong Que Lan slammed her hands against the heavy iron doors and pushed them wide open. “Hue Thu, don’t do this—”

The words froze in her throat.

The bright mid-afternoon sunlight poured directly into the dim interior of the warehouse, illuminating the central floor like a theater stage.

There was no sign of me anywhere.

Instead, laid out under the glaring sun on a pile of dusty burlap sacks, were Tran Vi Dong and To Huong Hong.

Tran Vi Dong was completely stripped to the waist, his eyes bloodshot and unseeing, his hands pinned securely around To Huong Hong’s waist. To Huong Hong’s clothes were shredded, her hair wild, her face stained with tears and sweat. The two of them were hopelessly, intensely entwined in an undeniable, indisputable act of raw, shameless passion.

The shockwave that hit the crowd was instantaneous and deafening.

Gasp!

Dozens of people covered their mouths. Several older women shrieked in horror. The propaganda officers dropped their notebooks.

“HONG’ER?!” Commander To roared, his face instantly turning from stern military authority to a terrifying shade of purple-red.

“Father—! FATHER, HELP ME!” To Huong Hong screamed, suddenly coming to her senses as the bright light hit her eyes and she saw the crowd of fifty people staring at her exposed skin.

Tran Vi Dong, still trapped in the haze of the potent drug, growled angrily at the interruption and tried to pull her back down under him, completely unaware of the commander standing five feet away.

“SEIZE HIM! SEIZE THAT BEAST!” Commander To screamed, his voice cracking with pure, apocalyptic rage.

Four armed guards rushed forward, pulling out their batons. It took all four of them, struggling and cursing, to physically drag the drugged, thrashing Tran Vi Dong off the commander’s daughter. They slammed him face-first onto the filthy floor, pinning his arms behind his back and snapping heavy steel handcuffs onto his wrists.

“You animal! You absolute monster!” Commander To threw off his military coat and wrapped it around his weeping, hysterically sobbing daughter, shielding her from the burning gazes of the onlookers.

Vuong Que Lan stood near the entrance, completely paralyzed. Her mouth was open so wide a fist could fit inside. Her eyes bulged as she looked around frantically.

“No… no, this is wrong!” Vuong Que Lan babbled out loud, her voice trembling. “Where is Hua Hue Thu?! She was supposed to be inside! She was supposed to—”

“Were you looking for me, Que Lan?”

My voice was soft, calm, and clear, ringing out from behind the crowd.

Everyone turned. I walked forward slowly, wearing a clean, modest white floral dress. I carried a small bamboo basket filled with fresh vegetables, looking completely innocent and bewildered.

My mother let out a gasp of utter relief and rushed over, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Hue Thu! Oh, thank God! You’re safe! Where were you?!”

“I was at the supply cooperative buying vegetables for dinner, Vice-Commander’s wife,” I replied softly, my eyes wide with confusion as I looked at the chaotic scene. “I saw Que Lan running like crazy toward the command office, so I followed the crowd to see what happened. What… what is going on here?”

Commander To’s lethal gaze instantly locked onto Vuong Que Lan.

“Nurse Vuong!” the Commander thundered, his chest heaving with murderous fury. “You came running into my office screaming that Hua Hue Thu was causing a scene in the warehouse! You brought me, the Political Commissar, and half the military division here to witness… to witness THIS?!”

Vuong Que Lan’s face turned paper-white. Sweat poured down her temples. “I… Commander, listen to me! Hue Thu told me—she stood at the door! She told me she was going inside to stop them! I thought—”

“I told you what?” I interrupted, my voice trembling with delicate hurt, tears brimming in my eyes. “Que Lan, how could you lie like that? I haven’t seen you all afternoon! I was at the cooperative market—the clerk there can vouch that I’ve been there for the last hour!”

“You’re lying! You wicked witch, you set me up!” Vuong Que Lan shrieked, losing her mind completely as she pointed a trembling finger at me. “You were standing right by the door ten minutes ago!”

“Enough!” the Political Commissar stepped forward, his face dark as thunder. “Nurse Vuong, your claims are utterly baseless! You dragged the entire leadership here to witness a scandal involving Commander To’s daughter! Furthermore…”

The Political Commissar walked over to the wooden crate near the door. He picked up a small, brown glass vial that had fallen out of Tran Vi Dong’s discarded trousers during the struggle. He sniffed it, his brows furrowing deep.

“This is a restricted, high-potency livestock stimulant from the veterinary station,” the Commissar said coldly, turning his gaze toward Vuong Que Lan. “This chemical is under strict lock and key. Nurse Vuong, you are the chief inventory manager at the veterinary station. How did Deputy Chief Tran get his hands on a controlled military-grade aphrodisiac?”

Vuong Que Lan’s knees gave out. She collapsed onto the dirt floor with a heavy thud. “I… I didn’t… he asked me for…”

“She gave it to him!” To Huong Hong screamed from under her father’s coat, her eyes burning with pure hatred as she looked at Vuong Que Lan. “Father! Vuong Que Lan told me earlier today that Tran Vi Dong wanted to discuss a secret union project with me in the warehouse! She lured me here! She conspired with him to ruin me!”

In reality, To Huong Hong and Tran Vi Dong had been secretly flirting for weeks, but in order to save her own dignity and reputation, To Huong Hong immediately threw both Tran Vi Dong and Vuong Que Lan under the bus.

“No! Miss To, that’s not true! You said you liked him! You told me you wanted him!” Vuong Que Lan screamed, scrambling backward on her hands and knees.

“SILENCE!” Commander To roared, his voice echoing like cannon fire throughout the entire compound. “Gendarme! Arrest Nurse Vuong immediately! Investigate her for drug theft, conspiracy, and intent to harm military personnel!”

Two heavy-set military police officers stepped forward, grabbing Vuong Que Lan by her arms and yanking her to her feet. She kicked and screamed, crying hysterically, but no one looked at her with a single shred of sympathy.

Tran Vi Dong, still groggy as the drug began to slowly wear off, looked around in complete horror. He saw the handcuffs on his wrists, the furious face of Commander To, the crying To Huong Hong, and the military police surrounding him.

His eyes finally landed on me.

I stood beside my mother, holding her hand, looking at him with a soft, mournful, yet utterly hollow expression. When our eyes met, I didn’t show anger. I merely offered him a tiny, almost imperceptible tilt of my head—a silent, icy farewell.

Tran Vi Dong’s eyes widened in realization. His bright military career, his grand political ambitions, his future as the rising star of the military region—all of it had vanished in a single afternoon.

“No… NO! Political Commissar! Commander! I was framed! I was drugged!” Tran Vi Dong howled, thrashing against his restraints as he was dragged away. “Hua Hue Thu! Save me! Tell them I’m innocent! HUE THU!”

His frantic screams faded as the military police shoved him into the back of a green military truck.

The aftermath was swift, brutal, and uncompromising.

Because the scandal involved the Commander’s daughter and took place right inside the military compound in broad daylight, the military court acted with unprecedented speed.

Tran Vi Dong was stripped of his officer rank, dishonorably discharged from the military, and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in the remote, freezing northern coal mines for assault and severe moral corruption.

Vuong Que Lan was found guilty of stealing controlled military pharmaceuticals, conspiracy, and slander. She was sentenced to ten years in a maximum-security women’s prison camp. The heavy manual labor destroyed her hands within months—the same hands she used to file so proudly while watching me bleed to death in my past life.

To Huong Hong, unable to bear the overwhelming shame and the endless whispers of the compound, was sent away by her father to a tiny, isolated mountain village in the far west, never to return to the capital again.

A week after the trial, my father sat in his armchair at home, sipping hot tea. Because he had never suffered the stroke that ruined his health in my past life, his body was strong and vibrant. My mother was happily cooking in the kitchen, her laughter ringing out alongside my younger brother, who had just received his official acceptance letter to the prestigious National Military Academy.

My family was whole. My life was my own again.

I stood on the balcony, feeling the warm summer breeze brush against my undamaged face. I looked out toward the distant northern mountains where Tran Vi Dong was currently breaking rocks in the freezing rain, and toward the penal farm where Vuong Que Lan would spend the best years of her youth in misery.

They had wanted to destroy my life for their selfish ambitions. Instead, they had dug their own graves, hand in hand.

I picked up my university entrance exam study guide, opened the first page under the golden sunlight, and smiled.

In this life, the fire would no longer burn my skin—it would light my path to the top.