After Marrying the Officer Chapter 2: Bizarre Rebirth

Xia Chuyi dreamt she had returned to that specific day at the military guesthouse.

Outside the building, the world was blanketed in a frozen layer of ice and snow, yet indoors, her own body felt as though it were burning with fever, her agitation growing beyond her control.

She was pinned firmly beneath the heavy frame of a powerful man.

His body temperature radiated a heat even more intense than her own.

The dream felt agonizingly real; straining to lift her heavy eyelids, Xia Chuyi reached out with trembling, weak limbs, desperate to trace the handsome features of the man above her.

"Huo... Shi... Qian..."

Her lips quivered as tears, a physical remnant of her distress, streamed down her cheeks.

This moment had signaled the start of a living nightmare. A sudden, fierce wave of indignation swept through her. Her eyes flared with resolution as she summoned the remnants of her strength to pull him closer, baring her teeth to sink them sharply into his broad shoulder.

Her resistance only served to ignite a more fervent response from the man.

The night wore on in this agonizing fashion.

When consciousness finally returned to her, Xia Chuyi stared blankly at the ceiling of the guesthouse room.

The sharp, lingering ache in her body confirmed that this was no mere dream.

Had she truly been reborn? Had she been sent back to that very dawn she had so fervently prayed to forget—the dawn that had spiraled her life into irreversible ruin?

In her previous existence, waking up to find she had been violated by a stranger had shattered her psyche. In her hysteria, she had cried out, jolting a drugged Huo Shiqian awake.

He had stirred with a frigid expression, immediately demanding to know if she were the one who had spiked his drink.

What had been her reply back then?

Overwhelmed by his accusations, she had screamed in a frenzy, labeling him a predator and clawing at him in a fit of rage.

The details of his reaction remained blurred in her memory, largely because the voice of her cousin, Xia Lan, had suddenly erupted from the hallway.

Xia Lan had arrived alongside He Qing and several of his fellow soldiers in search of her.

Back then, drowning in confusion and blinded by resentment toward the man before her, she had clung to Huo Shiqian just as the door was kicked open by the intruders.

Xia Lan and the others barged in, catching them in a state of absolute disarray.

Following that disaster, Huo Shiqian was transferred to a classified unit in the Southwest due to allegations of misconduct, while He Qing terminated their engagement, leaving her to endure a bitter return home.

Reflecting on these events, Xia Chuyi realized that this nightmare had been far more destructive to Huo Shiqian than it had been to her.

He was a distinguished military officer, yet he had been dragged into disgrace by her choices, his promising career nearly snuffed out.

It was a mercy that, regardless of the past, he managed to claw his way back to prominence.

Decades later, she would frequently catch glimpses of his televised interviews, his reputation having grown so formidable that his very name was shielded by internet censors.

"Was it you who drugged me last night?" The man's voice cut through the air, reaching Xia Chuyi's ears.

Huo Shiqian’s inquiry was identical to the one he had posed in her past life.

This time, however, she felt none of her previous hysteria.

"I..." she began, her voice raspy and broken from the ordeal.

"Answer me, who sent you?" he pressed, his gaze cold and his features set in a stern line.

She rubbed her aching throat, fixing him with a steady, composed look.

It was peculiar; the voice she had once remembered as being icy and devoid of empathy now struck her as deep and strangely magnetic.

Huo Shiqian, let us seek a more harmonious path in this lifetime, Xia Chuyi whispered to herself in silence.