The first night in the Su Manor was freezing. Su Wan lay on the hard bed, her 50-year-old joints aching with a dull, throbbing pain that made sleep impossible. Her lungs felt heavy, and every breath was a reminder that this body was failing.
I won't last a week at this rate, she thought, clutching the jade bracelet. I can't build an empire from a coffin.
With a thought, she felt the familiar tug at her soul. The room blurred, and suddenly, she was back in the misty garden of her hidden space. The air here was warm and tasted like spring.
She crawled to the edge of the bubbling spring. The water was crystal clear, reflecting the silver mist above. She scooped a handful and drank.
It didn't taste like water. It felt like liquid sunlight sliding down her throat.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a sudden, searing heat exploded in her chest.
"Ah!" Su Wan gasped, falling back onto the soft grass.
Her skin began to itch violently. A black, oily substance started to seep from her pores—the accumulated toxins of decades of sickness and poor "Matriarch" living. Her bones cracked and shifted, not with pain, but with a strange, restorative popping sound. It felt as if a heavy, rusted suit of armor was being stripped off her soul.
She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep right there on the grass.
When Su Wan woke up, the mist in the garden was thinning. She felt... light.
She stood up, and for the first time, her knees didn't creak. She looked at her hands. They were still wrinkled, but the deathly grey pallor was gone, replaced by a healthy, faint pink glow. The deep, age-spotted shadows on her skin had faded significantly.
She splashed more water on her face, washing away the black residue, and stepped out of the space back into her dark bedroom.
"Madam? It's dawn," Ling'er's voice came from behind the door. "The Young Masters are... well, they are complaining about the cold."
"Let them complain," Su Wan said.
She stood up and walked to the bronze mirror. She gasped. She didn't look twenty again, but she no longer looked like she was dying. Her eyes were sharp and clear, the deep wrinkles around her mouth had softened, and her silver hair had a new, healthy luster. She looked like a woman who had found a second wind a "Ruined Matriarch" who had just become dangerous.
She opened the door. Ling'er, who was holding a basin of water, nearly dropped it.
"M-Madam?" the girl stammered, staring at Su Wan's face. "You... you look different. Did the medicine work?"
"Better than medicine, Ling'er," Su Wan said, her voice now steady and firm. "Go to the kitchen. Tell the cook I want a pot of boiling water and the finest silk cloth we have left. And tell my sons to meet me in the courtyard in ten minutes. If they are late, they don't get breakfast."
Ten minutes later, Su Ren and Su He stood in the courtyard, shivering in the morning mist. When Su Wan walked out, both men froze.
"Mother?" Su Ren rubbed his eyes. "What happened to your face? You look... ten years younger."
"The ancestors have blessed me with a task," Su Wan said, ignoring their shock. She held up a small bottle she had brought from her space now filled with the spring water mixed with the Xun-Lu extract. "And that task is to fix the mess you two have made."
She looked at the front gate, which was still splintered from Lord Wei's visit.
"Su Ren, you will take this bottle to the city's most famous apothecary," she commanded. "But you will not sell it. You will let the owner smell it, then you will tell him that the Su family is looking for a distributor. Tell him the 'Fragrance of Rebirth' is coming, and the first bid starts at five hundred gold."
"Five hundred?!" Su He gasped. "No one will pay that!"
"They will," Su Wan smiled, a chillingly confident expression. "Because the first person to use this won't just smell like heaven they'll feel like they've been born again. Now, move! We have twenty-nine days left, and I intend to spend the thirtieth day buying back our dignity."
As her sons scrambled away, Su Wan felt the energy from the spring water pulsing in her veins. She wasn't just a 23-year-old in an old body anymore. She was a modern woman with the power of a goddess in her pocket.