Transmigration: The Fate of the Villainess

She recalled that she had just finished performing heart surgery. Being on her feet for the past six hours straight made her sleepy and so exhausted that she fainted in the breakroom.

When she came to, she was sitting in a banquet. There was a middle-aged woman crying, asking for justice for another woman who was kneeling behind an ancient-looking guqin.

A beautiful woman. A rare antique guqin.

She could not take her eyes away from such an enchanting scene. But as everyone was focusing on the crying woman, her sight was replaced by the memory of someone, a woman who looked like her...

This was the entirety of the memory of ‘Bai Hua’ who was the same person as ‘Padma’.

W...What is happening?

“Answering Empress Dowager, this servant checked the Qin before leaving the mansion. Everything was normal...”

Padma, now as Bai Hua, was jerked away from her thoughts by a woman’s voice. She was brought in while Padma was seeing the original body’s memory. When her eyes lay at that woman, Bai Hua’s memory immediately told her that this was Bai Yu’s maid. Bai Yu was the elegant woman behind the bloodstained guqin and Bai Hua’s half-sister of a different mother.

.....

Padma furrowed her brows, reviewing everything that was left in the body’s mind while making sense of the situation in front of her. Since she was a genius doctor, she could understand everything in that short moment. Still, an unanswerable question remained: How did she become Bai Hua?

“...It was this servant’s fault. I was not careful. I only thought that first [g1] miss and Furen’s carriage was too small for the Qin, so I asked to put it in the third miss’s carriage.”

Putting the guqin in Bai Hua’s carriage, and now that guqin cut this body’s sister? Was she accusing her?

“The third daughter of Bai family?”

She could not lose...not to this kind of thing!

“That was me, Your Majesty.”

Padma convincingly assumed the role of Bai Hua. From the memories, she knew what horrible things the original Bai Hua had been through. This accusation could lead her to death. She could not let this person, with who she felt a strange connection, be further trampled on.

“I am Bai Hua. Blessings to Empress Dowager.”

She recalled that she was in a banquet full of royalty. Her first action was to maintain her manner and greet the authorities calmly and gracefully. Still, her heart was filled with anxiousness.

She was not used to this era, but she could at least guess that the people who were speaking to her were Empress Dowager and Taizi. Bai Hua tried to ask for a fair judgment from the two since they seemed to be of the highest rank here.

At that moment, Padma had completely become Bai Hua.

———————-

Bai Hua never hated Bai Yu.

This woman never hated anyone, despite being bullied and mocked all her life. She had always accepted those treatments, and the only thing she resented was fate that dictated her low status.

The fate which Padma equally hated as well!

Before transmigrating into this world, people of all ages accepted her for her ability, not caring about her status or appearance. But in this world, she was forced to be a mere concubine’s child who had to sneak around just to meet her own mother.

“I heard that you almost got punished-cough”

“Mother, drink this tea first.” Bai Hua handed tea to Li Rong, her sick mother.

The new Bai Hua wanted to expose the person who schemed to accuse her, but she did not expect that Bai Yu was already a step ahead of her. Somehow, she had turned the situation around and made her guilty. Both Empress Dowager and Taizi believed her words, and so in the end, she had no one who she could rely on to prove her innocence.

The heroine lost without realizing that the person she could rely on, someone who she would trust for all her new life, was intently observing her.

The genius doctor could only regret...She should have investigated the poison on Bai Yu too, and not just on the guqin!

That woman who was her half-sister was both beautiful and intelligent. And as for her wickedness, Bai Hua could not be certain...In the past, Bai Yu had always bullied the former Bai Hua. But this time, she could escape royal punishment solely because of Bai Yu’s begging. Currently, she was only grounded.

She could not stay still, not even after she finally returned to her Jiu Hua building. Bai Hua’s living condition, combined with various memories she had seen, made her restless. The first thing she did was cure her mother’s sickness.

Li Rong had been weak since giving birth to Bai Hua. She never received proper medication because Yue Mei hated both the mother and daughter. Even Bai Hua’s residence building was separated from her mother with the reason that Li Rong was sick. There were no servants to help to take care of her, while Bai Hua had two personal maids. The fact made her feel guilty toward her mother.

But because of her fear for the first Furen, the old Bai Hua could only bow down and surrender to the destiny handed to her by Yue Mei. She did not even dare to meet her mother. The most she could do was send Xiao Zi to visit Li Rong’s distant building while Yue Mei had guests over.

“Rest assured, mother. I’m fine.”

“Cough” Li Rong’s face was pale, but her voice was gentle when she said to her daughter who she rarely met. “...You must be careful. And don’t think of harming your first mother.”

“I understand.”

An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Li Rong was the same as Bai Hua.

Submissive and gentle.

She did not understand why this kind of woman would willingly become a concubine. How could she dare, when she respected and feared Yue Mei more than everything else like this? Bai Hua did not bother herself with the long past events. Right now, she only cared about Li Rong’s sickness.

Her mother told her that it was a side effect of her being poisoned for nine months. Bai Hua not possessing magic was also caused by that poison. By the time Li Rong discovered it, it was already too late. As for the person behind that poison, Li Rong was uncertain if third Furen was truthful or not when she told her that it was Yue Mei.

Li Rong begged Bai Hua not to resent Yue Mei. She asked her to think about Yue Mei’s mercy, how she had let Bai Hua live, giving her food and a roof over her head up until now, no matter how shabby those things were.

The new Bai Hua accepted her mother’s request. She also did not want to dwell on the bygones. Luckily, she had trained in traditional Chinese medicine, and so she used her skills to attempt to diagnose Li Rong’s conditions through feeling her pulse. She intended to cure her with acupuncture, though it was an unpopular method in this world.

Bai Hua decided to sell her jade hairpin given from her father on the day of her hair-pinning ceremony, amidst her two maids’ loyal protest. She ignored their plea and sold it for the money to order some specially made needles for acupuncture. She went to pick them up by herself the day Qin Wang came to Bai mansion, and when she returned, she was met with an unexpected scene.

Xiao Tao was punished by beatings after she snuck into Bai Yu’s residence to search for the poison. Bai Hua had firmly forbidden them from further trying to prove her innocence, yet the maid was too stubborn.

Bai Hua wanted to be furious. But she could not.

She decided to take the fall, diverting Yue Mei’s attention from her leaving the mansion by arguing about the poison. If the fact that she was trying to cure Li Rong was exposed, she would lose every chance to help her mother.

Bai Hua did not know if Bai Yu noticed her lie or not. She stared at her half-sister’s face, who acted like she knew her every action yet still let everything happen while at the same time playing victim. Bai Hua hated her deceitful acts. She wanted to dart at that woman and unmasked her. But she was stopped by Xiao Zi.

In the end, Bai Hua was fooled by Bai Yu and was punished by beatings. However, it was also Bai Yu who saved her from those beatings and chose to send her to the family’s ancestral temple instead.

Bai Hua rode the carriage heading toward the temple without getting an opportunity to cure Li Rong. That night, she was too hurt from being beaten that she could not get up and perform acupuncture. Strangely, Bai Yu had her servant prepare balms within the carriage for her to heal the beating wounds. And so, she could quickly recover. Furthermore, she was not affected by the same poison as Bai Yu since she had no magic.

Ultimately, Bai Hua could not see her half-sister’s true nature. Was she truly wicked? Or was she planning something else?

Bai Hua’s time at the ancestral temple was spent peacefully. Her stay might not be the most comfortable, but it made her happy. She had time to study medicinal herbs until she could expel the poison in her body, enabling her to finally use magic. Oddly, she had a magic level that almost reached the color black despite its being her first time wielding magic. And her spirit of a doctor, she could easily use healing magic that was said to be difficult to learn.

The woman who was called useless now had magic and saved a man’s life.