Xu Jiaojiao's Rebirth State

Xu Jiaojiao's Rebirth State is revealed when Xu Jiaojiao tells Shen Tang that she has reincarnated. Whether the experience is literally reincarnation or an extraordinarily vivid dream remains uncertain to Xu Jiaojiao, but its practical force is unmistakable: she carries memories of another life into the current one and uses them to reinterpret her relationship with Shen Tang. The state therefore functions not merely as a supernatural premise, but as a burden of remembered responsibility and a chance to change an already familiar sequence of harm.

Revelation and Uncertainty

Xu Jiaojiao discloses the rebirth only after admitting that there is something Shen Tang might not believe. Her hesitation preserves the uncertainty surrounding the phenomenon: even Xu Jiaojiao does not know whether she has truly reincarnated or experienced a fleeting dream, although the memory felt too real to dismiss. Shen Tang accepts the confession rather than rejecting it, partly because she herself has crossed into the book's world. That shared openness changes the conversation from a confession seeking belief into an inquiry about what the previous life contained.

Shen Tang also recognizes that the timing of Xu Jiaojiao's rebirth matters. She cannot determine whether Xu Jiaojiao reincarnated during the first cycle, before Shen Tang crossed into the story, or during the second cycle, after her arrival. If the latter is true, Xu Jiaojiao may possess useful knowledge of the future. Rebirth thus becomes both an emotional disclosure and a possible source of narrative information, although the evidence does not establish that Xu Jiaojiao can predict events with certainty.

The Previous Life and Its Pressures

In the previous life, Xu Jiaojiao was a minor celebrity without resources or connections. Her fortunes improved after she acted in the drama, allowing her to ride the wave of its popularity, but the opportunity also exposed her to the entertainment industry's coercive power. An investor took an interest in her, and her company began sending her out to drink and entertain clients. Although she tried to uphold her principles, she could not avoid being subjected to unwanted physical contact. Her past therefore combines professional precarity with an environment in which institutional support turns a young performer into a tool for cultivating business relationships.

This background helps explain why her earlier choices cannot be reduced to simple malice. Xu Jiaojiao was vulnerable, lacked resources, and was operating within a company structure that treated access to her body and social performance as part of its business. At the same time, the rebirth does not erase the damage she caused. Her new knowledge forces her to hold structural pressure and personal responsibility together rather than allowing either one to cancel the other.

Guilt and the Recalled Betrayal

Xu Jiaojiao remembers that, in her previous life, she was blinded and plotted with Shen Tang's enemies to harm Shen Tang. The memory centers on a drink: Shen Tang tightly gripped a wine glass and sincerely asked whether Xu Jiaojiao really wanted her to drink it. Xu Jiaojiao nodded, and Shen Tang drank everything in one gulp. A tear ran from the corner of Shen Tang's eye, and Xu Jiaojiao immediately regretted what she had helped set in motion, but the reversal came too late.

Nothing ultimately happened to Shen Tang, yet the failure of the plot did not make Xu Jiaojiao feel innocent. She could not forgive herself, and the two women broke apart. The remembered scene gives the rebirth its moral center. Xu Jiaojiao is not simply trying to avoid an unpleasant fate or gain a better career; she is trying to prevent a betrayal whose emotional consequences survived even though its intended physical harm did not. The past remains active because it has become an unresolved relationship rather than a completed incident.

Redemption in the Present Life

In the present life, Xu Jiaojiao embraces Shen Tang and thinks that she is relieved nothing has happened yet and that she still has a chance to start over. She then resolves to redeem herself properly. Her rebirth therefore changes the meaning of physical closeness between them: the embrace is simultaneously an expression of relief, a confession withheld from ordinary speech, and a pledge that the former pattern will not be repeated.

The state also gives Xu Jiaojiao a different orientation toward choice. In the previous life, she joined the conspiracy and later regretted it. In the new one, remembered consequences precede the decision, allowing her to act with knowledge of what betrayal would cost. The evidence presents redemption as an ongoing intention rather than a completed absolution. Xu Jiaojiao still carries the past, and her promise to make amends matters precisely because the relationship has already been damaged in a life she cannot undo.

Narrative Function and Significance

Xu Jiaojiao's rebirth introduces a second consciousness of the plot's possible course. Shen Tang is already living against the expected storyline after entering the book, while Xu Jiaojiao brings memories from an earlier cycle into the altered present. Their conversation makes the story's timeline unstable: there may be more than one previous version of events, and neither character possesses a complete explanation of how the cycles relate to one another.

At the same time, the rebirth state links supernatural repetition to the practical pressures of celebrity culture. Xu Jiaojiao's former lack of status, the company's manipulation of her labor, and her eventual conspiracy with Shen Tang's enemies all belong to the same history of vulnerability and compromised agency. Remembering that history does not guarantee success, but it creates the possibility of ethical divergence. Its decisive significance is therefore the conversion of memory into responsibility: Xu Jiaojiao's second chance is valuable not because it promises a more favorable destiny, but because it gives her an opportunity to refuse the role she once played and preserve her relationship with Shen Tang.