“You’re not a little child anymore. You’re Dad’s firstborn, and everything I do is for your own good.
“For the sake of your reputation and so that you can marry well in the future, listen to Dad and agree to go to the countryside, all right? Once you get there, I’ll ask someone to look after you…”
The man’s gentle, patient voice pulled Lan Yue back from the distant future into the past. Fragments of memories flashed rapidly through her mind.
In the blink of an eye, the face before her went from blurry to clear. The moment she recognized the man, an overwhelming hatred surged in Lan Yue’s eyes.
It was this man standing before her. He was responsible for every misfortune she had suffered throughout her life her biological father, Lan Jianjun.
Before she could rush forward, smash his damn head in, and gouge out his eyes, lines of text began appearing in her mind.
Lan Yue’s gaze gradually grew dazed. Only belatedly did she realize that she had returned to the past.
Hahahahahaha…
How utterly ridiculous! Her entire life, the life in which she had been deceived for half of it, had actually been nothing more than a character’s existence in a novel. It was simply too absurd!
As her rationality returned, the hatred in her eyes, the desire to destroy everything around her, gradually faded and was replaced by an expression as calm as an ancient, undisturbed well.
From another perspective, perhaps Heaven still had some sense of justice after all. Otherwise, how could it have given her the chance to return?
Let’s call her previous life her past life for now. To think that the life she had lived had actually been written into a book!
If there hadn’t been certain things that only she herself knew, she might genuinely have suspected that someone had used their experiences as material for a novel.
In the book, when viewed from the reader’s perspective, Lan Jianjun turned out to be the devoted second male lead who was hopelessly in love with the female protagonist. He loved her his entire life. Even after marrying and having children of his own, the only woman in his heart and eyes was still the female lead.
The first half of the story revolved around the female protagonist, Lin Shuya, who was sold by her stepmother to a man twelve years older than her.
After discovering the truth, Lin Shuya ran away from home and fell into the water. She was rescued by the male protagonist, Qin Wentao, who happened to be passing by. That was how the male and female leads officially met.
Lan Jianjun and Lin Shuya had grown up together in the same village. One could even forcefully describe them as childhood sweethearts. Lan Jianjun had secretly loved Lin Shuya since they were young.
Many young men in the village liked Lin Shuya, but because she had a difficult and troublesome stepmother, none of their families wanted to marry her into their household.
Lan Jianjun’s mother Lan Yue’s paternal grandmother naturally felt the same way.
Qin Wentao, on the other hand, was a young master from a wealthy family. The male and female leads married soon afterward, beginning the happy first half of Lin Shuya’s life.
After many years of marriage, the couple had only one daughter, Qin Xiuxiu, who would become the female protagonist in the second half of the novel.
Naturally, the couple doted on Qin Xiuxiu immensely.
Who could have expected that disaster would strike without warning? Someone reported the Qin family, and the entire family was sentenced to be sent down to a rural labor farm.
Since Lin Shuya and her husband were deeply devoted to each other, they naturally intended to endure the hardship together. However, they couldn’t bear the thought of their only precious daughter suffering alongside them.
And so, Lin Shuya approached her former childhood sweetheart, Lan Jianjun, who had since become the deputy director of the sales department at a lumber factory.
His first love from his youth had come to him for help. Lan Jianjun was more than willing to do anything for her. When he learned that her family would be sent down to the countryside and that she wanted him to find a way to keep her daughter, who had been frail since childhood, in the city, he agreed to help.
Doing something like this could easily implicate him and jeopardize his own position. But true to his role as the devoted second male lead, Lan Jianjun didn’t refuse.
After returning home and thinking it over from every angle, he actually came up with a plan!
Didn’t he have a biological daughter of his own? His daughter, Lan Yue, had always been healthy and strong since childhood. Wouldn’t she be the perfect person to take Xiuxiu’s place?
Besides, according to the ages recorded in their household registration books, the two girls were born in the same year. It was the perfect opportunity to teach Yueyue a lesson and correct her spoiled, willful temperament.
His eldest daughter resembled his late first wife in both appearance and personality. She was nothing like him, her own father.
…
“Yueyue, are you listening to Dad? I’m heartbroken that something like this happened, but since it’s already happened, we need to minimize the damage. Don’t you agree?”
Lan Jianjun patiently tried again and again to help the girl before him overcome her emotional turmoil. Who could deny that he was a good father?
Lan Yue sneered inwardly.
In her previous life, she had been horribly deceived by this very act of his.
Putting herself back into the mindset she had possessed at this point in her previous life, she remembered that those had been her darkest and most helpless days. But now, the person inside this body was no longer quite the same.
It was her, yet not her!
Three days earlier, Lan Yue had been taken by her stepsister, Li Qingqing, to visit a friend’s house. At first, everyone had been playing cards and drinking soda. The next second, she had lost consciousness.
When she woke up, she discovered that she was lying in bed with a man. She had been left wearing nothing but her underwear, and the people who happened to rush into the room had seen everything.
How devastated she had been at the time was something she could barely remember after all these years. She only remembered having one thought: she didn’t want to live anymore.
Since everyone involved knew one another, the incident never became public. Even so, Lan Yue had already lost her ability to think clearly.
After returning home, she had stayed alone in her room for three days. Every day, Lan Jianjun would stand outside her door and speak to her, offering words of comfort and advice.
He told her that she could start a new life somewhere else, where no one would know what had happened.
She had believed him.
Even at such a time, she had been filled with gratitude toward him. She had thought that although something terrible had happened to her, she still had a father who loved her wholeheartedly!
How ridiculous she had been!
Could there possibly have been anyone more laughable in the entire world?
If there was ever a perfect example of something so absurd it made the whole world look like a joke, it was her.
As for whether anything had actually happened between her and that man, wouldn’t the people involved know the truth themselves? The people who wronged you were often the ones who knew best how deeply they had hurt you. They simply didn’t care.
And even if something really had happened, so what?
In her previous life, she had suffered because of her ignorance. On top of that, she had been young, and the incident had terrified her so badly that she had practically scared herself half to death.
If you asked her, the moment she had been caught in that situation, she should have gone straight to the police station and reported the man for hooliganism, a serious offense that could have resulted in him being executed by firing squad.
If not for this novel, she might still have been kept in the dark.
So everything had been a carefully designed trap from the very beginning, specifically arranged for her.
The whole point was to make her willingly take Qin Xiuxiu’s place in going to the countryside in reality, to be sent down for rural labor.
As for explaining the situation to outsiders, that would have been easy enough. They could simply claim that the two girls had been switched at birth.
Hadn’t that been exactly what they did in her previous life?
And their performance had been remarkably successful. She had believed every single word without the slightest suspicion.
They had led her around in circles, deceiving her completely.
She really had been a fool. Without Lan Jianjun’s approval, how would Li Qingqing have dared to treat her that way?
When she discovered that she had been sent to a rural labor farm rather than assigned to the countryside as an ordinary educated youth, she had written to Lan Jianjun.
What had he told her in reply?
Oh, right. He had claimed that her maternal grandparents belonged to the landlord class and had been reported by someone, which was why she, their granddaughter, had been implicated as well.
He had also said that his own job had been affected by the incident. He told her to stay where she was and warned her not to contact her maternal grandparents, lest she bring trouble upon the elderly couple.
And she had believed every word of that story, hook, line, and sinker!
During the journey to the rural labor farm, Lin Shuya and her husband had treated her very considerately. When she first arrived, she had felt as though the sky had collapsed on her. It was only after the couple repeatedly comforted her that she finally received Lan Jianjun’s reply.
In the years that followed, Lin Shuya’s health remained poor. Because of their history and the affection she still felt for her, Lan Yue would frequently visit and care for her.
That caregiving continued for ten whole years.
Ten years!
She had been deceived so cruelly for ten years!