“I’m telling all of you, I’m not getting married! I’d rather die than marry. You can give up on that idea!”
The moment she finished speaking, the girl suddenly charged toward the nearby pillar and slammed into it.
She moved too fast for anyone around her to react. By the time they realized what had happened, she had already collapsed onto the floor, blood spreading everywhere.
“Quick, check if she’s still breathing. If she is, smear some stove ash on it. If she’s dead, throw her outside. Don’t let her die in the house. Bad luck…”
“Mom, h-how can you say something like that…”
“Get lost! I get annoyed just looking at you. A woman who can’t even give birth to a son is useless. Why don’t you go die too…”
“Mom, stop talking. Qiaoyun is still breathing! Get her into the room first. She still has to get married the day after tomorrow. If she dies, who’s going to marry into the Zhao family?”
The entire family noisily carried the girl into a room, completely unaware that the vibrant young life inside her body had already disappeared.
Big Sister, please live on in Qiaoyun’s place! Life in this world is too bitter. I’d rather become the wind, become the rain…
“It hurts… it hurts so much! Why does it hurt this much… Who’s talking to me… Who is it…”
Lin Qiaoyun felt as if both her body and head were being torn apart.
Clutching her head, she curled up on the bed, sweating from the pain. Suddenly, a flood of memories that did not belong to her rushed into her mind.
Lin Qiaoyun passed out from the pain.
When she woke up again, it was already the next morning. Before she even opened her eyes, she felt someone slapping her face.
Smack.
“You shameless little slut, you worthless burden! Why aren’t you up making breakfast yet? Lying there trying to die? Why didn’t you just smash yourself to death yesterday? Are you staying alive just to ruin my Qiaofeng?”
The person hitting her was the original owner’s grandmother, Wang Chunhua.
Just as Wang Chunhua was about to continue beating Lin Qiaoyun, a woman grabbed her arm.
“Mom, if you want to hit someone, hit me instead! Qiaoyun still hasn’t woken up. She’s getting married tomorrow. What if you hurt her? Mom, I’m begging you. Please stop hitting her.”
The woman burst into tears as she spoke.
“You cry, cry, cry—that’s all you know how to do! If you had given birth to a son, my second son wouldn’t be left without an heir. Since she won’t get up to cook, then you go do it. And don’t even think about stealing food. If even one grain of rice goes missing, you’ll regret it.”
Still muttering curses, Wang Chunhua stormed out. Before leaving, she viciously pinched the woman—Xu Nian’en, the original owner’s mother.
After Wang Chunhua left, Xu Nian’en hurriedly helped her daughter drink a little warm water. She noticed her daughter was awake, though she remained silent.
“Yun’er, does it still hurt? It’s all Mom’s fault. I couldn’t protect you. Are you hungry? I’ll go make you something to eat. Just lie down and rest for a while, okay? Mom will be back soon.”
Xu Nian’en gently touched her daughter’s forehead, which was wrapped in cloth, before leaving the room.
Her daughter had always been quiet and withdrawn, so Xu Nian’en did not think much of not receiving a response.
Once Xu Nian’en left, Lin Qiaoyun closed her eyes again. She was still dazed and had no idea what had happened.
She remembered going with her team to an underground storage facility to transport supplies.
For some reason, just after everyone finished gathering the materials, the entire base suddenly seemed to be controlled by something. It felt as though her body was being ripped apart. She did not even have time to scream before everything went black.
And when she woke up again, she was here.
In the apocalypse, Lin Qiaoyun had been nothing more than an ordinary spatial ability user.
Why ordinary?
Because her space ability could not level up.
At first, she had lived quite comfortably thanks to her space. But later, more and more people developed spatial abilities. Other people’s spaces became huge and came with all kinds of useful powers, while hers only had storage.
By the later stages of the apocalypse, people like her were treated as nothing more than mobile warehouses.
The truth was, Lin Qiaoyun was not actually an ability user.
She simply possessed a storage ring.
And her space was not the basketball-court-sized area she pretended it was—it was actually as large as a football field.
Not only was her space large, but at its center stood a well. Growing from the center of the well was a lotus flower. Every few days, a few drops of essence liquid would appear on the lotus. However, there was very little of it, barely enough for one or two people to drink.
The essence liquid did not have any dramatic effects. Aside from making her stronger and more attractive, it did not seem to do much else. At most, it improved her physical condition.
If she got injured, drinking a drop would help her heal faster, but it was nowhere near powerful enough to completely heal wounds.
For all those years in the apocalypse, Lin Qiaoyun drank the lotus essence by herself. She had always been extremely careful to make sure no one discovered her secret.
She had no family.
When the apocalypse first began, all of them had died.
She had no friends either.
Over time, her friends had either died, disappeared, or betrayed her for a single bite of food, even trying to sell her out.
In the end, she was completely alone.
Then again, how many people could survive ten years in the apocalypse without ending up alone?
Even those who had husbands were often alone in reality.
As for men…
Hmph.
In the apocalypse, men—whether capable or useless—often kept multiple women.
The weaker ones surrounded themselves with ordinary women.
The powerful ones, especially men with abilities, behaved like breeding machines, desperately chasing after beautiful women and female ability users to satisfy themselves and hopefully produce children.
But Lin Qiaoyun had absolutely no interest in sharing a man with other women.
She also had no desire for children.
Adults could barely survive—how could anyone raise a child?
And in the apocalypse, strength ruled everything.
So for all those years, she lived alone, wandering independently. Within the base, she was considered an unusual existence.
Did no men ever target her?
Of course they did.
After drinking the essence liquid for the first time, she became prettier, which attracted the attention of several men.
Without hesitation, she ruined both her face and body.
Only by covering herself in horrifying scars could she avoid the claws of those disgusting men.
Even then, she had nearly been assaulted several times before finally joining a base.
After that, Lin Qiaoyun spent her days working as a transporter inside the base. Everyone treated her like a lunatic, like an emotionless moving warehouse.
The base leaders neither cared about her nor mistreated her.
She lived like a transparent person in the apocalypse, unnoticed until the day she died.
To be honest, death meant very little to Lin Qiaoyun.
She had long grown tired of living in the apocalypse—she just had not had the courage to kill herself.
What she never expected was that after dying, she would somehow come back to life.
And she had brought both her memories and her space with her.
The ring on her finger was gone, but the space remained.
She had already tested it just now by drinking a drop of the essence liquid. The effect was still the same as before.
The only difference was that the lotus in her space was gone, leaving behind nothing but a bare stalk.
The essence liquid she drank had been saved from before. She did not have much left—after collecting it for so many years, she had only managed to fill a small bottle.
Looking at the bare stalk in the well, Lin Qiaoyun realized there would probably be no more essence liquid in the future.
She would have to use what remained sparingly.
Still, no more was no more.
One small bottle should be enough to last her this lifetime.
This was not the apocalypse. There were no zombies here, and she would not constantly get injured, so she did not need much essence liquid.
Then she checked her supplies.
Her football-field-sized space seemed to have grown much larger, becoming emptier and more spacious.
The supplies themselves had not changed.
Everything she had gathered over the years in the apocalypse was still there.
There was very little food—only one bag of potatoes and sweet potatoes, along with one box of a synthesized nutritional liquid developed in the later stages of the apocalypse.
It tasted awful.
Lin Qiaoyun hated drinking it.
After sorting through the memories in her mind, she realized she had traveled to a time before the apocalypse—apparently the 1950s.
It was still a difficult era.
People often went hungry during these years.
But fortunately, crops could be planted, the mountains were full of wild produce, and there were fish in the rivers.
Lin Qiaoyun figured she probably would not go hungry in this era.
After all, she had plenty of strength.
She had been too exhausted in her previous life.
In this life, she wanted to be lazy and take it easy.