“Yueyue, aren’t we just the best of friends? We went to the countryside together, got pregnant at the same time, and our babies are due around the same month.”
“What do you think—if you were to accidentally push me down, who would Niancheng believe, you or me?”
The voice by her ear sounded somewhat familiar. Lin Qingyue only just realized she was sitting on the kang, holding a half-finished piece of baby clothing in her hands. Before she could gather her thoughts, the woman who had been standing in front of her suddenly grabbed her hand and yanked hard, stumbling and falling to the ground.
The woman clutched her belly tightly with both hands, her eyes red as she cried out:
“Yueyue, Niancheng really only helps me out because we’re best friends. There’s nothing between us—please stop being so suspicious, alright?”
“You—” Lin Qingyue looked stunned and instinctively reached out to help the fallen woman up.
“Ah, my stomach hurts…”
“Hongyan—” An anxious voice came from the doorway. Gu Niancheng rushed in, shoving Lin Qingyue aside, and bent down to scoop up the woman on the ground, his voice urgent:
“Hongyan, are you alright?”
“Niancheng, Yueyue didn’t mean it. My stomach hurts so much…”
Yao Hongyan’s face was pale, tears welling in her eyes as she explained anxiously,
“Niancheng, please tell Yueyue—there’s really nothing between us.”
As she spoke, she wrapped both arms tightly around the man’s neck.
“Lin Qingyue, how many times do I have to tell you? I only look after Hongyan a bit more because you two are best friends. Just be sensible and stop making a scene, alright?”
“You’re pregnant too—how could you push Hongyan down? What if something happens to the baby in her belly…”
Gu Niancheng’s face was twisted with anger as he tightened his hold on the woman.
“Ah, Niancheng, my baby—” Before Gu Niancheng could finish, the woman in his arms cried out again, clinging even tighter.
“Lin Qingyue, if Hongyan is fine, then good. But if anything happens to her, I won’t let you off!”
The man warned viciously before carrying the woman away in big strides.
Lin Qingyue fell to the ground, her palms stinging with a burning pain, one hand instinctively shielding her belly.
She looked up and surveyed her surroundings.
The pitch-black doorframe, the walls smeared with yellow mud, the paint-chipped table, the low windowsill.
Everything before her felt both foreign and familiar.
Had she been reborn? Reborn on the very day she gave birth?
She remembered her past life—her good friend, the young widow Yao Hongyan, had been accidentally pushed by her and gone into early labor, and her husband Gu Niancheng had rushed over eagerly to help.
When she, eight months pregnant, tried to explain, Gu Niancheng shoved her away with a sweep of his hand, and the pain nearly made her pass out.
She barely survived childbirth, but because the baby came early, he was sickly and dependent on medicine year-round.
Her husband and his family all blamed her for being petty and harming her son. Her father-in-law broke his leg going up the mountain to find medicine for the premature grandson, her mother-in-law collapsed from anxiety and was left partially paralyzed, and before she had even finished her confinement month, she was already managing all the household chores.
And her husband—heedless of the mess his own family was in—kept running off to the young widow’s house, fretting that the poor woman had no man to care for her during her confinement.
Later, her husband took all their savings to attend university, leaving her alone in the village.
Her husband’s schooling, her in-laws’ medicine, her son’s hospital stays—all of it cost money, and she gritted her teeth and bore it all.
After enduring until her son became the top scorer in the city’s college entrance examination, her husband—who only came home once a year like a migratory bird—returned arm in arm with a young widow, declaring that the two of them had never been legally married.
The husband and the young widow were the legally protected couple, and the son was biologically theirs.
Lin Qingyue couldn’t believe it. How could the son she had carried for ten months and given birth to with such pain not be hers?
She frantically grabbed her son’s hand to seek confirmation, but the son she had raised with her own sweat and tears, changing his diapers and feeding him, viciously kicked her twice and affectionately linked arms with the young widow:
“Old woman, you’re just our family’s free maid. This is my real mother.”
“Look at yourself—you look older than my grandmother. I don’t want an old woman like you as my mother!”
Her body, worn down from caring for that family of the old, weak, sick, and disabled, gave out as she fainted from rage. Those three ungrateful wretches actually tried to sell her to an old bachelor deep in the mountains.
When she woke up and resisted, she grabbed the steering wheel and caused a car accident.
The agonizing pain was still fresh, but as Lin Qingyue raised her hand and looked at her not-yet-fully-roughened palm, she couldn’t help but chuckle softly.
It seemed heaven had not been unkind to her—she truly had been given a second chance!
Gu Niancheng, the young widow, and that ungrateful son—fine. You tormented me for a lifetime. In this second life, I will make your lives a living hell!
Lin Qingyue struggled to climb up from the ground and looked down at her heavily swollen belly. She was now eight months pregnant.
In her previous life, she had fainted from pain before even finishing childbirth, lacking even the strength to see whether her child was a boy or a girl—which was exactly how they had managed to pull off their scheme of swapping the babies.
But what about her child?
She remembered that the young widow seemed to have given birth to a daughter, but the girl was born weak and died within a few days.
If the ungrateful son was the young widow’s child, then… the girl who died early—that was her own biological daughter!
Was her daughter destined to die young?
No! She refused to accept it!
Lin Qingyue’s heart trembled, and her hand stroking her belly pressed down slightly. As if sensing its mother’s distress, the little one inside kicked its tiny feet in response.
It was a fetal movement! Her daughter was greeting her!
At this moment, the little one was clearly full of strength.
So why had she died early? Could it really just have been because of premature birth?
The details of the baby swap remained a mystery to her until her death, but since heaven had granted her this rebirth, she was determined to protect the little one in her belly.
As for the scumbag, the slut, and the little ingrate—you can all stay locked together forever!
“My dear daughter, Mama will definitely protect you.”
Lin Qingyue’s eyes were gentle as she raised her hand and softly stroked her belly.
“And I will make those beasts who harmed us mother and daughter in our past life pay! Blood! For! Blood!”
Lin Qingyue’s gaze turned fierce, hatred surging in her eyes.
She remembered that the young widow had also had a difficult labor this time—after four or five hours of pain without delivering, she was sent to the town health clinic.
The young widow had no money, so that bastard Gu Niancheng had come back to take the money she had saved for her own childbirth.
It was also then that he discovered she had fainted on the floor of the inner room.
That beast had kicked her and called her a faker before rushing into the house to get the money to save the young widow.
But that money—it was the burial savings her grandmother had sent her after learning she was pregnant, meant for her to keep as a reserve for emergencies. Why should that young widow get to benefit from it?
At the thought, Lin Qingyue struggled to her feet. Her eight-month belly was already huge, and merely getting up from the ground left her drenched in sweat.
If she remembered correctly, her grandmother had sent her a full ten yuan.
Ten yuan didn’t sound like much, but this was 1980—even a veteran worker in town only earned twenty yuan a month.
Many families in the village didn’t have ten yuan to their name, and a bride price for marrying off a daughter was only seven or eight.
Lin Qingyue remembered where Gu Niancheng hid his money—beneath a loose blue stone behind the cabinet against the south wall.
She struggled to move the wardrobe aside, lifted the half-buried stone, and bent down to fish out a small, grayish cloth bundle from within.
Lin Qingyue couldn’t wait to open it. Inside were two ten-yuan bills, one five-yuan bill, and three one-yuan bills.
Twenty-eight yuan in total!
Lin Qingyue took off her shoes and tucked the money directly under her insoles.
After putting her shoes back on, she went to the crude little kitchen by the courtyard gate, hauled out the two half-sacks of grain, and tossed them into the cellar behind the kitchen, covering them with dry straw.
By the time she finished all this, Lin Qingyue was leaning on her waist, panting from exhaustion.
“Lin Qingyue, you wicked troublemaker! Sister Hongyan treated you so well, and you pushed her into a miscarriage!!”
Before she could even catch her breath, her sister-in-law Gu Yunyun came barging in, shouting at the top of her lungs.