Qiao Xin was walking along the roadside when a sharp, urgent blare of a horn cut through the air.
She turned her head to see a truck hurtling toward her. Her instincts screamed at her to jump, but her body felt paralyzed, as if trapped in place. The world went pitch black, and in an instant, consciousness vanished.
When Qiao Xin woke again, every inch of her body ached—especially her head. I was hit by a car, she thought. This time, Lin Qing wasn’t there to push me out of the way, and I didn’t get out in time. If she was in this much pain, did that mean she wasn’t dead?
She opened her eyes, but the world before her was a desolate wasteland of withered yellow. The trees were stripped bare, the ground choked with dry, brittle weeds. Beside her lay a bundle of firewood. She was slumped at the bottom of a slope. She looked down at herself—this was not her body. She wore layers of rags patched together, so caked in filth the original color was lost. Her hands were like skeletal chicken claws, stained with blackish-green grime. She was skin and bones, a mere frame of misery.
I’ve transmigrated, she realized. Yes, I must have.
As the thought struck her, a sharp, stabbing pain tore through her brain. A flood of memories poured in, so excruciating she writhed on the ground.
A quarter of an hour later, the pain subsided. She had indeed transmigrated.
She was in the Great Yu Dynasty, a period that didn’t exist in the history books. She had become Qiao Sanya, the granddaughter of Qiao Fugui in Qiao Village. Her original father, Qiao Silang, had been the family’s fourth son—the most neglected and overworked of them all. Three years ago, he had been conscripted into forced labor to repair a river channel and was crushed to death by a falling boulder. His wife, Madame Li, never recovered from the blow and followed him to the grave half a year later.
The couple had only one child: Sanya. At just eleven years old, she had been left to face the world alone. After her parents died, her life had become a living hell of beatings, starvation, and endless labor. In the winter, she lacked warm clothes; when sick, she had no medicine. Today, her grandmother, Madame Wang, had ordered her up the mountain to gather firewood. Too weak from hunger, Sanya had stumbled and tumbled down this slope, striking her head against a stone and breathing her last.
That was how Qiao Xin had taken over the vessel.
But the most incredible part was that she wasn’t the first to “reclaim” this body. After the initial impact, Sanya’s own soul had been reborn. But when she woke and realized she lacked the strength to change her reality—doomed to relive that agony—she had been so terrified that she had literally died of fright.
That was when Qiao Xin arrived, inheriting the memories of Sanya’s short, tragic two lives.
According to those memories, a years-long drought was about to force the entire village into a desperate migration. During the trek, Sanya had barely survived on bark and grass roots. The Qiao family never gave her a scrap of food, yet they forced her to carry luggage, fetch water, and gather firewood daily, all while enduring the abuse of the family’s other children.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. About a month into the journey, the heavens opened. The rain fell in relentless sheets. The villagers were overjoyed, planning to return to their homes once the sky cleared. Sanya had felt the same—surely the rain was a chance at survival.
But it didn’t stop for three months. Her family forced her to forage for mushrooms and water in the pouring rain. Her already frail body succumbed to a high fever. Nobody cared. Her grandmother, Madame Wang, cursed her daily as a “little slut” and a “money-losing commodity,” while her grandfather wouldn’t even deign to look at her.
She couldn’t bear to return to that family. While gathering wood, she had ventured deep into the mountains and encountered a group of strangers. They took her in, and Sanya was overjoyed, believing she had finally found a path to survival. A few days later, the rain finally stopped, and the air turned bitter cold. She lay in a cave, her fever flickering in and out. With no medicine, she could only endure.
She remembered that day well. The sun finally broke through the clouds, and she smiled for the first time in years. Then, two of the people who had taken her in began walking toward her.
In the end, she had been slowly devoured piece by piece by that group of people. The agony was something she would never forget, and even after her rebirth, she had felt so hopeless that she chose to give up, allowing Qiao Xin to take over this shattered shell of a body.
Qiao Xin sat up slowly. She pulled a cup of water and some painkillers from her space. Aside from the abrasions, the wound on her head was the most severe, but after drinking the stream water and resting for a few minutes, the pain dulled. She managed to eat a cup of warm millet porridge and a vegetable bun, savoring every bite.
The body was in horrific condition; she needed to start with easily digestible food to slowly regain her strength. Even an incredibly plain bun tasted like a delicacy from heaven. She had to use every ounce of willpower just to keep from devouring it too quickly.
As she ate, she planned her next moves. She had to find Lin Qing. As for the Qiao family, she would eventually have to return, but that could wait until she found him.
In her memories, there was indeed a family of hunters named Lin living at the foot of the mountain near her village. But she didn’t know the name of their child; since she could remember, her life had been one endless cycle of labor, just like her parents. She had never been out to play—not even once.
Looking at the withered, yellow forest, it was identical to the one in her dreams. Though the trees still held a trace of green, the leaves on the ground were bone-dry. Lin Qing had to be here.
The villagers’ reason for fleeing was a mystery to Sanya. She only listened to her family’s arrangements. They said it was time to pack and leave, so she followed; the drought had drained every drop of water, and staying behind meant certain death.
That poor girl, Qiao Xin thought. She was just a machine for labor, invisible to everyone, letting anyone bully her. She had such a weak temperament—even after being pushed to the brink, she didn’t know how to resist. And trapped in such a disaster, she’d trusted strangers too easily, only to end up as their food.
“Well, I am no one’s punching bag,” Qiao Xin said, her voice quiet but icy as she finished the last bite of the bun. “If they dare to bully me, I’ll make sure their household never knows another day of peace.”
Suddenly, the heavy, lingering gloom in her heart dissipated. Qiao Xin noticed the change but didn’t dwell on it. She was herself—she wouldn’t live for anyone else. But since this body was hers now, if those people didn’t have the eyes to see who they were dealing with, they had no one to blame but themselves.
After eating and drinking, her headache had completely vanished. She’d never noticed such rapid effects from the space’s water before. Maybe it’s because this body is so far gone that the recovery is more obvious? That had to be it. She took another long draught of the water, feeling strength flow back into her limbs.
She stowed the bundle of firewood into her space—it was what the original Sanya had gathered, and it shouldn’t go to waste.
Standing up, she brushed the dead leaves and weeds from her clothes, eyed a ridge above, and began to scramble up.
Suddenly, a thick, sturdy branch reached down toward her. A familiar voice drifted through the air: “Grab it. I’ll pull you up.”
Qiao Xin grasped the branch with one hand and looked up. Tears welled in her eyes, uncontrollable and burning. The boy from her dreams stood before her—it was him, her husband, Lin Qing.
“A-Qing,” Qiao Xin rasped, her voice thick with tears.
Lin Qing’s mind went blank. His heart felt as though it had been struck by the weight of that name. His mouth parted, his lips trembling, and he called out softly, “Xinxin? Xinxin… is it really you?”
With a powerful tug, he pulled her slight, frail frame up to the ridge. Her face, though yellowed and streaked with filth, was now washed with tears—but her eyes shone, bright as a galaxy of stars.
“A-Qing, it’s me. I’ve come to find you.”