Qiao Xin had fallen asleep on the sofa while browsing on her phone.
This time, she slept soundly, without any dreams. She didn’t visit the teenage Lin Qing’s dilapidated courtyard; the exhaustion of the past few days seemed to melt away, and she even let out a soft, rhythmic snore.
Suddenly, a strange power seized the room. The pendulum of the grandfather clock in the living room froze in mid-swing. A surreal, dreamlike figure clad in white appeared in the room. The visitor’s face was obscured, but his tall, imposing silhouette suggested he was a man.
He stood there, gazing at Qiao Xin as she lay on the sofa. With a graceful motion of his hand, a light blanket draped over the sofa settled over her. The next moment, he reached out as if to stroke her hair, but hesitated and withdrew his hand. He stood still for a long while before his figure dissolved into nothingness.
Time in the room began to flow once more. The little black cat pendulum beneath the clock resumed its rhythmic ticking, swinging left to right.
It was as if everything that had just happened was nothing more than a hallucination.
The Great Yu Dynasty.
Yong’an Town, Lin’an City, at the foot of the mountain in Qiao Family Village.
Lin Qing finished the last of his medicine and sat on a stone bench in the courtyard. He had transmigrated into this body just a few days ago. At the time, his fever had left him delirious, and he had only barely survived by dragging himself outside to cool down with well water, spurred on by the echo of a voice.
Before he could even recover his strength, a flood of memories surged into his mind, causing such excruciating pain that he had blacked out again.
Upon waking, he realized the “transmigration” his wife had always whispered about in the modern world had actually happened to him. He had died in a car accident, and he had never expected to wake up in the body of this youth.
The boy was also named Lin Qing, a child found and adopted by a hunter named Old Man Lin. Because the villagers claimed the hunter was cursed, they kept their distance, and Old Man Lin had lived alone at the foot of the mountain. He had adopted the young Lin Qing after the boy smiled at him upon their first meeting.
From the age of five, Old Man Lin had taught Lin Qing basic martial arts and hunting skills. Lin Qing was clever and learned quickly. The two had lived a simple, peaceful life by hunting for thirteen years.
Two years ago, a drought struck the region. Last year, they managed a meager harvest, but this year, there was practically nothing. As grain prices skyrocketed, Old Man Lin decided to try his luck deep in the mountains, but he ran into a tiger. Old Man Lin had fought with everything he had, eventually dying alongside the beast.
When Lin Qing realized the old man wasn’t coming back, he grabbed his bow and arrows and headed deep into the mountains to find him. Seeing the bodies of his adoptive father and the tiger had shattered him. He had wept and begged the village chief to help bring Old Man Lin’s body down the mountain, and the chief had helped him sell the tiger in town.
The ten taels of silver from the sale had gone entirely toward the burial. After the funeral, exhausted and grief-stricken, Lin Qing had fallen ill. He lay in bed for three days, and in the very moment he took his last breath, the modern Lin Qing had claimed the body.
His first thought upon waking was: If I die again, can I go back? For days, he felt as though someone was following him, but no matter how hard he searched, he found nothing.
In such a famine, with no food to eat, he hadn’t known how much longer he could survive, especially with the body so sick. Just as he was spiraling into despair, he heard his wife’s voice. He was certain he hadn’t imagined it. She had told him to wait for her. He couldn’t describe the sudden rush of hope; he was ecstatic, and for the first time, he had the motivation to keep living.
He remembered there was money in the house. Old Man Lin, fearing the famine might last forever, had been paranoid about saving every copper, never imagining it would cost him his life.
Lin Qing scrambled around the room, finally digging behind a hardened lump of dirt in the corner of the wall. He pulled out a cloth bundle containing a fifty-tael silver note and over twenty taels of loose silver fragments.
Lin Qing had hitched a ride on Old Man Qiao’s ox cart to the town, where he saw a doctor and filled his prescriptions. He had spent the night in town, only returning today once he felt slightly better.
Before heading back, he had bought a significant amount of supplies. If his wife had also transmigrated, she couldn’t be left without food. He refused to let her suffer alongside him again. He had to get well as quickly as possible and find a way to earn money.
A tiger that size for only ten taels of silver? Lin Qing didn’t believe it for a second. Based on his memories of the market rates, even with damaged fur, that tiger should have fetched at least a hundred taels. His eyes darkened as he glanced toward the village.
He pushed the suspicion aside for now, focusing instead on the current price of grain. The silver in his hand wouldn’t buy much. Where coarse rice used to be five wen a jin and fine rice eight, today he’d paid fifteen wen for coarse rice, thirty for fine, twenty-eight for white flour, and fifty for coarse salt.
This was utterly unaffordable for the average person. Given the drought, he doubted it would rain anytime soon, and prices were only going to climb higher.
Lin Qing looked at the well in his courtyard. Old Man Lin had paid to have it dug last year when he noticed the changing weather, saving them from having to fight the villagers for water. But if the village wells ran dry, it was only a matter of time before they set their sights on his.
Lin Qing shook his head, forcing himself to stop the frantic cycle of thoughts. The priority was to recover his health and stockpile grain and water immediately. Both he and Qiao Xin had known the agony of starvation; to live a second life and end up in such a miserable state would be an insult to his manhood.
He didn’t know how Qiao Xin would transmigrate. If it required death, as it had for him, he would rather she lived a long, happy life in the modern world. He would rather she didn’t come at all than suffer the lack of food and water in this desolate place.
“Xinxin, can you hear me? If the price of transmigration is death, I hope you live a good life over there.”
In her sleep, a single tear slid from the corner of Qiao Xin’s eye. She shifted unconsciously on the sofa and drifted back into a deep slumber.
A sudden alarm cut through the air, jolting the sleeper on the sofa awake.
Qiao Xin silenced the alarm and was instantly alert. It was 5:00 AM. She had to head to the agricultural market today. She hadn’t stockpiled breakfast in the space yet, but there was a shop right outside her complex. She arrived just as the first batch of steamed buns was being pulled from the steamer.
“Boss, I’ll take all of these.”
The woman turned, smiled, and said, “Morning, Miss Qiao! This batch has over two hundred buns—are you sure you want them all?”
Qiao Xin nodded. “Yes. The company has a project going on, and I’m taking these to the construction site for the crew. Could you also pack me thirty cups of black rice porridge and thirty of millet porridge? Thank you!”
“Certainly! Just a moment. Lao Liu, come out and help pack these!” The shopkeeper shouted toward the back.
Qiao Xin took two chive-and-vermicelli buns to eat while she waited. The skins were thin and the filling generous—not bad, though it lacked the rich touch of the fillings Lin Qing used to make.
Twenty minutes later, the buns and porridge were loaded into the van. Qiao Xin scanned the payment code: 350 yuan.
The moment the van doors were shut, she whisked the food into her space; when she took it out later, it would still be piping hot. She started the engine and headed straight for the wholesale market she had visited yesterday.
Today’s priority was grain, seasonings, and meat. She headed for the meat wholesaler first—the meat was freshest at this hour, and the prices were the most competitive.