“Qinglan, Qinglan, don’t scare your mother! If you’re gone, how am I supposed to go on?”
A woman’s voice rang in her ears, frantic and choked with sobs.
Huang Yingying found the noise unbearable. Her head was pounding, and she wanted to open her eyes, but a flood of hazy memories surged into her mind. The pain grew so intense that she couldn’t open them.
Her head buzzed, and the woman’s cries filled her ears.
A man’s voice cut through them.
“That’s enough. Keep shouting like that and you’ll bring the whole village running.”
The woman’s voice immediately dropped.
But she was still crying, shaking Huang Yingying again and again, trying to wake her.
The dizziness only got worse. Huang Yingying couldn’t open her eyes at all.
Then the man spoke again. “I think she’s dead. Well, if she’s dead, she’s dead. She’s only a girl who’ll cost you money, anyway. I’ll carry her up the mountain later and throw her off a cliff. We’ll say she fell by accident.”
The woman’s face twisted with anger. “Li Hansan, have you no heart? She’s my daughter! You—you killed my daughter! I’ll—”
“What are you going to do? Make me pay with my life?” he interrupted, unconcerned. “Chunxiang, she was just a girl who’d cost you money. If she’s dead, she’s dead. At least now you won’t have to keep living as a widow in the Huang household. You can move out and set up your own household. I’ll come propose to you right away. If you want a daughter, we can always have another one.”
Hu Chunxiang was furious. “How can you say something like that? She’s my daughter!”
“What else am I supposed to say? That it’s my fault? She followed you in secret and found out about us. And once she knew, weren’t you afraid she’d tell everyone?”
After that, he muttered, “Besides, when I threw the stone, I didn’t know it was her.”
Li Hansan felt exasperated himself.
Hu Chunxiang clenched her hands in anger, then turned to look at Huang Qinglan and began to weep again.
With her eyes still shut, Huang Yingying finally absorbed all of the original owner’s memories.
She couldn’t believe she’d transmigrated while on her way to catch her boyfriend cheating.
And she’d ended up in ancient times, in the body of a little peasant girl named Huang Qinglan. At least they shared a surname. The girl was only fourteen.
Huang Qinglan had had a hard life.
Years ago, when the court conscripted men for the army, every household had to send one male. Her father had been taken. The war was over now, but her father had died on the battlefield.
After that, she and her mother had been left alone, without a man to rely on.
Her paternal grandparents had taken one look at the two of them—widow and orphan, and the child a girl—and treated them with contempt. They made mother and daughter do all the dirty, exhausting work around the house and barely gave them enough to eat.
Lately, though, her mother had often slipped her food in secret. The girl had grown suspicious and followed her. By sheer chance, she’d caught her mother meeting privately with Li Hansan, a hunter from the village.
She’d panicked and made a noise. Li Hansan heard her and hurled a stone. It struck her squarely on the forehead, killing her on the spot.
So that was why her forehead hurt so much.
A father who’d died young, a weak mother, cruel grandparents—and she’d been killed by her own mother’s lover. What a life…
Sigh…
Why had she been brought here to this utter disaster of a life?
Maybe she should just keep pretending to be dead. Perhaps if she died for real, she’d go back.
Those two bastards were still waiting for her to catch them in the act.
She pleaded with Heaven in her heart: Just take care of this already! She didn’t want to transmigrate. She wanted to go back and catch them cheating!
Li Hansan spoke again. “Move aside. I’m taking her over to the cliff now and throwing her down. Then—”
She couldn’t bear to hear the rest.
Throwing her off a cliff would hurt like hell. Her mother’s lover really was heartless.
When she felt someone grab her leg, she knew she couldn’t keep pretending to be dead.
She cracked her eyes open. The world spun around her. “I think… I can still be saved.”
She spoke weakly.
Hu Chunxiang, who had been crying her heart out, jumped in fright.
Li Hansan, who had grabbed her legs and was about to hoist her over his shoulder, was so startled that he fell on his backside and scrambled a step backward, as if afraid she’d come back from the dead.
But Hu Chunxiang quickly came to her senses, and tears of joy streamed down her face. “Qinglan, you’re alive! I’ll take you to see a doctor right now. Just hang on.”
She moved to help her up.
Li Hansan wouldn’t let her.
“If you take her away now, everyone will find out about us.”
“Let them find out! Move. I’m saving my daughter.” Hu Chunxiang didn’t care about any of that now.
Huang Yingying thought that although this mother had been secretly seeing a man, she seemed to treat her daughter pretty well. Maybe she was a good mother after all?
At that thought, Huang Yingying wanted to slap herself. She’d been on her way to catch someone cheating, and now that she’d become someone else, she was actually thinking this woman seemed nice.
Wasn’t that ridiculous?
Then again, Li Hansan didn’t have a wife, and the woman’s husband was dead. Since he was unmarried and she was widowed, it wasn’t really cheating, was it? This was different from the affair she’d been on her way to catch.
Hu Chunxiang tried to leave, but Li Hansan clung to her and wouldn’t let go. The back-and-forth made Huang Qinglan’s head ache and spin even more. She even felt like throwing up.
She opened her eyes and looked at the rough-looking man before her. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Li Hansan froze.
She looked at Hu Chunxiang. “I don’t want my mother to die.”
Hu Chunxiang burst into even louder sobs.
“Let go!” she choked out.
At last, Li Hansan released her.
Hu Chunxiang carried her on her back all the way to the village barefoot doctor.
The doctor examined the wound. “How did this happen?”
Hu Chunxiang stammered, unable to answer.
Huang Yingying sighed inwardly. “Doctor Li, I hit my head while gathering firewood on the mountain.”
Doctor Li nodded, then turned and applied some medicinal herbs to the wound. They felt cool against her skin, and after a while, it didn’t hurt quite so much.
When it was time to pay, Hu Chunxiang grew embarrassed again. She didn’t have a single copper coin on her.
“I’ll go home and get the money.”
With that, she turned and ran home.
She was gone for a long time before she returned. Huang Yingying noticed that her hair was a little disheveled and that there were two handprints on her face.
Even her clothes showed signs of having been tugged and pulled.
Drawing on the original owner’s memories, Huang Yingying guessed the money must have been hard to get.
Hu Chunxiang smoothed her clothes, too embarrassed to meet the doctor’s eyes. She lowered her head and paid him fifteen wen in copper coins before taking her daughter home.
Watching the mother and daughter leave, Doctor Li sighed too.
The two of them walked along in silence.
They’d rested at Doctor Li’s house for quite a while, and Huang Yingying had now absorbed all of the original owner’s memories.
When her biological father had still been alive, life for the two of them had been fairly good.
Although her father hadn’t been well regarded by his parents, he was a hard worker. So long as he was useful, her grandparents didn’t dare show their favoritism too openly.
And her biological father had cherished the wife he’d worked so hard to marry. But then he’d gone to war and died.
As for her mother…
Huang Yingying glanced up at her. People had children young in ancient times. Hu Chunxiang’s complexion was a little sallow now, but her features were lovely. Though she was in her early thirties, her bright face still held a certain charm.
According to the original owner’s memories, quite a few of the village men had been interested in Hu Chunxiang over the years.
Li Hansan was one of them.
If Hu Chunxiang had wanted to remarry, it would have been easy enough. The problem was that she had a burden like Huang Qinglan to take with her. The grandparents refused to let the girl go, saying that even if Hu Chunxiang remarried, she wouldn’t be allowed to take her daughter. The moment Hu Chunxiang left, they’d sell the girl.
Hu Chunxiang was afraid her daughter would suffer if she left, so she had stayed.
And now the two of them were suffering together…
Huang Qinglan: …
They wouldn’t let her go, yet they didn’t treat her well either. Sigh…
It made sense that Hu Chunxiang had gotten involved with Li Hansan.
First, her family treated her terribly. How could she resist when someone suddenly came along and treated her well?
Second, she could get food from Li Hansan.
They were both pitiful.
In Huang Yingying’s view, the original owner’s father was already dead, so it was perfectly normal for her mother to find someone else.
But the times were different. If Hu Chunxiang’s “affair” were discovered, she’d probably end up being locked in a pig cage and drowned…