After spending ten years as a wandering soul, Shen Shujiao watched that man endure eight long years of exile. Just when his injustice was finally redressed and he was cleared of all charges, he was kidnapped by bandits on his way back to the city and tortured to death. Her soul, consumed by rage, finally scattered into nothingness.
As her consciousness faded, the brief twenty-one years of her life flashed before her eyes like scenes in a revolving lantern.
In the end, her awareness lingered on that scorching, intoxicating night she had spent with him.
“Shen Shujiao, have you really thought this through? Are you truly willing to marry me?”
Shen Shujiao hooked both arms around the man’s strong, solid waist. The heat beneath her palms was scalding.
Why did everything feel so real, even her senses, when she was merely reliving memories from her past life?
The man’s powerful arms braced on either side of her body. His cold, resolute face was softened by candlelight, beads of sweat sliding slowly down his forehead, lending him an indescribable wild, alluring charm.
This was the man Shen Shujiao’s father had chosen for her a month before hearing rumors of the Great Movement—a future pillar to rely on. He was Huo Zhoubai, the youngest and most promising ace regiment commander in the army.
Knowing that Shen Shujiao was unwilling to follow the army and endure hardship in the military, her father had used certain means to bring the two of them together.
Back then, when Huo Zhoubai asked her that question, Shen Shujiao felt very resistant to marrying him. She thought he was nothing like her brother-in-law—romantic, witty, and talented.
Marrying someone as rigid and dull as Huo Zhoubai, such a crude soldier, surely couldn’t compare to the happy, blissful life her elder sister Shen Shuyue enjoyed.
But at the time, Shen Shujiao was tormented beyond endurance by the drugs and never answered his question.
She only held tightly to his waist, burying her head against his solid chest, using her actions to tell him her choice.
Her mother had always said that feelings could be cultivated after marriage.
Shen Shujiao had always been an obedient daughter who listened to her mother.
“I’m willing!”
As she replayed her life, Shen Shujiao gazed at Huo Zhoubai’s handsome yet somber face and answered with absolute conviction.
She even boldly leaned forward and took the initiative to kiss him.
Just as she was about to touch the man’s thin, sensual lips, a sudden voice rang out.
“Comrade Shen, wake up!”
Shen Shujiao opened her eyes and met a pair of lively, beautiful peach-blossom eyes. Beneath them was a white gauze mask.
Looking at the woman dressed as a doctor in front of her, then at the operating table behind her, Shen Shujiao’s heart clenched violently.
She… had she been reborn?
Reborn to the day when her cousin Shen Xueman accompanied her to an illegal clinic for an abortion?
“Comrade Shen, since you’ve agreed to the procedure, take the abortion medicine now,” the doctor said, handing the pills and water to Shen Shujiao.
Shen Shujiao looked at the “doctor” before her—her cousin Shen Xueman in disguise—and then at the cup of abortion medicine in her hand, which contained three times the normal dosage. A bone-deep pain spread rapidly through her entire body.
In her previous life, less than a week after Huo Zhoubai left, Shen Shujiao’s parents died in a traffic accident on their way to purchase goods.
Only a couple of days after finishing her parents’ funeral, the Great Movement erupted with overwhelming force.
Seeing red armbands arresting people everywhere and the streets in chaos, Shen Shujiao was terrified. Every day she prayed for Huo Zhoubai to come and take her away, to help her escape that dreadful storm.
But just a few days later, her uncle Shen Shengchang told her that Huo Zhoubai’s entire family had been taken away for interrogation.
Huo Zhoubai’s grandfather had once disobeyed Party command while leading troops in battle, making a misjudgment that resulted in many soldiers’ deaths.
Her uncle said that since Old Master Huo had committed such a grave mistake, the Huo family would surely be sent down to the poorest, harshest, and most remote areas.
Although Shen Shujiao feared the bitter life of exile—eating bran and swallowing hardships—she still couldn’t bear to give up the child in her womb.
Until her uncle told her that her elder sister, who had married far away in Su Province, had been sent down with her entire family to the desolate northwest. Only by cutting all ties with Huo Zhoubai could Shen Shujiao avoid exile herself and find a chance to save her sister’s family.
To save her sister, Shen Shujiao reluctantly gave up the child in her womb and, accompanied by her cousin Shen Xueman, went to a black clinic for an abortion.
She ended up hemorrhaging heavily and dying miserably on the operating table.
After death, Shen Shujiao’s soul hovered above and saw the doctor remove her mask—revealing Shen Xueman. Only then did she realize that Shen Xueman had made her drink three times the normal dosage of abortion medicine. There had been no need for surgery at all; the excessive dose alone would have killed her.
The reason Shen Xueman disguised herself as a doctor and used curettes to stir inside her body, making her bleed to death in agony and despair, was because the world she lived in was a period-era novel titled Sweet Marriage in the Sixties.
Shen Xueman was a transmigrator who had entered the body of her cousin from several decades in the future.
And Shen Shujiao was the novel’s female lead. In the book, she was pregnant with auspicious koi-blessed quadruplets that could protect her life and bring her great fortune.
For Shen Xueman, this transmigrator, to unlock the space hidden within her jade pendant, she had to make Shen Shujiao—the female lead—voluntarily swallow the abortion medicine and personally destroy the children in her womb. Only then could she open the space and seize the vast fortune left to Shen Shujiao by her parents.
The bone-crushing pain from her previous life surged through her body again. Suppressing the monstrous hatred in her heart, Shen Shujiao took the cup from the “doctor.”
“Doctor, why is there a bug in this medicine?” Shen Shujiao said with a look of disgust, staring at the cup.
Shen Xueman rolled her eyes inwardly, cursing that little bitch for being so troublesome.
Just wait until she drinks it—she’ll see how she makes her suffer worse than death.
“I checked carefully when I prepared the medicine. The cup is very clean—there can’t be any bugs. That’s just the color of the powder,” Shen Xueman explained patiently.
“There really is a bug. After the abortion, my body will definitely be very weak. I can’t drink dirty medicine that might affect my recovery,” Shen Shujiao said, lifting the cup higher, her small face full of dissatisfaction.
Seeing Shen Shujiao’s strikingly beautiful face, Shen Xueman suppressed the urge to slap her a few times and said gently, “Let me take a look.”
When Shen Xueman lowered her head to examine the medicine, a flash of icy coldness passed through Shen Shujiao’s eyes. She swiftly reached out, ripped off Shen Xueman’s mask, grabbed her by the chin, and forcefully poured the entire cup of medicine down Shen Xueman’s throat.
The whole process was lightning-fast. Before Shen Xueman could react, she was kicked hard in the stomach, the pain making her curl up on the ground.
“Shen Shujiao, are you crazy?! Why did you make me drink the medicine?” Shen Xueman glared at Shen Shujiao with bloodshot eyes, wishing she could kill her with her gaze.
“Three times the dosage of abortion medicine—if you don’t drink it, should I wait for you to kill me instead?”
Shen Shujiao said coldly, then kicked Shen Xueman twice more before quickly turning and leaving.
Seeing Shen Shujiao run off, Shen Xueman’s face twisted with murderous rage as she struggled to get up and chase after her.
But her stomach hurt too badly. She had barely stood when her vision went black and she collapsed to the ground.
“Shujiao, why did you come out so quickly?” Shen Jinlong asked suspiciously and warily when he saw Shen Shujiao running out.
End of this chapter (please click the next chapter to continue reading).