Time passed in a blur of hurried days, and on this particular morning, Jiang Wanning was jolted awake by a choking stench.
It was not the faint, musty dampness typical of an old house, but a foul mixture of rotting straw, as if someone had stuffed a soaking wet rag deep into her nose.
She frowned, instinctively trying to turn over to escape the smell, only to find her body heavy as if filled with lead.
Her fingers twitched, and what she touched was not the soft comfort of cotton sheets, but a prickly straw mat. Beneath it seemed to be packed earth, hard and unyielding, pressing painfully against her back.
Something was wrong.
She snapped her eyes open.
What met her gaze was a thatched hut.
Dry, yellowed straw, cracked and in places already moldy and blackened, had been woven together with bamboo strips and laid across crooked wooden beams overhead. Sunlight filtered through the gaps, scattering in thin, fragmented rays across the uneven, pitted ground.
In that instant, Jiang Wanning’s mind went completely blank.
She pushed against the ground, trying to sit up, but her arms were as weak as noodles. It took two attempts before she could barely prop up half her body.
At that moment, she noticed her hands.
They were far too thin, too frail, the joints standing out like bamboo nodes. The skin was an unhealthy pale shade, and faint old scars ran across the back of her hand, as though something had scratched it before.
These were not her hands.
Lowering her gaze, she examined her body. She was dressed in a coarse gray-blue garment, the fabric stiff as sackcloth. The cuffs were frayed, and there was a dark patch stitched crookedly at the collar, as though done by a child.
The clothes hung loosely on her, like a sack draped over her frame.
A surge of overwhelming fear rose from her feet, swallowing her whole.
Jiang Wanning abruptly lifted her head and looked around.
This was a hut.
No, calling it a hut was generous. It was barely a shelter that could keep out wind and rain.
The walls were made of packed earth, with patches where the surface had crumbled away, exposing the yellow soil mixed with bits of straw inside. The door was nothing more than a few wooden planks nailed together, crooked and ill-fitting, unable to close properly. Thin beams of light slipped through the gaps, illuminating the dust floating in the air.
In one corner lay a few bundles of dried grass, with a torn mat spread on top, likely where she had been lying earlier.
At the center of the room stood a table with a broken leg, propped up with fragments of tiles. On it sat a chipped coarse porcelain bowl, half-filled with some unidentifiable paste.
The musty smell permeating the air came from here.
Jiang Wanning sat stiffly on the straw mat, her entire body rigid, her mind prickling as if pierced by countless needles.
Had she really transmigrated?
She had read so many novels and imagined countless possibilities, but when it actually happened, she realized that none of them captured the most real part of it.
That bone-deep terror that seeped out when you discovered that your body, your identity, everything about you had been replaced.
It was not fear, but something deeper. A terror so profound that she could not even scream.
Instinctively, she reached out with her mind to sense that space.
With a single thought, the familiar vast white expanse appeared in her consciousness.
The grain was still there, the salt was still there, the medicine was still there. The solar panels leaned against the wall, the furniture in the glass house remained untouched. The piglets huddled together asleep within the enclosure, while the chickens scattered across the grass, chirping as they pecked at the ground.
The space was still there.
Jiang Wanning clung to that realization as if grasping a lifeline while drowning.
As long as the space remained, she still had a way out. No matter how terrible this world might be, she at least had food, medicine, and a place to hide.
After taking three deep breaths, she finally managed to focus on her surroundings.
The original owner’s memories came flooding into her mind like shattered pieces of a mirror, stabbing into her consciousness one fragment at a time.
Incomplete, disjointed, yet when pieced together, they formed images identical to those in her dreams.
Wanwan. Foolish. Parents deceased.
These three words were like nails driven into the short and miserable fifteen years of this girl’s life.
Jiang Wanning closed her eyes, letting the fragments wash over her.
A young woman crouched on the ground, smiling and beckoning to her. Her face was blurred, but her voice was clear.
“Wanwan, come to Mother.”
The scene shifted. The same woman lay on a straw mat, her face waxy yellow, lips cracked, fingers thin as dry branches. She stroked the girl’s head, her voice faint as a passing breeze.
“Wanwan, be good… listen to your grandmother from now on…”
Then came the mourning hall. A small one, with only two wooden tablets. An oil lamp flickered before them, its wick nearly burned out, the flame wavering as though it could extinguish at any moment.
And more…
Too many fragments crowded together, like a pot of porridge cooked to a sticky mess.
Jiang Wanning opened her eyes, only then realizing that her eyes were wet.
She lifted her hand to wipe them, staring at the tear on the back of her hand, suddenly finding it absurd.
For twenty-five years she had been emotionally detached. Even when the caretaker at the orphanage passed away, she had not cried. Yet now, for a “grandmother” and “brother” she had never truly met, she sat in this broken hut shedding tears. It felt as though her emotions had returned, no longer numb.
But she had no time to dwell on it.
Footsteps sounded outside the door.
Not just one person, but several, mixed with voices and coughs, drawing closer.
The door was pushed open.
The first to enter was a white-haired elderly woman, leaning on a polished wooden cane. Her back was severely hunched, her chin nearly touching her chest.
Her face was covered in dark age spots, her eyes cloudy, but when she looked at Jiang Wanning, a flicker of light appeared within them.
“Wanwan, you’re awake?” Her voice was hoarse, yet gentle. “Are you hungry? Grandmother brought you some porridge.”
Jiang Wanning stared at her face.
It was exactly the same as in her dream.
Those fragmented memories suddenly found their place, like scattered beads strung together on a thread.
Grandmother.
Jiang Wanning’s throat tightened, no sound coming out. She wanted to say “I’m not hungry,” but when she opened her mouth, what emerged instead was a faint, indistinct whisper.
“Hungry…”
Those were not her words.
They were the body’s memory, Wanwan’s instinctive response.
Jiang Wanning froze.
Grandmother had already approached with a smile, taking a coarse porcelain bowl from a young woman behind her. Slowly, trembling, she crouched down, her knees making a soft clicking sound, and held the bowl out to Jiang Wanning.
Inside was porridge, thin and watery, with barely any grains of rice. The liquid was so abundant it resembled dishwater, grayish in color, with a few indistinguishable wild vegetable leaves floating within.
Yet in those fragmented memories, this was the only warm meal the family had.
Jiang Wanning took the bowl. As her fingers brushed against its surface, she felt the roughness and the chipped edges.
Lowering her gaze to the thin porridge, she suddenly thought of the supplies she had stored in her space, rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pork, chicken, salt, seasonings, enough to feed dozens of people for decades.
And yet, her family here was surviving on this.
She lifted the bowl to her lips and took a slow sip.
The porridge was warm, bland, the wild vegetables carrying an earthy bitterness. It was not good, in fact, it could be called unpleasant.
But Jiang Wanning finished it, one mouthful after another, even licking clean the grains settled at the bottom.
Not because she was hungry.
But because this bowl of porridge had been saved from her grandmother’s own share.
She could not waste it.
After finishing, she raised her head and looked at the people in the room.
Besides her grandmother, there was a young man, likely the second uncle-in-law from her dreams, always busy by the stove.
Another figure stood at the doorway.
A boy of fifteen or sixteen, thin as a bamboo pole, his face gaunt, making his front teeth appear especially prominent.
He wore a short jacket patched in seven or eight places, his trousers rolled up to his knees. His calves were covered in dried mud, and his feet were in worn straw sandals with toes sticking out.
He stood at the doorway without stepping inside, yet his eyes remained fixed on Jiang Wanning, as if wanting to come closer but not daring to.
The boy from her dream, the one who had rolled down the hillside, whose knees were bloodied yet still grinning as he offered her wild fruit.
Jiang Wanning recognized him.
“Wanwan.” The boy finally spoke, his voice slightly hoarse with the roughness of adolescence, but his tone cautious. “Are you feeling better? You slept all day yesterday. We couldn’t wake you, it scared us.”
Yesterday.
Jiang Wanning caught that word. That meant the original owner had been unconscious for an entire day, and she had arrived at that exact moment.
She parted her lips.
“I’m fine.”