“Shen Zhiyao, we told you to make food. Where’s the food? Why isn’t it ready yet?”
“Twenty years we’ve fed and clothed you for nothing, and this is how you repay the Qin family—eating and lazing around all day?”
Shen Zhiyao was sleeping in a daze when a sharp pain shot through her scalp, followed by several blows to her body.
She was on her period, her whole body sticky with sweat, weak and miserable—yet the person deliberately pressed viciously down on her stomach.
Instantly, a surge of nausea rose from her belly. She felt like vomiting, and the moment she opened her eyes, she instinctively raised her hand and slapped it hard against that person’s face.
The vomit never came.
She lifted her pale little face, and a fleshy face filled with disbelief came into view, a handprint blooming across it.
Qin Hao glared, his features twisted. ”Shen Zhiyao, you actually dare to hit me?”
Clutching her stomach, Shen Zhiyao was dragged by Qin Hao, listless and breathless, to sit on the cold cement floor, her lower body flooding like a burst dam.
Three days ago, she had transmigrated into a book titled The Era’s Pampered Bride: Pregnant and Doted On by the Richest Husband, becoming the fake heiress who shared her name—a cuckoo in the nest—who clung shamelessly to the Qin family and refused to leave.
The original owner’s body had been in terrible shape.
She had worked day and night, sparing no effort, studying for the textile factory exam.
Then the real heiress returned, and her adoptive parents demanded she hand over both the job she had worked so hard to earn and her engagement to the real daughter.
Her fiancé agreed without so much as blinking.
A lifetime of affection was instantly poured down the drain.
Unable to accept the sudden upheaval, and with her chronic illness festering into deeper sickness, the original owner had already gone two months without her period.
The first thing Shen Zhiyao did after transmigrating was gather medicinal herbs to nurse the original owner’s body back to health.
Why cling to this place and refuse to leave?
Was the Qin family some kind of prized delicacy?
Favoritist adoptive parents, a spoiled good-for-nothing brother, and a real heiress eyeing her like a hawk.
She was going to take back what the original owner deserved—by finding her birth parents!
A healthy body would make that long journey much easier.
Otherwise, if she fell ill in this era of underdeveloped medicine, where would she go to cry about it?
At that thought, Shen Zhiyao raised her eyes weakly.
The person before her was the original owner’s lazy, gluttonous, utterly spoiled brother.
1.6 meters tall, 190 jin in weight.
“Shen Zhiyao, you’ve lost your mind! You fucking dare hit me? Even Mom and Dad have never hit me!”
Qin Hao’s face flushed red, his neck thick with rage, his mung-bean eyes glaring.
Suddenly, a vicious smile curled at the corner of his lips.
He knew Shen Zhiyao was on her period, so every full-force punch landed squarely on her lower abdomen.
And that wasn’t all—if she still refused to cook, he’d fetch some cold water later and pour it straight over her head!
At the thought, the arc of his grin grew even wider.
Shen Zhiyao broke out in a cold sweat. The blows to her stomach hurt so much she couldn’t hold back her muffled groans.
She bit her bloodless lip and instinctively curled into a ball, like a small beast trembling in fear.
But Qin Hao only grew more brazen. “Hahaha! Now you know who’s boss! That’s what you get for not cooking, for hitting me!”
Her slender, fair hands trembled uncontrollably as she groped for the embroidery needle on the table nearby.
The frown on Shen Zhiyao’s brow suddenly relaxed, and a cold smile lifted the corner of her lips.
With a silver needle in hand, she had her confidence back!
“What are you smiling at?!”
Qin Hao flew into an even greater rage. He raised his hand high, his sandbag-sized fist slamming down toward her head.
Faster than words can tell, Shen Zhiyao rose to her feet without warning and drove the embroidery needle in her hand viciously into his Hegu acupoint.
Her delicate face was cold and stern, not even an eyelid fluttering.
Qin Hao’s whole body went limp as noodles in an instant—forget making a fist, he couldn’t even lift his arm. “You… you…”
A bead of sweat formed at the tip of Shen Zhiyao’s nose, yet her expression remained composed.
Suddenly, quick and precise, she struck his Zusanli point.
Qin Hao’s knees buckled, and with a thud, he dropped straight to his knees before her.
In his small eyes was enormous confusion.
He had only seen Shen Zhiyao fiddle with the embroidery needle a few times—so why did he feel as if he’d been struck by some evil spell? “Ugh…”
A vague sense of dread crept over him. He wanted to beg for mercy, but it was too late. His throat felt as if something were jammed in it, and all he could produce were faint whimpers.
In the end, he could only watch helplessly as that tiny yet terrifying silver needle stabbed into the very center of the plumpest part of his calf.
Through the slits of his half-closed eyes, he saw only Shen Zhiyao’s face, wearing a chilling sneer. He couldn’t cry out, and he couldn’t run.
His once-arrogant face was utterly doused, his eyes full of despair: No…
Climbing up along his calf came, at first, a small surge of excruciating pain.
Then the needle-like pain seeped everywhere, penetrating every limb and bone.
The pain made Qin Hao’s fat body shake and convulse violently.
For a long while, even a single sound seemed stuck in his throat.
Only after quite some time did his wails finally ring through the entire room. “Ah… ahh…”
He cried with a rhythm like a tractor engine.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
Only then was the door pushed open, and a well-groomed middle-aged woman and a young girl walked in, one after the other.
Shen Zhiyao was already sitting on the bed, the blanket neatly draped over her knees. She smiled weakly. “Mom, so you were home. I thought it was just me and Ahao.”
Three perfectly healthy people, all waiting for a sick girl to cook for them.
Hearing the mockery in her words—whether intentional or not—her adoptive mother Jiang Ailian’s face paled.
When Qin Hao had come in and closed the door, Jiang Ailian had clearly known he meant to bully Shen Zhiyao. This was hardly the first or second time, yet she had turned a deaf ear.
But the moment she heard her son’s screams, she had rushed in.
Qin Hao finally recovered, his face streaked with tears and covered in snot.
Without pausing to wipe his face, he struggled to his feet, stumbling and falling on his rear several times in the process.
He was about to say something when he met Shen Zhiyao’s pale, smiling face.
The lingering pain still fresh, he flinched instantly.
He backed away several steps, hiding behind Jiang Ailian, staring at Shen Zhiyao as if she were some monstrous beast. “Mom, she bullied me! She hit me! She knows dark arts!”
Jiang Ailian looked at Shen Zhiyao lying on the sickbed, her small face deathly pale as if she were hanging on by a single breath, then at Qin Hao behind her, who couldn’t even hide half his bulk behind her. She shook her head helplessly.
She knew this son of hers was adept at framing Shen Zhiyao, but even she couldn’t pretend not to see something this absurd.
“That’s enough, Ahao.”
Most likely he had bumped into the cabinet and hit a funny bone, which was why he looked like such a mess.
Otherwise, five Shen Zhiyaos wouldn’t be a match for him.
Qin Hao’s big fleshy face was written all over with grievance. “Mom, it’s true!”
Shen Zhiyao ranked first in her exams.
Qin Hao had torn up her exam paper, accused her of cheating, and her father had believed him—he’d even slapped Shen Zhiyao across the face.
So how come this time, when he was telling the truth, no one believed him?
Jiang Ailian patted his hand, signaling him to be patient. Then her eyes gleamed as she turned to Shen Zhiyao. “Zhiyao, when are you going to hand over your job to Xiaohui?”
With that, she let out a deep sigh. “It’s not that I want to rush you—it’s just that our Qin family owes Xiaohui so much.”
Her pleading gaze landed on Shen Zhiyao like a gentle blade, carving into her cut by cut. “You know as well as anyone—without the Qin family, how could you ever have gotten that position at the cotton mill? It should have been Xiaohui’s all along.”