It was hot.
Her insides felt as if they were being scorched alive, and Sheng Xia desperately needed an outlet.
The next second, a large hand clasped gently around her neck—not with force, but with a cautious tenderness, as if terrified of hurting her.
“Sheng Xia, look closely at who I am!”
A deep, raspy voice echoed right beside her ear, laced with tightly suppressed anger.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret!”
Huh?
Through her hazy, blurred vision, she caught a vague glimpse of the man in front of her. He was actually remarkably handsome—though his face was thoroughly dark and grim, looking for all the world like a fool who’d just been scammed out of a fortune in an online romance.
Sheng Xia couldn’t help licking her dry, parched lips.
At the sight, the glint in Jiang Han’s eyes quivered. A bead of scalding sweat rolled down his forehead. Though the hand holding her neck was burning hot, Sheng Xia still felt an indescribable, soothing wave of cool electricity ripple through her body.
She tilted her head and leaned in, pressing her cheek lightly against his arm.
“All I know,” she murmured faintly, “is that if I don’t do something right now, I’m really going to regret it…”
She was practically burning to death. Without another thought, she wrapped her arms tightly around his biceps and clung to him.
Jiang Han hadn’t expected her to react like this. His whole body shuddered as if struck by lightning, and he froze on the spot, not daring to move an inch.
After fumbling around clumsily for a long while without getting anywhere, Sheng Xia grew frustrated. She bit down hard on his solid chest and muttered a low curse under her breath: “Are you even a man?!”
With that, ignoring any remaining resistance, she boldly threw herself onto him.
Under such circumstances, how could any man hold back?
The primal, suppressed wildness of a man’s nature was instantly ignited.
Sheng Xia felt as though she were floating and sinking in a vast sea, tossed high into the clouds one moment and swept gently down the next. The constant swaying left her feeling utterly undone, as if her very bones had been broken apart and pieced back together.
She had no idea how much time had passed before she finally sank into a heavy sleep.
Just before losing consciousness, a fleeting thought crossed her mind: Damn, this dream feels way too real…
It was all her novelist cousin’s fault. Her cousin had insisted that her single status was due to her being hopelessly dense in romance, forcing a mountain of explicit adult movies onto her to “stimulate” her imagination. Sheng Xia had barely glanced at a few frames before falling into this bizarre, erotic dream.
It certainly was stimulating enough.
Sheng Xia cursed inwardly, resolving that as soon as she woke up, she would delete every single one of those videos. The aftereffects were simply too intense to handle!
Sheng Xia was jolted awake by a frantic, chaotic banging on the door.
“Sheng Xia, open the door, quickly!”
“I know Jiang Han forced himself on you! Don’t worry, I brought everyone here to stand up for you!”
“Since Jiang Han dared to play the rogue with you, he’d better be prepared to face a struggle session!”
Sheng Xia stared up at the dilapidated wooden roof beams, her mind completely blank.
Turning her head slightly, her gaze landed straight on Jiang Han, who was already fully dressed and sitting beside her with a dark, brooding expression.
She blinked stupidly.
This guy looks awfully familiar… Wait, isn’t he the handsome hunk from my dream?
The next moment, a sharp, excruciating pain shot through her head, forcing a low groan from her lips as a flood of memories rushed into her mind.
After processing the memory download, Sheng Xia’s pupils shrank in sheer shock.
She had transmigrated! And not just anywhere—into the wildly popular 1970s web novel, Reborn in the 70s: The Doted Youth Becomes the Richest Woman.
The novel’s heroine, Song Zhiqiu, had met a miserable end in her past life after being betrayed and murdered by her scum boyfriend and fake best friend. Reborn back in time, Song Zhiqiu vowed to make them pay in blood. Using her knowledge of the future, she gathered a loyal following, became an irresistible beauty, unlocked a magical portable space, punished the villains, and eventually married her past-life crush, the educated youth Zhou Zixi, living happily ever after as a female billionaire.
And Sheng Xia? She was merely a brainless, cannon-fodder female side character in the book.
After being sent down to the countryside, the original Sheng Xia had fallen for Zhou Zixi at first sight, chasing after him like a clingy pest. But she hadn’t realized that Song Zhiqiu had already been reborn. How could the heroine tolerate anyone scheming after what she considered hers? With just a few subtle tricks, the heroine had crushed the side character to dust.
Sheng Xia had transmigrated right to the moment where she was coaxed into drugging the male lead to force a marriage, only for the scheme to backfire, resulting in Jiang Han taking the bait instead.
Which meant… what just happened wasn’t a dream at all, but reality?!
How utterly ridiculous!
If Sheng Xia remembered correctly, the original “her” in the book woke up, realized the man beside her wasn’t Zhou Zixi but Jiang Han, and suffered a total mental breakdown. Defenseless and panicking, she was quickly framed by the heroine’s lackeys as a shameless seductress and a loose woman.
Driven out of her mind with shame, she was dragged to the village struggle session, publicly humiliated, and sent to a labor reform farm to live in a cowshed. In the end, she fell sick and died alone amidst a pile of manure.
Thinking of this fate, Sheng Xia broke out into a cold sweat.
She shot up like a bullet and scrambled into her clothes at top speed. As she pulled her shirt on, she whispered urgently to Jiang Han: “If you don’t want to die, get out of here right now!”
Jiang Han watched her with deep, pitch-black eyes.
Sheng Xia met his gaze, her expression cool and decisive. “Do not let anyone see you, and don’t breathe a single word of this to anyone. If people find out we slept together, we’re both dead!”
Without waiting for his response, she shoved him toward the window, closing the door behind him. She completely missed the hesitant, lingering look on his face.
Jiang Han paused outside the door for two seconds, took one long, deep look at the closed entrance, and silently scaled the wall, disappearing into the shadows.
Sheng Xia swept her eyes across the room, hastily tidied up the messy bedding, and then climbed back onto the kang bed, lying down once more.
Seeing that Sheng Xia still hadn’t opened the door, Wang Qiuxia called out loudly to the crowd: “Why don’t we just kick the door down? What if Sheng Xia does something rash and hurts herself?!”
Upon hearing this, a bystander chimed in nervously: “Oh my! If someone actually dies, how is anyone supposed to keep living in the educated youth dormitory? Everyone knows that room of hers used to be…”
Wang Qiuxia squeezed out a few hypocritical tears. “I never thought Jiang Han could be so bold as to force himself on Sheng Xia in broad daylight! Sheng Xia is still a delicate, untouched young woman… How is she supposed to go on living after losing her purity? How can she ever show her face again?!”
“Now is not the time for this!” someone urged.
“That’s right, let’s break in and check on her first!”
Amidst the chorus of voices, the crowd kicked open the front door of the dormitory.
Wang Qiuxia was the first to dash toward Sheng Xia’s room, shouting dramatically: “Sheng Xia, don’t be afraid! I’m here to save you—”
Her voice cut off abruptly.
Sheng Xia was lying pale-faced on the bed, her eyes tightly closed. Aside from her, the cramped mud room was completely empty—there was no sign of Jiang Han anywhere.
As if finally stirred by the commotion, Sheng Xia fluttered her eyes open with apparent difficulty.
She woke to find Wang Qiuxia staring at her intently, a strange, sinister glint flickering in her malicious eyes.
“Where’s Jiang Han? Where did that brute go?” Wang Qiuxia pressed immediately. “Sheng Xia, don’t be afraid! Even if Jiang Han is one of the best farmhands in the production team and the village chief trusts him, we won’t let him get away with harassing you! I will definitely get justice for you!”
She glared at Sheng Xia’s palm-sized, strikingly gorgeous face, her heart burning with envy. Ever since Sheng Xia had arrived at the youth dormitory, the men had all acted like they’d lost their minds, staring at her nonstop. Wang Qiuxia hated her to the bone.
Pah! Shameless little vixen! Dressing up every single day just to entice men!
Yet, her mouth spewed fake concern: “Where is Jiang Han? Tell him to come out! Is a full-grown man really going to act like a coward and hide from what he did?”
Wang Qiuxia was convinced that Jiang Han was simply hiding somewhere inside the room.