The smell of disinfectant was so acrid it felt like it was scorching her lungs.
The moment the sewing machine needle pierced clean through her index finger, Su Qingwan didn’t even have the strength left to cry out in pain.
At thirty-five, her hair was threaded with gray, and her hands were covered in cracked, blackened calluses.
Outside the glass window, the educated-youth-turned-husband she had worked three jobs a day to put through university—the man she had stood by when he took the plunge into business—was impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, tightly embracing a secretary in her early twenties.
“Such a drag. Coughing her lungs out day in and day out, a crude, sallow-faced hag. The sooner she kicks the bucket, the better.”
That sentence, drifting in through the gap in the door, was the final straw that broke Su Qingwan.
A sweet taste flooded her throat, and a massive mouthful of fresh blood sprayed across the half-finished suit fabric. Her vision plunged into boundless darkness.
Before drawing her last breath, she dug her nails desperately into the cold surface of the sewing machine table.
To hell with being a virtuous and devoted wife. If there’s a next life, whoever wants this dog’s life of backbreaking toil can have it!
…
A fierce sensation of weightlessness slammed into her.
Her throat burned like raw fire, as if she had swallowed a handful of shattered glass.
Su Qingwan jerked her eyes open. There were no pale hospital walls in her field of vision—only an overwhelming, eye-stinging expanse of bright red.
A length of cheap red silk bridal veil had slipped down to one side. The tip of her nose was filled with the pungent scent of harsh tobacco and the sulfur lingering after firecrackers.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed? The Huo family gave eighty yuan in betrothal gifts, and you’re throwing a fit by trying to hang yourself?! Put that veil back on right now before you make a public spectacle of me!”
A shrill, spiteful female voice exploded in her ear.
A rough hand, like an iron vice, clamped down hard on the inner skin of her arm.
Su Qingwan gasped sharply from the pain, shuddering as her scattered focus snapped back into place.
Before her eyes were mottled cement floors, a chipped double-happiness enamel washbasin, and luffa vines crawling all over the courtyard wall.
Down by the base of the wall, a Seagull-brand radio was crackling out Teresa Teng’s “Sweet Honey.”
She lowered her gaze and looked at her own hands—slender-fingered, fair, and delicate.
Then, trembling, she reached up to touch the burning red rope burn on her neck.
She was alive. She had gone back to 1985.
She was back in the state-owned residential compound of the Jiangcheng No. 1 Machinery Factory.
Worse yet, she was right back in the most absurd and fatal forced-marriage scene of her life.
“There are dozens of pairs of eyes watching in this compound! Even if you die today, you’re dying across the threshold of the Huo family!”
The speaker was her sister-in-law, Wang Chunhua, who was gripping the hemp rope she had just used to try to hang herself.
Su Qingwan raised her head, looking past Wang Chunhua’s greedy face toward the center.
In the middle of the open space in the courtyard, a circle of neighbors was packed tightly together, cracking melon seeds and watching the spectacle.
And right in the center of the crowd stood a man.
He wore the trendiest, most eye-catching wolf-tail haircut of the day, a loose floral shirt, and a pair of faded green military trousers.
With broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and standing a full six-foot-two, he looked like an enraged panther.
His facial features were rugged and wild, with high brow bones and long, narrow eyes.
Right now, that fierce, hardened face was filled with pure malice, and his knuckles cracked as he gripped the broken handle of an enamel mug.
This man was supposed to be her groom today—the notorious little neighborhood bully of the machinery factory compound, and the factory director’s youngest son: Huo Jingye.
In her past life, the original Su Qingwan had been brainwashed by that scumbag Shen Shuwen, believing Huo Jingye was nothing more than an uncultured, crude ruffian.
To keep herself “pure” for Shen Shuwen, she threw a massive public scene by trying to hang herself on her wedding day, completely infuriating the Huo family.
Though the wedding went through, she and Huo Jingye became sworn enemies.
Later on, Su Qingwan spent her days making a mockery of her marriage until she finally divorced him, only to turn around and work herself to the bone as a beast of burden for Shen Shuwen, eventually coughing up her last breath over a sewing machine.
Yet this same bully she had detested in every possible way would, in the early nineties, ride the winds of economic reform to cut a bloody path through the business world, ultimately rising to become the wealthiest man in Jiangcheng.
Sitting on the hard wooden bench, Su Qingwan dug her fingernails into her palms, forcibly suppressing the raging storms in her heart.
She looked at the furious, bristling man standing across from her, a faint, dark glint flashing in her eyes.
Pass up the chance to cling to the thigh of a future billionaire to go eat bitter roots and hardship with a hypocritical phony?
That wasn’t just having a screw loose; that was getting her brain squeezed out.
Since the heavens had given her a second chance at life, this time around, nobody was ever going to trick her into doing an extra ounce of labor again!
“I’m not getting married!”
A roar exploded out of nowhere.
Huo Jingye violently smashed the broken enamel mug handle into the ground.
A jagged piece of iron whistled past the tip of Wang Chunhua’s shoe, scaring her into a sharp screech as she yanked her feet back.
“What kind of thing does this Su Qingwan think she is? I’m gracing her with my presence by agreeing to marry her, and she has the nerve to pull an attempted hanging?!”
Huo Jingye’s eyes were bloodshot, his chest heaving violently.
He strode right up to the Su family, his overwhelming physical presence forcing the gossiping neighbors to step back a couple of paces.
“A forced melon isn’t sweet! I’m not playing this game today!”
“Huo Jingye! You unfilial brat, shut your mouth!”
The factory director, Huo Jianguo, was shaking with rage as he unbuckled the black leather belt from his waist, ready to lash it across his son’s back.
“On a day of great celebration, you’re spouting this kind of damned nonsense! I’m going to break your dog legs today!”
His mother, Zhang Guifang, hurried forward to block him, shielding her son with one arm while shooting murderous daggers of a look at Su Qingwan.
“What are you hitting him for? Clearly, this girl doesn’t know what’s good for her! Our Huo family is decent and upright; why should we put up with this kind of bad luck?”
The courtyard instantly erupted into total chaos.
Pointing fingers and murmuring discussions rolled in like a tidal wave.
“That Su girl really thinks high of herself, always pining after that sent-down intellectual, Shen Shuwen.”
“There’s no way this little tyrant of the Huo family is going to swallow that kind of humiliation. This wedding is definitely off.”
Hearing that the wedding was falling through, Wang Chunhua panicked and began jumping up and down, counting on that eighty-yuan betrothal gift to help build her own brother a new house!
She spun around and slammed a vicious slap right into Su Qingwan’s back.
“You dead girl, stop playing mute! Get down and kowtow to Young Master Huo to apologize right now!”
That slap was thrown with malicious strength, sending Su Qingwan’s frail shoulders jolting forward.
The moment had arrived.
Instead of just collapsing, Su Qingwan forced herself to take the blow.
She clamped her teeth shut, pressing her tongue against her lower lip and biting down hard.
A metallic taste bloomed across her mouth.
Then, her long eyelashes fluttered, and her eye sockets turned red in the span of a single breath, making her look like an utterly terrified little fawn.
She lifted her head, her mist-shrouded eyes locking directly onto Huo Jingye’s blazing, furious gaze.
“Cough… cough cough…”
A fit of violent coughing tore from her delicate throat.
Su Qingwan’s body went limp like water, sliding right off the bench and down to the ground.
She raised a pale, slender hand to cover her lips.
When she pulled her hand away, a streak of stark, shocking crimson lingered at the corner of her pale lips and across the back of her hand.
“Don’t hit him…”
Her voice was as light as a dying wind, carrying a stifled sob and profound grievance.
“I’ll… marry him…”
Absolute silence fell over the entire yard.
Teresa Teng’s “Sweet Honey” was still playing from the radio, but you could have heard a pin drop in the courtyard.
Everyone stared blankly at Su Qingwan on the ground.
Just a moment ago, she had been fiercely stubborn, throwing a fit and threatening to hang herself. How had she turned into a fragile porcelain doll that would shatter at a touch?
Huo Jianguo’s belt froze mid-air.
Zhang Guifang’s scolding words jammed in her throat, her eyes widening as she stared at that glaring smear of blood.
And the one reacting the most violently of all was Huo Jingye.
The eyes that had spent years in street fights—the eyes that refused to yield to anyone—were now locked entirely on the blood at the corner of Su Qingwan’s mouth.
Deep inside his head, the wire labeled “blind rage” snapped with a sharp clack.
Huo Jingye wasn’t afraid of heaven or earth, but he couldn’t stand seeing a woman cry.
Especially not a woman who looked this devastatingly pretty and was as frail as a dying kitten that might stop breathing at any second.
This woman… why is she coughing up blood?!
Was she beaten half-to-death by her sister-in-law just now?!
Or did hanging herself ruin her windpipe?
Huo Jingye awkwardly scrubbed his palms against his trouser seams.
His large, callused hands—which were usually stained with machine grease and could punch through sandbags—hovered uselessly in the air. He wanted to touch the corners of her reddened eyes, but he was terrified his rough skin would scratch her delicate face.
Finally, he ground his back teeth together. In front of a crowd staring as if they’d seen a ghost, he took a giant stride forward.
“Get out of the way!”
He shoved an obstructive Wang Chunhua aside and dropped heavily onto one knee.
Before Su Qingwan could react, the man’s strong, muscular arms slid underneath her arms and behind her knees.
“Up!”
With a low grunt, Su Qingwan was swept entirely off the ground, scooped securely into his arms in a bridal carry.
The man’s chest was scorching hot and rock-hard. Through his thin floral shirt, she could clearly hear his rapid, pounding heartbeat.
Su Qingwan instinctively hooked her arms around his neck, burying her face straight into the crook of his shoulder.
The moment her soft, delicate body pressed against him, every muscle in Huo Jingye’s body locked up like solid stone.
“You… don’t go thrashing around, or I’ll drop you.”
His voice sounded fierce, but the arms wrapped around her tightened instantly, and even his stride slowed down.
“I’m carrying you back to the bridal room to rest right now. If anyone else dares pressure you with a single word, I’ll smash their damn head in!”
He swept a ferocious glare across Wang Chunhua and the gawking neighbors.
The whole yard collectively sucked in a sharp breath of air.
Was this really the town bully who used to scream at his old man, flip tables, and smash bowls?
How come after someone coughed up a little blood in front of him, he turned as obedient as a guard dog?!
Su Qingwan tucked herself securely into his broad chest, listening to the gasps all around her.
She curved her lips into a hidden smile, her blood-stained mouth silently forming a sly, triumphant arc.
Future billionaire husband, from now on, you’ll just have to honestly be my beast of burden.