“Song Mianmian, fine, you incited my mother to attempt suicide, but you actually laid hands on Qinghui too, leaving her so badly injured. You’ve gone too far!
“Fine! To prevent anyone from getting killed in the future, I agree to go and submit our marriage application immediately!”
“…But Qinghui has suffered such a great injustice. We have to compensate her for her medical expenses and nutritional supplements!
“I’m short on money right now. You can transfer your job to her first…”
After being dead for more than fifty years without ever being able to reincarnate, Song Mianmian was enthusiastically singing and dancing with a group of ghost friends when her vision suddenly blurred.
After a brief lapse in consciousness, she unexpectedly heard Zhao Zilin shouting at the top of his lungs.
At the same time, there was the long-missed sound of Zhao’s mother crying.
“…Zilin, you can’t slander Mianmian like this. She isn’t the kind of person who schemes.
“I’m only standing up for her because I feel she’s been wronged. You’re the one who has gone too far…
“She’s your childhood betrothed. Everyone around here knows that.
“If you break off the engagement… how will she ever be able to face people?
“How am I supposed to face them?
“I might as well die…”
“Waaah…”
No!
Hadn’t Zhao’s mother and Zhao Zilin died long ago, to the point where even their souls were gone?
Then how could they…
While Song Mianmian was still confused, a sharp, piercing pain suddenly shot through her right hand.
At the same time, Zhao Zilin appeared before her eyes—dressed in a military uniform, barely in his twenties, his face filled with fury.
Beside him stood the equally young Du Qinghui. A bright smear of blood covered her forehead, and she wore an olive-green padded jacket. She looked pitiful and miserable, yet there was unmistakable scheming and smugness hidden in her eyes.
Off to the side sat Zhao’s mother, curled up like a frightened quail on a little stool. She was crying, looking no more than forty years old.
And the place they were in was unmistakably the main room of the steel factory workers’ residential compound where the Zhao family had lived forty years ago.
The Eight Immortals table, the grandmaster chairs, the long benches, the square stools…
Looking at them now, everything seemed both strange and familiar.
Could it be…
Had she been reborn, returning to 1974—the very day Zhao Zilin had tricked her into signing away her property?
Song Mianmian’s eyes suddenly widened.
She raised both hands and stared fixedly at her tender, youthful, unbelievably real skin, as well as the bloodied scrape on the palm of her right hand.
She could not help screaming inwardly—
Ahhhhh!
Yes! Yes!
She really had… been reborn!
Her long-held wish had finally come true!
As she reveled in the realization, everything that had happened on this very day in her previous life—things she had long forgotten—came rushing back into her mind all at once.
When she was ten years old, her military parents had both sacrificed their lives while saving others. With no other close relatives, she had been adopted by the Zhao family.
At the time, three families had wanted to adopt her.
The heads of the other two families, like Zhao’s father, had been her father’s comrades-in-arms and close friends.
The wife in one of those families had even been a close friend of her mother.
The reason she ultimately went to the Zhao family, whose father held the lowest position and whose family background was the poorest, was because Zhao’s father produced a marriage certificate and claimed that she and Zhao Zilin had been promised to each other since childhood.
A childhood betrothal meant their families must have had an especially close relationship, so the other two families tactfully withdrew.
Zhao Zilin was three years older than her.
Before he joined the army at sixteen, he had taken good care of her.
Later, while serving away from home, he was still very good to her whenever he occasionally returned.
Zhao’s father and mother had also always treated her well, but she had always been conscious that she was living under someone else’s roof and remained grateful to them.
So when Zilin was promoted and transferred to a job in the capital, bringing his new girlfriend, Du Qinghui, home and saying that their childhood engagement was outdated feudal nonsense and that he wanted to break it off and marry her instead, Song Mianmian did not blame him.
She was even willing to let him go.
But Zhao’s parents strongly opposed it.
Zhao’s mother attempted suicide several times.
Zhao’s father even pulled out his belt to threaten Zhao Zilin and threatened to throw him out of the house.
Zhao Zilin refused to back down either, leaving the matter deadlocked.
Today was the third day since Zhao Zilin had returned home.
Just now, when no one else was in the main room, Du Qinghui had deliberately pushed Song Mianmian to the ground before pretending to slam her own head against the wall.
When Zhao Zilin and his mother came running after hearing the commotion, Du Qinghui had turned around and accused Song Mianmian instead.
Zhao Zilin believed Du Qinghui and flew into a rage. He said he would immediately break off the engagement and drive this “poisonous woman” out of the house.
Seeing this, Zhao’s mother had threatened to kill herself to stop him.
And that was how the scene from moments ago had happened—
Zhao Zilin agreed to marry her immediately, but demanded that she transfer her job as a publicity officer at the steel factory to Du Qinghui and sign the transfer document at once.
At the time, Song Mianmian had not known that her parents had left her a considerable fortune.
Although she had already decided to break off the engagement, she thought that her job had originally been arranged through the Zhao family. Transferring it to Du Qinghui, the Zhao family’s future daughter-in-law, seemed reasonable enough.
Without reading the document carefully, she had signed the so-called job transfer form and begun making plans to leave the Zhao family.
She had never expected that after she signed it, Zhao Zilin would immediately send Du Qinghui away and begin treating her with tenderness and affection.
Zhao’s parents also comforted her in every possible way.
She did not love Zhao Zilin, but she thought that marrying him was indeed better than marrying someone else, so she tried to accept him.
Unexpectedly, less than half a month later, Zhao Zilin knocked her unconscious and threw her into the basement, leaving her to starve to death.
Only after she died did she discover that what she had signed was actually proof that she had voluntarily transferred her parents’ entire inheritance to Zhao Zilin.
Later, she learned that Zhao’s parents had never been good people.
They had not only seized the large compensation payment her parents had received after their deaths—although they had actually collected ten thousand yuan, they had told her it was only one thousand yuan.
Her father’s other two close friends, Uncle Jiang and Uncle Zheng, as well as her mother’s friend Aunt Meng, had also regularly sent her money and goods over the years. Even the rental income from the properties they had left her had been shamelessly pocketed by Zhao’s parents.
Zhao’s mother had insisted that Zhao Zilin marry her simply because she thought Song Mianmian was easier to control than Du Qinghui and because it would allow them to continue taking advantage of her.
As for the five houses, the fifteen thousand yuan in savings, and the gold, silver, and valuables stored in a bank safe-deposit box that her parents had left her, Zhao’s father had long considered them his own possessions.
Even the so-called marriage certificate from back then had been deliberately forged for the sake of obtaining her wealth.
Before today, Zhao Zilin had known nothing about the enormous fortune behind her.
It was only this morning, when Zhao Zilin stubbornly insisted on breaking off the engagement, that his father told him the truth.
Zhao Zilin was even more ruthless than his father. Once he learned about the fortune, he immediately decided to kill her for her money.
On this day in her previous life, he not only successfully tricked her into signing away her property.
Half a month later, after accidentally discovering her “farewell letter,” he and Du Qinghui knocked her unconscious and threw her into the basement here, where they left her to starve to death.
Because of that “farewell letter,” no one suspected that she had been murdered. Everyone assumed she had simply left…
But death had not been a release for her.
After dying, she discovered that not only could she not reincarnate—
she also could not leave Du Qinghui’s side.
Du Qinghui had already formed a contract with the butterfly-shaped jade pendant containing the spatial realm, and Song Mianmian could not move more than one li—roughly half a kilometer—from her.
She hated her enemies to the bone, wishing she could tear them apart and devour them alive, yet she could do nothing.
She was even forced to watch them flourish and prosper.
During the first few years, Song Mianmian had nearly turned into a vengeful ghost.
Later, she met several ghost friends with whom she clicked, and with the passage of time, her emotions gradually settled.
Now, as she looked at her enemies standing before her, hatred surged through her heart, but she was calm enough to think clearly.
She silently swore to herself:
She would have her revenge, but she would take her time.
She would slowly torment them—and she would do it without dragging herself down with them.
And now, she had the power to do exactly that.
After all, fifty-plus years as a “crazy ghost” had not been for nothing.
In the span of a single breath, Song Mianmian had already made up her mind.
At this point in time, Du Qinghui had already obtained the spatial butterfly jade pendant from Zhao Zilin, but she had not yet claimed it by dripping her blood onto it.
In her previous life, Du Qinghui had accidentally formed the contract with the space a week later when she injured her finger.
Therefore, Song Mianmian’s top priority now was to take the jade pendant back!
Her gaze immediately locked onto the red cord around Du Qinghui’s neck.