“Mother! I’m begging you, please don’t sell Xiao Man! I promise I’ll eat even less and work even harder! Xiao Man will too! She can help around the house—she can tend the fire, dig for wild vegetables, gather firewood. Please, Mother! Don’t sell Xiao Man!”
The gaunt, dark-skinned young woman wept hoarsely, kneeling on the ground and knocking her head hard against the floor in front of the equally gaunt and dark-skinned middle-aged woman lying on a wooden bed.
“Grandma, I’m scared… sob, sob…”
The little girl, about two years old, was as skinny as a little radish—a big head perched on a frail frame. She knelt beside the young woman, her tiny, dry little hand gripping her mother’s hem tightly. Her eyes, made larger by her thinness, were filled with fear.
Though she didn’t understand what “sell” meant, she knew “Xiao Man” meant her. And her mother was crying—crying so hard it made her heart feel uneasy.
She didn’t dare cry loudly, because Grandma lying on the bed would get angry, would yell at her, would say she was going to “sell” her.
And then her mother would end up like this…
The gaunt, dark old woman lying on the bed struggled to open her eyes amidst the cries of the old and young alike. Staring at the ceiling through which sunlight streamed, she couldn’t snap back to reality for a long time.
Had she really time-traveled?
And not just time-traveled, but been reborn into the body of a wicked grandmother who was always threatening to sell her granddaughter?
She vaguely remembered that the last time she opened her eyes, she was facing an arrow flying straight toward her head. Then she felt a sharp pain in her brow—and after that, she knew nothing.
Opening her eyes again brought her to this moment.
Couldn’t she at least get a different body? She didn’t mind being ugly—she just didn’t want to die young and be reincarnated so soon!
The young woman’s pleas were still ringing in her ears. Jiuyue, irritated, had no patience for her. She parted her dry, cracked lips and said in a hoarse voice:
“Liu, you—all of you—go out.”
Luckily, she was a true-blue native of Shandong. Even though a single city could have more than one dialect, she could at least manage a few “yous” and “mes.”
Liu wanted to keep begging, but she was afraid of angering her mother-in-law again—afraid she might remember to sell Xiao Man after all. So she took her daughter’s hand and tiptoed out.
“Mom, is Grandma still going to sell Xiao Man?”
The girl blinked her big, innocent eyes. The fear from before was gone.
“Grandma’s not selling Xiao Man. Mom won’t let her sell you—never!”
Liu held her daughter tight, tears streaming down her face again.
“Oh.”
The girl answered softly, patting her mother’s arm with her little hand—just like Mom usually patted her back to soothe her. But her arms were too short to reach.
Yue Jiuyue, lying on the bed, listened to the mother and daughter talking outside. Her brow furrowed deeply.
The original owner of this body—Yue, given name Jiuyue—had lost her husband early. The pain of losing their son had then been taken out on Yue Jiuyue and her three children. Before the 49th day after her husband’s death had even passed, she’d been cast out with nothing.
As a widow trying to hold the family together and avoid being bullied, the original owner naturally had to be as fierce and aggressive as possible.
Gradually, in everyone’s eyes, she became known as the most wicked mother-in-law for miles around.
Never mind why the first time she time-traveled, she was pierced by an arrow. She didn’t have the original owner’s lifetime of memories and couldn’t figure it out. She would just have to take it one step at a time.
Since she was here, she might as well stay and make the best of it.
For now, the most pressing issue was the three-year famine. She really didn’t want to go fleeing from it!
She had to find a way to solve the food problem quickly.
Looking at her three cheap sons, her eldest daughter-in-law, and her eldest granddaughter—all sitting around the table—and then glancing at the bowl of wild vegetable broth in front of each of them, Yue Jiuyue felt a pounding headache. A whole family to feed—how was she supposed to solve this?
She closed her eyes, downed the bowl of wild vegetable soup, chewed the vegetables a couple of times, and swallowed them whole. It scratched her throat and left a strange taste in her mouth.
Even after a bowl of soup, her stomach still growled with hunger. It didn’t fill her at all.
“Mother, it’s my fault. I couldn’t dig up enough wild vegetables, so you went hungry.”
“Mother, it’s my fault too. Tomorrow I’ll go deeper into the mountains. No one else in the village dares to go in—there must be plenty of wild vegetables in there!”
“Mother, we’ll go into the mountains together tomorrow. We’ll make sure you eat your fill tomorrow!”
Seeing the deep bitterness and despair on Yue Jiuyue’s face, her three sons immediately downed their own bowls of broth—each with barely a few wild vegetable leaves in it—and thumped their chests in promise.
“Enough of that! What’s all this about going into the deep mountains? Are you afraid you won’t die fast enough? Or are you in such a hurry to join your father underground? All of you, get back to your rooms and go to sleep!”
Yue Jiuyue imitated the original owner’s way of speaking, scolded her three sons, and chased them back to their rooms. Then she let out a sigh of relief.
Good—she hadn’t blown her cover. Still, the original owner’s three sons were truly filial. Despite how dire their situation was, every one of them was thinking about finding food for their mother.
But for her—a never-married young woman who’d never had children—to suddenly become the mother of three grown sons… it was a lot to take in.
“Mother… I’ll go and pick over the wild vegetables for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. You should get some sleep too.”
Liu didn’t dare look up at Yue Jiuyue. Keeping her head low, she finished speaking, immediately picked up the little radish of a girl, and hurried out—as if Yue Jiuyue were the big bad wolf.
Yue Jiuyue sighed. Going back to her room, she sat on the edge of the bed and was about to take off her shoes when she froze. She hadn’t washed her feet, hadn’t washed her face or brushed her teeth—was she really going to sleep like this?
And if not, what else could she do? This was the second year of the drought. The water in the house had been carried back, drop by drop, by her sons climbing over two mountains. They rationed even drinking water. How could she waste it on washing her face and feet? That wouldn’t just be wasting water—it would be trampling on her sons’ hard work.
Oh well. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. She’d just have to rough it.
Lying in bed, her stomach growling with hunger, Yue Jiuyue couldn’t sleep at all.
Tomorrow, she would go out and see what good things could be found in the mountains. She couldn’t just stay home and starve.
[Ding… System 2023 is booting up…]