A sudden, intense pain struck her.
It felt as if countless steel needles were piercing her temples, and yet also as if her entire body were submerged in an ice cellar.
Liú Xiǎomǎn’s consciousness drifted in endless darkness, while two completely different roars intermingled in her ears — the sharp alarm of a modern laboratory pressure release valve gone haywire, and the fragmented delirious muttering of an ancient girl with a high fever.
Eventually, a cold wind blew in through the broken wall, jolting her awake.
She struggled to open her eyes; it took a long moment for her vision to focus.
Above her were soot-blackened beams, with sparse thatch that barely blocked the night sky. A few pale stars blinked at her.
Beneath her was a hard wooden floor covered with a thin layer of rotten straw, pressing painfully against her bones.
“Hu—”
Another gust of cold wind, carrying the stench of decayed soil, swept through. The cracks in the western wall of the hut groaned like ghosts crying.
Liú Xiǎomǎn turned her stiff neck and peered through a large hole outside — under the night sky, lonely graves were scattered, and faint green ghostly lights hovered over the tombs.
A mass grave.
Her body was burning with fever, her throat dry as if smoking, and every breath was agonizing.
She tried to lift herself, only to find in horror that her body was extremely weak. Even the thought of moving a finger drained all her strength.
At that moment, countless memories not her own flooded into her mind like a tide.
The original owner was also named Liú Xiǎomǎn, fifteen years old, as thin as a bean sprout.
That very afternoon, her maternal grandmother, Elder Tián, had called her a “jinx that killed her father” simply because her father, Liú Shítou, had gone to the army three years ago and never returned, most likely dead.
Using this as an excuse, Elder Tián had driven her family — feverish Liú Xiǎomǎn, her crying mother Lǐ Xiùxiù, and her simple-minded younger brother Liú Cōngmíng — out of the Liú family mansion and left them to fend for themselves in this dilapidated hut next to the mass grave.
A small, thin figure shuffled to her side, giving off a sour, rotten smell.
It was her ten-year-old brother Liú Cōngmíng, emaciated from years of hunger, a skeleton with hollow, lifeless eyes.
He carefully touched Liú Xiǎomǎn’s burning forehead, then withdrew his hand, repeating the only phrase he knew: “Sister… hungry.”
Nearby, their mother Lǐ Xiùxiù knelt in the corner, scraping the bottom of an empty pot with a chipped bowl.
Inside was the tiny amount of bran that Elder Tián had mercifully tossed to them, now nearly gone.
Lǐ Xiùxiù scraped for a long time but only got half a bowl of gray powder, lowering her head as her tears silently fell into the bowl.
Fragments of memory continued to surge.
A cruel, sharp-tongued aunt, Wáng Jīnhuā, directing others to throw out their belongings with a look of disdain.
A greedy, cowardly uncle, Liú Dàshān, hiding behind Elder Tián, silently allowing everything to happen just to seize the second branch’s small patch of land and the relatively sturdy tiled house.
And their spoiled cousin, Liú Dàbǎo, taking pleasure in their misfortune, spitting at them.
Liú Xiǎomǎn sighed deeply inside, mourning their misfortune and angry at their cowardice.
“Well, have all the worst family members gathered here to summon a divine dragon?” she mentally scoffed. “I’m a modern agricultural scientist, just freed from the hell of academic competition, and now I’m thrown into the hard mode of ancient household intrigue? Or is this a hellish start?”
She tried to comfort her pitiful little brother, forcing her cracked lips to form a few hoarse syllables: “Cōngmíng… don’t be afraid… sister’s here.”
Her voice was so weak it barely carried, almost instantly swept away by the howling wind.
No sooner had she spoken than an intense itch surged up from her throat.
“Cough… cough cough… cough cough cough!”
Liú Xiǎomǎn could not stop violently coughing, each convulsion wracking her whole body as if trying to expel her organs.
She curled up in the straw, coughing so fiercely her heart ached, and her vision darkened in waves.
A thick metallic taste filled her mouth; the saliva she coughed up was a shocking dark red.
The fever rapidly devoured what little strength she had left, blurring her vision and casting everything in double images.
Relying on her instinct as a scientist, she quickly diagnosed herself: severe bacterial lung infection with high fever and hemoptysis. In an era without antibiotics, without effective treatment, she would be dead within half a day.
The fear of death, like the cold of this mass grave, enveloped her once more.
“Damn it, are you playing with me?” she thought in defiance. “All this effort to make me reincarnate just to let me experience a 24-hour rapid death card?”
Why should she! She hadn’t even avenged the poor girl she now inhabited, nor fed her cowardly mother and simple brother, and she refused to die so miserably!
Her fierce will to survive roared wildly inside her, like a trapped beast.
Just as her consciousness was about to be completely swallowed by darkness, a cold, emotionless mechanical voice suddenly sounded in her mind:
【Ding! Strong will to survive detected. Multiworld Medical Legacy and Species Preservation System binding in progress…】
【10%…30%…50%…】
Liú Xiǎomǎn’s muddled mind instantly cleared for a moment. A system?
【70%…90%…100%! Binding successful!】
【Welcome to the Multiworld Medical Legacy and Species Preservation System. New village chief Liú Xiǎomǎn, at your service!】
The system’s binding notification had just ended when Elder Tián’s harsh face flashed in her mind.
She had thrown the tiny sack of bran on the ground, spat, and shrieked, “Take it and go! If you die outside, don’t come back to dirty the Liú family land!”
That resentment and hatred seemed etched into her bones.
Before Liú Xiǎomǎn could study this sudden golden opportunity, an overwhelming fatigue swept over her, as if all her strength had been drained.
Her eyelids felt like a thousand pounds, and she sank into complete unconsciousness.
“Xiǎomǎn! Xiǎomǎn! Don’t scare your mother!”
“Sis… sis…”
Her mother Lǐ Xiùxiù and brother Liú Cōngmíng’s panicked cries reached her ears, but she could no longer respond.
In the final moment before her consciousness plunged into darkness, Liú Xiǎomǎn used all her willpower to fixate on the semi-transparent virtual panel that had just appeared in her mind.
It was her only lifeline.
On the panel, the two gray buttons, 【Recycle】 and 【Exchange】, flickered faintly.