“Shen Baizhi, open the door! Who gave you permission to lock it?!”
The pounding on the door and the shouting finally snapped Shen Baizhi out of her daze. Her eyes were fixed on the calendar on the wall, and a flash of excitement—like winning the ten-billion jackpot—lit up her gaze.
So rebirth, just like in novels, really could happen!
She had been reborn on the morning of the second day after marrying Lin Cheng!
The pounding outside continued. Shen Baizhi suddenly stood up and went to open the door. She remembered now—today was a crucial turning point that would change her entire life.
She had to return to Shenjia Village before noon to reclaim what was rightfully hers—her golden cheat, the stone pendant that her cousin Shen Baiwei had forcibly borrowed and was about to bind to herself.
She wouldn’t remember it wrong. That very afternoon, Shen Baiwei was supposed to complete the binding of that stone pendant!
Outside, Lin Cheng couldn’t break the door down, so he lifted his foot and kicked hard. Just then, the door suddenly opened from the inside. Unable to stop himself, he lurched forward and fell flat on the ground.
“Brother, are you okay? Let me help you up!”
Lin Ranran, dressed in a red wool coat, hurried over to help him up. She then complained to Shen Baizhi inside the room with a resentful look:
“Sister-in-law, even if you’re angry that my brother left you on your wedding night to keep me company, you can’t deliberately try to make him fall like this, right?”
“He’s your husband. You should at least feel sorry for him. Otherwise, he’ll never like you!”
After steadying himself, Lin Cheng patted Lin Ranran’s hand and said gently,
“Ranran really knows how to care about her brother.”
But when he turned to face his newlywed wife, his tone became extremely impatient.
“Are you a pig? Sleeping so soundly? We’ve been calling outside for so long—couldn’t you hear us?”
Shen Baizhi couldn’t be bothered to watch the two of them put on their little performance. She lifted her foot, intending to go around them and leave.
Seeing that Shen Baizhi ignored them and looked like she was storming off in anger, Lin Cheng grabbed her arm, wearing a magnanimous, condescending expression.
“Ranran likes this silver bracelet on your wrist. As her sister-in-law, you should give it to her as a meeting gift.”
“And I won’t hold it against you for locking me out on our wedding night.”
Even though she already knew how shameless this family was, Shen Baizhi was still so angry she laughed.
Clearly, it was he who had abandoned his bride on their wedding night to accompany his so-called “sister” and didn’t return all night. Now he was turning the tables and accusing her of locking him out!
She forcefully pulled her hand free and said with disgust on her face,
“You know very well what happened last night. Do you want me to call the neighbors over and have them judge it?”
“Move.”
Lin Ranran tugged at Lin Cheng’s sleeve, her eyes fixed on Shen Baizhi’s wrist.
Lin Cheng suddenly stepped forward, grabbed Shen Baizhi’s left hand, restrained it with one hand, and reached with the other to take off the bracelet on her wrist.
“Don’t be ungrateful. Once you marry into the Lin family, everything you own belongs to the Lin family. Now that Ranran likes this bracelet, you should just give it to her!”
Although he had been forced to marry Shen Baizhi as a smokescreen, Ranran had still cried sadly all night yesterday. He needed to quickly take the bracelet she liked, then take her out shopping and to the movies to cheer her up.
Shen Baizhi struggled to pull her hand back, but as a woman, how could she compete with a man’s strength?
Fortunately, the bracelet had a small inner diameter and fit her wrist perfectly. Even with brute force, it was hard for Lin Cheng to remove it.
Although the bracelet wasn’t taken away for the moment, Lin Cheng’s rough movements made her wrist ache intensely.
“Ding—system starting up!”
In the midst of struggling, Shen Baizhi seemed to hear a mechanical voice from the future, but she was too busy resisting Lin Cheng to hear it clearly. She only thought she might be hallucinating.
Seeing Lin Ranran also move in to help, Shen Baizhi gritted her teeth and used all her strength to kick Lin Cheng hard in the lower abdomen.
“Ah—!”
Lin Cheng instantly released Shen Baizhi’s hand, clutching his lower abdomen with both hands. He collapsed to the ground, hunched over and howling like a dog with its legs broken.
Lin Ranran turned around and threw herself beside Lin Cheng, asking anxiously,
“Brother, are you okay?!”
This time, her voice had less pretension and a bit more genuine worry.
Shen Baizhi bounced lightly on her toes, feeling only that her shoes had gotten dirty.
She raised her left hand and saw that from Lin Cheng’s earlier violent attempt to remove the bracelet, her wrist was now bruised purple and blue. One spot had even broken skin, with beads of blood seeping out.
Shen Baizhi sighed inwardly at her bad luck and lifted her foot, ready to leave.
“You can’t go!”
Lin Ranran abandoned Lin Cheng, who was still lying on the ground, and chased after Shen Baizhi in a few quick steps. With great force, she grabbed Shen Baizhi’s injured left hand.
“You injured my brother like this. You can’t leave—we have to take him to the hospital!”
Shen Baizhi gasped in pain. She reached out with her right hand, grabbed Lin Ranran’s hand, and bit down hard. When Lin Ranran cried out and loosened her grip, Shen Baizhi followed up with two loud slaps to her face.
“If you want to go, you go. Anyway, I don’t use that thing of his. If you want to use it, then you take him to the hospital yourself.”
“You’d better hurry. If you’re late and it gets delayed, then your happiness for the rest of your life might be gone!”
Lin Ranran stared at Shen Baizhi as if she’d seen a ghost, pointing at her with a trembling finger and saying in a quavering voice,
“You… you…”
“What… what do you know?”
Shen Baizhi sneered, didn’t answer, turned around, pushed open the door, and left.
Of course she knew everything!
In her previous life, on their wedding night, Lin Cheng didn’t accompany her, the bride. Instead, he spent the entire night with Lin Ranran.
At the time, she didn’t know the truth and only thought that her sister-in-law was afraid that once her brother married, he wouldn’t dote on her as much as before, so she was making trouble.
Later, she found out that Lin Ranran wasn’t actually the Lin family’s biological daughter, but the child of Lin Cheng’s mother’s close friend from her younger days.
Back then, that friend’s family fell into hard times and entrusted her daughter to Lin Cheng’s mother, giving her a large sum of money. Lin Cheng’s mother had only given birth to one son, Lin Cheng, so she grew very fond of the baby girl who came into the family.
The two children were the same age, born only months apart, so the Lin family simply raised them as twins.
Later on, Lin Ranran went missing as a child. More than ten years later, she reappeared before Lin Cheng’s parents—this time as Lin Cheng’s romantic partner.
Lin Cheng’s mother felt that the girl resembled her old friend when she was young. In the end, it was the birthmark on her body that confirmed Lin Ranran was indeed the child who had gone missing back then.
Finding the child again naturally made Lin Cheng’s mother happy, but for the young couple deeply in love, it was nothing short of the sky falling!
Lin Cheng’s mother insisted on bringing Lin Ranran back home. Lin Cheng’s father, although they weren’t related by blood, remembered that Lin Ranran had once been raised as a daughter in the Lin family for several years. He worried that if word got out, people would laugh at them, so he opposed the marriage.
But he was also afraid that if the two young people lived under the same roof, something unsightly might happen. After some discussion, the couple decided to marry Lin Cheng off to someone else.
And that unlucky person was her—Shen Baizhi!
In her previous life, she was kept completely in the dark and subjected to mental pressure by this family, until she ended up working herself to the bone for nearly twenty years like a beast of burden.
In the end, Shen Baiwei felt that Shen Baizhi’s life still wasn’t miserable enough and told her the truth.
In this life, she would take back everything that belonged to her.
As for the Lin family—since Heaven had given her another chance, it must have felt that the revenge she took on them in her previous life wasn’t enough, so it gave her one more opportunity.