The heavens sneezed, and very obligingly answered with a resounding crack of thunder.
Lightning illuminated half the sky.
Auntie Wang sat cross-legged on the double bed in the nanny’s quarters, completely engrossed in a drama on her tablet. She slapped her thigh repeatedly, spittle flying as she ranted.
“Oh, what a disgrace! How dare some little brat act so insolently in front of her mother-in-law! What an uncultured thing! A daughter-in-law like that deserves to be thrown out with a basin of foot-washing water!”
The doorbell rang three times before Auntie Wang finally heard it. Reluctantly, she paused her show and slowly shuffled out in her slippers to answer the door.
It was a drizzly, rainy night.
The moment the door opened, a cold, damp wind rushed inside, sending an eerie chill through the air.
A woman stood outside, dressed in an old-fashioned qipao, drenched from head to toe.
“Crack!”
Another bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating the woman’s bloodless face.
Auntie Wang staggered backward several steps, nearly scared out of her wits.
When she saw that the woman standing outside was Ruan Jiaqi, Auntie Wang relaxed, the familiar contempt returning to her eyes.
She muttered under her breath, “What a nuisance.”
The soft satin qipao clinging to Ruan Jiaqi’s body was completely soaked through, icy cold against her skin.
During the two years Hua Feng had been away, the household driver had grown increasingly lax. He had long since begun treating the luxury car assigned to him by the Hua family as though it were his own, and he didn’t take Ruan Jiaqi, the madam of the household, seriously at all.
The moment the rain started pouring harder, Driver Wu hurried to pick up his nearly thirty-year-old precious son from work. He simply dumped Ruan Jiaqi at the intersection outside the villa, turned the steering wheel, and drove away.
Ruan Jiaqi had no choice but to run all the way back, getting drenched like a drowned rat.
Auntie Wang stood blocking the doorway, hands on her hips, looking at her sideways.
“Xiao Ruan, don’t blame me for saying this, but you know the front-door password, don’t you? Couldn’t you just let yourself in? Why did you have to keep ringing the doorbell? Aren’t you deliberately making things difficult for me?”
Ruan Jiaqi shivered from the cold.
“The password… I couldn’t remember it for a moment.”
Auntie Wang nearly rolled her eyes straight into her skull.
She could forget the password to her own house? Why not conveniently forget her own name while she was at it? Obviously, she was doing it on purpose!
Seeing Ruan Jiaqi lift her foot to step inside, Auntie Wang immediately shrilled,
“Hey, hey, hey! Your shoes are covered in mud! If you dirty the floor, are you going to clean it or am I? Would it kill you to change into a pair of slippers?”
As she spoke, she tossed a pair of disposable slippers toward Ruan Jiaqi, along with a well-worn towel that had been washed countless times.
“Dry yourself off before you come inside.”
Ruan Jiaqi lowered her head and silently glanced at the high heels speckled with mud from the garden.
Without saying a word, she took the towel and retreated beneath the porch outside.
Auntie Wang’s sharp, spiteful face reminded her of the stewardess in the Ruan household in her previous life, the one who had always tormented her behind everyone’s back.
Her fists immediately clenched.
However, Ruan Jiaqi had no intention of making trouble for herself.
According to her speculation, after she had died, the three souls and seven spirits of her existence had most likely been trapped here by some sinister supernatural force.
Aside from herself and the Young Master, everyone else here—the nanny, the driver, the guests she had encountered at the banquet, even Hua Yan and Hua Yao—were probably fake.
Like the paper figures used in folk sorcery.
There was no point wasting her time and energy arguing with a fake person.
After all, half her life bar was already practically empty.
However, there was one thing Ruan Jiaqi couldn’t understand.
If this really was the world after death, why was the Young Master here too?
Could it be that he had also…
No. No, that was impossible.
If that were the case, she would rather believe the explanation that the little system had given her.
Before she could sort out her chaotic thoughts, fragments of memories that did not belong to her suddenly surfaced in her mind.
Two years ago, the day after Hua Feng had left the country, her mother-in-law, Zeng Yunhua, had moved back to the old Hua residence with Hua Yan and Hua Yao.
When they left, they had taken almost all the servants and chefs with them, leaving her with only an elderly gardener who could barely walk without trembling, an extremely unreliable driver, and the woman standing before her now—Auntie Wang, who was lazy, greedy, gluttonous, and shameless in equal measure.
With the master of the house gone for years at a time, the only people normally living in this enormous, empty mansion were Ruan Jiaqi and Auntie Wang.
Auntie Wang had practically made herself the mistress of the house. Every day, without fail, she occupied the sofa in the living room, sitting cross-legged with sunflower-seed shells flying everywhere, the volume turned up to maximum as she watched her favorite melodramatic mother-in-law-and-daughter-in-law shows.
Most of the cleaning was done by the robot vacuum. Otherwise, she would take the Hua family’s generous salary and outsource the work to cheap hourly cleaners.
The household’s monthly grocery budget, which amounted to tens of thousands—or even over a hundred thousand—yuan, mostly ended up in her own pockets and stomach. She would fob Ruan Jiaqi off with discounted takeout and prepackaged meals.
Even with such a cushy job, Auntie Wang was never satisfied. Whenever she was in a bad mood, she would kick the robot vacuum several times, shouting all sorts of nasty, pointed remarks at the top of her lungs so that Ruan Jiaqi upstairs could hear every word.
The poor little robot would be diligently working when, out of nowhere, Auntie Wang would kick it over. It would lie helplessly on the floor like a crab flipped onto its back, waving its four little legs desperately as it struggled to right itself.
Only when members of the Hua family occasionally visited on a whim would Auntie Wang temporarily switch back into servant mode, pretending to be incredibly diligent—serving tea and water, getting down on her hands and knees to wipe the floor, and making herself look impossibly busy.
……
After watching these memories unfold, the very first thought that popped into Ruan Jiaqi’s mind was—
New China really is magnificent and prosperous! Everything the Young Master said was true!
If there had been robot vacuums in her previous life, she wouldn’t have had to wear a threadbare padded jacket in the dead of winter and sweep the courtyard for the stewardess’s chubby second daughter, freezing her hands until they broke out in sores.
Perhaps because they shared the same fate, Ruan Jiaqi felt an inexplicable sympathy for the little robot vacuum.
Although the knowledge implanted in her mind told her that robots had neither life nor emotions, in her eyes, it looked rather like a small animal, such as a kitten or puppy.
The more she thought about it, the more hateful Auntie Wang seemed!
No wonder the original “Ruan Jiaqi” in the novel had eventually turned evil.
Anyone living under the same roof with such a spiteful, snobbish woman who loved tormenting others would go crazy sooner or later.
She had to rewrite the ending.
Just then, her stomach growled.
“Grrr~”
Ruan Jiaqi rubbed her ravenous stomach.
Step one in rewriting her fate: fill her stomach.
……
“Is there anything to eat?”
Ruan Jiaqi asked Auntie Wang as she dried her hair.
Auntie Wang couldn’t even be bothered to lift her eyelids.
“What time do you think it is? Dinner was hours ago.”
Ruan Jiaqi thought for a moment.
“Then make me a bowl of plain noodles.”
A family this wealthy couldn’t possibly have no noodles in the kitchen.
Auntie Wang impatiently yawned.
“The dried noodles are in the third compartment of the wall cabinet. If you want them, cook them yourself. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Ruan Jiaqi looked at her.
Old grudges and new grievances combined, and her gaze gradually turned cold.
“Fifteen minutes.”
She tossed the towel back to Auntie Wang. Her voice was not loud, but every word was perfectly clear.
“In fifteen minutes, I want to see the noodles on the dining table. If they’re not there, pack your things and leave.”
Auntie Wang stared at Ruan Jiaqi as though she had just seen something unbelievable. She stood there dumbfounded for a long moment before suddenly exploding.
“What an attitude! The people who pay my salary are Mr. Hua and the Old Madam! Fire me? Do you even have the authority to do that? Listen to yourself! You’re going to make me die laughing!”
Ruan Jiaqi tilted her head slightly.
Her wet black hair clung to her cheeks, making her already bloodless little face look even paler. Only her eyes were startlingly bright.
“I’m not entirely sure whether I have the authority either. But we can find out together.”
With that, she changed into the slippers, tucked her damp hair behind her ear, crossed the living room, and headed upstairs along the beautiful French-style staircase.
Auntie Wang nearly choked on her own breath.
She couldn’t understand how the little girl who had always swallowed her grievances and been so easy to manipulate had suddenly become so difficult overnight.
She had actually dared to climb right onto her head!
Mr. Hua and the young master and young lady were still upstairs in the study. Auntie Wang didn’t dare behave as brazenly as she normally did. She could only glare viciously at Ruan Jiaqi’s retreating back, huffing angrily.
She looked around, grabbed the mop leaning against the corner, and furiously scrubbed the floor where Ruan Jiaqi had just walked.
The posture looked almost as though she were trying to drive away some filthy evil spirit.
The mop dragged across the floor with an abrasive squeaking sound, mixed with Auntie Wang’s deliberately lowered muttering—which was nevertheless loud enough for Ruan Jiaqi to hear.
“What a vicious little woman!”
“She’s so young and already so rotten to the core. What’s going to become of her in the future? She’ll curse her entire family to death!”
Ruan Jiaqi had originally had no desire to waste time arguing with her.
But at the last sentence, she stopped.
She turned around and walked back downstairs.
“What did you say?”
Her gaze fixed coldly on Auntie Wang.
That look made Auntie Wang’s heart tremble.
But someone who had spent years acting arrogant and domineering wasn’t about to show fear in front of a little girl.
Auntie Wang stiffened her neck and continued glaring at Ruan Jiaqi with her narrow, triangular eyes.
“What did I say? And you think you can fire me? The Madam hasn’t said anything, so nobody can touch me!”
Ruan Jiaqi stared at the trembling rolls of flesh on Auntie Wang’s face.
For a moment, that face overlapped with the image of the stewardess from the Ruan household in her memories.
In an instant, anger surged from her heart and wickedness rose to her courage.
Before Auntie Wang could react, Ruan Jiaqi snatched the mop from her hands, gathered all her strength, and stomped down hard with her foot!
“……”
She stomped again!
“……”
The mop handle didn’t budge.
It was absurdly sturdy.
As expected of a mop from New China—it was built to last.
The corner of Ruan Jiaqi’s lips twitched almost imperceptibly.
Her foot hurt a little.
However, although she hadn’t succeeded in snapping the mop, the dirty water soaked into the mop head was flung into the air by her stomping.
It traced a perfect arc before landing squarely on Auntie Wang’s thick lips.
【Character Deviation -1】
Ruan Jiaqi’s ears immediately perked up.
It could do that?
So that meant even if she didn’t complete the tasks assigned by the system, as long as she actively committed one evil deed a day, she could reduce her character deviation.
“Little System? Say something!”
The system was still giving her the silent treatment over what had happened earlier, stubbornly pretending to be dead.
Ruan Jiaqi had no choice but to continue figuring things out on her own.
“Ptooey! Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!!!”
Auntie Wang, who had just gotten a mouthful of mop water, frantically wiped her lips with her sleeve, trembling with rage.
“I—I’ve worked for the Hua family for twenty years! I’m old enough to be your mother! How can a young girl like you have no manners? How dare you bully your elders!”
“I’m going to make Mr. Hua and the Old Madam judge this properly! Let’s see exactly what kind of disaster they brought into this family when they married you!”
“Sure.”
Ruan Jiaqi wasn’t nervous in the slightest.
Instead, she smiled brightly, her eyes clear and shining.
“Go ahead and complain. And while you’re at it, let’s also go through all the household purchasing accounts from the past two years together, in front of my mother-in-law.”