“Mom, I’m going to marry Xiaobao.”
Su Nanzhi lay weakly on the hospital bed. Hearing her son’s words, she struggled to open her eyes.
“No… no…”
That mother-daughter pair, Zhou Xiaobao and her mother, had ruined her entire life! How could her son marry her?
“Mom, you’re in so much pain. It’s better if you find release sooner.”
Her son clearly met her gaze, yet chose to look away, reaching out to pull the oxygen tube.
“You…”
Su Nanzhi couldn’t catch her breath, tears streaming uncontrollably. Her most beloved son, the son she had raised with so much hardship.
Over twenty years of nurturing—could it not compare to the tiny bit of fatherly love his father gave him?
He absolutely had to form a family with his father, the mistress, and the mistress’s daughter?
No wonder people said sons can never truly empathize with their mothers…
“That cousin of Deputy Battalion Commander Qin’s—ugly as sin and vicious to boot. She fought with Xiaobao over food and even beat Xiaobao so badly she ended up in the infirmary.”
“Country folk are just short-sighted. I say she’s using the excuse of taking care of Deputy Battalion Commander Qin, but really she’s come to the military base to find herself a man.”
…
Hearing the noisy chatter outside the door, Su Nanzhi suddenly opened her eyes and saw the calendar on the mud-brick wall, steeped in the atmosphere of a bygone era, reading 1974.
Her dazed gaze turned to shock. She rushed to the calendar and confirmed it.
She had been reborn, back to forty years ago. On this very day, she had arrived at the military base with her luggage to join her husband.
On this day, she had not yet married or borne children. Everything could still be changed…
She and Qin Lie had been betrothed since childhood—an agreement made by her father on his deathbed. The Qin family had taken the money and agreed readily.
Later, Qin Lie joined the military and became an officer, and he asked her to come live with him at the base.
Su Nanzhi had thought she would finally have a home of her own.
But she never expected that this home would also include Zhao Xue and Zhou Xiaobao.
Under the pretext of caring for a fallen comrade’s widow, Qin Lie gave more than half of his monthly allowance to Zhao Xue and her daughter.
The voices outside grew closer. Su Nanzhi clutched her head and walked toward the door.
As she walked, she pressed hard against the wound on her forehead. The broken skin immediately seeped blood, which trickled down the side of her face.
In her previous life, she had taken the train to the base to find Qin Lie. The moment she stepped into the room, Zhou Xiaobao had snatched at the bundle in her hands. She had pushed her, and Zhou Xiaobao had pretended to cry—wailing as if her heart were being torn out.
Qin Lie, without a word, had kicked her into the wall. Caught off guard, Su Nanzhi had hit her head.
Then the two of them had carried the perfectly fine Zhou Xiaobao and rushed frantically to the infirmary.
Her reputation as a vicious child-abuser had spread throughout the entire base.
Su Nanzhi swayed on her feet and stumbled out of Qin Lie’s courtyard gate, collapsing.
“Oh dear, isn’t this Deputy Battalion Commander Qin’s cousin?”
“How did she get such a big gash on her head? Something bad might happen.”
Several military wives moved to help Su Nanzhi up, but their movements were somewhat rough, causing even more blood to flow from her forehead. Startled, none of them dared to touch her again.
It wasn’t until they saw a man in military uniform emerge from the neighboring door that they breathed a sigh of relief.
“Regiment Commander Gu, come give us a hand!”
Gu Xizhou looked at the blood on Su Nanzhi’s forehead as she lay on the ground. His brows furrowed. Recalling the scene he had just witnessed, his steps slowed somewhat.
Still, to onlookers, Gu Xizhou appeared as unapproachable as ever.
Gu Xizhou walked over to Su Nanzhi in a few steps and looked down at her. Noticing the faint movement of her eyeballs beneath her eyelids, a flicker of mockery passed through his eyes.
Ignoring the military wives’ suggestions that he carry Su Nanzhi to the infirmary, he pressed his thumb firmly into her philtrum.
Su Nanzhi’s whole body stiffened. She felt a woody fragrance with a faint bitterness at the tip of her nose, followed by a sharp pain at her philtrum.
She had been half-faking unconsciousness, but now she simply couldn’t keep it up.
She slowly opened her eyes and met a pair of icy cold ones.
The man had deep-set eyes, thick lashes, and slightly drooping peach-blossom eyes—but the gaze he fixed on her was utterly cold.
Su Nanzhi hadn’t expected that the first person she would see after her rebirth would be Gu Xizhou.
In her previous life, her heart and eyes had been filled with Qin Lie, and she had barely exchanged a few words with Gu Xizhou.
Even so, as the military base’s most eligible bachelor, Gu Xizhou often came up in the military wives’ gossip.
It was just a pity he died young…
The day news of Gu Xizhou’s death arrived happened to be the day her son Qin Xiaofeng was born.
Because of that, Qin Xiaofeng had been called a jinx behind his back by the people in the compound ever since he was little.
The Su Nanzhi of her previous life had been heartbroken and furious. The current her found it quite fitting.
Pulling her thoughts back, Su Nanzhi lowered her eyes and said weakly, “What… what happened to me?”
“What happened?”
Hearing this familiar voice, Su Nanzhi’s eyes turned icy cold.
Qin Lie saw that the person surrounded by the crowd was Su Nanzhi, and his brows immediately knitted together, disgust written all over his face.
“What are you making a scene about now?”
Qin Lie sat in a wheelchair, one leg in a cast. On his other, uninjured thigh sat Zhou Xiaobao, her hair in pigtails, her eyes red-rimmed.
Behind him stood Zhao Xue.
They looked quite like a family.