“Damn it! That bitch has to be hiding somewhere around here! Search for her! When I catch her, I’ll be the first to kill her!”
The vicious male voice cracked through the mountains like thunder, shattering the stillness of the forest.
“Brother Hu, over here! There’s blood!”
“Judging by these tracks, did she slip and roll down the slope? If she fell like that, can she even still be alive?”
“Who cares! Keep chasing! I want to see her alive or dead! I paid five hundred yuan for her. She’s due for delivery the day after tomorrow. If we don’t get her back and sell her to recover the cost, I’m taking a loss!”
Chaotic footsteps and curses pounded like death drums from above the cliff.
Lin Wan curled tightly into a freezing crevice between rocks, one hand clamped over her mouth, forcing her breathing to the faintest whisper.
Her heart slammed violently against her ribs. The wound on her forehead throbbed. But even more suffocating than the pain was the flood of memories surging through her mind—
Memories that belonged to the original owner of this body.
She had struggled to grow up in a small mountain village that valued sons over daughters. Just when she thought she was about to endure her way to a better life, her parents knocked her unconscious and sold her for five hundred yuan in bride price to an old man old enough to be her father.
But the old man had only been a cover.
Behind him was a human trafficking ring.
When the original Lin Wan discovered the truth, she refused to accept humiliation. During her escape, she tumbled down a mountainside, struck her head on a rock—and died on the spot.
When she opened her eyes again, a modern soul from the twenty-first century had entered this body.
She, Lin Wan—same name, same face—had simply gone to sleep after another exhausting day as an overworked corporate drone.
And slept herself to death.
That still wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was—
She had transmigrated into a novel.
An ’80s-era dual-power couple story.
The male lead was a cold-faced military officer who clawed his way up from the bottom.
The female lead was a reborn business genius who used her knowledge of the future to seize opportunities and rise to success.
Together, they were evenly matched, sharp and magnetic. Their intense back-and-forth had made readers’ blood boil with excitement. Lin Wan had once listened to the audiobook version with her roommate in their shared apartment.
Back then, she’d listened with passionate fervor, cheering from the heroine’s perspective, wishing she could jump into the book and accomplish great things herself.
Now that she had actually jumped in—
Her heart felt ice-cold.
Because the original Lin Wan wasn’t even properly mentioned in the book.
A pure cannon-fodder extra.
If she hadn’t overheard the traffickers mentioning familiar names and locations—and remembered that this “Brother Hu” would later become a key figure in a smuggling case cracked by the male lead—she wouldn’t even have realized she was inside that very novel.
According to the original plot, this trafficking gang wandered through mountain regions year-round, delivering their “goods” on the 25th of every month.
If the original Lin Wan had been caught this time, she would first have been violated and abused by the traffickers.
Afterward, she would have been sold at a high price to a red-light district.
Tortured.
Broken.
Dead.
After absorbing all these memories, Lin Wan felt numb.
She had definitely been set up by fate.
She—a useless modern-day slacker who couldn’t carry a load or lift a bucket—what heavenly law had she violated?
Transmigrating into a cannon-fodder side character was bad enough.
But starting in an apocalyptic-level scenario?
Why not just strike her dead with lightning already?
She absolutely couldn’t return to the original owner’s home. That place was a pit of fire.
She had to find another way out.
This was an era where you couldn’t take a single step without a letter of introduction. And this region was a remote mountain area near the border—desolate, sparsely populated, surrounded by towering trees in every direction. Even finding north and south was difficult.
People came in.
They didn’t come out.
Back in her old life, she’d seen online discussions about female college students trafficked into mountain villages. People would always ask: Why didn’t they just run?
Only when you were truly here would you understand.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to run.
It was that they couldn’t.
Even more despairing than running was climbing over one mountain, only to see another beyond it.
An ordinary person could never escape endless mountain ranges on foot.
When you can’t see hope—
That is the greatest despair.
“Damn! This little bitch is good at hiding. When we catch her, let’s just break her legs. Those rich bastards like them locked up anyway…”
After circling the area and finding nothing, the men cursed irritably.
“Once those big bosses are done playing with her, we’ll break her arms and legs and throw her out to beg…”
“Shut up! You want someone to hear? Things haven’t been peaceful around here lately. What if we run into—”
“What are you scared of? Who knows this territory better than us?”
“Quit talking nonsense! Keep searching!”
“Brother Hu, look!” One of them pointed toward the slope where she had rolled down earlier. Near the original track, partially hidden under fallen leaves, was a faint footprint.
It looked like she had deliberately followed the roll-down path for a while to mislead them, then changed direction and run off from the side.
“Damn it! She’s clever! Almost got fooled! Hurry!”
Their voices gradually faded into the distance.
Cold sweat soaked through her thin clothes. Yet the sense of danger still coiled around her neck like a venomous snake.
The deeper a person is pushed into adversity, the more fiercely survival instincts ignite.
She absolutely could not die.
She hadn’t even lived enough in her last life. Now that she had another chance, why should she die?
In a flash, scattered bits of information from the original novel surfaced in her mind—
Wait.
Besides her, there was another tragic cannon-fodder.
The male lead’s adoptive older brother—
Gu Ye.
In the book, everyone praised the male lead’s brilliance. But Lin Wan knew that Gu Ye was the truly extraordinary one.
His public identity was reconnaissance battalion commander.
But behind the scenes, he came from a powerful background.
Rebellious. Unruly. Hard to control.
That was why he had been thrown into the army to be tempered.
If he hadn’t died unexpectedly later, the so-called “chosen son of heaven” might not have been the male lead at all.
After Gu Ye’s sacrifice, his connections and resources were inherited by the male lead—becoming a crucial force in his rapid rise.
When Lin Wan first followed the story, she’d regretted how quickly this character had been written off.
Now she realized—
They were all just cannon fodder for the sake of the main couple.
But why?
If she remembered correctly, at this point in time, Gu Ye was undercover at a nearby coal mine, disguised as a coal digger.
Filthy. Disheveled. Covered head to toe in black soot.
Higher authorities suspected that someone at the mining base was colluding with foreign forces. To avoid alerting the enemy, they sent Gu Ye to infiltrate and gather evidence, aiming to strike in one decisive blow.
After all, Gu Ye was highly capable—and with his rough, rebellious appearance, no one would ever guess he was a soldier.
But when nothing seems likely to go wrong—
Something always does.
When the organization sent him in, they certainly hadn’t expected him to be spectacularly unlucky.
Just as he was about to gather enough evidence and lock onto the criminal ring, he was struck on the head during a mine collapse while saving someone.
When he woke up—
He had lost his memory.
The kind where he didn’t even recognize his own parents.
Because of his amnesia, the entire operation stalled.
Gu Ye honestly worked at that illegal mine for two whole months after losing his memory.
He even managed to promote himself to foreman.
Only when his superiors received no updates did they send people to investigate, discover his condition, and secretly bring him back.
Not long after returning, news spread that he had died in the line of duty.
Until his death, his memory had never fully recovered.
Wasn’t that…
A perfect opportunity?
The coal mine collapse had appeared in the original owner’s memories just a few days ago.
Back then, she had been locked at home by her parents, overhearing them gloat about how dangerous the mines were—how the miners made money they might not live to spend. Better to marry off their daughter. That brought money faster.
Which meant—
Gu Ye was already in his amnesiac state.
A wild plan formed instantly in Lin Wan’s mind.
Since he had lost his memory—
Then he belonged to her.
A soldier’s family status was the best protective shield.
Even if Gu Ye died in the future, the identity of “martyr’s widow” would be enough to pull her completely out of the mire.
And Gu Ye, at his core, was fiercely protective, stubborn, fearless.
With him around, many troubles would disappear.
With no way left to retreat—
This was her best option.
She would gamble.
Gritting her teeth, listening as the traffickers followed the false trail she had deliberately left behind—
Suppressing her dizziness—
She moved in the direction that might change her fate.