“Xiao Xi is your sister—she almost died! Don’t you know that? How could you be so heartless!”
“Then hit me! You only ever have eyes for Su Lingxi anyway. There’s no place for me in your hearts. I refuse to be your daughter!”
Scolding, sobbing, and a chorus of overlapping voices arguing tangled together, piercing her eardrums like needles straight into her brain, making Ling Xi’s temples throb with pain.
Her whole body felt weak and limp like a waterlogged, rotting sponge. A searing pain raged in her throat, and merely lifting her eyelids took every ounce of strength she had.
Before she passed out again, all she vaguely saw was a pair of eyes full of hatred.
At the same moment, on the wrist of the sickly granddaughter of the old Su family in Huaixing Village, a red string flickered faintly—unnoticed by anyone.
Her consciousness entered the Xuantian Bracelet, and the moment Ling Xi opened her eyes, she saw a small bird fluttering up and down, emerald green all over, with a rainbow-colored tail even longer than its body—it was Cai Yu, the Artifact Spirit.
With what looked like a casual, effortless move, she seized the bird by the throat of its fate.
Cai Yu chirped in terror, and when it spoke again, what came out was a soft, babyish voice: “Ahem, Ancestor, what are you—cough cough—”
Ling Xi narrowed her eyes dangerously, every strand of her hair radiating menace. “Little bird, what exactly is the situation right now, hmm?”
At her low voice, Cai Yu felt the hand around its neck tighten.
Its tail trembled with fright, and only after a long moment did it fawn obsequiously: “A-Ancestor, your current client is named Su Lingxi, and this body is your original appearance…”
Looking at her own dry, shriveled self—like a scorched enoki mushroom—Ling Xi nearly laughed from sheer anger.
Before the contract, they’d made it sound so nice: complete the mission and you can freely adjust your appearance. And in the end they’d given her such an ugly, weak body. Did they really take her for a pushover—a rock to be bullied?
She ground her teeth and made a mental note to settle accounts with those old immortals.
Having endured hundreds of millions of years of hardship to cultivate a human form, Ling Xi certainly wasn’t going to ruin this opportunity on impulse. She released Cai Yu. “Fine. Send me the plot.”
“Received! Beginning plot transmission.”
After a shudder of Divine Sense synchronization, the plot of this world unfolded in Ling Xi’s mind.
When she finished, she let out a long breath, more than once tempted to smash the heads of this world’s male and female leads with her sandbag-sized fists.
The female lead, Su Xinghui, had transmigrated from the 21st century back to the 1970s, becoming Su Xinghui, the eldest daughter of the second branch of the old Su family in Huaixing Village.
Faced with abusive adoptive parents who exploited and drained her pitiful younger sister, Su Xinghui relied on her heaven-blessed Koi Luck to fight her way through every obstacle and turn the tables—punishing her heartless adoptive parents, slapping down the white-lotus sister, building her own business empire while being lovey-dovey with her puppy-love sweetheart, rising to the peak of life and trampling everyone who had ever wronged her underfoot.
Ling Xi’s client was none other than the female lead’s white-lotus sister, Su Lingxi.
Having received the original owner’s memories, she knew things were nothing like the plot claimed—the second branch of the Su family had never mistreated the female lead. On the contrary, they had raised her as their own beloved daughter, only to have their kindness repaid with cruelty.
Su Xinghui not only failed to feel grateful, she caused Father Su to become completely paralyzed and Mother Su to lose her right hand to amputation. The original owner bore the reputation of a jinx who cursed her father and mother for her entire life, and ultimately took her own life at a young age.
Looking at these two lives that seemed designed as a contrast study, a surge of stifled fury lodged in Ling Xi’s chest, unable to settle for a long, long time.
What wrong had the original owner done? What wrong had the second branch of the Su family done?
They had merely taken in the female lead out of the kindness of their hearts, yet she not only made it impossible for the second branch to stay in the village, but also brought their family to ruin. “Ungrateful wretch” was exactly the word for her!
Ling Xi grumbled inwardly, and the scene before her suddenly shifted. Countless points of light converged into a semi-transparent consciousness—this was the original owner’s last remnant of soul power, bound by the Xuantian Bracelet to become a client, with Ling Xi to fulfill her dying wish.
“Su Lingxi, what is your wish?”
Su Lingxi answered timidly, “Fairy sister, I want to get better so I can care for my parents. My parents are good people, but they’re both dead now, sob sob sob…”
“You don’t want justice?” Ling Xi asked, slightly surprised. She had always believed in repaying grievance with grievance, and truly couldn’t understand why the original owner wouldn’t seize such a good opportunity.
“Can I?” Su Lingxi’s voice grew even smaller. “But everyone in the village says Su Xinghui is a lucky star descended from heaven, and whoever treats her badly will be struck with disaster by the heavens…”
Ling Xi gave her a calm sidelong glance. “Superstition really won’t do.”
The spirit: “?”
Cai Yu: “???” And you have the nerve to say that?
Ling Xi was free-spirited and unrestrained by nature, with no patience for the original owner’s dough-like temperament. She waved a hand. “I’ll get justice for you, and I’ll see your parents well cared for. Now go.”
When she woke again, there was a clamor of noise in her ears. Ling Xi lifted her eyelids, looked at the dull, earthen walls mixed with grass sod, and smelled the faint mustiness in the air, which only strengthened her resolve to complete her task as quickly as possible.
Her body was still a bit sore, but the pain had faded considerably. She picked up a bowl from the cabinet, took a sip of water, and slowly made her way toward the source of the noise.
It was her first time possessing a body, and even Ling Xi couldn’t hide her novelty at it. Walking the way humans did still felt somewhat awkward.
Following the sounds to the front room, before she even poked her head out she could hear a crowd of people bickering and chattering—some speaking in dialect, some in local patois—far livelier than before.
Among the many voices, one young girl’s voice stood out, exceptionally pitiful: “Grandpa Village Chief, just consider me unfilial, but I really can’t stay with the second branch any longer… The second branch isn’t my home, and Father and Mother were only Little Xi’s parents…”
The way she said it, she couldn’t have sounded more wronged.
She didn’t even need to peek—Ling Xi knew this had to be the female lead, Su Xinghui. Apparently the plot had progressed right to the point where the female lead was adopted into the third branch.
The adoption incident was the beginning of the second branch’s tragedy. Su Xinghui accused Su Changhe and Yu Lian of abusing her, and exposed her own origins, cementing the image of her adoptive parents as ungrateful and heartless. This caused the second branch’s reputation in Huaixing Village to plummet, and the original owner was branded a jinx.
Meanwhile, the female lead herself emerged from the whole affair unscathed, winning everyone’s sympathy and praise.
Thinking of how the second branch’s tragic end would only earn them a dismissive “they brought it on themselves,” Ling Xi gave a cold laugh and pushed open the door, just in time to hear Su Changhe wearily ask Su Xinghui, “Huihui, how can you say that? When have your parents ever mistreated you?”
A cough escaped her throat uncontrollably. She composed her expression and walked in coughing, and everyone she passed instinctively backed away, as if afraid of catching her illness.
Ignoring the gazes that treated her like a plague, Ling Xi walked straight up to Su Changhe. “Father, what’s going on?”
When Su Xinghui saw her, a flash of resentment passed through her dashing phoenix eyes, but it quickly gave way to a tearful, wounded expression. “Dad, since Little Xi is here too, I’ll just say it straight. In your and Mom’s eyes, only Little Xi counts as your daughter. I go to school, do chores, and take care of a child every day—I get less sleep than anyone. Yet whenever anything goes wrong, she pins it on me. Just take pity on your daughter and let me go!”
The stocky woman beside her spat. “If you ask me, who could stand someone like San Ya? Of course it gets pinned back on her!”
Ling Xi recognized her as the original owner’s third aunt, Wang Guiqiu. In the original plot, it was she who had advocated adopting Su Xinghui, and under the heroine’s halo, she had prospered and lived a smooth, successful life.
Yet her adoption of the heroine was not out of kindness—she had simply set her sights on the girl’s good luck, hoping she would help pull up the third branch of the family.
The laughable thing was that Su Xinghui, that self-proclaimed clever transmigrator, had always believed that the person in the whole Su family who treated her best was Wang Guiqiu.
Yu Lian had been wondering how to explain the current situation to her daughter, but hearing this, she flared up at once. “Wang Guiqiu, what’s that supposed to mean? What exactly is wrong with Little Xi? Explain yourself!”
The Su family’s door stood wide open, and the whole village had gathered to watch the commotion. Someone with no regard for their life shouted, “Does that even need asking? How many years does Su San Ya have left in that body of hers? Making Er Ya take care of her—isn’t that just bullying?”
The whole crowd fell silent for a moment, and from inside the house came an aged sigh from the village chief, Su Shanren. “Changhe, you fool!”