An Ran bid farewell to Granny Liu and headed straight to the hospital.
Although NDA technology was not yet widespread at the time, her blood type was B, Yang Huixian's was A, and An Hegui's was O, so a simple blood test would be enough to confirm that she was not their biological daughter.
While waiting for the blood test results, An Ran instinctively reached for her left wrist, only to grasp at nothing.
She had worn a string of Buddhist prayer beads on her wrist for years. They were given to her by an old monk who had traveled far and wide. At the time, the monk was begging for alms from passersby, and she happened to have a bag of steamed buns in her hand, so she gave him two. The monk said they were fated to meet and gifted her his prayer beads.
Whether it was psychological or not, she felt that her life had become much smoother ever since she got the beads.
Over the years, these beads had become her spiritual anchor. Now that they were suddenly gone, she felt a hollow emptiness in her heart. Just as she was thinking about this, An Ran suddenly discovered a space in her mind. The space stretched endlessly, but it was shrouded in white mist on all sides, with only an area of about thirty square meters in the center being clear.
Almost instinctively, An Ran knew that this space had materialized from the prayer beads. At the same time, she also recalled the incident before her rebirth when she had coughed up blood onto the beads. At that moment, she noticed the beads absorbing her blood, and in her shock, she couldn't catch her breath and fainted. She never expected that when she opened her eyes again, she would be sixteen-year-old An Ran.
So the prayer beads not only gave her a second chance at life but also bestowed upon her a Magical Space?
She felt grateful to the old monk… no, she should thank the old Living Buddha!
Fortunately, she had a friend who worked as an editor at an online literature website. This friend loved recommending good books to her, and among the novels she had recently recommended, nine out of ten featured protagonists who had either traveled through time or been reborn.
She thanked her friend's recommendations for giving her a clear understanding of her current situation.
With the space at her disposal, she should take advantage of this unique era to acquire some gold or antiques to collect. Otherwise, how could she do justice to the Magical Space gifted by the prayer beads?
She just wondered if time in the space was frozen. And could living beings, humans or animals, enter it?
Suppressing the excitement welling up inside her, An Ran found a secluded corner to test things out. First, she tried storing and retrieving items with her mind—no problem. Then she tried to will herself into the space—nothing happened. She picked up an ant from the ground and placed it into the space; the ant died instantly upon entry.
It seemed her space could only store inanimate objects; living creatures would die the moment they entered. She wondered if she could put other people into the space as living beings.
No, that thought was too dangerous. She couldn't try it.
After receiving the blood test report, An Ran glanced at the results and calmly stored it in the space. Then she went to a small shop nearby and bought two popsicles. She put one into the space and ate the other.
July was the hottest time of the year, and a popsicle taken out of the insulated box would melt within five minutes. It took An Ran about half an hour to walk from the hospital to her home. As she entered the residential building and climbed the stairs, she checked that no one was around, then took the popsicle out to inspect it. Good—the popsicle hadn't changed at all.
Although she was now fairly certain that time in the space was frozen, An Ran cautiously placed the popsicle back into the space.
To rule out the possibility that the popsicle remained unchanged simply because time in the space moved more slowly, she would keep this popsicle in the space permanently. She wanted to be one hundred percent sure whether the space was completely frozen or just had slower time.
When she returned home, she was greeted by a locked door.
Fortunately, she had habitually brought her keys with her.
After unlocking the door and stepping inside, she noticed that the table she had overturned had already been cleaned up. Without bothering to wonder where everyone had gone, An Ran began studying the space. First, she discovered that to put something into the space, she had to touch it first—any part of her body would do. Once touched, the item could be stored in the space. Items in the space could be manipulated with her mind, but only within that central area of about thirty square meters.
Through experimentation, she found that the space could stack items up to about five meters high, meaning she could effectively store roughly one hundred and fifty cubic meters of things.
The area shrouded in white mist felt like it was blocked by an invisible wall. But her intuition told An Ran that as long as certain conditions were met, the white mist could dissipate. She first tried filling the space to see if it would automatically clear the mist. Unfortunately, she moved everything movable in her house into the space and still couldn't fill it up.
Because the space had an automatic organizing function—whenever items were placed inside, they would be automatically sorted and arranged. As a result, items that looked like they would fill the space ended up only taking up half of it.
Besides the organizing function, there was another feature that delighted An Ran: the space's automatic perception ability. For example, if she placed a locked cabinet into the space, she could automatically sense what was inside it.
It was precisely because of the space's sensory function that An Ran discovered Yang Huixian's secret—she never expected that the wardrobe at home actually contained a very hidden secret compartment, and inside that compartment were packed full of gold bars.
Antiques are chaotic, gold is chaotic.
Although in this special era, gold had greatly depreciated in value, a single fifty-gram gold bar could still sell for a couple thousand yuan, and there were a full ninety-eight gold bars in the secret compartment. Besides that, there was also over a thousand yuan in cash at home, and the work unit she wanted to buy only cost five hundred yuan.
This was what they called having no money at home?
Fine, since Yang Huixian claimed the family had no money, then she would make her truly have no money.
An Ran decisively used her mental power to unlock the compartment and took all the gold bars and cash notes. Thinking about how in her previous life, when she was carried onto the train, they had only stuffed a hundred yuan into her hand and given her nothing else, An Ran simply went all the way—not only taking all the quilts, sheets, thick clothes, and several bolts of new fabric, but also taking the pots, pans, bowls, and dishes from the kitchen, as well as all the food in the house.
Just as she had put the furniture back in place, she heard someone knocking on the door. An Ran opened the door and saw Granny Liu and several women who liked to gather and gossip about household matters.
In the time it took An Ran to go to the hospital for a blood test, Granny Liu had already, true to expectations, spread her story throughout the family compound. As soon as An Ran opened the door, everyone began chattering and pressing her for the test results.
An Ran immediately put on a sad expression upon hearing this: "My mother is type A, my father is type O, and I'm type B. I really am not their biological daughter. Granny Liu, didn't you say that the hospital could absolutely never mix up babies back then? Then what's going on with me?"
Granny Liu firmly assured that the hospital could absolutely not have made a mistake: "Back then, I helped your father take your mother to the hospital, and I saw with my own eyes your mother carrying the baby out of the operating room. The moment the baby came out of the operating room, an identification tag was hung on her wrist. As long as no one deliberately switched the tags, it was impossible for the baby to be mixed up…"
Thinking of how An Ran had said that Yang Huixian didn't like her aunt but favored her aunt's daughter over her own, an unbelievable thought suddenly surged into Granny Liu's mind—could this child have been deliberately switched by Yang Huixian?
But why would she do such a thing?
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