“Hey, hey, hey! Massive scoop! Huge gossip!” A boy dressed in a school uniform gathered his classmates around him with a mysterious air.
The swollen red acne on his face became even more noticeable as he made exaggerated expressions.
“Hey! Don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us quickly—what kind of news deserves to be called a ‘massive scoop’?”
Another male student nearby couldn’t stand the way he was deliberately trying to grab everyone’s attention. Didn’t he see his goddess looking over here curiously as well!
The boy looked around at the circle of classmates, his face full of animated expressions, as he feigned mystery.
“Did you guys know? The Li family has taken back a girl! Word is she was swapped with Li Ran back then. Li Ran isn’t even their biological daughter!
She’s in for it this time. With her personality, if the girl the Li family brought back is even a little bit fierce, Li Ran will be bullied to death! Do you think she’ll be kicked out of the house?”
Looking at the expressions of the students around him, the boy felt a sense of satisfaction. When he first heard the news, his level of surprise was no less than those present.
“My god! Is that true?” A girl with magenta nail polish and dyed pink hair gasped, lightly covering her mouth.
“I’m so worried about her. No wonder she’s not at school this afternoon. To think such a huge thing happened at home! What if she gets bullied!”
The voices of the students discussing the matter grew louder, but the topic never strayed from the girl who wasn’t at school—the girl everyone liked, the one with the soft, cute voice who was friendly to every classmate.
Meanwhile, the subject of the conversation—Li Ran—was currently in a dessert shop eating cherry shaved ice, idly scrolling through Weibo.
Li Ran had known for a long time that she wasn’t the biological daughter of the Li family. If you asked how she knew?
Well, it was quite surreal. She had died once and actually experienced Rebirth. Her story from her previous life went like this:
The Li family was a top-five family enterprise in the country, enjoying smooth sailing in the technology and manufacturing industry. The current head of the Li family was Father Li, who had a son and a daughter with his wife.
Father Li was a total slave to his daughter, and Brother Li was a complete sister-con. The level of pampering the whole family showered on Li Ran reached the point where they would give her the stars and the moon if she asked for them.
Under such an environment, Li Ran developed an extremely arrogant and willful personality. Yet, the Li family felt that this version of Li Ran was innocent and adorable, so they never tried to restrain her wild growth.
As for Li Ran, she thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being second only to God.
Just when she thought she would live this life smoothly until the end, during her sophomore year of high school, a girl her age appeared at her home. The girl told her superciliously that she was the real biological daughter of the Li family and told her, the “bitch who had usurped the nest,” to get out quickly.
Li Ran couldn’t accept this fact at all. She cried, screamed, and even ran away from home. Even though Father Li promised her repeatedly that she was still the little princess of the Li family and that the family wouldn’t ignore her just because they had found their biological daughter.
Thus, she could only slowly accept the reality with extreme reluctance. Even though the girl who had been brought back often bullied her when her parents weren’t around, she still endured it.
But accidents happen suddenly and without reason. After the college entrance exams ended, she got drunk at a class party. She wanted to walk a bit to sober up so her parents wouldn’t nag her when they smelled the alcohol at home, but she encountered a robber on the way.
She wanted to give the robber money, but he didn’t give her a single chance to beg for mercy. He cleanly and efficiently slit her throat. In her final memory, she seemed to see the face of the person who killed her.
Li Ran died just like that. What she didn’t expect was that souls truly existed after death, and her soul returned to the Li family home.
She drifted in the living room, watching Mother Li call her phone over and over, watching her brother put on his coat to go out and find her. She couldn’t help but want to cry.
She saw the girl named Li Xin. After comforting their mother, Li Xin returned to her room and made a phone call.
“Is it handled? Is she dead for sure?” Li Xin’s expression showed none of the anxiety she had just displayed in front of the Li family.
Li Xin continued, “It’s good that she’s dead. That cheap dad of mine actually wanted to make a will to have the three of us split the assets equally after he dies. Li Qing is fine, since he’s the son, but what right does Li Ran have?
She lived my life for sixteen years, occupying my life, my parents—and me? What kind of life did I have before! What right does she have! She must die!”
Li Ran stood frozen on the spot. Li Xin knew the person who killed her?
She had clearly been trying hard to accept her recently. She had never told her parents or her brother that Li Xin had been bullying her. Why did Li Xin hate her enough to kill her?
At that moment, Li Ran felt herself becoming lighter and lighter, as if something was pulling her away.
She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave the Li family, her parents, or her brother. If they knew she was dead, how heartbroken would they be?
Just before she lost her final consciousness, she seemed to hear Mother Li’s voice: “Honey, even if we’ve taken back Xiao Xin, we have to be as good to Xiao Ran as before, okay?”
Then came Father Li’s gentle reply, “She’s the daughter I’ve pampered for over a decade, I know. It’s just that Xiao Ran’s temperament needs to be reined in. If our Xiao Ran wasn’t so willful and was as gentle as Xiao Xin, that would be perfect.”
The voices grew fainter until Li Ran could hear nothing at all.
Because of that, she missed the last thing Mother Li said: “I actually don’t want Xiao Ran to be like Xiao Xin. It’s best for Xiao Ran to live her life just as she is, lively and straightforward.”
When she woke up again, she found herself back as the five-year-old Li Ran.
She recalled everything she had encountered before her death and remembered the last thing she heard Father Li say: he hoped her personality would be gentle and not willful.
However, it was a bit difficult to suddenly turn an arrogant personality into a gentle and understanding big sister, so she chose to disguise herself as a weak, delicate “little white flower.” The difficulty level for that dropped off a cliff instantly.
And so, the reborn Li Ran became a delicate little white flower swaying in the wind. Now, everyone from her peers to her elders both liked and felt sorry for her.
That led to the scene at the beginning: her high school classmates were extremely worried that she would be bullied by the true heiress the Li family had just recognized.
As for why she was eating shaved ice in a dessert shop right now? That was because today was the day Li Xin was being brought back.
This girl who had hired someone to kill her in her past life—she was going to make her pay the price she deserved.
Did she, Li Ran, die for nothing? Of course not.
A life for a life, a debt of blood must be paid in blood. Li Xin, I’ve been waiting for you for eleven years.