Shen Ruo was awakened by intense waves of pain, his abdomen throbbing in almost perfect sync with his heartbeat.
“Ugh…”
It felt as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach several times, twisting his insides as if they had shifted out of place.
What’s happening?
Shen Ruo breathed rapidly, flashes of memories crossing his mind. He recalled leaping to save a child who ran a red light, but he himself had been struck and flung by a speeding truck!
Strangely, aside from his abdomen, he felt no other pain…
Before he could make sense of it, an anxious voice rang in his ears.
“Push! The child is almost here!”
?! What child?!
Shen Ruo’s eyes snapped open, and he saw his abdomen swollen. Darkness flickered at the edges of his vision.
I transmigrated? And into a pregnant woman?
But…
From this angle, his chest was flat, it didn’t look female at all.
Beside the bed stood a woman wearing a right-cross coarse linen robe, her hair wrapped in a cloth strip, her face pale and waxy from malnutrition. She looked at Shen Ruo, eyes full of worry.
Shen Ruo was bewildered, even thinking he must be dreaming.
But the relentless pain in his abdomen kept reminding him: this was no dream!
He was truly at the life-or-death moment of giving birth!
“Ruo’er, you have to hang on! Don’t be afraid. In our village, women always help with births, you’ll be fine!” The woman’s eyes were red, and she pressed her hands against Shen Ruo’s belly. “Breathe in, push hard, give it everything you’ve got to deliver the child.”
It hurt like hell!
Shen Ruo’s vision darkened from the pain. He barely had time to think about her words and summoned all his strength to push…
“He’s coming, he’s coming!”
Finally, a loud, clear cry of a baby reached him, and Shen Ruo felt an immense relief.
“…It’s a little ge’er. His eyes and eyebrows are just like yours! Take a look?” The woman quickly cleaned the baby, wrapped him in a blanket, and placed him on Shen Ruo’s pillow.
Then she went to massage his abdomen, helping him recover.
Shen Ruo looked down at the little one. Sparse fetal hair clung wet to his scalp, his skin wrinkled and red, as if he had just been pulled out of water.
He could hardly believe it; the entire world felt surreal.
A grown man, he had transmigrated, and into a man capable of giving birth. And he had actually delivered a baby!!
Shen Ruo took a deep breath, almost choking on the thick, blood-scented air. The baby hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but he gave a toothless smile that left Shen Ruo half laughing, half crying.
In his previous life, he had barely secured a civil servant position. Before he even started working, he was hit by a truck and ended up here, his years of late-night studying wasted.
Yet, if he were given a second chance, he would still have jumped to save that child running a red light.
Perhaps the original mother’s accident during childbirth allowed Shen Ruo, a lost soul from another world, to inhabit this body.
With shallow family ties, he had been raised by his grandmother. His mother had been gone for twenty-four years, and now, after transmigrating, he even had a child of his own, maybe this was heaven’s compensation.
Although it was incredible, being reborn was already a gift.
Still, Shen Ruo couldn’t fully accept it. He pursed his lips and looked at the baby lying on his pillow.
This is… his own child? And it’s so ugly.
“…Looks like a water monkey.”
The baby seemed to understand him somehow, wailing loudly as if complaining but with no effect, thunder without rain.
Shen Ruo: “…Alright, that’s even more accurate.”
“All newborns look like this, wrinkled and scrunched up. Give it a few days, and he’ll be fine.” The woman couldn’t help smiling at his words. After cleaning him, she changed him into fresh clothes and pants, and removed the half-bloodstained old mat underneath.
“Your elder brother should have prepared some rice soup. I’ll go get it to feed the baby.” The woman left the room carrying the bloodstained clothes and mat, leaving only Shen Ruo and the little one inside.
Shen Ruo nodded, his eyes scanning the room. He realized it was a mud-and-tile house. The oiled paper on the window was still new, probably freshly patched to serve as a temporary delivery room, shielded from the wind. But other than the bed, there was no furniture at all; the room was cramped, barely enough space for three grown men to stand.
Recalling what the woman had said earlier, it seemed this body was also called Shen Ruo, and his child was a… little ge’er?
Shen Ruo, only now realizing, stared at little ge’er and noticed a small, faint red mole on his forehead.
…Wait! This isn’t just a simple transmigration!
He had actually transmigrated into a book!
He remembered that while preparing for the civil service exams, he had picked up a farming-themed novel as a pastime, called The Road to Prosperity for the Farmer’s Daughter.
And by coincidence, there was a character with the exact same name as Shen Ruo, and he was a ge’er.
In the world of this book, there are three genders: men, women, and ge’er (哥儿).
Ge’er are unusual, they are weaker than men but stronger than women, yet like women, they can give birth…
In the story, the female lead is Shen Ruo’s cousin. The two of them often fought over the male lead, jealous and competitive.
When Shen Ruo first read the book, he realized the female lead wasn’t a good person in the traditional sense. She was ruthless in her pursuit of wealth, and everyone who got in her way was written by the author as extreme and ridiculous, tools for the female lead to humiliate.
The female lead’s path to riches went smoothly, while the “extreme characters” defined by the author all met various grisly ends.
Shen Ruo had only read a third of the book before abandoning it. He hadn’t even reached the romantic entanglements of the main couple yet, and he was already disgusted.
Now, having transmigrated into the story, he had changed the plot of Shen Ruo’s difficult childbirth.
In other words, the story’s events could now be altered!
Shen Ruo was deeply regretting that he hadn’t studied the book carefully. If he had known he’d end up inside it, he would have memorized every detail!
Now, he didn’t even know who the other father of the baby was.
Infant mortality in ancient times was high. Looking around at the bare walls of the house, Shen Ruo could easily imagine how poor the Shen family was. If he knew who the father was, he could at least ask for some child support, making sure the baby didn’t go hungry.
In the original story, the baby never made it. But Shen Ruo had come through and delivered Huizi alive, creating the closest connection he had to this world.
Even without any blood ties, Shen Ruo wanted to raise the child, to make him healthy and chubby.
The woman entered with a bowl of rice soup. The thoroughly cooked grains steamed with a rich, hearty fragrance.
Shen Ruo instinctively swallowed; he realized the original body probably rarely had the chance to eat white rice before.
In ancient times, rice wasn’t rushed with fertilizer, and the single annual harvest was especially fragrant, so much so that even Shen Ruo, a soul from another world, felt a little tempted.
“There’s only a handful of rice left at home; we need to save it for the little one to eat,” Li Shantao said, noticing Shen Ruo’s craving. Then she skillfully picked up the baby, cooled the rice soup, and fed him with a small spoon.
Shen Ruo had just given birth and was still weak. Earlier, he had been immersed in the shock of rebirth, but now, smelling the aroma, all his other senses revived, and his stomach growled.
He was hungry too.
After feeding the baby, Li Shantao went out and returned shortly after with a bowl, which she handed to Shen Ruo.
Shen Ruo obediently took the bowl. Inside was brown sugar egg drop soup. Its color was pale, and the sweetness light, but drinking the warm soup and having something in his stomach greatly eased his physical discomfort.
“Thank you… Mother.” Shen Ruo’s voice was a little hoarse.
“You child, still thanking me?” Li Shantao wiped away her tears as she spoke. “I don’t know which villain harmed you. My heart aches for you—I haven’t even found a good match for you, and yet…”
“Mother, I won’t marry. I’ll stay home and take care of you.” Shen Ruo glanced at little ge’er. “I’ll raise him myself.”
Shen Ruo realized that he had inherited part of the original body’s memories. With certain keywords, he could instinctively recall them.
He knew that in earlier times, having a child out of wedlock or losing one’s chastity could result in being drowned in a pig cage. But after the famine twenty years ago, the population dropped sharply. To encourage childbirth, the current emperor issued many decrees: now, for any reason, pregnancy had to be carried to term unless the fetus was already dead, and illegal abortions were punishable.
In this era, simply giving birth was considered meritorious.
If one gave birth to a little ge’er, the family could receive two more acres of land; a daughter or a ge’er counted as one acre each. Even the poorest families would continue to have children, just to gain a few more acres to grow staple crops.
And his little ge’er had earned an acre of land for the family the moment he was born, far more impressive than Shen Ruo thought.
“This baby is so lovely, it warms my heart. It’s just a shame we don’t have extra money to buy a mother goat to feed him with milk, poor child,” Li Shantao said, gently patting the baby swaddled in the blanket and sighing.
Shen Ruo’s thoughts were pulled back by her worries. Although he had inherited part of the original body’s memories, he still needed time to recall them fully.
He didn’t expect that now the family didn’t even have money to buy milk for the little one. He needed to find a way to make money quickly.
Shen Ruo propped himself up with his hands, preparing to swing his legs off the bed.
“Ruo’er! What are you doing? You need to properly rest after childbirth, or you’ll end up with an illness later,” Li Shantao stopped him, urging him to lie back down and tucked the blanket around him carefully.
So men also had to observe postpartum confinement after giving birth?
Shen Ruo felt helpless. He couldn’t ask directly, if the family discovered he wasn’t the original body, it might frighten the elders.
His gaze fell on the handkerchief Shen Ruo’s mother had been using to wipe her tears. It was embroidered with a few peach blossoms and a butterfly, the thread faded from years of use.
The design was simple, like the basic traced drawings Shen Ruo had made as a child.
He tested the waters: “Mother, your handkerchief’s design is really beautiful.”
Li Shantao smiled at his words, her waxy complexion brightening considerably.
“My sister-in-law embroidered this for me. As for truly exquisite patterns, those belong to wealthy families. It’s said that those skilled embroiderers can even stitch the big beasts from the mountains onto the cloth!” Li Shantao’s eyes sparkled as she spoke of embroidery. She even pulled out several more handkerchiefs from her chest so Shen Ruo could see them.
“You never cared for these things as a child. When we tried to teach you embroidery, you refused to learn, always following your elder brother into the mountains and rivers, not at all like a ge’er.” Li Shantao remembered with a smile playing at the corners of her eyes.
Shen Ruo pressed his lips and nodded, this memory also appeared in his mind. The joyful times of going up the mountains with his elder brother to catch birds and down to the rivers to catch fish.
In his memories, he hadn’t seen many embroidery patterns. In this era, highly skilled embroiderers were kept by wealthy families, while villagers’ handkerchiefs were mostly simple designs like the ones Li Shantao held.
Although such patterns could add a bit of detail to a handkerchief, they still lacked finesse.
“Mother, how much could a handkerchief like this sell for in town?”
“No one sells them. These handkerchiefs are all made at home. Aunt Zhang in the village bought a book of embroidery patterns from town, and when we have free time, we go copy from it,” Li Shantao said, pulling out a gray-blue handkerchief embroidered with a cluster of green bamboo. “See, this is the prettiest one in that book. I cut it out from old clothes to embroider it.”
Shen Ruo could see the deep fondness in Li Shantao’s eyes. Apparently, the original Shen Ruo’s mother really loved embroidery!
The stitches were tight, the colors blended evenly, but the pattern itself…
Before being hit by the truck, Shen Ruo had done online illustration work, and now his “professional instincts” kicked in. Looking at the scattered bamboo leaves, he wanted to take it and redo it entirely.
ᘻᘿᓍᘺ
Shen Ruo thought that if he could draw a pattern that could then be embroidered, it would be completely unique in this world.
And if it were unique, charging a little more to sell it would be entirely reasonable.
“Mother, find a long, thin wooden stick. I’ve thought of a few embroidery patterns. If you can stitch them, we could definitely make money.” Shen Ruo was confident. Looking at the little baby on the pillow, his tone softened in a way he hadn’t noticed before: “Once we earn enough, we can buy a mother goat for him.”