The summer sun blazed overhead when Zhao Xiaomian transmigrated.
Leaning against the headboard, Zhao Xiaomian surveyed her surroundings.
On her right was a freshly whitewashed wall, smooth and spotless, with newspapers pasted across it. The headlines included “The Twelfth National Congress Convenes” and “Mrs. Thatcher Visits China.” Together, they recorded nearly all the major events of 1982.
To her left stood a tall-and-short cabinet. The shorter section was right beside the bed, while the taller one stood against the wooden partition on the far left. A full-length mirror was built into the cabinet doors, making the room look brighter while conveniently serving as a dressing mirror.
At the foot of the bed stood a natural-wood wardrobe, pushed tightly against the wall. A writing desk sat to its left, with a calendar hanging on the wooden partition above it. The numbers were large enough for Zhao Xiaomian to read clearly: Saturday, July 16, 1983.
The bedroom door was on the other side of the desk. That was the entire room.
The furniture, the newspaper-covered walls, the calendar, and even the changes in her body all told Zhao Xiaomian the same thing.
She had transmigrated!
She had landed in the 1980s, a decade many people looked back on with nostalgia.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of them.
In her previous life, Zhao Xiaomian had graduated from college and become a teacher at a middle school in the provincial capital. She was usually busy with work and didn’t have many expenses. Before transmigrating, she had been planning to buy an apartment with her own money, paying the full price upfront before marriage.
Now, she had lost both her job and her savings. Worse still, she had landed in 1983.
1983! It was the year the country had explicitly launched its campaign against serious criminal activities. That alone said plenty about how chaotic society had become.
Whoever wanted to live in this godforsaken place was welcome to it!
Without a moment’s hesitation, Zhao Xiaomian closed her eyes, hoping she could simply sleep her way back to her old life.
Unfortunately, a flood of memories that didn’t belong to her suddenly surfaced in her mind.
They belonged to the original owner of this body!
The original owner had the same name as Zhao Xiaomian and was also twenty-eight years old. The difference was that she had been born in 1955. In 1970, she had gone to the countryside as an educated youth alongside her maternal cousin, who was two years older than her.
Later, the original owner returned to the city, resumed her education, and graduated from a secondary vocational school. She was then assigned to work as a teacher at the kindergarten attached to the machinery factory where her parents worked.
She had been quite satisfied with the job.
Unfortunately, times had changed.
After the country began its reform and opening-up policies, the gap between rich and poor widened. The original owner watched as her colleagues got their hair permed one day and bought new dresses the next. Some even managed to transfer from the machinery factory kindergarten to prestigious municipal elementary schools simply because they had married into influential families.
Jealousy gradually took root in her heart.
As it happened, an opportunity soon presented itself.
The original owner’s male cousin—the biological older brother of her female cousin—sent a telegram from overseas, asking his parents and younger sister to join him abroad.
Her female cousin’s family had been classified as capitalists. With relatives overseas as well, they had suffered terribly during the ten years of political upheaval. Worried that another political movement might erupt in a few years, her cousin wanted to leave the country with her husband, Chen Jianye.
However, Chen Jianye came from a family of senior government officials. He had graduated from a prestigious university and had a promising career ahead of him. He had no intention of leaving the country.
The two couldn’t agree on anything, and their marriage was on the verge of falling apart.
Her cousin wanted a divorce so she could leave without looking back. However, she was afraid that if she left the children behind, their father might neglect them once he remarried. She wanted to take the children abroad with her, but Chen Jianye refused to give up custody.
That was what kept her hesitating.
Her cousin’s parents were eager to leave as soon as possible, so they brought their daughter to the original owner’s home. They asked the original owner and her parents to persuade her cousin to give up the children rather than fight for custody.
The atmosphere in the original owner’s home was unusually heavy that day.
Curious about what was going on, her cousin asked a few questions. Only then did she learn that the original owner had broken up with the man she had been planning to marry. The reason? A hospital examination had supposedly revealed that she was infertile!
The original owner had never thought much of Chen Jianye. She had repeatedly complained that he was too slick and smooth-talking. She preferred men who were quiet, practical, and down-to-earth.
Her cousin, however, began to consider another possibility.
If the original owner had a chance to marry Chen Jianye, the two could settle into a marriage based on mutual convenience.
After all, the original owner was a kindergarten teacher who was patient with children. Since she couldn’t have children of her own, and if she married a man she didn’t particularly love, she would surely treat her stepchildren as her emotional support in old age.
In those days, it was extremely difficult for an infertile woman to find a husband. The original owner probably wouldn’t mind marrying a divorced man with children.
But Chen Jianye was a stubborn man. With his family background and personal qualifications, he had no shortage of women interested in him. He might not be willing to marry the original owner.
After discussing the matter with her cousin, the two came up with a plan.
They picked an auspicious day. While Chen Jianye’s parents took the children out, the cousin invited the original owner to their home. Then, under the pretext of having somewhere to go, she slipped out.
When she returned, she made sure to walk in at just the right moment.
There, in the living room, Chen Jianye’s parents and children caught Chen Jianye and the original owner lying on the sofa with their clothes in disarray…
Her cousin got the divorce she wanted. Chen Jianye subsequently married the original owner, while his parents, disgusted by the scandal, drove the newlyweds out of the family home.
Fortunately, Chen Jianye had been assigned temporary housing through his participation in a river management project. The two moved there.
It was the very apartment Zhao Xiaomian was currently occupying.
The apartment was on the second floor of a three-story tenement building. It faced south, with its back to the north, and consisted of one large room measuring roughly thirty square meters.
Two smaller rooms had been partitioned off along the western wall. One belonged to the cousin’s children and contained a bunk bed. The other was Zhao Xiaomian’s current bedroom.
The remaining space on the eastern side served as the kitchen and dining area, with a chopping board and dining table. The stove was kept outside the apartment, in the shared corridor.
Initially, Chen Jianye’s parents had objected to letting the two children move in. They were worried that the original owner’s bad influence would turn the children into troublemakers.
However, Chen Jianye had insisted. Since his elderly parents hadn’t retired yet and had no time to look after the children, they eventually gave in.
At the moment, the two children were downstairs playing.
After digesting the original owner’s memories, Zhao Xiaomian could only find the whole situation absurd.
Her cousin believed she had rescued her younger cousin from a miserable fate. Her children would also have an aunt who loved them like a mother. It was the perfect arrangement for everyone.
What she didn’t know was that the medical certificate claiming the original owner was infertile was fake!
The whole thing had started the previous summer.
When the original owner’s cousin first received a letter from overseas, she immediately began urging Chen Jianye to leave the country with her.
Chen Jianye had mocked the idea to his childhood friend, saying that if foreigners were really as wonderful as everyone claimed, there never would have been an Eight-Nation Alliance invading China in the first place.
Chen Jianye’s childhood friend was one of the educated youths who had gone to the countryside alongside the original owner. Once, when he ran into her on the street, he asked her to talk some sense into her cousin.
At the time, the original owner was already furious about a colleague’s transfer. She had been wondering whether someone with her qualifications could marry into a high-ranking official’s family and persuade her future father-in-law to arrange a transfer out of the kindergarten.
And then, just like that, an opportunity landed right in her lap.
If her cousin didn’t know how to appreciate Chen Jianye, why not let someone else have him? There was no reason to let an outsider benefit.
But how could she convince her cousin to leave without worrying about her?
To make absolutely certain her plan would succeed, the original owner went straight to the hospital and asked a doctor to issue her a certificate stating that she was infertile. She explained that her parents were pressuring her to get married.
Such situations weren’t uncommon in those days. The kindhearted doctor agreed to help her. However, worried about getting into trouble later, he avoided explicitly stating that she was infertile. Instead, he wrote that she would have difficulty conceiving.
Her cousin interpreted this as an act of kindness on the doctor’s part. She assumed the doctor simply couldn’t bear to leave the original owner completely hopeless.
Convinced that her cousin could never have children, she proceeded with the plan that followed.
During that time, worried that the original owner might change her mind, her cousin even offered her a sum of money as compensation. She probably figured the money would eventually be spent on her children anyway.
But the original owner had thought differently.
In a couple of years, Chen Jianye and I will have children of our own. By then, everything will belong to my children.
Of course, after scheming with her cousin to trap Chen Jianye, the original owner knew he must hate her now.
So she decided to focus on taking good care of the children first. Sooner or later, she would win Chen Jianye over.
And she certainly treated the children well.
Whenever they wanted candy, she bought it for them without hesitation. When they didn’t want to do their math homework, she simply worked out the answers and told them to copy them down.
There were countless other examples like these.
In less than six months, the two children had become completely spoiled and unruly.
When the original owner had first married into the family in the spring, her six-year-old stepson already knew how to wash vegetables, while her four-year-old stepdaughter could help clear away the dishes and chopsticks.
Now, they refused to lift a finger.
The older boy would come home from school, throw his schoolbag aside, and immediately run off to play.
Just yesterday, he had even broken a window at a neighbor’s apartment downstairs. The original owner had paid for the damage and brought the two children home.
She hadn’t scolded them, either. She had simply pretended the whole thing had never happened.
Even though Zhao Xiaomian hadn’t been a teacher in her previous life, she knew exactly what the original owner was doing.
She was spoiling the children rotten under the guise of loving them!
Unfortunately, the original owner had planned for everything except the possibility of passing out from heatstroke.
And that was how Zhao Xiaomian had ended up here.
Not interested in getting involved in this whole ridiculous mess, Zhao Xiaomian closed her eyes again.
But she tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. Then she remembered that there was an electric fan in the dining area.
She decided to grab a bamboo sleeping mat and move beneath it.
Pushing herself up from the wooden bed, Zhao Xiaomian suddenly felt dizzy and lightheaded. Her heart was pounding, and she had to lean against the headboard to steady herself.
Only then did she finally remember how she had ended up in the 1980s.
Yesterday afternoon, she had received intimate photos of her boyfriend and her best friend together. Furious, she had wanted to confront her best friend immediately.
But just before leaving, she stopped to think.
There was no way those intimate bedroom photos could have fallen into the hands of an outsider. If her boyfriend wanted to marry her best friend, he wouldn’t have agreed to get engaged to her the following day.
Besides, her boyfriend might have been sleeping with her best friend, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had any real feelings for her.
So there was no reason for him to send those photos.
Her boyfriend’s father held a minor leadership position in the city. Her best friend had more than once remarked how lucky Zhao Xiaomian was to be marrying the son of an official.
There was a good chance her best friend had sent the photos herself.
Zhao Xiaomian went to see her future in-laws. Not wanting the scandal to spread and bring shame upon their family, they offered her compensation.
Zhao Xiaomian had never been the sort of person who pretended to be above money. If they offered, she would take it.
Afterward, she called her cheating boyfriend to break up with him. Then she deliberately stirred things up between him and the woman he had been sleeping with, before calling a classmate to vent.
Once a cheater, always a cheater. If someone did it once, they’d do it again.
The two of them got so caught up in their conversation that they drank liquor like it was water.
Zhao Xiaomian rarely drank alcohol. By the time she got home, the alcohol had finally gone to her head. She didn’t even realize how drunk she was.
Feeling unbearably hot, she staggered around looking for the remote control. Then she tripped over something and crashed to the floor.
Could I have actually died from that fall?
Before transmigrating, the daytime high temperature in Zhao Xiaomian’s city had been forty degrees Celsius.
In weather that hot, livor mortis could appear within an hour or two after death.
A wave of dread washed over her.
Am I never going back?
A sudden bang against the door jolted Zhao Xiaomian out of her thoughts.
She shuddered and turned toward the sound.
Two filthy children stood at the bedroom doorway.
One was tall, the other short. One was about to start elementary school, while the other would soon be entering kindergarten. One had short hair, the other long.
But both had disheveled hair plastered to their heads with sweat. Their faces were a patchwork of black, white, and red.
Zhao Xiaomian had never seen children this dirty in her previous life. Not even as a little girl.
“Stepmom! Give me two cents to buy a popsicle!”
The taller child walked straight to the bed and held out his hand.
Zhao Xiaomian couldn’t help cursing the original owner inwardly.
What a mess you’ve made!
According to the original owner’s memories, the two children had been clean, well-behaved, and adorable at this time last year.
It really was easy to learn bad habits, but hard to break them!
“Stepmom, did you hear me? Hurry up! The popsicle seller is leaving!”
The taller little brat spoke again.
There was no feeling of her soul being temporarily displaced or anything of the sort. Zhao Xiaomian had no choice but to accept that she really wasn’t going back.
She had become a mother without the pain of childbirth, and she already had a son and a daughter.
Under normal circumstances, that should have been a blessing.
Unfortunately, these two were little terrors!
If she divorced Chen Jianye, her only option would be to return to her parents’ home.
In her previous life, Zhao Xiaomian had been from northern China, while the original owner was from the south. Their lifestyles and habits were very different.
Worse, the original owner’s mother had been born before the founding of the People’s Republic. Her head was full of outdated feudal ideas. She had even agreed to let her daughter become a second wife to a divorced man with children—a decision that showed just how poor her judgment was.
If Zhao Xiaomian suddenly behaved like a completely different person, her mother would probably suspect she had been possessed by a ghost.
Zhao Xiaomian didn’t dare take that risk.
She could rent a place of her own, of course, but society was so chaotic at the moment that she didn’t feel safe living alone, either.
It seemed she would have to wait until she had familiarized herself with the area around the school and found a reasonable explanation for her sudden change in behavior. Once she could face the original owner’s family without raising suspicions, she would get a divorce.
But until then, she would have to live with these two little terrors.
Zhao Xiaomian couldn’t stand children like this for even a second.
Better to act now than put it off!
The great little-terror rehabilitation project would begin this very moment!
Zhao Xiaomian had inherited the original owner’s memories, so she knew exactly where everything was inside and outside the apartment.
Looking at the shorter child, she said, “Go pull out the stove in the corridor. I’ll start cooking once the fire gets going.”
Then she turned to the taller one.
“There’s a bottle of Huoxiang Zhengqi Oral Liquid in the writing desk drawer. Go get it for me.”
The little terror, Chen Xiaodan, stood perfectly still.
The elder little terror, Chen Xiaofei, stretched out a grubby hand.
“Give me the money first!”
Zhao Xiaomian frowned.
“Get me the Huoxiang Zhengqi Oral Liquid first!”
“I know where you keep your money.”
Chen Xiaofei turned around and opened the lower compartment of the tall-and-short cabinet.
Zhao Xiaomian remained perfectly calm.
“You’re going to regret this.”
Chen Xiaofei shot her a contemptuous look.
“Are you going to hit me? I’ll tell Dad to divorce you! I know what you did to marry him. Auntie told me everything.”
A face appeared in Zhao Xiaomian’s mind.
Well, half a face, actually.
Chen Jianye’s younger sister believed that her brother would never force himself on the original owner. Therefore, the original owner must have been the one who couldn’t behave herself and had willingly taken off her clothes.
She had always looked down her nose at the original owner.
But Zhao Xiaomian wasn’t angry. After all, it was the original owner who had been treated that way, not her.
Besides, Chen Jianye still needed someone to look after his two little terrors. He wasn’t going to be the one to suggest a divorce anytime soon.
That meant the elder little terror’s threat was nothing to worry about.
“Chen Xiaofei, put the money down!”