1
At the end of June, the midday heat was at its peak. At this time of day, the commune members of Shanzui Village would normally be taking their afternoon naps, but today they had all crowded into the threshing ground by the brigade office, layer upon layer, packed so tightly that not a drop could leak through.
From within the crowd came a shrill, ear-piercing roar: “You tell him, if he doesn’t come back, I’ll drink pesticide and you can just wait to collect my corpse!”
“My heavens, did she really drink it?”
“That’s 1605, highly toxic!”
“Oh Mother above, someone’s dead, someone’s dead!”
The crowd clamored noisily, and the crowd descended into chaos.
The brigade leader bellowed, “Are you all fucking dead? Barefoot doctor!”
The party secretary shot him a glare and said in a muffled voice, “Send another telegram. Urgent!”
…
Headache, dizziness, thirst—this was Lin Lan’s strongest impression of a hangover.
Last night she had been in a bad mood and drank a couple extra glasses. She went back to her apartment and fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. The whole night was filled with endless nightmares, with the sound of phone calls and knocking on the door piercing into her ears.
She never expected that when she woke up, her ears would again be filled with a buzzing sound disturbing her sleep.
“Second Brother, do you think Mom… really drank pesticide and died?”
“Shh—keep your voice down. Mom’s putting on an act to scare them. She wants Dad to come home. Let’s go cut grass.”
Lin Lan tried hard to open her eyes, but her eyelids seemed stuck together by something, and no matter what, she couldn’t open them.
After a while, another shrill voice rang out. “Old Three is in the army. I saw that she couldn’t manage on her own with five children, so I helped her. And what does she do in return? She puts on those saintly airs all day long. If she doesn’t want to live, then she can pack up and go back to her mother’s home. Nobody wants her here! One moment she’s threatening to hang herself, the next she’s drinking pesticide. She’s doing it because she thinks I, this old woman, am an eyesore and wants me dead first. Good heavens, I’ve never seen such a vicious daughter-in-law! She wants to split up the family? Why doesn’t she just strangle me with a rope? …All of you, stop standing around! Get to work. Go do what you’re supposed to do. Don’t just stand there being lazy and shirking your duties!”
Immediately after, the sound of a door being slammed came.
What drinking pesticide, what splitting the family?
A complete mess.
Lin Lan’s head felt like it was splitting. It took almost all her strength just to lift her eyelids.
What met her eyes was a narrow, cramped room. She saw no window, only a tattered straw curtain hanging there. The walls and roof were all blackened by smoke, and long streaks of black ash hung in the corners. The smell at the tip of her nose was a mixture of all kinds of unpleasant odors. Lin Lan couldn’t even distinguish whether it was livestock feces and urine, or children’s excrement, or mildew, or some other strange smell.
It was simply so stifling it made one want to vomit.
Lin Lan’s mind went blank, as though struck by a bolt from the blue. Could it be that she had transmigrated?
Lin Lan closed her eyes and waited for a long while. When she opened them again, she was still staring at the same smoke-blackened yellow mud wall.
This time, she was certain. She really had transmigrated.
The reason she was so certain was that memories that did not belong to her had already surfaced in her mind, as vivid as something she had once read in a book or watched in a movie, leaving a deep and lasting impression.
It was 1970 in the Huaxia Nation, D Province, a small village in the north—Shanzui Village.
The original host had the same name as her. Her maiden home was Linjia Village. Her husband’s family surname was Han. Her husband, Han Qingsong, was a soldier. The two of them had five children.
The original host had never gone to school. She had only attended a literacy class for a few days and knew no more than fifty characters. Since childhood she had been stubborn and fierce, and her temper was not very good either. Uneducated and inexperienced, when she encountered problems she did not know how to stay calm and think of solutions. Her most commonly used method was to kick up a fuss. Therefore, even when she was at her maiden home, she was not very well liked.
She married Han Qingsong at sixteen. He was away from home year-round, while she suffered suppression from her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. She herself could not think of any way to resolve the conflicts and ease the relationships, and her temper grew more and more irritable. At the slightest provocation she would kick up a huge row, and later she directly resorted to threatening others by making scenes of wanting to die.
As for Han Qingsong, he joined the army at seventeen. After more than ten years of hard work, he was now already a company commander.
His prospects were excellent.
Because of this, the original host felt uneasy and always suspected that he looked down on her, and that once he made something of himself, he would want to attach himself to someone of higher status.
So she kept making a fuss, demanding that he come home to live, lest he be seduced away by those educated, young, and pretty vixens outside.
The reason she put on the pesticide-drinking drama this time was that the original host had heard people discussing a piece of confirmed news brought back by a demobilized soldier—Han Qingsong had someone outside, the daughter of some commander!
The thought that Han Qingsong was definitely going to divorce her became the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The original host repeatedly ran to the commune to send telegrams to the army, insisting that her man be transferred back home. If he did not come home, she would die! And she would take all five children with her to die!
When the mother-in-law learned of this, Old Mrs. Han naturally did not agree. Her son’s bright future was the glory and financial support of the old Han family. If she dragged her son back, wouldn’t that mean going back to the pre-liberation days overnight?
Absolutely not!
The original host then demanded that her mother-in-law hand over her husband’s allowance. Otherwise, she would force her husband to come home, and no one would benefit from it. If her demand was not met, she threatened to drink poison!
She had her second son, Han Wangjun, quietly pick up an empty bottle of 1605 pesticide and bring it back. Since there was no pesticide left in it, she figured that even if she filled it with water, no one would be able to tell the difference. She could pretend to drink pesticide and frighten everyone into backing down.
Of course, there was also the intention of showing the family just how formidable she could be.
How could she have known that 1605 was highly toxic? When spraying it, if one was careless in handling it and the liquid fell on the skin, one could be poisoned, let alone directly mixing it with water and drinking it?
Although she only pretended to take a sip, that was already enough to poison a woman whose health had been poor year-round.
Thus, Lin Lan transmigrated over.
Only, in the original story, this time the original host really got her way.
Han Qingsong was worn down by all the commotion until his heart turned cold, and he no longer had any interest in his official career. In the end, he submitted a transfer application to the army and would return home in a few days.
But his return home did not make the family harmonious from then on. Instead, it opened the curtain on a tragedy.
The original host had originally sworn that as long as her man came home, she would settle down and live properly. But once he returned, she again suspected that he looked down on her and suspected him of having affairs with other women. As long as he left her sight for the time it took to eat a meal, she would suspect whether he was having a tryst with someone.
The young unmarried women and young wives in the village, even widows, all became objects of her suspicion.
As long as her man did anything that did not suit her wishes, she would kick up a huge fuss and make scenes of wanting to die. In the end, this led her man to want to divorce her.
Who would have thought that after she made a huge scene, Han Qingsong died in an accident.
After his death, she became even more twisted. On one hand, she wallowed in self-pity and took her anger out on the children. On the other hand, she was protective and indulgent, raising all the children into ruin. In the end, not one of them came to a good end.
Wait!
Lin Lan suddenly realized that this familiar plot seemed to be from a novel she had read a long time ago. The male and female leads in the book were a pair of childhood sweethearts, busy building wealth and striving for a moderately prosperous life. Among them, a supporting female character left a deep impression because of her style of causing trouble heaven and earth alike. She was the original host’s daughter, Han Maisui. Youthful, pretty, and lively by nature, she had been raised by the original host since childhood to have a heart loftier than the heavens and to be incomparably vain. She always felt she was a princess and wanted whatever she wanted. Anyone who was not good to her was a bad person. The original host helped her daughter devote herself to pestering the male lead, and her several sons each had their own bad qualities as well. In the end, none of them came to a good end.
If one traced it to the root cause, it was inseparable from the original host’s upbringing.
She had actually transmigrated into such a person…
What should she do?
Go back? Impossible now.
Run away from home? Get divorced?
In these times, no one got divorced. If she divorced and only cared about herself, she was afraid that even Linjia Village would not be able to accommodate her.
In this era where one could not survive without household registration, work points, and a letter of introduction, it seemed that she could only live on as the original host.
But if she suddenly turned over a new leaf, she did not know whether others would suspect her. Even if it would arouse suspicion, she really could not live her life the way the original host did.
A thought suddenly popped into her head: she could use surviving a great disaster, feeling utterly disheartened, and suddenly seeing the light and no longer obsessing over the past, wanting to live steadily and practically, as an excuse!
Mm, not bad!
It was just being suppressed by her mother-in-law and her husband having no feelings for her. It was not as if it were some fatal matter. As for living life, she still had plenty of ways.
To her, the most terrifying thing was—
**