It hurts.
Every single inch of her body hurt.
Her consciousness struggled to reconverge amidst sharp pain and a strange, swollen sensation—especially in a certain unspeakable place.
Shen Qianqian thought she must have gone completely insane in the afterlife.
After living for decades without touching a man, she couldn’t even catch a break after dying, and now she was having this kind of dream? And a dream this… wild?
A man’s heavy, scalding torso was pressing down on her, and sweat slipped from his clenched, taut jawline, landing with a “plop” right against her collarbone, scalding her so intensely that her whole body trembled.
Accompanied by a suppressed groan and the sensation of the deepest parts of her body being forcefully breached—
Her chaotic brain went “buzz” with a loud explosion.
No.
She was dead.
She clearly remembered being pushed down the stairs by Xu Yanqing, Lin Wanzhi, and that “good daughter” she had raised for decades. They had poured alcohol down her throat, leaving her head cracked open and blood pooling across the floor.
As a disembodied soul, she had floated in mid-air, watching those three calmly look at her gradually chilling corpse, wiping away fingerprints, and staging a fake accident.
She watched her elderly parents cry until they fainted in the mourning hall.
She watched Xu Yanqing and Lin Wanzhi flirting before her bones had even gone cold.
She watched all her assets get “legally” inherited by that pair of scumbags and the ungrateful wolf of a daughter.
Finally, she watched Huo Xiangbei.
This ex-husband whom she had despised her entire life and never saw again after their divorce was hugging her tombstone and crying.
Then, ignoring his older brother’s warnings, he brandished a knife, tracked the three beasts down, and executed them with his own hands, before ruthlessly slitting his own throat.
As the blood spurted out, he said, “I want Qianqian to watch them die. That way, Qianqian will take me back.”
As a ghost, she had no tears.
There were only bloody tears welling up from her hollow eye sockets, turning into two shocking, bloody trails.
She chased after his instantly departing soul, screaming, “Huo Xiangbei! In the next life! In the next life, I’ll still find you—”
But he couldn’t hear her anymore.
His soul shattered right in front of her eyes, alongside that trail of resolute blood.
…
When she opened her eyes again, it was right now.
The world was spinning. Her body was heavily suppressed, and the clear, burning body heat and aggressive aura belonging to another person dragged her violently back to reality from her icy memories of death.
“Huo… Huo Xiangbei?”
Shen Qianqian widened her eyes, her gaze finally focusing on the face inches from her own.
—Severe brows, tightly pressed thin lips, and veins bulging at his temples.
Handsome, yet stained with terrifying rage.
It wasn’t a dream.
This real, bone-aching sensation of falling apart, this physical sensitivity belonging to a youthful body…
She blinked fiercely, her panicked gaze sweeping across her surroundings.
The man’s muscular arms, the ceiling lined with old newspapers in the dim light, the rock-hard brick kang beneath her, and the ambiguous, humid scent hanging heavy in the air.
Was this… the 1970s?
The home she and Huo Xiangbei shared when they first married in the countryside?
She had been reborn on the exact day Huo Xiangbei “caught her red-handed,” dragged her back, and pinned her to the kang to “teach her a lesson”?!
A profound sense of absurdity struck her like a blunt instrument, making her head spin.
Throughout history, people had been reborn in cold palaces, on battlefields, or right in front of their enemies…
And she? She was reborn right on the kang, underneath a man, in the middle of doing the deed?
“Shen Qianqian!”
Huo Xiangbei’s voice crashed down, hoarse and deep, laden with an uncontainable fury.
His pitch-black eyes stared right at her, churning with emotions she used to fail to understand, but which now stabbed painfully at her heart. “Are you still thinking about that pretty boy?”
Looking at him, Shen Qianqian’s lips moved without making a sound, tears rolling down her cheeks without warning.
Those three words—”pretty boy”—acted like a key, violently unlocking the floodgates of her memory.
It wasn’t just thinking about him.
It was hatred.
Bone-deep hatred mixed with the memories of her past life, rushing over her like a tidal wave—
Today.
Yes, it was today.
She had run off to the educated youth point to see Xu Yanqing.
That hypocritical scoundrel had sweet-talked her, discussing how to use the precious urban transfer quota her father had fought tooth and nail to secure in the city.
“Qianqian, this opportunity is rare. Huo Xiangbei is a rough brute; he doesn’t deserve you at all. Once we both return to the city, I’ll marry you.”
“Wanzhi will help us cover our tracks. Once we get a foothold, we’ll bring her back too. She’s your best friend after all!”
“But… what about Huo Xiangbei…”
“You’re a modern woman—are you really going to stay trapped in this rural area living out your life with a wild brute? Divorce! We must get divorce! Love is free!”
“Right… Yanqing, you’re right.”
Back then, she had been bewitched by that halo of “freedom,” the trace of hesitation in her eyes replaced by desperate resolve.
“I’ll take you away! Once we’re back in the city, I’ll beg my dad; he’ll definitely find a way to get you a job assignment too. Trust me, Yanqing, I’ll definitely get you out of here!”
And then—
Huo Xiangbei, who had returned home on family leave but overheard the entire conversation, had carried her back like a sack of grain and slammed her heavily onto this kang.
He threw her around until she was completely dizzy!
She had cried and cursed, calling him a “brute” and a “bandit,” openly demanding a divorce so she could pursue true love and freedom…
Enraging him to the point that his eyes turned bloodshot, he directly sealed her lips, declaring his ownership in the most primitive and clumsy way possible.
Arguments, struggles, yet the man pressing down on her remained completely unfazed.
So… she had literally passed out from exhaustion?
And combined with going a whole day without food, her weak state had led to her rebirth right here?
Having finally sorted out the sequence of events, Shen Qianqian’s chest heaved violently.
She hated her past self for being as foolish as a pig.
She pitied the man before her for his deep devotion, only to throw his life away for her in the past.
And even more, she hated that pair of scumbags who sucked her blood, wanted her life, and ultimately didn’t even spare her parents!
Complex emotions clashed within her chest, threatening to burst.
She looked at the face inches from her own.
Thinking of how he had hugged her tombstone and cried in her previous life.
Thinking of the scene where he had resolutely slit his throat…
A sharp pang twisted at her heart, leaving her gasping for breath.
Without knowing where she suddenly found the strength, she raised her weak hand and swung it hard across that stern face!