Xiao Li’s maiden family owned a general store in town.
With backing like that, Old Madam Wang was willing to give her a bit of face.
On top of that, she was the wife of Old Madam Wang’s favorite son—so naturally, she benefited from a bit of affection by association.
The original Xia Wanyue, on the other hand, had no natal family to rely on and a frail body to begin with.
Years ago, she had fallen off a cliff and injured her head.
Not only did she lose her memories, she was also plagued by frequent headaches.
Because of this, she was the most bullied person in the household. Both she and her husband ate the least and worked the most.
This time, it was because her headaches had flared up again, and she was pregnant yet severely malnourished. Li Ke felt heartbroken when he saw her like that.
After finishing his work, he gathered three of his brothers and went up the mountain, planning to catch some wild game to nourish his wife.
They figured that even if they couldn’t eat the meat, being able to drink some broth would be good enough.
No one expected things to go so terribly wrong.
The four of them went into the mountains.
Because the weather had been so dry, the trees on the outer slopes were already withered. Only deep in the mountains was there still some green.
Relying on their courage, three of them ventured further inside.
They had only planned to catch a few wild chickens or rabbits along the edges, but while chasing a rabbit, they encountered a black bear.
The four scattered in terror.
During the escape, the rabbit in Li Ke’s arms suddenly broke free and bolted.
That moment of hesitation—thinking of his wife at home and debating whether to grab the rabbit again—cost him his life. The bear caught up to him. The other three had already scrambled up trees.
Watching Li Ke being attacked by the bear, they trembled with fear.
In the end, Li Ke lost consciousness. Seeing that Li Ke was dead, and drawn by the rabbit instead, the bear swayed off and left.
Li Ke’s abdomen had been torn open by the bear, a bloody hole gaping as blood poured out in streams.
Once the bear was gone, the other three hurried down from the trees and carried Li Ke as they ran down the mountain.
Fearing the bear might return, they didn’t dare carry him together. Instead, they took turns carrying him, running in stretches.
In his unconscious state, Li Ke’s face grew paler and paler.
His blood soaked through the backs of the other three. Before they even made it out of the mountains, Li Ke breathed his last.
“This… isn’t this exactly like the book I read before?”
The heroine of that book seemed to be Li Xueying at the age of two, and she herself appeared to be the heroine’s second aunt—the one whose husband had died.
The original story began when Li Xueying turned sixteen.
Everything before that only appeared in her memories, including her weak yet malicious second aunt.
In Li Xueying’s recollections, after her husband died, the original host completely fell apart.
Coupled with her chronic headaches and poor postpartum recovery, her body utterly collapsed.
With no natal family and no support, she could only remain in her in-laws’ home, enduring everyone’s bullying. She was like a servant in the household—or like an old ox—endlessly working without rest.
Her weakness made her three children weak and easy targets as well. Unable to protect them, she could only watch as they were bullied, forced to do heavy labor at an age when they should have been carefree.
The youngest son was especially pitiful. Born prematurely and never properly cared for, he fell sick again and again. Not long after his birth, a severe drought struck.
The entire family fled as refugees, traveling long distances, sleeping in the open, enduring wind and rain. Aside from working herself to the bone every day, the little energy she had left was spent entirely on her youngest son.
She no longer had any strength to care for the two older children.
On the road of exile, a lone woman couldn’t protect three children.
All she could do was work desperately, hoping that her parents-in-law would treat the children a little better in return—at least give them something to eat.
In the end, her eldest son, Li Ning, died during the flight.
At a tender age, he was pushed out by Li Cai to take a blade meant for his sister.
Her eldest daughter, Third Girl, was sold along the way to a widower in his thirties whose wife had died. By the time the original host found her, she had already been tortured to death.
The original host was underfed, poorly clothed, and forced to do hard labor.
She had no milk at all. Every day, she saved a mouthful of her meager rations, held it in her mouth to soften it with saliva, and then fed it to her child.
After unimaginable hardship, they finally reached a place where they could settle.
She was forced to trade her body for food. That last child became her final hope.
As long as the child could live, she was willing to do anything.
After months of wandering, they finally reached a place with water and escaped the drought-stricken land.
They chose a village with clear mountains and clean waters, preparing to put down roots.
But a sudden high fever took the life of her last remaining child.
That day, torrential rain poured from the sky.
The long-parched land finally drank its fill.
The original host knelt in the rain, kowtowing endlessly before her parents-in-law, begging them to save her child, to find a doctor.
But that miserly old hag coldly said the child was fated to die anyway—and that dying sooner was better.
The child had always been sickly. Even if he lived, he would just be a burden.
Better to let him die—saving both grain and money.
With all her children gone, the original host lost all hope.
She wanted to drag everyone who had harmed her children down with her. She wanted to pull them into hell at the very moment they thought they were safe.
So, the day after her child died, she cooked a meal and poured rat poison into it.
Only the third son’s family survived because they happened to be hiding in town. Everyone else died.
In the heroine’s words after growing up, the second aunt was merely described as vicious—someone who only worked a bit more and suffered a little hardship, yet cruel enough to kill everyone.
These memories existed only to make the heroine appear kind and magnanimous in the eyes of the male lead.
“This heroine is such a damned green-tea bitch! All her second aunt’s misery gets reduced to ‘working a bit more’ in her mouth.”
The cannon-fodder character who once made her furious was now herself. The feeling was… strange.
It felt like all the curses she had thrown back then were now being hurled at her own face.
“Oh—right! The child?!”
Xia Wanyue slapped her forehead and stood up.
Thinking of going out, her vision flickered—and she found herself back in the kitchen once more.
Stepping out of the kitchen, the courtyard was deathly quiet.
Occasionally, faint kitten-like cries could be heard.
Following her memories, Xia Wanyue headed toward the rooms.
The Li family courtyard was simple: the main hall for meals stood in the center. On either side lived Old Madam Wang and her husband, and Li Xin’s family of three.
Two rooms in the east wing housed the eldest son’s family, with the kitchen beside them.
The west wing contained the woodshed and the rooms where Xia Wanqing’s family lived. Behind it were the pigsty and the latrine.
In winter it was tolerable, but in summer, waves of stench assaulted the nose.
“Mew—wah… mew—wah…”
“Huh? Where’s that cat crying from?”
Xia Wanyue pushed open the door and heard the thin, pitiful mewling inside the room—weak yet piercing in the stillness of the night.
She followed the sound to the corner of the bed.
Reaching the bed, she lifted the bedding, intending to shoo away the annoying kitten—
Only to discover a frail child instead.
The child was thin and small, his face flushed red, his whole body shriveled and wrinkled.