“Mumu… Mom isn’t dead, is she?”
“If she’s dead, it serves her right! She abandoned Dad first and even tried to trick us into being sold!”
“Quick, come help search her body.”
“Yeah, yeah! All our family’s belongings are on her! We can’t let her wake up and run off with everything!”
In her hazy state, Song Jin first heard a chorus of chattering voices by her ears. Then she felt seven or eight little hands groping all over her body.
Startled, her whole body jerked, and she abruptly woke up.
Opening her eyes, she saw four filthy, raggedly dressed, skinny children surrounding her.
They were quadruplets.
More specifically, a rare set of twin boys and twin girls.
Their nicknames were Jin, Mu, Shui, and Huo—Metal, Wood, Water, and Fire.
At that moment, the four children were sneakily searching Song Jin from head to toe like little thieves.
Before Song Jin could react, the instant Jin, Mu, Shui, and Huo saw her suddenly open her eyes, all four pairs of hands froze in terror.
“Jinjin… I think there’s something wrong with my eyes.”
“Me too… Why do I feel like Mom’s eyes are… staring at me?”
“Jinjin, this is bad!”
“Jinjin!”
But Jinjin couldn’t hear them anymore. His mind was buzzing blankly, completely unable to think.
After who knew how long, the four children suddenly looked as if their souls had left their bodies. Scrambling and tumbling over themselves, they turned and ran while screaming at the top of their lungs.
“Run!”
“Ahhhhhh—!”
“Daddy!”
“The evil woman is going to sell us!”
Song Jin sat up in confusion, staring at the terrified children fleeing in panic before turning to examine her surroundings.
Only then did she realize she was lying in a dried-up riverbed.
The mud was cracked into palm-wide fissures, and many animals had dried into corpses beneath the scorching sun.
The barren hills along the riverbank were equally desolate. There was not a trace of greenery anywhere—only flocks of crows circling overhead from time to time.
But none of that was the important part.
The important part was—
Where was this place?
Wasn’t she supposed to be dead?
Song Jin clearly remembered leading an earthquake rescue operation. Just as they were in the middle of saving people, disaster struck again—the tunnel suddenly collapsed, burying both her and her team alive.
A massive rock had smashed directly into her head.
She knew perfectly well that with her skull crushed and her body trapped in freezing temperatures for over three hours, not even her own military medical skills could have saved her.
Just as suspicion rose in her mind, a flood of memories that did not belong to her forcibly poured into her brain.
Very quickly, Song Jin understood what had happened.
She had transmigrated.
She had become Song Jin, the lawful wife of the scholar Xiao Yanzhi from Xiao Family Village in Tianxi Town, Fuxiang County, Ji’an Prefecture of the Great Hao Kingdom—
and the adoptive mother of Jin, Mu, Shui, and Huo.
One month ago, the northwestern region—already suffering through two years of drought—was struck by disaster upon disaster.
In the middle of the night, a sudden massive earthquake destroyed nearly a quarter of the Great Hao Kingdom.
Collapsed buildings and ruins were everywhere. Casualties among the people were countless.
Ji’an Prefecture happened to sit at the epicenter of the quake.
The original owner of this body had survived only because Xiao Yanzhi pushed her away at the last moment, preventing her from being buried alive.
But Xiao Yanzhi himself lost both legs beneath the collapsed house and became permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
To survive, the original owner had no choice but to push Xiao Yanzhi on a flat handcart while bringing along the four “burdens,” following the surviving villagers of Xiao Family Village eastward under the village chief’s leadership to flee the famine.
Perhaps hardship truly reveals true feelings.
Two years ago, Xiao Yanzhi had been forced into marriage after being schemed against by the original owner.
She shamelessly clung to him only because she fancied his handsome appearance and his status as a scholar.
She originally thought that after marrying Xiao Yanzhi, it would only be a matter of time before she became an official’s wife.
Who could have expected that overnight, Xiao Yanzhi would lose both his legs?
The towering tree she had finally managed to cling to had suddenly collapsed.
Ever since the doctor declared that Xiao Yanzhi would remain crippled for life, the original owner had spent the entire journey fleeing famine thinking of ways to get rid of her burdens.
In the end, she came up with a plan—
Steal the household registration papers, abandon her crippled husband, and sell the four children as human livestock to traffickers in exchange for food.
The original owner believed her scheme would succeed.
Unfortunately for her, the four children were each smarter than the last.
Guessing her intentions, Jin, Mu, Shui, and Huo pretended to obediently follow along. But once they reached an isolated area, the four immediately scattered and ran in different directions.
While chasing “Mu,” the original owner accidentally slipped and rolled down a slope, smashing her forehead against a sharp rock.
Her head split open on the spot.
She rolled her eyes back, kicked her legs once—
and died.
Then Song Jin transmigrated into her body.
“Hiss…”
Song Jin touched her forehead and, sure enough, her hand came away covered in blood.
Not only that, she also felt dizzy, nauseated, and lightheaded.
It was obviously a concussion.
Suppressing her dizziness, Song Jin forced herself to stand. She picked up an empty cloth bundle lying nearby and slung it over her shoulder before instinctively walking in the direction the four children had fled.
After exhausting all her strength to climb over the hill, she looked down from above—
and instantly sucked in a cold breath.
Below her stretched countless campfires and an endless sea of famine refugees numbering in the tens of thousands, all gathered around the fires to rest.
“Holy crap…”
Song Jin suddenly felt like fate had played a cruel joke on her.
She was a single woman who had never even dated before, yet somehow she had suddenly gained a crippled husband and four bargain-bin children.
And to make matters worse, the moment she transmigrated, she became a homeless refugee dragging an entire family through a famine escape.
She was probably the unluckiest transmigrator in history.
Still…
Being able to live a second life was already a profit in itself.
After calming herself down, Song Jin trudged step by step toward the Xiao Family Village refugee camp.
As the epicenter of the earthquake, Ji’an Prefecture had lost nearly half its population in the disaster. Almost every family had either dead or crippled members.
Passing through the refugees, even Song Jin—who as a military doctor had witnessed countless disaster scenes—could not help but sigh heavily.
These refugees were simply too miserable.
Looking around, misery stretched everywhere.
Men, women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled alike were all dressed in rags. Many refugees’ wounds had gone untreated, while others were burning with fever from infected injuries, their lips cracked and bleeding as they lay unconscious.
Even the mules, oxen, and donkeys pulling carts had collapsed from exhaustion, foaming at the mouth.
If this had been Song Jin’s original world, she would have rushed to join disaster relief efforts immediately.
But now, she herself was merely one refugee among countless others—
like a clay bodhisattva crossing a river, unable even to protect herself.
The Xiao Family Village refugees were resting beneath a giant dead banyan tree.
Before Song Jin even got within ten meters of it, she noticed several people gathered around her husband’s campfire.
Then she heard a man’s furious roar from the crowd.
“Poisonous woman! Poisonous woman! Poisonous woman!”
Three consecutive curses, each overflowing with hatred and disgust.
Song Jin’s eyelid twitched.
She suddenly hesitated about whether she should approach.
She had a strong feeling that the “poisonous woman” the man was cursing…
was her.
And as it turned out, she was absolutely right.
The man roaring in anger was none other than her crippled bargain husband, Xiao Yanzhi—
who had just awakened after spending two days unconscious with a high fever.