“There was really only a single drop. Even so, the moment the Spirit Spring water entered her mouth, Lin Xiyun felt her headache disappear, the weakness leave her body, and all her strength return!
Her consciousness returned to reality. She reached up and touched the back of her head, feeling fairly satisfied.
The wound hadn’t healed.
There really was a tiny red mole on her right wrist. By touching it and willing it with her mind, she could freely enter or leave the space, whether with just her consciousness or her physical body.
A little surprise?
Lin Xiyun searched the space for quite a while but couldn’t find anything. Finally, she plopped down onto the ground. The fingertip stained with blood from touching her wound pressed against the floor as she complained,
“What surprise?”
The moment the words left her mouth, a burst of white light filled the space. She instinctively covered her eyes. When she opened them again, she was completely stunned.
“Oh… my… God…”
The scene before her was unmistakably…
Her tiny rental apartment from the modern world!
And not the cluttered version piled high with cardboard boxes—it was spotless and neatly organized!
Lin Xiyun happily threw herself onto her familiar little bed.
Waaah… I love this surprise!
After savoring the comfort for a while, she finally left the space, overjoyed.
Now that she had regained her strength, she finally had the energy to think about the situation of this body she now occupied.
The original owner was also named Lin Xiyun. She was a country girl whose parents were still alive, with two older brothers. When she was nine years old, she had suffered a head injury. After waking up, her personality became timid, weak, and easy to bully.
“She injured her head at nine… What a coincidence. My mom always said I nearly fried my brain with a high fever when I was nine.”
Lin Xiyun muttered to herself before suddenly frowning.
“Could that be what the original owner and I have in common? Is that why I ended up here?”
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became.
The original owner wasn’t exactly evil. She was simply gullible, spineless, and somewhat selfish—but she took excellent care of herself.
Still…
She had been incredibly lucky.
At thirteen, on her very first trip into the city, she happened to meet Lu Yanbei. Somehow she ended up saving his life, and…
Just like that, the two became engaged.
Lu Yanbei—the husband of this body.
He was seventeen when their engagement was arranged, and soon afterward enlisted in the army.
They officially registered their marriage when the original owner turned eighteen.
The very next day after the wedding, Lu Yanbei left on a military mission.
Three years had passed since then.
He still hadn’t returned.
So why would anyone call this kind of lonely marriage a blessing?
Because…
She had money.
And no husband around.
Back when she still lived with her parents, the original owner had always been lazy. She refused to work in the fields, insisted on eating well, and wanted to wear pretty clothes.
Her poor family couldn’t indulge those desires.
Her husband’s family could.
Her in-laws were city people.
Her father-in-law, Lu Aiguo, was an experienced worker at the machinery factory.
Her mother-in-law, Zhao Jinlan, worked in the factory’s security department.
Their family was relatively well-off.
Lu Yanbei was the fourth child. His older brothers and sisters all earned their own living, and he himself was exceptionally capable.
Every month, her bargain husband mailed money home.
There were always two money orders.
Ten yuan for his parents.
Sixty yuan for his wife.
“My God… he’s loaded!”
Lin Xiyun was genuinely shocked.
In the 1970s, sending your wife sixty yuan every month was an enormous amount of money.
But after sorting through the original owner’s memories, one thing stood out clearly.
Lu Yanbei didn’t seem to like her at all.
They had only met a handful of times.
Every single encounter, he had been cold and expressionless.
Even on their wedding night, the man had slept on a mat on the floor.
The next morning, he packed his belongings, left some money behind, and departed.
He had barely spoken.
The sentence he said most often was:
“If you don’t have enough money, write to me. If anything happens, come to me. But make sure you take good care of your health.”
…Take good care of her health?
To a girl in the prime of her youth?
What kind of logic was that?
Still, the original owner had carried out those words perfectly.
She never did any work.
Instead, she dressed herself beautifully every day.
She freely enjoyed expensive treats for the era like canned food and malted milk.
Even scarce fabrics weren’t difficult for her to obtain.
She deliberately chose floral and plaid prints.
Well…
Her taste was actually pretty good.
When Lu Yanbei married her, he’d prepared all the famous ‘Three Turnings and One Sound’ wedding essentials.
That alone had made everyone in her village envious, constantly saying she’d married incredibly well.
The only exception…
The sewing machine sat unused, gathering dust.
Every kind of ration coupon issued through the military was mailed back to her.
When she complained about the summer heat, she spent a fortune buying herself an electric fan.
Her in-laws criticized her endlessly for it.
Lin Xiyun twitched the corner of her mouth.
She really had taken excellent care of herself.
Of course, she had plenty of flaws too.
First of all, in this era, refusing to work ruined your reputation.
People looked down on you for it.
But since her husband was a soldier and the Lu family had been poor peasants for generations—a politically favorable background—few people dared criticize her openly except her in-laws.
The original owner was so lazy that she even paid Lu family’s second sister-in-law to wash all her clothes.
Granted…
She did pay for the service.
“What a spendthrift!”
Money-loving Lin Xiyun couldn’t help grumbling.
The second daughter-in-law, Li Zhaodi, did the most housework in the Lu family.
She was also a swindler.
She constantly tricked the original owner into handing over money.
And she charged outrageous prices.
Twenty cents for a single load of laundry!
Lin Xiyun knew perfectly well how valuable every single cent was in the 1970s.
A regular city worker only earned twenty to thirty yuan a month.
Growing up, she’d heard her grandparents endlessly talk about how much money had been worth in their day.
She’d practically developed calluses on her ears from hearing it.
Well…
Now she’d gone to sleep and woken up in a year before her own parents had even been born.
Leaning against the headboard, Lin Xiyun glanced around the room.
This eastern room had only been built recently.
She hadn’t lived here before.
Originally, her room had been right beside her in-laws’, cramped and tiny.
But the Lu family lived in factory housing.
Both the eldest and second sons were already married with children.
It was common for such large families to be squeezed together.
Two years ago, after watching the original owner recklessly spend money on one luxury after another, Zhao Jinlan had finally reached her limit.
Her son had risked his life earning that money.
Even she, his own mother, had barely enjoyed any of it!
Although she didn’t know exactly how much money Lu Yanbei enclosed with the letters every month, judging from the original owner’s comfortable lifestyle, it certainly wasn’t a small amount.
Unable to tolerate it any longer, Zhao Jinlan exploded in anger.
She was famous for having the sharpest tongue for miles around.
Both of her daughters-in-law had been scolded countless times.
The fact that she’d endured the original owner for an entire year before exploding had already seemed miraculous to outsiders.
The original owner had also been the youngest daughter in her own family and married young.
She had absolutely no talent for arguing.
She could only stand there and be scolded.
With her delicate constitution, she literally made herself sick from anger.
Rather than endure it, she rode her bicycle straight to the post office and called Lu Yanbei, claiming that she’d become ill because his mother had upset her.
The man on the other end had barely spoken.
The original owner had rambled awkwardly the whole time.
But the instant he heard she was sick…
He became incredibly anxious.
No one knew how many favors he’d called in or how much money he’d spent, but somehow he arranged for this large new room to be built for her.
Thinking about it, Lin Xiyun rubbed her chin.
To her…
Lu Yanbei seemed like he had split personalities.
If you said he treated her well…
His attitude toward her was no different from how he treated everyone else.
If you said he treated her badly…
He had never once let her lack for material comforts.
Wait…
Her eyes suddenly widened.
Lu Yanbei.
Lin Xiyun.
Zhao Jinlan…
Why did those names sound so familiar?
She slapped herself on the forehead.
She remembered!
These were characters from a period novel she’d been binge-reading late into the night not long ago!
In that novel…
Lin Xiyun was the cannon-fodder female foil.
Lu Yanbei was the male lead… halfway through the story.
No wonder she hadn’t recognized it immediately.
The plot had diverged so much.
The novel’s heroine was named Lin Xuanxuan, the daughter of the original owner’s second uncle.
She’d been adored by everyone since childhood.
At eighteen, she was chosen by a Koi Luck System.
From then on, she lived as Heaven’s favorite daughter—the lucky koi girl blessed by destiny.
Starting from a poor village, she built wealth effortlessly.
Whenever she went into the mountains, she’d conveniently stumble upon a wild boar that had crashed into a tree and knocked itself unconscious.
She could casually dig up decades-old wild ginseng.
She’d had a childhood engagement to a boy from the neighboring village.
Who knew that after more than twenty years, he’d joined the army and become an officer?
Lin Xuanxuan went to the military base looking for her fiancé…
Only to discover he’d long forgotten about their engagement and already had a woman he was close to.
So why was Lu Yanbei called the male lead only halfway through?
Although he held a high military rank, his personality was simply too cold.
On top of that, he’d adopted the orphaned twins—a boy and a girl—left behind by a fallen comrade.
To everyone else, they were just two burdens.
There were virtually no women around him…
Except for the clingy Lin Xiyun.
Oh…
And Lin Xuanxuan, everyone’s beloved darling.
Simply because Lin Xuanxuan was the author’s precious favorite, and Lu Yanbei was written as a cold, distant man burdened with two adopted children, neither the author nor the readers wanted their sunny, lucky heroine to suffer that kind of life.
So…
The author crippled Lu Yanbei.
Yes.
Lin Xiyun only remembered that halfway through the novel, Lu Yanbei was briefly mentioned.
He was permanently paralyzed during a special military mission.
After that…
He was never written about again.
As for Lin Xuanxuan?
Of course, her considerate childhood fiancé eventually chased after her, suffered through a dramatic redemption arc, cleared up their misunderstandings, and the two happily built a prosperous life together.
He even found his powerful biological parents.
Together, the male and female leads moved to the capital.
When Lin Xiyun had reached that part of the novel, she’d rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out.
She’d immediately given the book a one-star review along with an eight-hundred-word rant.
He literally slept with another woman! What misunderstanding was there to clear up?!