“Done. I can finally get a good night’s sleep tomorrow.”
Xu Tang sat in front of her computer and stretched. She had been working overtime every day recently to finish a project. She shut down her computer.
After leaving the office, Xu Tang stopped by a 24-hour convenience store and casually picked up some snacks. After paying, she pushed open the door and walked to the roadside to wait for the light.
Since it was already one in the morning, she was the only person standing beside the crosswalk. When the light turned green, she lifted her foot and prepared to cross the road.
Suddenly, a speeding car that had lost control came barreling straight toward her. By the time she tried to dodge, it was already too late.
“Bang!”
Xu Tang was instantly sent flying. She crashed to the ground as her consciousness gradually faded. In a daze, she could vaguely hear the sounds of a police car and an ambulance.
When she opened her eyes again, Xu Tang felt terrible all over. Her head was throbbing with pain. She forced her eyes open and realized that she seemed to be in a forest.
But she couldn’t hold on and passed out again.
When she woke up once more, she found herself inside a very dilapidated house.
Holding her head, she slowly sat up. What came into view was an old-fashioned mud-brick house. On the left was a window covered with paper, and beside it stood an old wooden chest. The room itself was rather small.
“Where is this? I was hit by a car. Shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”
As she muttered to herself, a sudden wave of dizziness hit her.
A flood of memories rushed into her mind.
She had transmigrated into a rural girl named Xu Tang in Xuhe Village.
It was the spring of 1975—a time when supplies were scarce. People needed introduction letters to travel, ration coupons to purchase goods, and had to work in the fields to earn work points. History had developed along the same general path as the real world, but the people were different.
The original owner was also named Xu Tang. She was seventeen years old, a famous beauty in the surrounding villages, but she was equally notorious for being lazy, greedy, and bad-tempered.
Her parents and older brothers and sisters-in-law doted on her. On top of that, she was one of the few high school graduates in the village, so she had always looked down on the rural villagers.
As a result, no one had come to propose marriage to her even at the age of seventeen.
In her previous life, Xu Tang had been an orphan. She never expected that after transmigrating, she would suddenly have so many family members.
The reason the original Xu Tang had been injured was that she had discovered some wild chicken eggs on the mountain the previous day. She had run too fast, lost her footing, and fallen, hitting her head against a rock. She lost too much blood and died.
That was when the current Xu Tang arrived.
A hunter from the same village had discovered her and carried her down the mountain. When her parents and older brothers and sisters-in-law saw that her head was covered in blood, they immediately sent her eldest brother to find the village doctor.
The village doctor said she had lost too much blood. He stopped the bleeding, gave her some medicine, and left.
She had been unconscious for an entire day.
Xu Tang quickly accepted her new reality. After all, she hadn’t had a family in her previous life either.
Her new mother, Zhao Guifang, pushed open the door. The moment she saw Xu Tang sitting on the bed, her eyes immediately turned red.
“My precious girl, you’re finally awake! Hurry and lie down. Don’t start bleeding again.”
Xu Tang looked at the woman who had come in to check on her.
This was her new mother, Zhao Guifang, who was around fifty years old. She wore a dark-blue cotton outfit with a patch sewn onto it.
“Mom~”
Xu Tang called out softly. Surprisingly, the word didn’t feel difficult to say.
“Are you hungry, Tangtang? Your sister-in-law is steaming some egg custard. It’ll be ready soon.”
After saying that, Zhao Guifang shouted toward the doorway,
“Oldest son’s wife, is it ready yet? Can’t you hear that my daughter is hungry?”
Everyone in the household heard Zhao Guifang’s voice and immediately realized that Xu Tang had woken up. They rushed over all at once.
“Sweetheart, does your head still hurt? You scared your dad half to death.”
Xu Tang looked at the worry in Xu Guoli’s eyes.
“Dad~ I’m fine.”
Her voice was weak.
“Little sister, how did you manage to fall and hurt your head? Did someone bully you?”
As the original Xu Tang’s eldest brother, Xu Changxing spoke while rolling up his sleeves, looking as though the moment Xu Tang gave him a name, he would immediately go and beat that person to a pulp.