Summer, 1976.
Haicheng, in a tube-shaped apartment building. Inside a cramped, low-ceilinged storage room.
Jiang Yan lay on a makeshift bed cobbled together from old wooden door panels, her eyes tightly shut, her face contorted in pain.
Outside the door, Lin Shujuan stood on the other side of the firmly closed door, patiently trying to persuade Jiang Yan:
“Jiang Yan, Huo Zhanting may look fierce, and he’s got two kids tagging along with him, but he’s a regiment commander. Marrying him would be far better than marrying some poor country bumpkin. Don’t be so ungrateful!”
“Jiang Yan, I’m doing this for your own good. Huo Zhanting earns over a hundred yuan a month. If you marry him, you’ll be able to eat meat at every meal!”
“If you find those two kids annoying, just find an excuse to send them away later. They’re not even his biological children anyway.”
Lin Shujuan’s incessant nagging gave Jiang Yan a splitting headache. She struggled to open her eyes, but before she could even process what was happening, a flood of unfamiliar memories surged into her mind.
She had transmigrated into a book!
For twenty years, she had struggled to survive in the apocalypse, relying on her naturally extraordinary strength and her seemingly useless plant-based supernatural ability to narrowly escape disaster after disaster.
But in the end, she couldn’t escape a knife in the back from her own teammate!
Her teammate had pushed her from the twentieth floor just to keep a single bowl of braised pork all to himself. She had fallen to her death and been devoured by zombies.
And when she opened her eyes again, she had become Jiang Yan, the female protagonist of a period novel she had once read.
From the moment she was born, the heroine had been abandoned by her biological parents and sent to live with her uncle’s family in the countryside, left to fend for herself. After finally growing up, she was sold by her aunt to Lu Zekai, the male protagonist, who had returned to his hometown after being wounded.
After recovering at home, the male protagonist returned to the military and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the youngest senior officer. Jiang Yan, meanwhile, became the envy of everyone as the wife of a senior military commander!
Her biological sister, Jiang Meng, was spoiled rotten by their parents and raised in luxury from childhood. She was supposed to marry Huo Zhanting, the regiment commander.
In the novel, Jiang Meng only discovered after marrying Huo Zhanting that he had been disfigured, had suffered a serious injury that left him impotent, and had adopted two sons. The two boys were young, but utterly wicked and vicious, committing all sorts of evil.
And yes, six months later, Huo Zhanting would die in battle!
But in the eyes of the Jiang family right now, Huo Zhanting was a highly desirable catch.
Young, already a regiment commander, earning a handsome salary, with a bright future ahead of him—and he was handsome, too…
Jiang Yan was still recalling the plot when Lin Shujuan, having lost patience outside, suddenly began cursing at the top of her lungs:
“You ungrateful little brat! Your life was given to you by me. Whether you want to marry him or not, you’re marrying Huo Zhanting! Otherwise, you can just wait here and starve to death!”
Wait a second. How had this become her marrying Huo Zhanting? Shouldn’t Jiang Meng be the one marrying him?
Jiang Yan was puzzled when suddenly a sharp cramping pain seized her stomach—the kind of pain that came from being desperately hungry.
Before Jiang Yan had arrived, the original owner had already been starved by Lin Shujuan for three whole days and had just died.
Now that Jiang Yan had taken over the original owner’s body, the hunger remained. The pain in her stomach grew more and more intense, and she felt as though she might starve to death too.
Who cared why she was supposed to marry Huo Zhanting?!
“I’ll marry him…” Jiang Yan didn’t want to starve to death right after transmigrating into the novel, so she decided to placate Lin Shujuan for now. She could figure everything else out after she had eaten her fill!
Lin Shujuan’s booming curses abruptly stopped.
“What did you just say? You agree to marry Huo Zhanting?”
Her voice was brimming with undisguised excitement.
“Mm. I agree!”
“That’s my good girl! Yan Yan, just wait. I’ll go make you some sweet egg soup right now,” Lin Shujuan said.
In an instant, the face of the sharp-tongued, vicious mother transformed into that of a loving, doting mother.
Before long, Lin Shujuan brought over a steaming bowl of fragrant eggs cooked in sweet soup.
The moment Jiang Yan smelled the food, her eyes practically glowed green. She flipped herself upright, snatched the bowl of sweet eggs, and devoured them ravenously.
She ate so quickly that she nearly choked several times, even rolling her eyes back.
Lin Shujuan watched with undisguised disgust.
A country bumpkin was a country bumpkin. Even eating an egg, she looked like a starving dog pouncing on food.
Crude. Disgusting!
“Boil me ten more sweet eggs!” Jiang Yan swallowed the last bite and shoved the bowl into Lin Shujuan’s hands, urging her on.
Lin Shujuan’s eyes widened.
“You want another ten? Have you never eaten eggs in ten lifetimes or something? No. Not a single egg!”
Jiang Yan sneered. “No? Then I won’t marry Huo Zhanting…”
“All right, all right, I’ll go boil you some eggs,” Lin Shujuan said, terrified that Jiang Yan might change her mind.
Eat, eat, eat. Eat yourself to death, for all I care!!
Lin Shujuan cursed viciously under her breath.
…
Jiang Yan ate a full twelve eggs before she finally felt like she was truly alive again.
Her normal intake was actually fifty eggs, because she had possessed abnormal strength since childhood and needed a tremendous amount of food.
But this body had been chronically underfed for years, and its stomach was pitifully small. Twelve eggs were already its absolute limit!
With her stomach full and her thirst quenched, Jiang Yan finally had enough of a functioning brain to think through the situation.
According to the novel’s plot, at this point, the original owner should still have been in her uncle’s family home in the countryside, working like a beast of burden and about to be sold to Lu Zekai as his wife.
Meanwhile, Jiang Meng should have been happily waiting to marry Huo Zhanting and become the regiment commander’s wife.
But now she had been brought back to the city to marry Huo Zhanting in her sister’s place!
Exactly where had things gone wrong?
Had her transmigration caused a butterfly effect?
Jiang Yan rested her chin in her hand and thought hard. Suddenly, she heard Jiang Meng’s delighted voice coming from the bedroom next door.
“Mom, did Yan Yan really agree to marry Huo Zhanting?” Jiang Meng asked.
Jiang Yan pricked up her ears and secretly listened.
“She agreed, she agreed! That country girl is so stupid. Starve her for a few meals and she’ll behave!”
Lin Shujuan didn’t care about her younger daughter at all, but when it came to her eldest daughter, she genuinely doted on her.
She then asked Jiang Meng worriedly, “Mengmeng, are you sure Huo Zhanting really was injured down there and that he has two kids tagging along with him?”
Lin Shujuan was actually quite satisfied with Huo Zhanting. He had become a regiment commander at such a young age, and even if his monthly allowance wasn’t a hundred yuan, it was at least eighty. He could give her daughter Mengmeng a very comfortable life.
Jiang Meng thought to herself: She had experienced it all herself in her previous life. How could it possibly be fake?
But she couldn’t tell them that she had been reborn.
“Mom, if Huo Zhanting were really handsome and healthy, why would he adopt two sons?
“If Huo Zhanting were really a good match, why would my aunt, that snob, willingly give up the marriage?”
Lin Shujuan suddenly understood.
“So you’re saying your aunt tricked us?”
Jiang Meng shrugged without denying it.
“That accursed harbinger of bad luck! We’re sisters-in-law, for heaven’s sake, and she still had the nerve to set us up like this! I curse her grandson to be born without an asshole!”
Lin Shujuan slapped her thigh and viciously cursed her sister-in-law, completely forgetting that she had been the one who had aggressively snatched this marriage in the first place.
Jiang Meng genuinely believed her aunt had set her up, so she made no attempt to stop Lin Shujuan from showering her aunt’s entire family with a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse.
After cursing to her heart’s content and finally venting her anger, Lin Shujuan solemnly said to Jiang Meng, “Mengmeng, I think Lu Zekai isn’t good enough for you either. Why don’t we look around and see if there’s someone else?”
Although her daughter had said that Lu Zekai would become a high-ranking commander in the future, that was still in the future. Who could say for sure?
“Brother Zekai is the best. Not only will he become a senior commander in the future, he’s also… the biological son that Commander Qin lost years ago.”
Jiang Meng spoke the last few words so softly that Jiang Yan, listening from the room next door, couldn’t make them out.
But Lin Shujuan heard every word clearly. Her face immediately lit up with delight.
“Then we have to get this marriage settled as soon as possible, before the golden son-in-law we’ve got slips through our fingers.”
“Mm. Brother Zekai is at his lowest point right now. If I’m willing to marry him, he’ll be deeply grateful and remember me for the rest of his life.”
Lin Shujuan felt the same way.
“Then you mustn’t forget your younger brother. He’s the only son in your maternal family. If anyone bullies you in the future, you’ll still need him to stand up for you!”
Although Lin Shujuan doted on her eldest daughter, she loved her only son even more.
Jiang Meng sneered inwardly.
That useless, deadweight fatty Jiang Xiangyang? What could he possibly do to stand up for her? All he would ever do was embarrass her!
Jiang Meng had no intention of taking him along to enjoy the good life. She wouldn’t even take her parents with her!
But she couldn’t say that yet.
“Don’t worry, Mom. Once I’m successful, I’ll definitely bring all of you to the capital to enjoy a good life. I’ll find my brother a good job and get him a wealthy heiress for a wife,” Jiang Meng promised, painting Lin Shujuan a beautiful picture of the future.
Lin Shujuan was practically beside herself with joy.
“Then I’d better hurry and tell your father. We’ll send that wretched girl over to Huo Zhanting as soon as possible and get this marriage settled!”
With that, Lin Shujuan hurried off to Jiang Jianguo’s workplace.