Lin Yujiao was dead.
That day, she had just finished attending the launch event for her brand’s newest collection. On the drive home, a child suddenly darted into the road. She swerved to avoid hitting the child, crashed straight into the guardrail, and died on the spot.
Her final thought before everything went dark was strangely absurd.
How in the world did I drive my car into someone’s sitting room?
Just thinking about it made Lin Yujiao’s heart ache.
She had grown up in an orphanage. Only through the help of a kind benefactor had she managed to attend university, and after years of hard work, she had finally achieved her dream of becoming a fashion designer.
This very year, on her thirtieth birthday, she had even bought herself a spacious riverside apartment, paying the entire price out of her own pocket.
And now?
Everything was gone.
If she ever got another chance at life, she definitely would not work herself half to death just to save money.
She would take things easy.
She would enjoy life while she still could!
Heavens above, how could fate be so unfair?
Some people were born into good families and sailed smoothly through life, enjoying comfort from beginning to end.
As for her?
She had been thrown into a rubbish bin at birth simply because she was a girl.
She had struggled step by step to get where she was, and just when she thought her life was finally becoming better…
Snap.
She was dead.
Wait.
Something was wrong.
She seemed to be alive again.
Otherwise, how could she still feel anything?
“My head hurts…”
Lin Yujiao knew this feeling all too well.
She had endured countless colds and fevers alone over the years.
She raised a hand to her forehead.
She had a fever.
And judging by the heat, it was a high one.
Still groggy, she reached toward the wall, intending to switch on the light.
Wait.
Something was wrong.
The wall did not feel right.
Lin Yujiao forced her heavy eyelids open.
The first thing she saw was a crude tiled roof, made from the sort of old-fashioned tiles she had not seen in years.
The walls around her were almost completely bare. Only a thin layer of plaster covered them, and the outlines of the bricks underneath were still faintly visible.
The window had a wooden frame, and newspapers had been pasted over it, blocking most of the light from outside.
The room was dim.
But Lin Yujiao was absolutely certain of one thing.
This was not her home.
Had she been abducted?
The thought had barely surfaced when she lowered her gaze.
Her breath caught.
The hand in front of her was thin and bony, almost like a chicken claw. Wounds of various sizes covered the skin.
This was not her hand either!
Lin Yujiao shuddered from head to toe.
She looked around frantically and spotted a small mirror hanging not far away.
Supporting herself against the bed, she struggled to her feet and staggered toward it.
A young woman’s face appeared in the little mirror.
It looked like her.
But it was not her.
The girl looked much like Lin Yujiao had at eighteen or nineteen, except Lin Yujiao had never been this thin.
The girl’s cheeks were slightly sunken, and even more alarming was the deathly pallor covering her entire face.
There was not the slightest trace of healthy color.
Lin Yujiao had often heard people describe someone as being “as pale as a corpse.” She had always thought it was an exaggeration.
Looking at herself now, she finally understood.
Was she…
a ghost?
The girl in the mirror raised a hand and pinched her own cheek in bewilderment, her brows tightly knitted.
Warm.
Her body was still warm.
She was not dead.
“Hiss…”
Another wave of pain tore through Lin Yujiao’s head.
It felt as though someone had shoved a drill into her skull and was boring straight through it.
Just before she lost consciousness, she used the last of her strength to stagger back to the bed and lie down.
She was obsessed with cleanliness.
Even if she had to die again, she absolutely refused to collapse on the floor.
Lin Yujiao did not die.
Instead, memories that did not belong to her surged into her mind like a great tide.
And then she understood.
She had transmigrated.
She, Lin Yujiao, a well-known fashion designer of the twenty-first century, had somehow crossed into another world and awakened inside the body of a young woman who shared her exact name.
According to the original Lin Yujiao’s memories, it was currently the 1970s in Huaguo.
The year was 1978.
Many historical events were similar to those Lin Yujiao knew from her own world, but there were also noticeable differences.
This was probably some sort of parallel world.
The original Lin Yujiao had been born in the southern region. A few years ago, her home had still been known as a production brigade, but it had since been renamed Linjia Village.
Her father, Lin Dajun, was a worker at a machinery factory.
Factory workers enjoyed good wages and benefits in this era. In a rural place like Linjia Village, Lin Dajun was considered someone who had risen beyond his rural origins.
Her mother, Jiang Chunyue, taught at the village primary school.
Her parents had married for love, and their relationship had always been exceptionally close.
When Jiang Chunyue gave birth to Lin Yujiao, she suffered severe bleeding and nearly died.
Afterward, the couple decided they would never have another child.
One daughter was enough.
In an era when people believed that having many children meant greater fortune, their decision made them seem rather unusual.
Yet despite all the gossip around them, they never wavered.
They poured all their love into their only daughter and protected her wholeheartedly.
The course of history in this world was fairly similar to the one Lin Yujiao remembered.
The national college entrance examination had been restored the previous year.
The original Lin Yujiao had just graduated from senior secondary school at the time, so naturally, she had taken the examination as well.
She was one of the rare girls in the area who had managed to finish secondary school.
During those turbulent years, however, teachers had little heart for teaching, while students had little heart for studying.
Most of her classmates had already found other paths for themselves long before graduation.
With her parents’ support, the original Lin Yujiao had managed to finish school, but truthfully, she had not learned very much.
The college entrance examination was fiercely competitive, like thousands of people fighting to cross a single narrow bridge. Worse still, several older graduating classes were taking the examination alongside the newest graduates.
Unsurprisingly, she failed.
Fortunately, she was her parents’ only child.
Neither Lin Dajun nor Jiang Chunyue blamed her. Instead, they supported her decision to study for another year and try again.
No one expected tragedy to strike.
The original Lin Yujiao turned twenty this year.
Knowing how much pressure their daughter was under because of the examination, her parents decided to travel to the city and buy her the radio she had wanted for a long time as a birthday gift.
On the way there, a massive boulder rolled down the mountainside and struck the bus they were riding in.
The bus plunged over a cliff.
Everyone aboard died.
Just like that, the original Lin Yujiao lost the two people she loved most in the world.
She somehow stumbled through the arrangements for her parents’ funeral.
But before she could even emerge from her grief, she discovered that, in the eyes of her relatives, she had become a fat piece of meat that everyone wanted to sink their teeth into.
In the countryside, a daughter was not considered someone who could continue the ancestral line.
In their eyes, that meant she had no right to inherit anything either.
Using this as their excuse, her relatives pressured her to surrender Lin Dajun’s factory position.
They also wanted her family’s large blue-brick and tiled house.
Yes.
The house that looked unbearably crude to the Lin Yujiao of the twenty-first century was considered a grand residence in this village.
The countryside was poor in this era.
Many families still lived in mud-brick houses, so naturally, they could not compare with the Lin family’s sturdy brick home.
But to the original Lin Yujiao, its value had nothing to do with bricks or tiles.
This was her home.
It was the place where she had lived with her father and mother.
How could she possibly hand it over?
She had received an education. She was not a fool.
She also had classmates in the city, and through them, she knew that she was eligible to take over her father’s factory position.
Her home and that position were what her parents had left behind for her.
She would not surrender either of them.
After her parents died, the once gentle young woman gradually became stubborn and unyielding in order to protect her home.
She fought back with everything she had.
She swore she would never allow anyone to lay a finger on what her parents had left her.
Unfortunately, a slender arm could never overpower a thick thigh.
Out here in the countryside, there were far too many ways to force a young woman into submission.
Someone pushed the original Lin Yujiao into the water.
Before she fell, she clearly saw her younger aunt arriving with a nephew from her maternal family.
Lin Yujiao knew the man.
He was a notorious hooligan from the neighboring village.
She had even heard people say that his previous wife had been beaten to death by him.
Then, right before her eyes, the hooligan jumped into the water and began swimming toward her.
A terrible chill spread through Lin Yujiao’s entire body.
In that instant, she understood exactly what her younger aunt intended.
Shameless!
Absolutely shameless!
They wanted that man to “save” her from the water, ruining her reputation through physical contact, then use her chastity and the village’s gossip to force her into marrying him.
They could dream on!
She would rather die than marry a man like that.
The original Lin Yujiao thought of the parents who had treasured her like a precious jewel.
Then she looked at the wolves and tigers surrounding her.
Something inside her hardened.
If they refused to let her live in peace, then she had nothing left to fear.
When the hooligan reached her, she had already made up her mind to drag him down with her.
Using every bit of strength left in her body, she grabbed him and pulled him toward deeper water.
Fine.
Then they would die together.
If she had to die, she would take one of them with her!
The hooligan had never imagined that the helpless young woman he regarded as easy prey would actually be unafraid of death.
When he felt his body being dragged downward, terror finally seized him.
He did not want to die.
He kicked the original Lin Yujiao away with all his strength.
At that point, he no longer cared about marrying her.
Staying alive was far more important.
He desperately swam back toward the bank.
Her younger aunt, who had been frightened senseless on shore, stared deeply at the original Lin Yujiao, who was still in the water.
Then she helped her nephew away.
The original Lin Yujiao remained in the water for a long time before finally climbing out.
She secretly made her way home.
She had spent too long soaked in cold water, and the fear and shock had taken their toll.
Almost immediately, she developed a raging fever.
But the fever was not the true reason she died.
She had lost the will to live.
Her longing for her parents had never diminished.
The two people who had loved her most were gone.
All that remained were relatives who had revealed their true faces the moment her parents died.
She no longer wanted to live.
And so, the original Lin Yujiao died.
It was at that moment that the Lin Yujiao from another world entered this body.
After sorting through all those memories, Lin Yujiao gently placed a hand over her heart.
Poor girl.
She had grown up sheltered beneath her parents’ loving care.
How could someone like her possibly have known how to fight against people so vicious and calculating?
You already did everything you could.
You did well.
I hope you’ve found your father and mother again.
I hope the three of you can remain together forever this time, never to be separated again.
As that thought passed through her mind, Lin Yujiao suddenly felt her entire body relax.
The final trace of the original owner’s consciousness disappeared.
Lin Yujiao immediately felt a little better.
At the same time, she sensed that she now had complete control over this body.
The original Lin Yujiao was gone.
She still had no idea why she had transmigrated here, but since she had been given another chance to live, she had no intention of dying.
She was different from the original owner.
No matter which world she lived in, Lin Yujiao had never had a family.
She was like wild grass.
Throw her anywhere, and she would find a way to survive.
There was only one thing from her old life that she truly could not bear to leave behind.
That enormous riverside apartment she had just bought!
She had barely lived there for a few days!
The moment that thought crossed her mind, the surroundings suddenly changed.
Lin Yujiao froze.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the familiar sight before her.
“Th… this is…”
“My apartment?”