Lin Yujiao immediately recognized the voice and opened the door.
“Auntie Cuihua.”
It was indeed Auntie Cuihua, the woman who had helped her earlier.
She had been the closest friend Lin Yujiao’s mother, Jiang Chunyue, had in the village, and she had always treated Lin Yujiao with great kindness.
Auntie Cuihua took her hand as soon as the door opened.
“Yujiao, are you all right? Did those people bully you?”
Seeing the genuine concern in her eyes, so different from the calculating looks of those relatives, warmth spread through Lin Yujiao’s heart.
“I’m fine. They didn’t get what they wanted.”
Lin Yujiao deliberately said nothing about being pushed into the water.
One could never truly know what lay in another person’s heart.
She had decided that what happened that day would remain her secret.
She wouldn’t tell anyone.
Just from what she had witnessed earlier, however, Auntie Cuihua could already guess that the Lin family had been bullying the girl.
She gritted her teeth angrily.
“Your parents treated them so well when they were alive. All that kindness was wasted on a pack of heartless ingrates!”
“My parents were simply too kind,” Lin Yujiao said. “They probably never imagined things would turn out like this.”
Auntie Cuihua looked at her with heartache.
“Poor child. What are you going to do from now on?”
After thinking for a moment, she added, “If that younger brother of yours in my family were good enough for you, I’d have him marry into your household myself.”
The corner of Lin Yujiao’s mouth twitched.
“Auntie Cuihua, if I remember correctly, Xiaogang is only fifteen.”
Auntie Cuihua’s eldest son had married long ago and already had children of his own. After him came two daughters, and only then had she finally given birth to her youngest son, Xiaogang.
In the original owner’s memories, he was still practically a child.
“So what if he’s fifteen?” Auntie Cuihua replied matter-of-factly. “You’re only twenty yourself. Five years isn’t much.”
“Besides, people raise child brides all the time. Why can’t you raise yourself a child husband?”
Lin Yujiao gave her an approving thumbs-up.
Auntie Cuihua truly had an astonishingly open mind.
“Auntie, stop teasing me. Xiaogang is still young. When he grows up, he should marry a girl he actually likes.”
She certainly had no interest in children.
That was one preference she absolutely did not possess.
Auntie Cuihua sighed.
“What does that boy like? Food, that’s what. All he thinks about is eating. He’s not particularly clever either. He wouldn’t be able to protect you.”
Then she remembered what Lin Yujiao had said earlier.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to find a husband willing to marry into your household? Tell Auntie what kind of man you’re looking for. I’ll help you find one.”
Lin Yujiao nearly jumped.
Why had she taken that seriously?
“No, no, there’s no need! I only said that earlier so they couldn’t get what they wanted. I don’t actually intend to marry anyone.”
She was only twenty years old now.
Why in the world would she rush into marriage?
Auntie Cuihua immediately frowned.
“Not getting married won’t do either.”
“Yujiao, don’t you understand? As long as you’re unmarried, those people will look at you like a piece of fat meat. Everyone will want to take a bite.”
She looked seriously at Lin Yujiao.
“And what about your father’s job? Do you really think you’ll be able to take it over without any trouble?”
Lin Yujiao was puzzled.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Child, you really don’t understand.”
“The county town isn’t far from here. Even if you take over the job and move there, what’s stopping them from going to find you whenever they feel like it? What will you do then?”
“You aren’t married, and your parents are gone. Those people are your elders. They’ll use that position to press down on you. Even if you refuse to obey, they’ll keep pushing until you have no choice.”
Auntie Cuihua looked at the young woman’s beautiful face.
Her gaze was clear and bright.
Jiang Chunyue had raised her daughter delicately, sheltering and pampering her from childhood.
How could a girl raised that way possibly deal with all the filthy schemes people were capable of?
Auntie Cuihua couldn’t help worrying.
Lin Yujiao fell into thought after hearing her words.
Her original plan had seemed straightforward.
Protect the house.
Take over her father’s job.
Then live her own life.
But now it seemed things might not be so simple.
After all, Lin Yujiao was an outsider to this era.
She didn’t fully understand the customs and social expectations of this place.
There were certain things she had taken for granted.
Auntie Cuihua had lived here for decades and understood these matters far better than she did.
Her advice was worth considering.
So Lin Yujiao sincerely asked, “Auntie, what do you think I should do?”
Auntie Cuihua thought carefully.
“Maybe you really should find a man willing to marry into your household.”
“But he can’t be just anyone. He has to be capable enough to protect you, and he must also be able to deal with those people from the Lin family.”
The problem was obvious.
What capable man would willingly become a live-in son-in-law?
Suddenly, Auntie Cuihua seemed to remember something.
Her eyes lit up.
“I’ve got it! Yujiao, don’t you already have a childhood betrothal?”
Lin Yujiao stared at her.
“Me?”
“Yes!”
Auntie Cuihua nodded enthusiastically.
“I remember Chunyue telling me about it. When your father was in the army, he and one of his comrades agreed to arrange a marriage between their children. The other family had a son, a few years older than you.”
“They were still in contact with your father a few years ago.”
Lin Dajun had served in the army when he was younger and had even fought on the battlefield.
His military service was one of the reasons he had later been able to secure his position at the machinery factory.
While serving, he had formed a life-and-death friendship with one of his comrades.
When Jiang Chunyue was pregnant, the two families had verbally agreed that their children would be betrothed.
Lin Yujiao searched through the original owner’s memories.
Only then did she vaguely remember the matter.
Jiang Chunyue and Auntie Cuihua had been close enough to talk about nearly everything, so naturally, Jiang Chunyue had mentioned it to her a few years ago.
“I heard that young man is serving in the army now too,” Auntie Cuihua continued. “Your mother even said that if she couldn’t find a fine son-in-law for you when you grew older, she’d contact his family and ask about the arrangement.”
“She always thought highly of soldiers.”
Lin Yujiao stared at her.
“Auntie Cuihua, are you saying I should go find him?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Auntie Cuihua sighed.
“I know asking you to leave your home and go somewhere unfamiliar is cruel. But if you stay here, I’m truly afraid something terrible will happen to you.”
She knew this was hardly an ideal solution.
If there were another choice, who would willingly leave the place where they had been born and raised?
But Auntie Cuihua was genuinely afraid that if Lin Yujiao remained in Linjia Village, she would encounter even more disgusting schemes in the future.
She had lived in the countryside for many years.
She had seen all manner of sordid things.
She did not want Lin Yujiao to become another victim.
What Auntie Cuihua didn’t know was that something terrible had already happened.
The only reason the scheme had failed was because the original Lin Yujiao had fought back with everything she had.
And the young woman who had suffered through it all had already left this world forever.
After Auntie Cuihua departed, Lin Yujiao sat alone and thought about her suggestion.
The more she considered it, the stranger it seemed.
Just to escape these troublesome relatives, she was supposed to marry a complete stranger?
Surely things hadn’t reached that point.
Still, curiosity eventually got the better of her.
Lin Yujiao went into her parents’ room and began searching.
After going through a drawer, she found a letter.
The sender was named Qin Jianguo.
He was the comrade her father had fought alongside.
In the letter, Qin Jianguo exchanged pleasantries with Lin Dajun and reminisced about their years together.
From the way he wrote, it was obvious that the two men truly had shared a bond forged through life and death.
Toward the end of the letter, Qin Jianguo mentioned his son.
His name was Qin Weiguo.
He also included a mailing address.
Qin Jianguo wrote that the childhood betrothal between their families still stood. If Lin Dajun’s daughter had the opportunity, she could write to Qin Weiguo so the two young people could get to know each other.
In the original owner’s memories, her parents had occasionally mentioned the arrangement jokingly.
But she had only been seventeen at the time.
Having grown up surrounded by her parents’ affection, she still thought of herself as a child.
Marriage had been the last thing on her mind.
Naturally, she had never written to him.
Digging deeper through those memories, Lin Yujiao discovered something else.
The original owner had even disliked the fact that Qin Weiguo was six years older than her.
At seventeen, she had thought a man in his twenties belonged to an entirely different generation.
Now Lin Yujiao was twenty.
That meant Qin Weiguo should be twenty-six.
The age difference didn’t bother the current Lin Yujiao.
After all, her true age before transmigrating had already been thirty.
What concerned her was something else.
In an era when people generally married young, wouldn’t a twenty-six-year-old man probably already have children old enough to run errands for the family?
Lin Yujiao searched but found no other letters.
She had no idea whether Qin Weiguo was married.
Then she caught herself.
Wait.
Why did it matter whether he was married?
She didn’t want to marry a stranger in the first place!
Still, just in case, Lin Yujiao placed the letter inside her mysterious space for safekeeping.
Then she entered the space herself.
Back inside her spacious apartment, Lin Yujiao used the ingredients from the refrigerator to prepare herself two proper meals.
She ate until she was completely satisfied.
With good food in her stomach, she could almost feel strength returning to her body.
The original owner had been physically delicate and rarely exercised.
Lin Yujiao, however, understood something very clearly.
A healthy body was one of the most useful weapons a person could possess.
Since fate had given her another life, she intended to nurse this body back to health.
In a way, she would be raising herself all over again.
Night gradually fell.
Lin Yujiao had no intention of sleeping outside in that uncomfortable bed.
Instead, she stretched out on the sofa in her apartment and began watching videos on her tablet.
In her previous life, she had traveled frequently for work.
Because of that, she had downloaded plenty of classic films and television dramas onto the device to watch during long journeys by train or plane.
She was completely absorbed in what she was watching when she suddenly heard a sound coming from outside the space.