Although that was true, staying in the city was no easy matter.
Zhang Yunqing walked forward with her head lowered, pondering what kind of future path she could take.
Finding a job? She had just arrived and had no connections whatsoever.As for deliberately injuring herself to avoid being sent down to the countryside—medical conditions in this era were poor. What if she ended up crippled for life?
After thinking it over, marriage seemed like the only reliable option.
But who could she marry?
In her previous life, she had been busy earning living expenses while studying. After starting work, she had been busy saving money to buy a house. She had practically no experience with relationships.
As for the original owner of this body, she did not seem to have any suitable male prospects either.
And the man Zhao Pinglan mentioned—the one who had sweet-talked the original owner so thoroughly she lost all sense of direction right before Zhang Yunqing transmigrated—
Zhang Yunqing chose to ignore him entirely.
Any man who could coax a girl into willingly suffering in the far Northwest could hardly be a good man. Besides, he could barely take care of himself.
“Ow, my poor back!”
Just as she was thinking, accompanied by the sound of something heavy hitting the ground, a deliberately exaggerated female voice rang out.
Zhang Yunqing looked up and saw a middle-aged woman around fifty years old. The woman clutched her waist while groaning dramatically, occasionally glancing at her from the corner of her eye.
Beside her sat a bucket of well water. Apparently, she had strained her back while carrying it.
Zhang Yunqing froze for a moment and did not rashly step forward to help. Instead, she hurriedly searched through her memories for information about this auntie.
She had grown up in the village. Although the neighbors were close, relationships there were also complicated.
Who was related to whom, who held grudges against whom, and which families refused to interact—all of that determined how she should behave.
If this auntie happened to have conflicts with the Zhang family, helping her might end with Zhang Yunqing getting falsely blamed for something.
Seeing that she made no move, the woman directly called out, “Yunqing! My back hurts. Help Auntie carry this water home, will you?”
Just then, Zhang Yunqing finally figured out who she was.
This woman was none other than Auntie Huaihua, as the original owner had called her.
She was the mother of the very man who had persuaded the original owner to go to the Northwest together.
The fact that the original owner had even changed her assigned destination for him showed she harbored girlish feelings for the man.
Yet in the original owner’s memories, the man had never openly expressed any affection. Instead, he constantly claimed he only saw her as a younger sister.
That said, he never once refused the food and drinks the original owner gave him.
Auntie Huaihua also used her son as an excuse to order the original owner around all the time—complaining about aches here and pains there to get free labor out of her.
Normally, before Auntie Huaihua even opened her mouth, the original owner would already have eagerly rushed over to carry the water for her.
But Zhang Yunqing was not the original owner.
She did not like the woman’s son, nor did she intend to indulge the old schemer’s petty tricks.
With complete sincerity written across her face, she said, “Auntie Huaihua, if the water is so heavy even you can’t carry it, then there’s no way I, a young girl, can carry it either. If I hurt my back too, you’d have to pay my medical bills. You should ask someone else for help.”
Li Huaihua’s expression twitched, nearly unable to maintain her act. She could not understand what medicine the Zhang family’s “money-losing girl” had taken today to suddenly change her temperament.
Still unwilling to give up such free labor, she sighed pitifully and muttered, “Ah, if your Brother Changlin were home, Auntie wouldn’t want to trouble you either. It’s just that… sigh… I’m old now, useless…”
After speaking, Li Huaihua waited for Zhang Yunqing to comfort her as usual and conveniently take care of all the work.
But after waiting quite a while, all she saw was Zhang Yunqing rapidly walking away.
“You may be old, but I’m still young. My waist is very useful to me. Carry it yourself slowly.”
Li Huaihua was so angry she nearly fainted on the spot. She immediately decided that once her son returned, she would make sure to complain thoroughly about that “worthless girl.”
If Zhang Yunqing did not come apologize to her, she would forbid her son from paying attention to her ever again.
If Zhang Yunqing knew what she was thinking, she would definitely raise both hands in agreement.
During the past two days since transmigrating, Zhang Yunqing had inherited the original owner’s memories, but they all seemed shrouded in fog.
Like NPC dialogue in an online game, certain memories only surfaced when specific conditions were triggered or when she deliberately tried to recall them.
Until just now, when Auntie Huaihua mentioned the name “Changlin.”
The fog in Zhang Yunqing’s mind suddenly dispersed, and the memories gradually became clear.
At the same time, she realized that she had not simply transmigrated—
She had transmigrated into a novel.
The title Male Educated Youth of the 1970s made it obvious that it was a period novel written from a male protagonist’s perspective.
And Auntie Huaihua’s son, Shen Changlin, was the novel’s male lead.
The story roughly told how Shen Changlin, a young intellectual responding to the nation’s call, voluntarily went to the harsh farms of the Northwest countryside.
There, he met and fell in love with the daughter of a former capitalist family who had been exiled because of her class background.
Later, after the college entrance exams were reinstated, the two of them were admitted to universities in Shanghai together. Using the hidden wealth preserved by the young lady’s family, they rode the wave of economic reform all the way to becoming the richest power couple in the country.
A very classic wish-fulfillment storyline.
If Zhang Yunqing had not transmigrated into cannon-fodder herself, she probably would have thought it was a pretty good story too.
In the original novel, Zhang Yunqing followed Shen Changlin to the Northwest as planned.
Because she had liked him since childhood, she constantly helped him with work at the farm whenever she had free time, ruining her health at a young age.
Shen Changlin saw all of this clearly. Not only did he feel no guilt whatsoever, but because he pitied the rich young lady heroine, he cleverly pushed even her share of work onto the original owner as well.
Even when the two of them registered for the college entrance exams, the registration fee—fifty cents each—had been borrowed from the original owner.
Borrowed, supposedly.
In truth, they never intended to repay her.
The original owner waited in the Northwest for Shen Changlin to graduate from university and marry her.
What she received instead was news of his marriage to the heroine.
Her body, already broken from years of exhausting labor, could not endure the blow. She died on the spot after failing to catch her breath.
Even after death, she was not left in peace.
Years later, after becoming wealthy tycoons, the male and female leads returned to the Northwest to reminisce about their hardships. They even stepped on the original owner’s memory to build themselves a sentimental and loyal image.
When Zhang Yunqing had read that part, she had fiercely criticized the couple for being hypocritical.
Who would have thought that after one accident, she herself would become this cannon-fodder character?
Thinking about the plot, she only wanted to stay as far away from Shen Changlin, that leech, as possible.
What “male protagonist halo”? He was basically just someone who climbed upward by exploiting others.
Then suddenly, as she thought about the plot, Zhang Yunqing’s eyes lit up.
Her previously hurried footsteps abruptly stopped, then turned toward the district of state-owned factories according to her memories.
If she remembered correctly, before going to the countryside, the male lead had learned from a female classmate who liked him that a certain factory would soon hold an internally prearranged public recruitment.
Of course, he had never gone to apply.
The author’s intention had merely been to highlight how noble, selfless, and popular with women the male lead was.
After all, the main story took place in the Northwest.
If the male lead entered a factory job, how would the story continue?
The novel did not describe that recruitment in detail, so Zhang Yunqing had no idea which factory it was or exactly when it would happen.
But when she thought about being sent to the countryside, she still decided to try her luck.
What if it happened to be today?