Chapter 7: The First Day of Time Travel, the Broken Engagement

Spring, 1958

Cao County, Wulizhuang Township, Lotus Village.

All things revive, the spring is bright and beautiful.

“My god! Where am I?” Ruan Xiaotang lay limply on the kang (a heated brick bed), her slender eyelashes fluttering a few times before slowly opening her eyes.

Intense sunlight poured in.

Completely unprepared, she reflexively squeezed her eyes shut.

After a while, she dared to open them again.

She propped herself up on the kang, sitting up. Her eyes, still wet, scanned the surroundings: a small window letting in a few rays of harsh light, which fell across the faded, multicolored quilt on her legs and onto her head.

Her brow furrowed slightly, her lips pouted in confusion. The roughly 10-square-meter room felt utterly strange and distant.

Everywhere she looked, she saw patches of yellowish-brown earth, emitting a strange odor. Upon closer inspection, she realized the material was actually dirt!

Her gaze moved downward; the floor was also packed earth, hard-rammed.

In a corner stood a man-high, dilapidated wooden cabinet, yellowish and greasy, with one door hanging precariously, threatening to fall off at any moment.

Just as she was about to get off the kang,

a sudden, excruciating headache ripped through her, and a flood of new memories surged into her mind.

Ruan Xiaotang leaned against the wall, clutching her dark, long hair.

Calmly, she pieced together the timeline,

considering the existing memories and the dilapidated furnishings before her.

Her eyes lit up, and she slapped her thigh excitedly.

She realized…

She realized…

“I, Ruan Xiaotang, have time-traveled!”

Her voice betrayed her excitement.

Those time-travel dramas were so popular back then, and she had caught up with the trend.

She was riding the wave.

Ruan Xiaotang, born in 2004, was the same age as the original Ruan Xiaotang.

Since fate had given her a second chance, it must have a reason.

What’s done is done.

From today on, she was this era’s Ruan Xiaotang.

This country girl had a pretty face and a great figure.

Touching the original host’s delicate skin, she began to sort through her family and relationships.

Since heaven had spared her soul and this exceptional body,

Ruan Xiaotang vowed to make a life for herself.

Ruan Xiaotang’s younger brother, Ruan Xiaohai, was 18 years old. He had fallen from a ladder, breaking his leg, and now walked like he was on stilts of uneven lengths.

Ruan Xiaotang’s mother, Liu Guifang, was a kind and gentle rural woman.

Ruan Xiaotang’s father had passed away two years earlier from a serious illness,

leaving the three of them to fend for themselves.

And they were facing a severe famine.

In the closed-minded rural society of that era, widows were considered inauspicious and unlucky.

No one wanted to be associated with her “bad luck.”

The strong-willed Ruan Xiaotang resolutely shouldered the responsibility of supporting her family.

She also had a keen business sense.

She started by raising chickens and ducks with her mother.

Then, she responded to the team’s call to raise pigs and rabbits.

She was intelligent and studious, always following behind the town’s agricultural technicians, taking notes and asking questions.

She asked and she wrote.

Making key notes.

In two years,

just two years,

Ruan Xiaotang paid off all her father’s medical debts.

From then on, the Ruan family stood tall in the village.

Villagers who had initially been hesitant about the team’s poverty alleviation initiatives began to change their minds.

The evidence was clear.

Money doesn’t grow on trees!

Two uninvited guests disturbed the peace in the courtyard.

“Ruan Xiaotang, get out here!”

“Ruan Xiaotang, return the betrothal gifts!”

“Ruan Xiaotang, you second-hand goods, we don’t want you as our daughter-in-law. Return the money!”

A plump middle-aged woman yelled.

The woman was stout, with a fleshy face. She was a shrew, as if she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had scolded Ruan Xiaotang to death.

She stood with her hands on her hips, her face red and neck thick with anger, spitting as she spoke.

Her small, beady eyes glared viciously at Ruan Xiaotang’s room.

“The in-laws are here, come in quickly, let’s sit down and talk.”

Liu Guifang put down her fire stick, got up anxiously, and hurried out of the main room, wiping the dust from her hands on her patched trousers.

Hoping to avoid a public scandal,

she greeted them with a smile as soon as she went outside.

She was already at a disadvantage against the fat woman, Wang Xianghe.

She was at their mercy.

“Liu Guifang, ah, Liu Guifang, you killed your husband, and now your daughter is just like you, at such a young age, she doesn’t learn anything good, she’s fooling around with men! What a disgrace.”

Wang Xianghe spoke condescendingly, using her round, elbow-like chin to point at the meek woman.

She knew that the Ruan family was a vulnerable widow and orphan, and she planned to squeeze them dry, not only getting back the money she had given but also extorting more. She didn’t want her daughter’s reputation ruined, so she would force the Ruans to accept this loss.

That Ruan Xiaotang girl, selling rabbit fur for the past few years, must have saved a lot of money.

Her three sons wouldn’t have trouble finding wives.

Humph!

Her disdain and contempt instantly transformed into a calculating malice.

“What did my sister do to deserve this treatment?”

Ruan Xiaohai, carrying a hoe, heard the commotion as he was entering the house. He had always disliked Wang Xianghe, and he saw her standing in his yard, berating his mother like a dog.

He had strongly opposed this marriage, but his mother, relying on the Wang family’s influence in the village, didn’t want her family to be bullied again, so she persuaded his sister.

His sister, being soft-hearted, didn’t want her mother to cry every day.

So she sacrificed herself for her family.

But she…

cried every night.

The heartbreaking image filled him with hatred.

Anger surged through him.

He raised his hoe, regardless of the consequences, and chased after them.

“You can’t even walk straight, and you dare to fight? I’ll break your leg and make you spend the rest of your life on the kang.”

Wang Qiang, Ruan Xiaotang’s fiancé, who had been squatting at the foot of a tree smoking, saw the situation turning bad. He dropped his cigarette, dashed out, and kicked Ruan Xiaohai to the ground.

His size 44 feet, like ox hooves, landed on the back of Ruan Xiaohai’s head.

He pressed down hard with his leg.

Glaring with crazed eyes, his nose wrinkled, his thick lips pursed.

He yelled wildly.

Ruan Xiaohai’s face was buried in the dirt, unable to move or breathe. His limbs thrashed wildly, kicking up dust.

Like a pig struggling to its death in a swamp.

The more he struggled, the tighter he was held.

“Please stop, Auntie, please, take your foot off him, he’s going to suffocate.”