Chapter 1 : The Miserable Su Zhaozhao

“Xiao Nian, how is your mother doing?”

Gu Nian was hurrying home with half a basket of wild vegetables, head down, when she was stopped by a middle-aged woman coming out of a courtyard as she passed by.

“Auntie Guo,” Gu Nian stopped and politely greeted her, “My mother is feeling better…”

But there was something strange… Whenever she thought about it, her small brows would furrow into a tight knot, filled with worry.

“That’s good to hear.” Auntie Guo smiled, her sun-darkened face lighting up. “Tell your mother to rest for another day. The autumn harvest is over, and there’s not much work left in the fields. She doesn’t need to rush back. There are plenty of young and old men in our cooperative to do the work.”

“Okay, I understand.”

After Gu Nian left, a middle-aged man carrying a hoe walked out from behind the house. “Who were you talking to?”

“That was Xiao Nian.” Auntie Guo stepped forward and brushed some grass off the man’s clothes. “Her mother fainted the other day. I was just thinking of visiting later, but then I saw Xiao Nian passing by the door, so I had a quick chat and told her mother to rest for another day and not to hurry back to the fields.”

The man put down his hoe, patted the mud off his pants, and grunted, “You sure know how to organize work. Maybe you should take over as the cooperative leader.”

The man was Su Gensheng, the village head of Sujiagou and also the leader of the cooperative, as well as Auntie Guo’s husband.

Auntie Guo rolled her eyes at him, “What? You don’t think I’m managing things well? If it hadn’t been for that one missing vote last year, who knows who would be in charge now!”

Just mentioning that one missing vote brought a wave of complaints to Auntie Guo’s mind. She was convinced that the vote had been rigged by her own husband.

“Ahem!” Su Gensheng coughed guiltily. “Alright, alright, why bring up the past?” Quickly changing the subject, he said, “If you have time, you should still go check on Xiao Nian’s mother. It’s not easy for a woman to raise two children on her own, and there’s no one to lend her a hand. Su Laibao is useless; he can’t even control his wife, and he doesn’t dare say a word to his sister, let alone help out.”

“I know, I’ll go later.” Auntie Guo responded as she picked up a sickle to cut vegetables for lunch from the garden next to the house. She kept talking to her husband, “If Xiao Nian’s mother had remarried, she wouldn’t have worked herself sick. A house without a man just doesn’t work.”

Su Gensheng pulled up a chair and sat down in the courtyard, picking up a half-woven basket nearby. “You’d better not mention this in front of her again, or you might get a sharp retort.”

“Let her retort if she wants. It still needs to be said. After all, they’re family. If no one thinks about them, as a leader and a relative, you should consider their situation!”

Auntie Guo straightened up, shaking off the dirt from the vegetable roots. “Years ago, she didn’t remarry because she was afraid someone would treat the two children poorly, and no one wanted to take on two young kids. Now that the children are older, they can help with work, and they’re sensible and hardworking. Maybe it’ll be easier to find someone now. In a few years, Xiao Nian will need to marry, and Xiao Xiang will need a wife. Finding someone now could help with that…”

She went on and on, and Su Gensheng’s ears started to ache. Auntie Guo even began discussing suitable candidates for remarriage.

“Alright, alright, the person involved hasn’t even said anything, and you’re already planning their wedding day.”

This woman talked too much. Luckily, she didn’t become the cooperative leader; otherwise, the members would be nagged to death.

“I’m just talking to you! Seriously, what do you think of the people I suggested?”

“None of them are good.”

“Ugh! You’re impossible… How about just having vegetable porridge for lunch? I’ll make a cold dish with the vegetable roots…”

As Auntie Guo continued chatting warmly with her husband, the person she called “Xiao Nian’s mother” was sitting at the doorway of her house, staring blankly at the hawthorn tree in the courtyard.

Dazed, lifeless—this was exactly how Su Zhaozhao looked at that moment.

She had only stayed up late to finish reading a military romance novel. Who would have thought that when she opened her eyes, she would find herself in this dilapidated thatched hut, with nothing but bare walls, a place where even mice would turn away?

And there were two kids in the hut. Unfortunately, these two kids were hers.

She, a 25-year-old single woman, suddenly became a mother. And this mother was two years older than her!

When Su Zhaozhao looked in the mirror, she almost dropped it!

She couldn’t believe that the dark, skinny woman in the reflection was herself. Just by appearance, she could easily pass for someone ten years older.

The only bit of comfort was that her facial features were still somewhat delicate. With some care, she might look better. But how could she afford to take care of herself in a home so poor that even mice were too lazy to make holes?

What’s worse, the original owner of the body wasn’t just a mother; she was a widow who had been alone for years.

When she first woke up, Su Zhaozhao was bombarded with the original owner’s memories. After absorbing them, she summed up the original owner’s life in one sentence:

A woman with a hard life.

The original owner’s name was Su Zhaodi. Just from the name, you could tell she was born into a family that favored boys over girls to an extreme degree. She had a younger sister, Su Laidi, and a younger brother, Su Laibao.

Over a decade ago, Su’s parents sold both Su sisters while fleeing from famine.

Su Laidi disappeared without a trace after being sold, while Su Zhaodi became a child bride.

Fortunately, the family that bought her treated her well, and she lived peacefully for a few years.

At seventeen, she was married off by her in-laws to a man she had barely met. The day after the wedding, the man ran away.

No need to guess—he wasn’t willing.

(Su Zhaozhao: If he wasn’t willing, why consummate the marriage? Jerk!)

Two months later, Su Zhaodi was diagnosed with pregnancy. The family hadn’t even fully celebrated the news when they heard the man had died.

A bolt from the blue!

As for how he died, the original owner of the body only knew the general story. Someone had reported the death, saying that her husband had been hit by a bomb dropped by the Japanese in the provincial capital. Her in-laws went to the provincial capital, but they didn’t bring back his body. All they knew was that there had indeed been an air raid recently, which had killed many people.

The child in Su Zhaodi’s belly became the family’s only source of hope.

If that had been all, they might have still been able to live in relative peace. But unfortunately, a bandit raid destroyed everything.

The small village was burned to the ground overnight!

Su Zhaodi was hidden in a cellar by her in-laws, which is how she narrowly escaped death.

Otherwise, she would have ended up like most of the young women in the village, who were captured, sold, and their fates unknown.

However, her in-laws lost their lives in the raid, their bodies burned beyond recognition.

With the village destroyed and her home gone, Su Zhaodi, heavily pregnant and with nowhere to go, set out to return to her parents’ home. Her in-laws had settled in the small village to escape the war, so there were no relatives nearby to help her. Fearing that the bandits might return, the survivors fled the village. With no other options, a distraught Su Zhaodi hurriedly left the village.

Because she left in such a rush, she didn’t even have time to bury her in-laws’ bodies. This remained a heavy burden on Su Zhaodi’s heart.

The journey to her parents’ home was not close. Even if it wasn’t a thousand miles away, it was still several hundred miles. A pregnant woman relied on her own two legs and the charity of kind strangers along the way to make it back to her hometown just before giving birth.

When their daughter, whom they hadn’t heard from in years, suddenly returned home heavily pregnant, the Su family’s parents weren’t exactly overjoyed. They were concerned about their reputation and feared people would gossip. Still, they grudgingly accepted the daughter who had come back to seek refuge.

Once the child was born, the household suddenly had two more mouths to feed. Fearing that their son wouldn’t be able to find a wife, the Su family parents kicked Su Zhaodi and her children out to live in the old, dilapidated house shortly after she finished her postpartum confinement.

A married daughter is like spilled water; the Su family parents believed they had done their duty.

It’s easy to imagine how hard life was for a woman with two children to feed.

In the most difficult years, they were just shy of begging for food.

Fortunately, the country was liberated later on, and Su Zhaodi, being a married woman, was allocated land and registered as a resident. Although life was still tough, at least they no longer had to worry about starving to death.

In the following years, Su’s parents also passed away due to illness.

Last year, the village established a cooperative, promoting mutual help and shared prosperity. Since Su Zhaodi was the only one who could work in her family, she didn’t want people to gossip that she was taking advantage of the cooperative. So she worked herself to the bone, which led to her collapse after the autumn harvest, right before Su Zhaozhao took over her body.

After absorbing the original owner’s memories, Su Zhaozhao instinctively connected the situation to the novel she had stayed up late reading before.

What a coincidence! The husband’s name was Gu Heng, and his nickname was Gu Shitou. The male protagonist in the novel also had the surname Gu, though it wasn’t clear if his nickname was Shitou, because the book didn’t say. But his name was Gu Heng.

This male protagonist, Gu Heng, had lost his parents early, also due to bandit raids. His newlywed wife had also died.

In the book, Gu Heng’s parents and first wife were briefly mentioned, so much so that they didn’t even have names—just placeholders like Father Gu, Mother Gu, and the first wife.

As for why Gu Heng left home the day after his wedding, the book explained that he had secretly joined the Communist Party years earlier and had to leave home the next day because of a mission. Who would have thought that he would lose contact with his family forever? When he finally returned, all he found were the ruins of his burned-down home and a rebuilt village. The surviving villagers told him that his entire family had perished, and there wasn’t even a grave for them.

After scooping three handfuls of earth from where his home had once stood and placing it in an earthen jar, Gu Heng left home and returned to the army, never to come back.

After that, the book didn’t mention them much. It mostly focused on the male protagonist’s relationship with the female lead and their domestic life.

While reading the book, Su Zhaozhao had made a few comments, feeling sorry for the male protagonist’s first wife. The man had left right after their wedding. All the capable and loving male protagonists were meant for the female lead, while the first wife was just a throwaway character.

The first wife’s only role was to make the female lead occasionally feel jealous and throw a minor tantrum with the male lead.

Was that why she had inexplicably transmigrated?

For some reason—maybe it was a woman’s sixth sense—she felt like she had indeed transmigrated into a novel.

Oh, what cruel fate!

When other people transmigrate, they become princesses or royalty, but she ended up as a throwaway character.

Fine, a throwaway character it is, but she’s the kind that the male protagonist didn’t even remember—someone who died years ago.

So many people wanted to transmigrate, but they didn’t get the chance. Yet here she was, someone who had never even thought about transmigrating, and it happened to her.

What was heaven thinking?

Even though her parents were divorced and had treated her like a burden, shuttling her between boarding schools, and had each given her a hundred thousand yuan after graduation, telling her not to contact them anymore because she wouldn’t be entitled to any inheritance, she had never complained about her fate.

Instead, she used the 200,000 yuan, along with money she had saved over the years from part-time jobs, to buy a tiny little apartment.

At least she had a home, and she loved it. She had a house and a job, living a carefree life without anyone to control her.

She never once imagined leaving the 21st century, no matter what era it was!

Wait a minute—her soul had entered someone else’s body. Did that mean she was already dead?

Or was it like in other novels, where if she died here, she could return to her original body?

Su Zhaozhao considered dying.

Preferably in a way that would bring her back to her original body.

But what if it didn’t work?

After holding a knife to her wrist for 25 seconds, Su Zhaozhao gave up.

Putting down the knife, she couldn’t help but burst into tears. She had just passed the civil service exam!

After working so hard to escape the grind of being an exploited corporate slave and finally landing a secure government job, she hadn’t even had a chance to quietly gloat in front of her old boss…

The feast she had been waiting for was gone before she could even take a bite.

How tragic! Truly tragic!

Holding her rumbling stomach, Su Zhaozhao felt like crying again.

Her apartment, her government job…