Chapter 1

“Wanwan, it seems like it’s low tide today. Do you think the water has receded by now if we head over?”

“Almost, I think. We still need to park, so it’ll be perfect timing to walk over.”

Jiang Wan was in high spirits, smiling widely. She had finally managed to catch her mom on a day off, so she had to make the most of it and enjoy the day with her. Which beach should they go to for gathering seafood?

As Jiang Wan was pondering this, they turned a corner and suddenly saw a car driving the wrong way, coming straight toward them. There was a loud crash, and the airbags deployed. Before she lost consciousness, Jiang Wan could only curse her bad luck—how unlucky could she be!

“Wanwan, wake up!”

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly there was a voice calling out to her repeatedly. Who was calling her? Was it her mom? But the voice didn’t sound like her. Her mom’s voice was always gentle, but this one was a bit raspy.

“Wanwan, wake up!”

Warm drops landed on her face, and Jiang Wan’s consciousness began to return. She instinctively raised her hand to touch her face, but someone grabbed her hand before she could.

“Wanwan, you’re awake, right? Open your eyes and look at mom!”

Mom?

Jiang Wan’s eyelids twitched as she struggled to open her eyes. She remembered that she and her mom had just been in a car accident, and from the sound of it, her mom seemed to be okay. That thought brought her some relief. But as she painfully lifted her head to reassure her mom, she froze in shock. The person holding her didn’t look like her mom at all. The woman’s face was gaunt, her hair messy like a bird’s nest, and her lips were cracked and chapped—nothing that looked like it was caused by a car accident.

In fact, she looked even more ragged than the occasional beggar on the street. A sharp, sour odor was coming from her, so strong that Jiang Wan could only bear to breathe through her mouth.

Something wasn’t right! This wasn’t her mom!

No matter how bad the accident was, her mom’s clothes wouldn’t change. Jiang Wan clearly remembered her mom wearing a mustard yellow dress that day—how could she suddenly be wearing rough burlap clothing that smelled so terrible?

“Wanwan? It’s Mom…”

Yin Huaixi kept stroking her daughter’s head, looking into her eyes expectantly, hoping to find some sign of recognition. When she’d awoken from the car accident, she found herself in an unfamiliar place surrounded by people dressed in ancient clothing, all of them looking as gray and lifeless as foreign refugees. Next to her lay a girl barely breathing, and from bits of memory and overheard conversations, she understood that this was her body’s original daughter.

Realizing she’d traveled through time, Yin Huaixi was initially devastated. It meant that she’d never see her daughter again, separated by lifetimes. For a moment, she even thought about ending it all to see if she could return. But then she noticed that the girl beside her looked strikingly like her daughter, only frailer.

Since she could travel through time, maybe her daughter could too?

Clinging to that faint hope, she started performing emergency care on the girl while calling her name, hoping to see her open her eyes and react. The moment Jiang Wan did, Yin Huaixi was sure—this little girl in her arms was indeed her Wanwan!

After all, the original family here was exiled, and everyone around them had a vacant, hollow look in their eyes. But the girl in her arms was full of life; Yin Huaixi could read the shock and confusion in her eyes.

“Wanwan, we’ve time-traveled.”

Yin Huaixi whispered, and Jiang Wan went numb with shock when she heard it. She looked around at the desolate, barren land—no clean roads, no cars.

No wonder the person before her felt both familiar and strange; this was why…

“Mom!”

“Yes!”

Yin Huaixi hugged her daughter tightly, her eyes brimming with tears.

“From now on, don’t call me Mom; call me mother. And when you speak to others, follow my lead. If you don’t know how to respond, just say you have a headache and can’t remember.”

She had inherited some of the original body’s memories but wasn’t sure if her daughter had, so she wanted to set things straight. Jiang Wan clutched her mother’s sleeve, nodding earnestly.

“Little sister, is Wanwan feeling better?”

“Much better. Wanwan has woken up. Big brother, have we registered our household yet?”

Yin Huaixi had arrived an hour earlier, just as the exiled group reached the destination where they needed to register. Some of the stronger people had already completed the registration and returned with a small bag of grain, which was what she was hoping for. She was a skilled healer, and from feeling her own and her daughter’s pulses, she knew they were both severely weakened. Exile was sure to be harsh; after all, they had walked thousands of miles, often half-starved and exhausted, with two elderly parents who had died along the way. The most important thing now was to get food; otherwise, they risked starving.

“The household registration is done. Surprisingly, they allowed a separate female household. Here, this is yours and Wanwan’s.”

Yin Huaishan handed her the registration slips. He didn’t understand why his sister suddenly requested a separate household. He and his wife had always cared for her deeply and never blamed her for the family’s misfortune. They had looked after her as much as possible on the journey, and everything had been fine until they arrived at Lizhou Island, where she suddenly insisted on setting up a separate female household.

Yin Huaishan felt a pang of sadness, as if his little sister was distancing herself from him.

“Little sister, why did you set up a female household?”

Yin Huaixi felt much more at ease after seeing her and her daughter’s names on the slips. Looking up, she saw her brother’s disappointed face and felt a bit embarrassed.

It wasn’t that she disliked her brother’s family; on the contrary, she quite liked them. In the brief time she’d spent with them, coupled with fragments of memory, she could tell that her brother was a genuinely caring person, her sister-in-law was kind, and her niece, although quieter, showed no ill will toward her. Her desire to set up a separate household was mostly due to…

She had few of the original host’s memories left and was worried about slipping up, and even more about the awkwardness of close interactions. Besides, as the saying goes, “familiarity breeds contempt.” When you don’t see each other often, there’s no conflict, and everything is warm and friendly. But if they lived together every day, disagreements were bound to arise. By that point, separating would hurt their relationship, so it was better to establish separate households from the start.

“Elder Brother, I married out of the family, and now I have my daughter with me, so we should be counted as a separate household. I just saw that each household gets a pound of millet; if we’re counted as two households, we can get two pounds. Isn’t that better? Or do you think that if we split into two households, you’ll stop looking out for your sister?”

“How could I!”

Yin Huaishan quickly promised, brushing off the issue of her household registration with a bit of humor. His wife, Song Wenhui, simply smiled from the side, aware of her sister-in-law’s concerns, though she found it hard to say much herself. After this exhausting journey, she just wanted to settle down and rest her mind.

After the group had been sitting on the desolate land for nearly an hour, several ox carts slowly came down the road, and loud voices could be heard in the distance.

“Those assigned to Lianjia Valley, come over here!”  

“Those assigned to Caojia Bay, over here!”

As those booming voices echoed, many people started to stir. After arriving on Lizhou Island, they had been processed by the island officials and, after verifying their identities, were assigned to different towns and villages. Only after their village allocation was finalized did they receive their household registrations. Barely had they completed this process when villagers came to escort them.

Yin Huaishan took his frail niece from his sister’s arms, while Song Wenhui held their daughter’s hand, and the five of them slowly made their way over to where people from Lianjia Valley were gathering.

The representatives from Lianjia Valley were the village chief, his two sons, and two strong men from the village, who had come with a single ox cart for transportation. Although the village had only been assigned four households, two of them had many members, totaling over twenty people.

The old village chief wore a sour expression, showing no joy as he surveyed the four families before him. He had just counted: the Yin siblings had five people, the Cai family thirteen, and the Zhou family nine. The ox cart could barely manage seven or eight people, maybe even ten at a push, but he didn’t want to overwork his old ox.

“This cart can carry no more than six people along with your luggage and rations. The rest will have to walk.”

Everyone was stunned. They had been delighted to see the ox cart, thinking they could finally rest a bit, only to hear that it would only take six people. Four families with nearly thirty people—who would get to ride, and who wouldn’t?

“Hurry up and decide; we still have work to do back home!” The old village chief was quite unkind, as these people were convicts, their status even lower than the village’s impoverished farmers. Yet they were former officials, used to wealth and power. If he didn’t assert his authority before they reached the village, they might not know their place, making them hard to manage.

He recalled when he was younger, the village had once taken in exiles. At first, the villagers treated them well, but they looked down on them, calling them filthy mud-legged peasants and acting arrogantly. Some good-for-nothing sons even dared flirt with local girls, stirring up trouble in the village. It had taken a firm crackdown from the village leader to restore order. Since then, they had been wary of accepting exiles. If it weren’t for the government’s mandate, he would have refused them entirely.

With a sigh, the old village chief glanced at the neighboring village, which had even more people assigned to them, feeling a bit more at ease.

“Well? Who’s riding? Hurry up!”

Yin Huaishan looked at his wife and daughter, then at his sister and niece, and suggested, “If it can only take six people, I think we should let the children ride. Between the four families, we have eight children, and they’re all small and light. They won’t weigh more than six adults.”

The old village chief looked at the children from the four families. The oldest was just over ten, and several were only a few years old, not very heavy. He nodded in agreement, allowing them to load their bundles and rations onto the cart and finally letting the children get on.

The Zhou family had two boys around eight or nine and a pair of three-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. The Cai family consisted of three households, with one child from each of the second and third households taking a spot, while the Yin family’s two daughters completed the group of eight. The children seemed content on the cart, but someone took offense.

“Yin Huaishan, your family has some nerve! Those two girls are hardly children anymore, and yet you’re squeezing them in with the others. Shameless!”

Everyone had someone on the cart—except the eldest branch of the Cai family. Liu Lian, the wife of the Cai family’s eldest son, felt wronged and couldn’t hold her tongue. She didn’t dare confront the Zhou family, who had many men, or her own family members, so she targeted the Yin family. After all, they were all exiles now; none were higher than the others.

The old village chief shot her a look and snorted, “If you feel cheated, you can walk yourself. Don’t stand here grumbling and wasting my time. Get your things on the cart and settle in; we’re heading back to the village.”

The thought of having to arrange housing once they returned made him sigh.