Chapter 001

In the cold of winter, the stone trough under the old locust tree in the courtyard had formed a layer of ice. The chill wind swept through the tree branches, thin as ink lines. The tips of the branches swayed a few times before snowflakes fell gently from them.

The wind slammed against the cotton curtain, causing the dark fabric to shudder with each gust.

Suddenly, a small head peeked out from the seam of the curtain, glancing outside, before quickly retreating.

Inside, the “small head” turned toward the elderly woman with gray hair, who was sitting by the fire pit. In a soft, childish voice, she said, “Grandma, it’s snowing again.”

After speaking, she adjusted the cotton curtain and returned to her little stool by the fire pit, stretching out her chubby hands to warm them by the flames.

The fire pit was placed in front of a square table, its edge chipped, and heavy rust covered the ceramic lining.

Inside the pit, the charcoal was black with tinges of red, the sparks flickering on and off.

The elderly woman used the fire tongs to poke at the charcoal. “Since the Winter Solstice, this is the third snowfall. It should be a good year ahead…”

The small head, with its chubby little hands, couldn’t quite follow the old woman’s words.

What was a good year? She didn’t understand—she was only four and a half years old.

All she could see were the sweet potatoes buried in the pile of charcoal, her eyes wide as she stared at them, asking the elderly woman, “Grandma, are the sweet potatoes ready yet?”

The elderly woman put down the fire tongs. “Not yet.”

The small head swallowed the saliva that had formed in her mouth. “It smells so good…”

As soon as Meng Li regained some consciousness, she heard a faint, almost distant voice, as if separated by a layer of glass—”Grandma, it’s snowing again.”

Then, the conversation between the elderly woman and the young child continued, never stopping.

The voices fluctuated between being hazy and ethereal, gradually becoming clearer and more distinct, until they landed on her eardrums, as if they were right beside her.

Meng Li suddenly opened her eyes wide and found herself staring at the dark red beams of the ceiling.

The voices of the old woman and the child hadn’t ceased. The elderly woman’s voice carried a smile, making her sound especially kind-hearted: “What’s such a good thing?”

The soft, childish voice answered, “It’s just a good thing…”

Her mind felt as though it was stuffed with cotton, and her heartbeat raced wildly.

Meng Li couldn’t gather her thoughts for a moment.

Before she woke up, the last thing she remembered was sinking to the bottom of a lake while trying to save a child who had fallen in.

She had thought she was certain to die, but now, here she was, awake.

Logically, if she hadn’t died, she should be lying in a hospital right now.

But the place she was lying in clearly wasn’t a hospital.

Her mind was blank, and the sensation wasn’t pleasant. Meng Li raised a hand to press against her temple and instinctively sat up.

But as soon as she sat up, she realized her long hair was gone.

A sense of unease and tension spread rapidly from her heart. Meng Li lowered her gaze and saw that she wasn’t wearing a hospital gown or her usual blue-and-white school uniform, but a military green uniform—old-fashioned and outdated.

She blinked rapidly a few times, but nothing had changed.

Her breath tightened in an instant. Meng Li slowly slid her fingers up to her head, instinctively feeling the top of it. She was horrified to find that her hair was only about an inch long!

She wanted to scream, but her voice was trapped in her throat, unable to come out.

In a panic, she yanked off the blanket, got out of bed, and slipped on a pair of lazy slippers lying in front of the bed. Her face was tense as she quickly scanned the room.

Everything in the room was unfamiliar. The three-tiered table, the camphor wood chest, the wooden plank bed—everything looked so strange it made her afraid.

Her heart raced so fast it felt like it might burst out of her throat, and her temples throbbed violently in sync with it.

Meng Li forced herself to scan the room quickly, then her gaze landed on an old mirror with red floral patterns at the bottom. The mirror was set in an old-fashioned vanity. She shuffled over in a few steps and almost stumbled in front of it.

She hadn’t expected to be startled this badly, but the moment she looked, she was genuinely shocked.

In the mirror, there was no longer the 17-year-old, blossoming Meng Li. Instead, it reflected a 16 or 17-year-old boy, wearing a military green uniform and sporting a crew cut, his face full of a rogue’s mischievousness.

Meng Li was instantly overwhelmed with panic. She quickly pressed her hand to her chest.

She hoped she hadn’t somehow traveled to another world, and even worse, become a boy! But the sensation under her palm confirmed that she was still a girl, which made her subconsciously let out a small sigh of relief.

However, before she could fully relax, her mind suddenly snapped, and a flood of memories forcefully surged into her consciousness.

In an instant, she couldn’t make sense of them all, but the first memory she grasped was this: Her name was now Meng Li (T/N: The name is still pronounced the same but uses different characters/meaning), and she was a girl. But she had been raised as a boy since childhood. Only her biological parents knew the truth; no one else had any idea. Moreover, she had a vast number of subordinates, and in the capital, she was renowned. Many people referred to her respectfully as “Third Master”…

The moment this memory surfaced, Meng Li’s vision went black, and her legs buckled. With a loud “thud,” she collapsed again.

Outside the room, a five-year-old girl, Tang Yuan’er, was peeking through the crack in the wooden door, watching everything unfold inside. She didn’t have many thoughts on the matter. She simply turned to her grandmother, Grandma Cheng, and said, “Grandma, he woke up, but then he fell again.”

When Grandma Cheng heard Tang Yuan’er’s words, she quickly got up from beside the fire pit, walked over to Yuan’er, and peeked into the room. “He really woke up?”

Yuan’er looked up at Grandma Cheng and nodded. “I saw him get out of bed, look in the mirror, and then fall again.”

Grandma Cheng saw that Meng Li was no longer lying in bed but on the floor in front of the vanity. Without asking Yuan’er any more questions, she hurriedly opened the door, went inside, and, pulling Meng Li’s arm, carried her back to bed.

At nearly sixty, Grandma Cheng was still relatively strong, but it still took a lot of effort for her to lift Meng Li and lay her back in bed. After placing her down, she let out a few heavy breaths and sat on the edge of the bed to rest for a moment.

Yuan’er didn’t just stand idly by. Whether she could help or not, she stretched out her little hands, trying to assist by helping Meng Li and Grandma Cheng. When Grandma Cheng sat down to catch her breath, Yuan’er mimicked her, wiping her forehead and putting her hands on her waist as she panted. “Grandma, is he better now?”

Grandma Cheng caught her breath and pulled the blanket over Meng Li. “Who knows? Didn’t your mother say that the doctor at the hospital said he probably wouldn’t wake up? Turns out he’s tough. He’s been lying here for so many days and still managed to get up on his own.”

Yuan’er’s little face was full of seriousness. “Waking up is a good thing.”

Grandma Cheng smiled and stood up. “Yuan’er, keep an eye on him. I’ll go make some sweet soup.”

Yuan’er stood by the bed, watching Grandma Cheng leave. She then turned back to stare at Meng Li, who remained motionless with her eyes closed for a moment. Afterward, she looked toward the door as Grandma Cheng returned with a white porcelain bowl in her hands.

When Grandma Cheng reached the bed, Yuan’er moved aside to make space.

As she had been doing these past few days, Grandma Cheng sat on the edge of the bed, spooning the sweet soup into Meng Li’s mouth, feeding him one spoonful at a time.

Grandma Cheng had no emotional attachment to Meng Li; she took care of her solely because of the grandmother-grandchild relationship that had recently developed.

When her daughter-in-law, Gu Huijuan, had brought Meng Li back from the hospital, she had said that the child was unlikely to survive. It was just a matter of days before she would breathe her last.

But who could have guessed that not only had she not passed away, but she had also risen from the bed as if she had “come back to life.”

Being alive was a good thing. Being alive was fate.

Grandma Cheng put down the bowl and spoon and looked at Meng Li for a moment. She thought to herself that when she had gotten up earlier, she hoped it wasn’t just a momentary burst of energy before her final breath.

…

After Meng Li fell unconscious again, she lay for over half an hour before waking up once more.

This time, when she woke, she didn’t panic and sit up to look in the mirror. Instead, she lay quietly, slowly blinking her eyes, carefully sorting through all the new memories that had appeared in her mind out of nowhere.

She had indeed traveled to another world, to early 1976 in Beijing, inhabiting the body of this girl named “Meng Li.”

This Meng Li was the same age as her, also seventeen years old, in her final year of high school. She was about to graduate in one more semester. But this Meng Li wasn’t interested in studying; she was more focused on skipping class and getting into fights to show off.

During this unique time period, the city of Beijing felt eerily empty. The adults were preoccupied with the revolution, while older children had either graduated to join the military or been sent to the countryside for re-education.

The only ones left were teenagers like them—caught in the in-between, neither fully grown nor entirely children.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that, during this time, Beijing belonged to them.

Meng Li, being ignored and good at fighting, had risen to power over the past two years and had become a local boss. Now, she had countless subordinates and was a well-known figure in the city.

Equally famous as her was a person named Ji Chen.

As the saying goes, “One mountain cannot have two tigers.” Naturally, Ji Chen was her sworn enemy.

Meng Li was a native of the hutongs, born and raised in Beijing, while Ji Chen was a child from a government compound. They were natural enemies from the start. ^[1]The Chinese word hutong (胡同) means “alley” or “lane”. It refers to the narrow streets and alleys that are common in northern Chinese cities, especially Beijing.

Neither side could stand the other, and neither would bow to the other.

The reason Meng Li ended up in the hospital this time and had to lie in bed for so long was because of a fight with Ji Chen and his group.

In the vague recollections, it seemed Ji Chen had also been injured quite badly.

However, the person who struck Meng Li on the back of the head with a brick wasn’t Ji Chen. In fact, the most severe blow Ji Chen had received came from Meng Li herself.

After this incident, the grudge between the two seemed to have been firmly entrenched.

As for Meng Li’s family, in 1966, her father made a mistake and underwent re-education. In 1968, her mother, Gu Huijuan, decided to sever all ties with her father and filed for divorce. Shortly after, she remarried to her current husband, Cheng Chunliang.

Cheng Chunliang’s wife had passed away from cancer without leaving any children. Two years after their marriage, Cheng Chunliang and Gu Huijuan had their daughter, Tang Yuan’er. Now, Gu Huijuan was pregnant with their third child, probably hoping for a son.

Ever since Gu Huijuan brought Meng Li to the Cheng family, she had been harsh and cold toward her, as though Meng Li was some stray picked up off the street.

Meng Li suffered a lot of grievances in the Cheng family. She held in her anger and learned how to fight and make a name for herself. Afterward, she joined a group of friends and spent her days hanging out, living a carefree and free life.

But when this carefree life was applied to Meng Li’s situation, it became…

Meng Li pressed her lips together, a chill spreading through her heart…