Chapter 1: Waking Up in the 1980s

Year 1980.

Shanghe Village.

A few low earthen houses made of yellow mud bricks sat scattered. The yards didn’t even have proper walls, just a rough fence made of sorghum stalks enclosing the space.

The simple courtyard was filthy and dilapidated, with pigpens and chicken coops in a chaotic mess. The stench was overwhelming.

Inside a small, dim mudbrick house—

A delicate, beautiful girl lay asleep on the bed like a slumbering beauty.

She wore a long silk nightdress, with a military jacket draped over her upper body.

A middle-aged woman pushed the door open and strode in, reaching out to shove the girl on the bed.

“Get up! Stop pretending to be dead!”

Wen Nian groggily opened her eyes from the shaking.

The woman before her wore a white shirt on top and coarse dark blue trousers on the bottom, with short hair cut to her ears.

Her outfit had a distinctly retro vibe from another era.

Seeing Wen Nian still lying there motionless, the woman didn’t hold back. She grabbed the soft flesh of Wen Nian’s arm and pinched down hard.

“You wretched girl, stop playing dead! Get up already!”

With a sharp hiss, Wen Nian clutched her bruised arm and sat up.

Where did this shrew come from?

Why had she barged into her house?

And even laid hands on her like that?

She glanced around. The room was cramped and dim, the walls made of rough, yellow mud bricks. Aside from the bed she sat on, there was nothing else in the room.

This wasn’t her home.

Was she dreaming?

Before she could make sense of it, the middle-aged woman yanked her off the bed roughly.

With a face full of fury, she slapped her across the face.

“You wretched thing, you actually tried to kill yourself? Do you think marrying Zheng Jiahe is beneath you? Your father and I pulled every string we could to get in with the Zheng family! If it weren’t for your looks, would they even consider you? There are plenty of girls lining up for the chance to marry in, and here you are trying to die over it?”

Wen Nian was stunned.

Even her own parents had never hit her like this.

Anger flared up in her chest. She had no patience for this woman’s nagging, so she slapped her right back.

What the hell—was she going to let herself be bullied even in a dream?

The middle-aged woman stared at her in shock, covering her face with disbelief. Her hand trembled as she pointed at Wen Nian, unable to get a word out.

“M-Mom, are you okay? Wen Nian, are you crazy?! You dare hit my mom?!”

A tall girl in a yellow dress came running in, yelling as she shoved Wen Nian.

Wen Nian didn’t back down—she shoved her right back.

Seeing her fight back, the girl was both shocked and furious, and the two quickly got into a full-on scuffle.

The other girl was tall and strong—Wen Nian knew she couldn’t win by brute force alone.

So she changed tactics. Grabbing both of the girl’s long braids, she crossed them and used them to strangle her neck tightly.

Then she freed one hand and ruthlessly attacked the girl’s chest.

Wen Nian struck fast and hard, completely ignoring any rules.

The girl howled in pain and instantly lost all will to fight.

Wen Nian snorted coldly.

She’d never lost a girl fight in her life.

Even in a dream, she wouldn’t lose now.

“Wen Nian! Let go! You little wretch, are you trying to strangle your sister?!”

The middle-aged woman realized things were going south and rushed in to break it up.

Wen Nian completely ignored her shouting, only letting go when the girl’s eyes began to roll back.

Fighting was all about being more vicious and more fearless.

She was sure this girl wouldn’t dare provoke her again.

The girl gasped for air, clutching her chest and sobbing in the woman’s arms.

“Mom, she bullied me!”

The woman’s face twisted with rage.

“Wen Nian, I never thought you could be this cruel! Wen Xue is your sister! And you actually tried to kill her!”

She glared at Wen Nian with cold eyes and continued her scolding.

“You can be jealous of Xue’er all you want—it won’t change anything. She’s a city girl, a high school student. And you? Just an uneducated village bumpkin. Even if Lu Hanzheng were blind, he’d never pick you. You think you can marry into the Lu family just because of your looks? Stop dreaming!”

Wen Xue? Lu Hanzheng?

The familiar names made Wen Nian freeze.

“Chen… Qiuwei?” she asked hesitantly.

The middle-aged woman’s face darkened.

“Wen Nian, I’m still your elder. Even if you don’t accept me as your stepmother, you shouldn’t be calling me by name! Your father was right—you need to be taught a proper lesson. Even if you do marry into the Zheng family, you’ll only bring disgrace to the Wen family!”

“Exactly! No manners at all. Mom, she was totally faking it before—when we get home, Dad needs to teach her a lesson too!” Wen Xue shouted from behind Chen Qiuwei, glaring at Wen Nian with both fear and wariness.

Clearly, Wen Nian’s ruthless fighting style had scared her.

This time, Wen Nian was truly stunned.

This isn’t the same character from the novel “Back to the ‘80s: Marrying a Military Officer” that she’d been reading before bed?

She had transmigrated into the book—and been mistaken for the supporting female character.

The one who had the exact same name as her, a hopeless romantic with zero self-preservation.

She married a man with violent tendencies, was beaten daily, and in the end was literally beaten to death, yet she kept defending that abusive husband until her last breath.

Wen Nian had pitied her misfortune and been furious at her lack of resolve. She even wrote a long review complaining about it in detail.

Who would’ve thought she’d end up transmigrating into the book herself?

Outside the battered and broken wooden door stood two men.

The man in front was very tall.

He wore a rough blue cotton outfit, clearly ill-fitting and patched all over.

A black belt cinched tightly around his lean waist, and he wore military boots on his feet.

With sword-like brows and starry eyes, sharp features, broad shoulders and long legs—his bone structure was striking.

Even in old, worn clothes, he couldn’t hide his handsome, noble aura.

But his handsome face was now as cold as ice.

The man behind him wore a proper military uniform. He was a bit shorter, with a clean and upright appearance—though his skin was rather tanned.

Meng Yichuan had just raised his hand to knock when he heard the name of his regiment commander. He quickly pulled back.

He sneaked a glance at Lu Hanzheng beside him.

He hadn’t expected this family to know the regiment commander.

And they even wanted to marry their daughter off to him?

Lu Hanzheng’s deep black eyes flashed with a trace of mockery, and his lips pressed into a firm line.

He had come today to visit the family of a fallen comrade.

While passing by the river, he saw someone fall in. Without hesitation, he jumped in to save her.

After asking around, he found out the girl he rescued was the daughter of this very family.

He had instructed Meng Yichuan to bring her home, while he went to a comrade’s place to borrow a set of clothes to change into.

He came back now only to retrieve his military jacket.

But he hadn’t expected to overhear such a conversation.

Inside the house, no one realized they had an audience outside.

Wen Nian quickly tried to recall the plot.

The female lead of this novel was Wen Xue—or more precisely, the reborn Wen Xue.

The male lead was Lu Hanzheng, the only son of the prestigious Lu family from the capital’s military district.

The female supporting character who shared her name was supposedly Wen Xue’s older sister.

But in truth, there was no blood relation between them.

Because the supporting character had been taken in by Wen Xue’s father.

Her adoptive mother, Wang Xiumei, was the village head of Shanghe Village—pretty and capable.

She’d taken a liking to Wen Jiancheng, who had been fostered in the countryside at the time.

Wen Jiancheng didn’t care for a village girl, but he also couldn’t bear the hardship of laboring in the fields.

His parents were late to come pick him up.

Then came a famine.

Although the foster family were distant relatives, they didn’t even have enough food for themselves—let alone for him.

So he gritted his teeth and married Wang Xiumei.

She could work, warm his bed, and wasn’t hard on the eyes—why not?

Wang Xiumei, unfortunately, was both shallow and hopelessly romantic.

She handled everything in and out of the home, ate the least, and worked the hardest.

After years of overwork and severe malnutrition during pregnancy, the child she bore had visible health defects.

While she lay asleep, Wen Jiancheng secretly took the child to the back mountain and abandoned her to die.

On his way back, he happened to come across a newly abandoned baby.

After checking and finding the infant healthy, he worried that if Wang Xiumei and her mother found out he’d dumped the baby, they’d make a scene.

So he simply brought this one back instead.

Not long after he returned home, Wang Xiumei began to hemorrhage from postpartum complications and soon died.

Right then, Wen Jiancheng’s parents sent someone to pick him up, and he left without looking back—leaving the baby with the maternal grandmother of the supporting character.

That grandmother had come to Shanghe Village years ago to escape a famine.

Not long after arriving, her husband fell ill and passed away.

She never remarried and raised her daughter on her own through hardship.

After Wang Xiumei’s death, the grandmother went blind from crying too much.

Still, she pulled herself together and raised her granddaughter through endless trials.

Years of hunger and illness took their toll. By the beginning of the year, she finally couldn’t hold on any longer and passed away.

She died without ever knowing that the granddaughter she cherished with all her heart had actually been picked up by Wen Jiancheng on a whim.

Her real granddaughter had frozen to death during that bitterly cold winter long ago.

The moment Wen Nian transmigrated into the story was exactly the beginning of the first chapter.

Right at the opening scene.