Chapter 1: Rebirth of the Fake Daughter [Seeking Follow-up Reading]

“You wretched little brat!”

A heavy slap landed hard. The frail and thin Shi Qingqing staggered from the blow and thud! her head slammed into the wall.

Then everything went still.

“Don’t you dare play dead! Shi Qingqing, you heartless, ungrateful thing! If anything happens to Lanlan, I I’ll make you pay with your life!”

Shi Qingqing’s skull throbbed with waves of pain.
The resentment and grief building in her chest hadn’t yet faded.

When she opened her eyes and saw the Shi family trio standing in front of her, hatred and fury exploded in her gaze.

At that moment, even if it was just a hallucination, she wanted to leap forward and tear them apart!

But the moment she moved, her whole body went limp, and her face burned with pain.

Only then did Shi Qingqing realize the Shi family in front of her were wearing clothes from decades ago. Even Shi Wang, that treacherous brat, looked barely ten years old,
not the grown man who later beat her to death with his fists.

She glanced around and saw the slogans and quotes from great leaders on the wall clearly from the 1960s.

“Shi Qingqing! What kind of attitude is that? Your mother’s talking to you!”

A furious voice snapped her back to reality.

She remembered now.
This was late March, 1966, shortly after she had gotten a job at a factory.

But Qiao Lanlan, who had tested for the same job, was suddenly revealed to be her parents’ real daughter.
And she was actually the daughter of the Qiao family.

Shi Jingye and Wang Meifang brought Qiao Lanlan home without hesitation.
But Shi Qingqing refused to change her surname or go with the Qiao couple she didn’t want to leave the Shi family.

The Shi family, seeing this, felt proud and smug, and kept her around.

From that point on, she only groveled harder to please them.

When Qiao Lanlan failed to get the job, and Wang Meifang merely hinted, she immediately gave her job away.

Later, when Lanlan suddenly had a heart attack at the factory and fainted, she helped rush her to the hospital.
When the Shi family got word and arrived, Wang Meifang slapped her across the face without a single question.

That slap left her entire cheek numb. Had it landed just slightly off, it could’ve made her deaf!

But back then, having grown up being beaten and scolded by the Shi family, she thought it was normal.
Coupled with her deep sense of guilt toward the Shi family and Lanlan, she was filled with remorse.

Even though she was the one who gave up the job, the one wrongly blamed and beaten, and the one who felt all the pain…
She still lowered her head and apologized, constantly trying to please them.

But now…

Shi Qingqing’s gaze turned deep and cold.

Though the Shi parents were still shouting abuse in her ears, her heart surged with excitement.
Excitement that she had been reborn after death and could now take revenge with her ownhands.

Still not satisfied with venting her anger, Wang Meifang rushed at her again and started pounding her.

“Have you gone mute like that vicious biological mother of yours?!”
“You ungrateful brat! We fed you, clothed you, sent you to school you stole everything that should’ve belonged to Lanlan! That job was hers! So what if you gave it to her?!”

As the curses rained down and fists hit her body, Shi Qingqing’s eyes remained cold and unmoved.

Taking advantage of Wang Meifang’s body blocking her from view, she discreetly faced the wall and sipped some spiritual spring water from her space.

Soon, energy flowed through her limbs.

Feeling her strength return, Shi Qingqing’s gaze turned sharp and fierce!

She suddenly spun around and scratched Wang Meifang’s face hard!

To protect herself, she had curled into a defensive ball earlier, so she launched this strike based on pure instinct.
Wang Meifang, completely off guard, yelped in pain:

“Aiyo!”

Her eye got scratched. She reflexively backed off to cover her face, crying out in disbelief:
“Shi Qingqing! You dare hit me?!”

Before Shi Jingye or Shi Wang could respond, Shi Qingqing quickly grabbed Wang Meifang’s arms and, using her own weight, yanked her down

BANG!

Wang Meifang crashed headfirst into the wall, just like Shi Qingqing had earlier.
But Wang Meifang’s skull seemed harder she grunted in pain but was still able to fight.

“Hey! You little brat Old Shi! OLD SHI!!”

Tears poured from her eyes as she kept them shut, wailing for her husband.

Seeing his wife get hurt, Shi Jingye’s face darkened and he strode over.

Shi Qingqing slipped out from under Wang Meifang, using the moment to get used to her young, weak body again.

In her previous life, after becoming wealthy, she had taken self-defense courses in secret to escape the abuse of Zhou Hongjun and his mother.
If the Shi family hadn’t tipped Zhou Hongjun off about her address,
and he hadn’t pretended to be a delivery man just to stab her the moment she opened the door,
catching her completely unprepared she wouldn’t have died from the beatings that followed.

Shi Jingye glanced at Wang Meifang, and seeing she wasn’t seriously hurt, turned his scowl on Shi Qingqing.

“You’re out of control, huh? KNEEL!”

Right there in the hospital corridor, with people walking back and forth, he demanded she kneel proof that Shi Jingye truly believed he was the master of everything.

In her past life, it was always like this.
Whenever she did something he disliked, he forced her to kneel.
If she refused, she’d get beaten and threatened with being banned from school.

Shi Qingqing loved going to school.

At school, no one called her a wretch, no one told her she was born to serve the Shi family and love her little brother.
Instead, teachers and classmates praised her for being smart, kind, and capable.

So, just to stay in school, even after gaining a sense of self through education, she still caved to the Shi family’s abuse.

She had hoped that getting a job and becoming a factory worker would help her turn her life around.
But the Shi family had never intended to let her go.

The child swap wasn’t accidentally exposed.
In her previous life, she only learned the truth right before dying when she heard Wang Meifang confess.

The Shi family’s biological daughter had been born with a congenital heart defect.
Wang Meifang knew her husband wanted a healthy son, but she had not only given birth to a daughter it was a sickly one.

In a moment of desperation, she switched babies.

Seeing how much the Qiao couple doted on their newborn daughter, Wang Meifang targeted the Qiao family.
She figured, since the Qiaos adored their daughter, they’d spare no expense to save her.

She only took Shi Qingqing home to avoid suspicion.

But she never wanted to raise her.
She tried several times to sell or abandon her, but was foiled by kind strangers or unexpected events.

Once Shi Qingqing turned four and could cook, clean, and do chores,
Wang Meifang decided it wasn’t so bad having a little servant at home and gave up on discarding her.

Then came the factory recruitment. Wang Meifang saw Qiao Lanlan again a perfectly healthy daughter, no trace of the sickly baby she once was.

So, she decided to bring her back.

Once Shi Qingqing passed the job exam, Wang Meifang manipulated events to expose the baby swap,
then used both coercion and guilt to force her to give up the job.