Chapter 1

Early summer, at dawn.

After a night of heavy drinking, Su Qingwan turned over contentedly without opening her eyes. No one knew that she had just had a most intoxicating dream—a dream about a man who fit her heart’s desires perfectly.

Everything about him was wonderful, except for the coldness in his handsome features.

But unlike her usual calm and restrained self, in the dream Su Qingwan had taken the lead with rare boldness. The feel of those sculpted eight-pack abs still seemed to linger at her fingertips, leaving behind a trace of warmth and a tantalizing aftertaste.

Suddenly, a low husky voice came from above her head.
“Still not done touching?”

Wait—what?!

Su Qingwan’s eyes flew open. The scene before her nearly crashed her twenty-two-year-old brain like a system overload.

“What’s going on?” She stared blankly at the man lying beside her. Her breath was soft and fragrant as she murmured, while her little hand under the quilt secretly pinched at her thigh.

Could this be a rare dream within a dream—was she still asleep?

“Huh, no pain.” A surge of delight bloomed in her chest, the corners of her lips curling upward. “So it really is a dream!”

And since it was only a dream, she shamelessly took advantage and groped a little more—waste not, want not!

“You pinched my leg.” The man lowered his eyes to look at her, voice cool and detached.

With that, he immediately sat up and began to dress.

Su Qingwan’s eyes widened, her delicate face flushing scarlet. She hastily turned her back.

“Ahh—!” The sudden movement tugged at her sore muscles, a wave of weakness and aching sweeping through her body as though she had climbed mountains all night long.

Pain!

What on earth was happening? Su Qingwan clutched her head, curling into the corner of the bed. Wasn’t it said that in dreams you don’t feel pain?

Very soon, the man had finished dressing.

After a moment of hesitation, he bent down to pick up the pink lacy garment draped over the bed frame. Handing it to her with a flicker of unease in his eyes, he spoke more gently this time:
“Su Qingwan, I’ll take responsibility.”

Su Qingwan peeked at him, snatched the frilly little thing away with lightning speed, and stammered with a flushed face, “Who needs you to take respon—”

Before she could finish, hurried footsteps sounded in the yard outside, rushing straight toward the room.

And from the sound of it, more than just two or three people.

Startled, Su Qingwan scrambled to put on her clothes. Dream or not, she still had her dignity!

But why did these clothes look so strange, like fashion stuck in the last century?

Bang! Bang! Bang! Violent pounding rattled the door, followed by a shrill voice:
“Lu Zheng, open up!”

“Grandmother, I swear Qingwan is inside! I saw Lu Zheng drag her in with my own eyes!”

Sister? Half-dressed, Su Qingwan froze in confusion.

Her name was indeed Su Qingwan, but she was an orphan—where had this so-called sister come from?

And more importantly—where was she?

She distinctly remembered attending a farewell dinner with her college classmates last night. She had drunk too much, returned to the dorm, and passed out.

But now, looking around, this was clearly no dormitory. It was a shabby shack.

The only furniture was a solid wooden bed and a wobbly desk and chair by the window.

Then she spotted the perpetual calendar on the wall—May 1st, 1975.

And the man in front of her, also wearing era-appropriate clothes…

Could it be—she had traveled through time?

“Lu Zheng! If you don’t open this door right now, don’t blame us for breaking it down!” The sharp voice rang out again, tinged with excitement.

The man turned to her, his gaze complicated. “Have you made up your mind?”

Before Su Qingwan could respond, with a loud crash, the flimsy wooden door collapsed and a crowd of villagers swarmed inside.

A lone man and woman, together in the same room. A messy bed. The conclusion was obvious—compromised purity!

“Well, well! Sharing a bed, just as I thought!” someone muttered gleefully, the crowd buzzing with gossip.

“What a disgrace!” An old woman beat her chest in fury. “Hold down that beast!”

“My Qingwan is young and innocent. Clearly this brute surnamed Lu took advantage, using some vile trick to abduct her while we weren’t looking!”

“He dared ruin my Qingwan—I’ll kill him today!”

The villagers, easily swayed by the old matriarch’s words, were quickly riled up. Several strong young men exchanged looks, then rushed forward to pin Lu Zheng down. Soon, ropes were fetched and tied around him.

Through it all, the man offered no resistance, only watching Su Qingwan with a cold, measuring gaze.

She knew very well—with his build, if he had wanted to fight back, no one here could have subdued him.

Yet after he was bound, the old woman still wasn’t satisfied. She turned on the young woman at her side and barked,
“Song Zhaodi! Why are you standing there like an idiot? Go fetch your second uncle and Jiang Chunlan! Let them see what a disgrace their precious daughter has committed!”

At the names Jiang Chunlan, Song Zhaodi, Lu Zheng—and the all-too-familiar scene of a “caught in the act” scandal—realization struck Su Qingwan like lightning.

She hadn’t just time-traveled. She had fallen into a novel!

Specifically, into the manuscript her roommate had written—“Rebirth in the Seventies: Marrying the Tycoon, Not the Rough Man.”

The reborn heroine in that story was Song Zhaodi, who in her previous life had schemed to marry the powerful Lu Zheng, only to earn his disdain. Shortly after their wedding, he returned to the capital and abandoned her, leaving her to wither away in misery in Qingxi Village.

Reborn, Song Zhaodi returned to the night she had drugged Lu Zheng and before she could climb into his bed.

In her desperation, she had shoved her drunken cousin into his room instead.

The next morning, she dragged her grandmother and the whole village over to “catch them in the act.”

She knew Lu Zheng was stoic and disciplined—he would never touch her cousin no matter what. At most, the cousin would face a bit of gossip. But compared to securing her own future, what did that matter?

This time, Song Zhaodi not only wanted to sever ties with Lu Zheng but also to ruin him completely—destroying his prospects to avenge her previous life of neglect and abandonment.

Su Qingwan remembered teasing her roommate back then:
“What’s the cousin’s name? How dumb must she be to let herself be used like that?”

Her roommate hadn’t answered, only giving her a strange look.

Now she understood. The cannon-fodder cousin in the book bore her exact name—Su Qingwan!

And what’s worse, Lu Zheng may have been disciplined, but he hadn’t been able to resist her drunken, fiery advances last night.

But even that wasn’t the worst of it.

The real nightmare was what came next in the plot.

Soon, “her” parents would rush to the scene. They adored their daughter as the apple of their eye. Believing she had been wronged, they would be enraged and beat Lu Zheng half to death.

Alone and unprotected in the village, already considered an outsider sent down from the capital, Lu Zheng would not resist—knowing himself to be “in the wrong.”

By the time the villagers realized something was off and rushed him to the hospital, it would be too late.

He would lose a leg, his fertility, and even suffer brain damage.

A man’s entire life, destroyed in one night.

Su Qingwan clenched her fists. No matter what, she would not let this tragedy play out!