Wen Ci watched as the bathroom door opened, revealing a man with countless scars on his back. Even though Wen Ci had experienced the battlefields of the apocalypse, she found these wounds shocking.

Her heart couldn’t help but ache with pity. What had Huo Jingyuan gone through all these years?

The room was warmer than the bathroom. When Huo Jingyuan felt the slight rise in temperature, he thought the water heater had started working again. Just as he turned around, his eyes met Wen Ci’s.

Wen Ci’s gaze involuntarily drifted downward, a hint of amusement in her eyes.

Huo Jingyuan quickly reached out to close the door. In his haste earlier, he had forgotten to check if the door was properly shut, leading to this awkward situation.

After his shower, he slipped on a white T-shirt. Water droplets from his hair trailed down his throat, and Wen Ci’s eyes followed the movement.

The outline of his abs was faintly visible through the fabric.

“Are you going to the mall?” Huo Jingyuan asked.

Wen Ci glanced at the clock in the room. It was almost 7:30 PM. In the 1980s, there wasn’t much of a nightlife. “Are there still malls open this late?”

“The malls in Haishi close at 9 PM.”

Haishi was a provincial capital. Since the government encouraged the street vendor economy, nightlife had gradually begun to flourish, and this was the busiest time of the evening.

“What are we going to buy at the mall?” Wen Ci asked.

Huo Jingyuan nodded. “My comrades asked me to pick up some things for them.”

Soldiers in the Northwest Military Region didn’t get much leave except for annual leave and marriage leave. When they heard Huo Jingyuan was taking marriage leave, many of them asked him to bring back some items.

“I’d like to go shopping too.”

Wen Ci’s hair wasn’t completely dry yet. In this era, hair dryers were extremely hard to come by, so women had to rely on towels to dry their hair after washing it.

Drying hair was a difficult task, usually left to air drying.

As they stepped out of the guesthouse, Wen Ci saw many street vendors selling goods, including sweet potatoes, filling the air with a lively atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the store where Huo Jingyuan’s comrades had asked him to buy items had closed early. He frowned. “Looks like I won’t be able to get their things.”

“You still can,” Wen Ci blinked. “You can take the first bus back to the compound tomorrow morning, and I’ll help buy the things for them when the store opens.”

“No,” Huo Jingyuan refused the suggestion.

Wen Ci was new here and unfamiliar with the place. How could he let her help with shopping?

“But didn’t you promise to buy things for them?”

“In case of an emergency, they’ll understand.”

…

Meanwhile, far away in the capital, Jiang Ye, lying on the sofa in the compound, suddenly woke up. She looked around the living room, her eyes wide open, and then tears streamed down her face.

Had she really been reborn?

In her previous life, she had dated a boy in high school who was destined for Tsinghua or Peking University. When she heard her parents wanted to marry her off to a man from the Northwest whom she had never met, she firmly refused and even subtly revealed her true background.

This led to the Jiang family’s biological daughter being sent to marry the man from the Northwest instead.

But…

Decades later, Jiang Ye had suffered greatly. Her boyfriend had always had a white moonlight in his heart, and due to health reasons, she had never been able to have children.

Her husband despised her, and her life ended in tragedy.

In contrast, Wen Ci, who had taken her place in the marriage, though there was no love between them, was still the dignified wife of a high-ranking official.

Jiang Ye narrowed her eyes. Having been reborn, she was determined to change her fate. However, she wasn’t sure what point in time she had returned to. Just then, the sound of the door opening caught her attention. She saw her brother helping their drunk father into the house.

“Brother, Dad, I want to marry Huo Jingyuan.”