“You’re selling your own son and still trying to talk fancy? Two hundred yuan, how shameless can you get? We agreed on one hundred, so it’s one hundred. If you’re too greedy, you’ll be struck by lightning, you know that?”

What a heartless thing to do!

“One hundred is for one child, two hundred for two. Who’s being greedy here? It’s you, isn’t it?” The young woman’s pretty face was full of contempt and disdain.

She was sure the other party would agree.

In the countryside, people valued their descendants more than anything.

Without a son, they’d be gossiped about and, after death, there’d be no one to offer them sacrifices.

It would be a disgrace.

The Zhao couple had been childless for over twenty years; what good was their brick house if they had no descendants?

Once they died, who knew who would benefit from their hard work?

Mrs. Zhao and her husband were upset.

They had agreed on one hundred yuan, how did it become two hundred?

One hundred was enough to save for two years.

These educated youth were annoying, useless at work, and always trying to outsmart people.

“Then I’ll just take one.” Mrs. Zhao said fiercely.

“If you don’t want them, forget it. I’m leaving!” The woman pretended to walk away. “If I didn’t urgently need money, I wouldn’t sell them to you even for five hundred.”

Although she disliked her own sons, they were still healthy, good-looking boys, and surely others would cherish them.

She was just bluffing; she had already decided to take the money they offered and leave the boys behind.

Mrs. Zhao wouldn’t let her go, grabbing her arm. “Don’t go!”

Country women were stronger, and the woman stumbled from the pull.

“What are you doing, trying to rob me?” The woman was furious and tried to fight back.

The two women tussled, pushing and shoving.

Mrs. Zhao, being stronger, pushed the woman, who tripped and hit the corner of the table as she fell.

“Ouch!” the woman cried out in pain, then lay still on the ground.

Mrs. Zhao said, “Stop pretending, get up.”

The woman didn’t move.

Mrs. Zhao became anxious. “Husband, could she be dead?”

Mr. Zhao waved his hand and grumbled, “No, it’s just a bump, she won’t die that easily.”

Mrs. Zhao bent down to check on the woman and realized she wasn’t breathing.

Frightened, she jumped up and whispered frantically, “She’s dead, she’s dead!”

“Don’t talk nonsense! What dead person? Quickly pinch her philtrum.”

Mrs. Zhao’s hands were trembling, but she forced herself to stay calm and pinched the woman’s philtrum, yet there was no response.

Mr. Zhao, also scared of something going wrong, quickly went to help.

Just as his hand was about to touch the woman, she suddenly opened her eyes.

Those eyes, which had always looked down on them because she was pretty and educated, now glared at them even more coldly, shining with a clear and icy light.

“Oh my!” Mr. Zhao was so startled that he instinctively pulled his wife back, watching the woman warily.

Jiang Lin’s head felt like it was being stabbed by countless needles, and her vision was a bit blurry.

She blinked hard and, after a few seconds, her sight cleared.

Even though the light wasn’t very bright, she immediately noticed something was wrong.

Why was she in a different place?

She had just bumped her head, and her mind wasn’t very clear.

She was still thinking about how a single bump could have changed her surroundings.

Was it an illusion? Or had she been unconscious for a long time?

She rubbed her eyes instinctively and then saw the frightened couple opposite her.

Jiang Lin’s hair stood on end, and she instantly widened her eyes, standing up quickly in a defensive posture.

She shouted sternly, “Who are you? What are you trying to do?”

“Bian Haitao, get out here! What kind of trick are you playing? This is illegal!”

Could it be that the scumbag sold her to some remote village?!!

Although she had read some novels about time travel and reincarnation, when faced with such a situation, she wouldn’t think of time travel first.

Her initial thought was that she had been drugged and kidnapped.

In that moment, a thousand scenarios and countermeasures flooded her mind.

At the time, she had been painting their new home when Bian Haitao, whom she had been married to for six months, suddenly approached her, stammering about wanting to break up.

“Linlin, I… I’ve fallen in love with someone else. She’s… pregnant with my child. I need to give her and the baby a proper status…”

“Linlin, I know I’ve wronged you, but you wouldn’t want me to be an irresponsible man, right?”

How did she react back then?

She felt like she was having a heart attack, but instead of flying into a hysterical rage, she remained unusually calm, looked at him, and nodded. “Fine, let’s go to the civil affairs bureau and change the certificate. If you’re in a hurry, we can go now.”

After all, getting a divorce certificate wasn’t like getting married; there was no need to change clothes or wash up.

Meanwhile, her mind was filtering through who he might have cheated with and when it had happened without her noticing any signs.

Was it that junior of his, or someone else? But then she thought it didn’t matter who it was.

As long as he had cheated, there was no need to cling to the relationship.

No matter how deep the wound, time would heal it.

There was no point in dragging it out.

But the scumbag continued to mutter, “Linlin, you see… you’re pretty, capable, and wealthy. You can buy another house in the future… I… I’ve just graduated with a PhD, I don’t own a single brick… I can’t let them…”

“You want the house?” Jiang Lin got angry. “Bian Haitao, I bought the house with my own money, you didn’t contribute a cent. Oh, except for that one time when my tire got a puncture at the building materials market, and you paid for the taxi.”

“I said those expenses were borrowed from you. I always intended to pay you back. I never wanted to take advantage of you!”

“The tuition you borrowed certainly needs to be repaid, there’s a promissory note and bank transfers. You can’t avoid that. As for the house… don’t even dream about it.”

“We’re getting divorced, and we should split the assets fifty-fifty!”

“Oh, sorry, but this house was bought before we got married, with all my savings. There’s also a debt of one million yuan. Do you want to split that too?”

“Jiang Lin! I never realized you were so cunning. You always said you admired, loved, and supported me, and this is how you repay me? I’ve been blind for all these years to not see through you! Your parents are awful, your education level is low, and I never held that against you. Yet you treat me like this…”

“Go to hell!” Jiang Lin grabbed a brick from the carpenter’s table and struck him.

In response, he pushed her, causing her head to hit the wall.

She didn’t remember passing out. It was just a bump.

One moment her eyes were closed, and the next, she found herself here.

Where was Bian Haitao?

“Sister, don’t be afraid, don’t shout!” Mrs. Zhao quickly tried to calm her down. “You just accidentally hit your head, you’re fine.”

Mrs. Zhao assumed Jiang Lin had just been knocked out for a moment and would wake up with a pinch to the philtrum.

Hearing the calm tone of the old woman, Jiang Lin relaxed a bit but remained on high alert.

“Who are you to Bian Haitao?” she asked.

Mrs. Zhao exchanged a puzzled glance with her husband and shook her head. “We don’t know this person.”

Jiang Lin didn’t think they were lying.

The tension in her chest eased slightly.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, revealing the woman who had spoken.

She appeared to be a middle-aged… or perhaps an elderly woman?

Her skin was dark and yellow, her cheeks covered in sunspots.

Though her short, ear-length hair was black, it was filthy and greasy, clearly unwashed for days.

The odor of dirt and grease was nauseating. Her clothes seemed ancient, an oversized, faded shirt and pants hidden in the shadows, likely equally shabby.

Even if Bian Haitao’s family was poor, they wouldn’t be this destitute.

Was this some kind of reality show, a prank, or a hidden camera stunt?

Had she been kidnapped and brought here while unconscious? This felt like a malicious abduction!

She quickly scanned the room, looking for hidden cameras.

The place was an extremely old-fashioned rural house: wooden windows, an earthen kang bed, and smoke-stained walls.

The ceiling was low, exposing wooden beams and corn stalks.

The walls were plastered with yellow mud mixed with wheat straw.

There were posters on the walls, their images and text too faded from smoke to decipher.

Beside her was a blackened table with a rattan thermos on it, something only seen in old TV shows.

Jiang Lin, being in the renovation business, knew various styles, but this one seemed to belong to the poorest, most backward rural areas.

Just as she was about to declare that she wasn’t participating in any show and to stop messing with her.

Mrs. Zhao opened a wooden box on the kang bed, taking out a stack of money and ration tickets.

Mrs. Zhao handed two hundred yuan and one hundred catties of grain tickets to Jiang Lin, trying to make peace. “Alright, two hundred it is.”

She hated to part with the money, but thinking about how those two kids were truly wonderful—twins, fair and beautiful—she gritted her teeth and decided to buy them.

Jiang Lin eyed the colorful stack of bills in the woman’s hand.

The dim light made it hard to see clearly, so she moved closer and noticed that some were new and some were old, with the largest denomination being ten yuan.

Ten yuan?!!

Jiang Lin’s eyes widened as she noticed the small print reading 1965.

This ancient form of Chinese currency was still in use?

“Where am I?” she asked, growing increasingly anxious.

“This is Dache Dianzi, we’re the Zhao family,” Mrs. Zhao said, exchanging a worried glance with her husband.

They wondered if Jiang Lin had become disoriented from the bump on her head.

Jiang Lin thought: You’re still pretending?

“What year is it?”

Mr. Zhao replied, “It’s the year of the dragon, today is the Great Heat festival.”

He pointed to the wall above the kang bed, which had an old calendar.

Just as Jiang Lin was about to sarcastically demand they reveal the hidden camera, a sharp pain shot through her head, flooding her mind with information.

…

Jiang Lin: !!!

I’ve time-traveled?

It felt like a bolt from the blue.

…

“Sister, we agreed on one hundred yuan and one hundred catties of grain tickets. Now you’re asking for two hundred, we’ll comply. But we can’t give more grain; we only have enough for ourselves, and we can’t borrow any either,” Mrs. Zhao said earnestly.

Mrs. Zhao considered herself not a bad person.

She and her husband couldn’t have children and didn’t want to see their family line end.

They didn’t want to adopt someone else’s child, fearing it might lead to disputes over their property.

So, they quietly sought to buy a child.

At that time, many families had more children than they could manage, so it wasn’t impossible to find one at the right price.

She had looked at several children and finally chose Jiang Lin’s twins.

The boys were handsome and, importantly, they were six years old, born on the Mid-Autumn Festival.

They were old enough to remember little and could be raised as their own, but not so young that they were still in diapers and hard to care for.

At this moment, Jiang Lin felt like she had turned to stone.

There was so much information flooding her mind that she couldn’t process it all.

Her head was pounding, and she had no time to deal with Mrs. Zhao.

What the hell!

She hadn’t been kidnapped, and this wasn’t some reality TV show.

She had actually time-traveled!

Even worse, she had arrived just as her current self was selling her children, her own sons!

Fate was truly playing a cruel joke on her!

Because her father’s infidelity during her childhood had left her with abandonment issues, she had always despised people who abandoned their children.

And now, she had become a mother selling her own sons?

“Two hundred yuan and a hundred catties of grain?” Jiang Lin’s face darkened as she coldly said, “You think you can buy two children with that?”

Mrs. Zhao, fearing she would ask for more money, quickly said, “What, you’re still not satisfied? If not, then forget it.”

She had thought this woman seemed desperate for money and believed that two hundred was the maximum.

She hadn’t expected her to be so greedy.

These educated youth from the city were all cunning and annoying.

Jiang Lin wanted to curse them, but her head throbbed with pain like needles piercing her brain.

Cold sweat rolled down her face, and she clutched her head, feeling like she might bang it against the wall.

Seeing her in such pain, Mr. and Mrs. Zhao were too scared to touch her, fearing she might hurt herself more.

They felt anxious and uncertain.

After a moment, Jiang Lin’s headache eased a bit, and she remembered the children.

She called out, “Cheng Dabao, Cheng Xiaobao!”

“Don’t worry, they’re outside playing with cicadas,” Mrs. Zhao said with a comforting smile. “You didn’t want them to hear and cling to you, so you let them play outside, remember?”

Jiang Lin: … I actually forgot.

She pressed her hand to her forehead and said angrily, “Two hundred is not enough! Such wonderful children are worth at least ten thousand!”

Mrs. Zhao was taken aback, “Ten thousand! That’s impossible! We don’t have that kind of money!”

Jiang Lin, still furious and with a throbbing head, decided to stand her ground.

She couldn’t believe the situation she was in and was determined not to let her sons go so cheaply.