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This is a fictional world. Please don’t take it too seriously.
“This girl’s forehead is burning hot. Should we take her to Doctor Zhou to have a look?”
“Take her where? She’s just a wretched little brat. Just force some herbal decoction down her throat and she’ll be fine. That girl has a tough life—she won’t die that easily.”
“Then I’ll go up the mountain to dig up some herbs for her. You hurry up and clean her up and change her clothes.”
“Clean her? Hmph, I’m going to check the room next door first. Your sister-in-law has quite a few good things in her hands. Let me go see what I can find.”
“I’m not dealing with you. I’ll go dig up some Banlangen (isatis root) first.”
The two people speaking were Lin Hongjun and Zhuang Chunya, and the girl lying on the bed was Lin Qingmei.
A week ago, Lin Qingmei’s grandmother, the only person she relied on, passed away. From that moment, Lin Qingmei lost all her spirit.
After the funeral yesterday, Lin Qingmei started running a fever. It wasn’t until a full day and night later that Lin Hongjun and Zhuang Chunya noticed.
They were her paternal grandaunt and granduncle.
“So hot… my head hurts…”
“Didn’t I self-destruct? Why is my body so hot? Don’t tell me… I failed to blow myself up and got bitten by the Zombie King instead?”
Lin Qingmei slowly opened her eyes and stared blankly at the pitch-black ceiling above her.
The apocalypse might’ve been chaotic, but at least the houses weren’t this bad! This kind of mud-brick house could collapse with just one slap from a zombie.
Suddenly, her head throbbed with intense pain, and memories of a sixteen-year-old girl flooded her mind.
Just then, a loud bang from the room next door startled Lin Qingmei out of her thoughts.
Who was that? Wasn’t she supposed to be the only one left in this house? Why would there be someone else?
The sound came from her grandmother’s room. Could it be a thief?
There were still quite a few valuable items in Grandma’s room—she couldn’t let a thief take them away.
Lin Qingmei opened the door and was met with the sight of an old woman hurriedly clutching a bundle.
“You old hag! You’re blatantly stealing in broad daylight! Drop what’s in your hands, or don’t blame me for calling the police!”
“Qingmei, you’re awake? I was just tidying up your grandma’s room for you. You’re still a child—you don’t understand. When an elder passes away, some of their belongings need to be burned. Everything in this bundle is meant to be burned.”
Zhuang Chunya panicked upon seeing Lin Qingmei at the door. She just wanted to sneak off with the bundle as fast as possible. After all, the old Qingmei was naive and clueless—if she could trick her, everything would be fine.
But to her dismay, this wasn’t the same Lin Qingmei anymore.
This Lin Qingmei was a supernatural ability user from the apocalypse. Would she really be fooled by an old woman like her? Zhuang Chunya had no idea her little scheme was about to backfire.
“You old hag, who are you trying to fool? I’ve seen clothes and bedding burned for the dead, but I’ve never seen anyone burn money and jewelry! I suggest you hand that over right now. For the sake of our tiny blood relation, I’ll let it slide.”
“Qingmei girl, what are you saying? How could your grandaunt lie to you? Aren’t you still running a fever? Hurry up and lie down. I’ll go cook some porridge and bring it over.”
Zhuang Chunya tried to shove Lin Qingmei aside and slip out the door.
Suddenly—crack—her wrists were snapped in an instant, and the bundle was snatched away by Lin Qingmei.
“Lin Qingmei! You damned girl, give that back! That stuff is mine!”
“Yours? Funny, I didn’t know your things were kept in my house. Should I go search your place to see if anything of mine ended up there? Zhuang Chunya, I suggest you behave yourself. Don’t make me angry, or I’ll send you straight to the Public Security Bureau.”
Lin Qingmei shoved the injured Zhuang Chunya out the door and slammed the courtyard gate shut, ignoring her curses.
She was still running a fever from the transmigration. But dealing with someone like Zhuang Chunya? She had plenty of ways. Breaking her hands was enough of a warning.
Ah… finally, some peace and quiet. She still had a fever and needed to take some medicine quickly.
She focused inward with her thoughts and was surprised to find her abilities from her previous life—space, wood, and strength types—were still there. Unfortunately, only her space ability remained at level 10. Her wood and strength abilities had dropped to level 1.
The wood ability now could only handle minor ailments. There was no way she could be as powerful as before.
This wasn’t the apocalypse—there were no zombie cores to help her train. Relying solely on the spiritual energy of trees? If she could reach level 5 in this life, she’d be lucky.
For now, what mattered most was reducing her fever. She activated her wood ability to circulate within her body, and soon the fever subsided.
The body she had now was too weak—even a fever could nearly kill her.
She didn’t know exactly how strong her level 1 strength ability was yet, but the sky was already dark. She’d have to test it tomorrow.
Lin Qingmei tossed the bundle she took from Zhuang Chunya into her space. She still felt unwell and wasn’t in the mood to organize anything. She’d deal with it tomorrow.
She was drenched in sweat from the fever and felt sticky all over. Since there was still light, she quickly took out a bucket of warm water from her space to bathe.
She had her space ability even before the apocalypse started. In the early days of chaos, she had already scavenged several supermarkets and docks, and later even collected inventory from clothing factories, shoe factories, agricultural machinery plants, and seed companies.
For convenience, she’d stored many large barrels of boiled and warm water inside her space. There were even iced drinks, sour plum soup, and mung bean soup in reserve.
She had everything in her space—except for food, which was running low. Just two bags of rice, two bags of flour, and a basket of freshly steamed buns.
As for meat? None. In the late apocalypse, all animals had mutated. Their meat carried viruses, and before she died, scientists still hadn’t managed to develop any safe-to-eat livestock.
The frozen meat and canned goods she had scavenged had long been eaten over the past five years. That’s why she was especially craving meat now.
Just then, two hungry hens behind the house escaped from their coop.
Hearing their clucking, Lin Qingmei lit up with excitement. Why not kill one and make chicken soup tonight? She hadn’t had any in so long.
Without hesitation, she went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and began to slaughter the chicken.
Bleeding, plucking, gutting—she moved swiftly. Within an hour, she was sipping fragrant chicken soup.
Mmm, delicious! So fresh and flavorful. If only she had some dried mushrooms to throw in—it’d taste even better.
Unfortunately, she had transmigrated into a province in the south of China where mushrooms were rare and most couldn’t be dried.
The original host’s father, Lin Jianshe, was serving in the Northeast as a soldier and is now a regiment commander in a special forces unit. Her mother, Yao Yanfang, is a doctor at a military hospital in the Northeast.
She also has a twin sister named Lin Qinglan and a younger brother, Lin Zheng, who is still in elementary school.
Because Yao Yanfang suffered severe bleeding when giving birth to the twins, she always resented Lin Qingmei. When the twins were only one month old, she sent Lin Qingmei back to her paternal grandparents’ home to be raised by Grandpa Lin and Grandma Lin.
To this day, Lin Qingmei has never seen Yao Yanfang in person. Every year when Lin Jianshe returned home on leave, he only brought Lin Qinglan and Lin Zheng. Because she couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law, Yao Yanfang never returned to Linjiawan after her early visit right after marrying Lin Jianshe.
This time, after Grandma Lin passed away, Lin Qingmei called the Northeast to inform them. Unfortunately, Lin Jianshe was away on a mission.
Yao Yanfang’s only response after hearing about Grandma Lin’s death was a cold, “Got it,” before she hung up the phone.
The original host fell ill not just from grief but from a complete sense of hopelessness toward life.
She didn’t expect that even after her grandmother died, her own mother wouldn’t consider bringing her back. She didn’t even ask how she was doing. After that call, the last shred of hope in her heart for Yao Yanfang disappeared.
Now that Lin Qingmei had taken over this body, she cared even less about such irresponsible parents.
If they didn’t want to take her to the Northeast—fine by her. Staying in Guangdong alone wasn’t so bad.
Linjiawan was quite close to the sea. In a while, if she had the chance, she planned to visit Hong Kong City. She was curious about what the 1960s version of Hong Kong looked like.
It was only 1968. Over the next ten years, domestic resources would be very scarce. If she wanted to eat well, she’d have to head to Hong Kong to get it.
She even had several speedboats stored in her space, so going to Hong Kong wouldn’t be difficult.
Unfortunately, her best friend Wu Chunlan didn’t transmigrate with her. As a level 10 supernatural ability user, if Lin Qingmei had self-destructed, then Wu Chunlan, who had fought alongside her, likely hadn’t survived either. She only hoped Wu Chunlan had also transmigrated, just like her.
The thought of Wu Chunlan brought tears to Lin Qingmei’s eyes. Their bond was deeper than blood sisters.
After crying for a bit, she started feeling sleepy. Even though she had been energetic at first, exhaustion quickly took over.
Even with her wood-type ability having regulated her body, after a high fever, her whole body still ached.
She changed the bedding on the bed and lay down under the thin quilt she used in her previous life before closing her eyes.
In October, Guangdong had large temperature differences between day and night—short sleeves during the day but needing a thin quilt at night.
The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight entered the window, Lin Qingmei woke up.
It had been a long time since she’d had a good night’s sleep. In her previous life, she had to face zombies every day. She had to stay alert every moment, not only against zombies but also the scheming humans in the shadows.
After breakfast, she took out the bundle she had snatched back yesterday from her space.
She didn’t know what was inside, but it felt a little heavy in her hands.
In truth, there weren’t many valuables in Grandma Lin’s room. The real treasures were all hidden in a secret room beneath Lin Qingmei’s room.
In Grandma’s room, there were only half a jar of malted milk powder and two cans of fruit.
Opening the bundle, Lin Qingmei found exactly that: two fruit cans, half a jar of malted milk powder, and a few pieces of jewelry Grandma used to wear.
That Zhuang Chunya really had shallow eyes—she went through all that trouble just to steal this?
Zhuang Chunya: I only did it because I couldn’t find your family’s money or real valuables.
She placed the canned goods and malted milk on her desk. As for the jewelry, she found a box to store them in and casually tossed it into her space.
They were all silver and not worth much. The truly valuable pieces had long been hidden in the secret chamber.
Grandma Lin had a rather dramatic past. She was born in 1912, in Shanghai, to the wealthy Wang family. She was the eldest illegitimate daughter of the family patriarch. At the age of 16, when the Wang family hastily sold off their assets to emigrate to England, she was pushed into the sea during the voyage—and coincidentally rescued by Grandpa Lin, who was out fishing.
They fell in love, got married, and settled in Linjiawan.
Shortly after their marriage, Grandma Lin took Grandpa Lin back to Shanghai. At the time, he was a captain of a long-distance voyage ship and personally sailed the ship to escort her back.
The Wang family had left in such a rush that many valuables were left behind, all stored in a secret chamber in their old home.
After returning to Shanghai, Grandma and Grandpa Lin quietly moved over a dozen boxes of treasure from that chamber onto the ship.
Once they had dug out a secret room beneath their own house, Grandpa Lin would stop by Shanghai on every voyage to retrieve more furniture from the Wang family home.
Much of the furniture wasn’t worth much and was sold in Yangcheng (Guangzhou), while the pricier items were kept.
In over three years, the elderly couple essentially emptied out the Wang family estate.
Now, the secret chamber beneath Lin Qingmei’s room was completely full—not just of those Wang family items, but also of the wealth Grandpa Lin had accumulated over the decades.
He was the captain of the largest ship under the county’s Marine Products Department, and all the crew members on board were from Linjiawan.
Besides fishing, the long-range vessel also occasionally transported government supplies.
Grandpa Lin made full use of his role to trade goods—selling textiles and porcelain from China to coastal countries and Hong Kong, and then bringing rice from Southeast Asia back to China.
That was why every family in Linjiawan had big tile-roofed houses. As long as someone in the household worked on the ship, there was no shortage of food.
Most of the land in Linjiawan was alkaline and barren, and there was very little farmland suitable for growing crops. The villagers mostly lived by fishing.
Grandpa Lin had served as captain for over thirty years, only retiring due to illness a few years ago.
He was a man of great wisdom. Though he earned a lot over the years, aside from buying a small courtyard in the county town, the rest of the money was converted into gold and hidden in the secret chamber.
He often told Lin Qingmei:
“The juiciest buns don’t always show from the outside.”
[Translation note: A Chinese saying, meaning wealth or value isn’t always visible.]
No one outside the old couple knew they were rich. The original host always thought their family was poor and that the meat they ate came from the living expenses Lin Jianshe sent home.
It wasn’t until after Grandpa Lin passed away that Grandma Lin revealed the existence of the secret chamber to Lin Qingmei.
Even so, Lin Qingmei had always been frugal. Even after learning they weren’t short on money, she never spent extravagantly.