Chapter 7 – What Lies Behind the Time Travel

Song Yeqing now felt an even greater sense of urgency about recovering her health to perform a divination and spirit inquiry.

Divination and spirit inquiries didn’t necessarily require cultivation or spiritual power—other things could be exchanged in return. In her case now, that meant her health.

Even in a healthy body, divination would leave her weak for several days, let alone in her current frail state—doing it could very well cost her life.

To recover her health, she couldn’t keep hiding those supplies. He Yanxin would surely become suspicious—he wasn’t a fool.

But she didn’t know how to explain where Lady Song had gone; the origin of those supplies was a secondary concern.

It was impossible to explain! Even if she was innocent and hadn’t taken over this body by choice, would he believe her?

They had been so deeply in love. If he found out that Lady Song was no longer here, who knew how he would react?

That’s why the best choice was to tell him the truth directly. She could act for a moment, but not for a lifetime.

Besides, He Yanxin probably wouldn’t harm this body that had belonged to Lady Song, right?

And even if he did try something, she had her own means of self-defense.

At this moment, Song Yeqing wished Lady Song would just come back.

After all, before her death, she had nothing left to hold onto. Her family in the Song household had their own loved ones; her mother had her own family and her younger brother.

If she could bring Lady Song back and then head off to the underworld to reincarnate, she wouldn’t mind—maybe she’d even see her father again, who worked there.

As a Celestial Master, she wasn’t allowed to contact relatives who had become officials in the afterlife, so it had already been ten years since she last saw her father.

“No rush, no rush,” Song Yeqing steadied her breath.

She could only restore her health using items from her space, but doing so would expose her in front of He Yanxin. Yet before she could perform the divination, she had to be well again; only then could she determine Lady Song’s whereabouts.

By then, she could try explaining things to He Yanxin—tell him she could find out where Lady Song had gone and ask him for some time.

As long as people still have hope and things to care about, they won’t spiral into extremes.

In her memories, he wasn’t an unreasonable man. He should be willing to listen… right?

After tidying the room and doing laundry, and having lunch, the eldest took the younger child out into the yard to play in the mud.

After Song Yeqing covered the well with a stone slab, she didn’t worry much. Since they usually couldn’t go outside, this was how the boys played.

They couldn’t move the heavy slab anyway. It was just a little troublesome to clean up afterward.

In the past, she used to take the kids next door or let them play with other children in the village. But later, as things became less safe, she started keeping the doors closed and not letting them go out.

Still, she was glad they had each other. A single child alone at home would be terribly lonely.

After playing for over an hour, the two boys were exhausted and fell asleep, giving Song Yeqing time to go to the unused west wing and pull out a wardrobe with a full-length mirror.

In the mirror, the woman wore a sky-blue cotton blouse on top, a beige fine-linen skirt below, and a gray cloth belt around her waist.

In the countryside, clothes were made for ease of labor: narrow sleeves, skirts only down to the ankles, and homemade cloth shoes exposed.

Although she was already emaciated, her looks hadn’t deteriorated much—one could still see her refined beauty.

With the full-length mirror, the overall appearance looked about 70-80% like her modern self. Perhaps because of childbirth and poor health, she looked five years older than she had in the modern world.

Lady Song had looked at herself in a bronze mirror and the water in the well; back then, her appearance had resembled Song Yeqing’s by nearly 90%. But Song Yeqing was 1.71 meters tall, while Lady Song looked about 1.66 meters.

How could two people look so similar? And one of them was a person from ancient times, completely unrelated to her.

She was sure that the Da’an Kingdom didn’t exist in the history she had studied, nor did Lady Song or her family appear in her ancestral records.

Besides, this world had no cultivation—so this must be another world entirely, not just a different era of her own.

Faced with such a situation, Song Yeqing, who rarely felt lost, now found herself engulfed in uncertainty. Who had brought her here? It couldn’t have been her own power—she didn’t possess the ability to cross worlds.

After an entire afternoon of fruitless pondering, Song Yeqing decided to simply live well in the present and think about everything else later.

In ancient rural areas, people went to bed early. Candles and lamp oil were expensive, and there weren’t any entertainment activities.

The cheapest candles here cost 20 wen each. That’s what the household usually used, although they gave off a lot of smoke when burned.

Even then, only households with spare money would buy them. Most families just used the stove for warmth and lighting.

In the better-off days, the Song family had used even nicer ones—down in the affluent Jiangnan region, candles sold for between 100 to 300 wen.

They had once owned a kerosene copper lamp, but it had been exchanged for grain the month before.

Comparing Lady Song’s life before the age of fourteen with her current circumstances, Song Yeqing couldn’t help but admire her.

A wealthy young lady abruptly thrown into ruin, her family wiped out in an instant, leaving her all alone. Yet she hadn’t lost the courage to live—she had used her own strength to make life work.

She married a farmer she would never have looked at before and didn’t feel wronged by it. Instead, she built a happy and loving marriage.

She was truly an extraordinary woman.

Still unaccustomed to sleeping in complete darkness or going to bed the moment the sun set, Song Yeqing finally took out her fully charged desk lamp.

“Mom, what’s that?”

He Chengze thought everything today was amazing. Not only had he eaten all sorts of delicious food, but he had also seen things he’d never encountered before.

His mother said they would drink milk soon too, but it had to cool down first. He’d never had milk before, but that didn’t dampen his anticipation.

“That’s a lamp.”

“How is that a lamp?” His little head was full of confusion.

Apparently, he already had some understanding of what a lamp was, but this desk lamp looked completely different from any he’d seen.

She had thought this child wasn’t curious about new things earlier—but it turned out he actually was.

“There are many kinds of lamps. This is just one of them.”

Song Yeqing scooped up the younger child, who was bouncing and laughing on the bed, afraid he’d fall off.

Perhaps because they’d finally had a full meal today, the two boys were brimming with energy.

The older one kept asking questions, while the younger couldn’t sit still.

“What other kinds are there?” the older one pressed, unsatisfied with her answer and eager to know more.

She was overwhelmed.

Song Yeqing had never liked talking much—she really couldn’t handle this barrage.

“Lots.”

Afraid he’d follow up with “How many is lots?”, she got off the bed and grabbed the warm milk that had been cooling on the table, hoping it would shut the boy up.

She had already replaced the bedding with the more comfortable set from her space. The original ones had been washed and aired out.

If it weren’t so hard to set up the 1.8-meter-long bed from her space, she would’ve replaced the bed entirely.

Due to the severe water shortage, the three of them only heated two basins of water at night to wipe themselves down.

Thankfully, it had been cold recently, so they didn’t sweat much. A quick wipe was enough. Back on Mount Lingwu, she hadn’t bathed in a tub every day either.

But wiping down two kids turned into total chaos.

By the end of the day, Song Yeqing realized that no matter how well-behaved kids were, taking care of them was no easy task.

When kids cried, they were utterly unreasonable. The older boy hadn’t cried again after the morning incident.

The younger one had cried twice—once after a fall, and once because his brother hadn’t managed to get his pants off in time, and he had soiled himself. Maybe he felt dirty or thought he’d done something wrong, which made him cry.

As a result, Song Yeqing almost had to wash poop-stained pants for the first time in her life.

Why “almost”? Because she had already summoned the courage to do it—after all, the brothers only had four sets of clothes total, and the younger one wore hand-me-downs from his brother.

But in the end, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Then she remembered she had a few soft tracksuits in her space, which she could alter for the boys.

Seriously, asking a 19-year-old girl who had never raised a child to do all this was a tall order. Thankfully, the younger boy had already been weaned—otherwise, she would’ve completely lost it.

Helping them wipe after using the toilet was just barely tolerable. The paper in her space wasn’t abundant, but at least she didn’t need to scrimp on it.

But washing by hand? Actually touching it? That was just suffocating.

The toilet paper in this world was made of straw and far too rough—she couldn’t get used to it. And that was considered the better option. Some families couldn’t even afford that and used sticks instead—now that was terrifying.

(End of Chapter)