Chapter 2.1

Lu Che helped Jiang Yao ashore. Originally intending to leave, he couldn’t help but feel compassion when he saw her wet dress clinging to her body. He grabbed her hands, swung her onto his shoulder like a pig, and headed towards his own home.

Lu Qing had just managed to put her two children to sleep and was about to lie down herself when she remembered Lu Che hadn’t returned after fishing for a long time. Worried, she got up to check.

To her surprise, as soon as she stepped out of the main room, she saw Lu Che entering the yard, carrying a woman on his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” Lu Qing hurriedly approached.

Lu Che didn’t have time to explain much, only saying, “Let’s get her into auntie’s room first. Don’t wake Grandma up. I’ll tell you more later.”

“Okay.” Lu Qing nodded, though the scene was difficult not to provoke assumptions, she trusted her brother’s character.

Leading the way, she opened Lu Yuan’s room door first. After laying Jiang Yao flat on the big bed and using the light from the kerosene lamp to see her face clearly, Lu Qing asked in surprise, “This…isn’t this Jiang Zhiqing (educated youth), the educated youth from the city?”

Even though Jiang Yao had only been sent to the countryside for two or three months, everyone in the village recognised this educated youth. After all, with her appearance and figure, she was hard to forget.

“Yeah.” Lu Che responded, saying, “I was fishing in the pond just now, and she suddenly jumped in. Something seemed off about her. I guess she was drugged, so I knocked her unconscious first in a hurry.”

“Drugged?” Lu Qing widened her eyes in shock, then regained her composure after a moment and held the kerosene lamp close to Jiang Yao’s forehead to examine it closely. Indeed, her cheeks were abnormally flushed.

Lu Qing reached out and touched Jiang Yao’s face, confirming she was feverish. She turned to Lu Che and said, “Let me change her into clean clothes first. You go and fetch the village doctor and see what needs to be done.”

“Okay.” Lu Che turned to leave, but Lu Qing reminded him, “Don’t make a fuss. If this spreads, it will tarnish the girl’s reputation.”

“I know.” Lu Che replied and walked out. As soon as he reached the door, he heard Lu Qing saying, “You are wet, change your clothes first.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lu Che replied without looking back as he left.

Once outside, he began to run, but he hadn’t gone far when he ran into a fellow villager, Chen Shuanglian.

Busy with the harvest for almost half a month, Chen Shuanglian hadn’t played Pai Gow ^[1]Pai gow poker (aka double-hand poker) is a version of pai gow that is played with cards, instead of traditional Chinese dominoes. The game is played with a standard 52-card deck, plus a single joker. … Continue reading for a long time. Today, after finally finishing harvesting rice, despite feeling exhausted, she couldn’t resist the urge to play a few rounds of cards after dinner.

But everyone was tired, and after a few rounds, they were about to disperse. She wasn’t satisfied, but it didn’t matter; she had won some money anyway.

With the five dimes (50 cents) she won tonight in her pocket, Chen Shuanglian was in a good mood, but she didn’t expect to run into Lu Che, that good-for-nothing, it was really unlucky.

As Lu Che brushed past her, she disdainfully muttered, “Good-for-nothings like to go out at night to do bad things,” and spat on the ground.

Lu Che didn’t respond, just cast a cold glance at her.

Chen Shuanglian was known in the village as a shrew, but that one glance was enough to make her tremble.

Lu Che didn’t linger with her, just turned his head and continued on his way.

Once he was far enough away, Chen Shuanglian breathed a sigh of relief, but she was also angry at being scared by him. She continued to mutter curses to herself.

It was late at night, and there was no one nearby. No matter how harshly she cursed, there was only the air as her audience. After a while, tired of cursing, she slunk back home.

The village doctor, Zhang Meifang, didn’t live far away. After Lu Qing helped Jiang Yao change clothes and dried her hair halfway, Lu Che brought her over.

When Lu Che knocked on Zhang Meifang’s door, he said that a child at home wasn’t feeling well and asked her to come over. But on the way here, he had already explained the situation in detail.

After Zhang Meifang entered the house and examined Jiang Yao, she said after a while, “She’s not seriously injured, just fainted. It’s actually better this way; if she was awake, it would be harder to deal with. By tomorrow when she wakes up, the effects of the drug should have worn off.”

“That’s good.” Lu Qing expressed her gratitude to Zhang Meifang, saying, “Dr. Zhang, you’ve had a long day, and it’s late. Thank you for coming over even at this late hour. You’ve worked hard.”

“No problem.” Zhang Meifang shrugged it off and added, “Jiang Yao’s encounter with you tonight was fortunate amidst misfortune. If it had fallen into someone else’s hands, it would have been unimaginable. We’ll have to wait for her to wake up to find out who did this, perhaps even she herself doesn’t know.

“But regardless, unless absolutely necessary, we should keep this matter to ourselves, otherwise it could affect her reputation.”

“We understand, Dr. Zhang, don’t worry.” Lu Qing quickly assured her, “It’s late, we won’t delay you any further. Let Lu Che escort you home.”

***

When Jiang Yao woke up, she found the light very bright. After trying hard to adjust for a while, she slowly opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was a slightly yellowed mosquito net.

She looked around the room, the blue brick walls, the retro-styled wooden dressing table, the table, the chairs, and the big bed were all arranged just like in the period dramas her grandfather liked to watch.

She was shocked and sat up, pinching her arm hard, tears almost streaming down her face from the pain. Coupled with memories that didn’t belong to her flooding into her mind, all pointing to an unbelievable fact, she had transmigrated, into a historical novel she had been reading recently.

During her vacation, she had originally planned to travel with her best friend, but her friend received a sudden business trip and left her behind, giving her a historical novel to pass the time.

She wasn’t really interested in reading it, but her memory was too good, and after reading it once, she remembered all the plot lines.