C1 Chapter 1

“Dad, why isn’t Mom moving...”

“Waaah... Mom...”

Two kids’ cries rang in her ears, and Qiqi frowned.

So loud.

She opened her eyes in annoyance and saw two children—one taller, one shorter—leaning over the edge of the bed. A young man stood beside them.

The thing was, all three of them were dressed in ragged clothes, and the man had long hair.

“Where am I?” The words came out of Qiqi’s mouth like a wheezing bellows, and she froze in shock.

“Mom!”

“Honey!”

As the voices hit her, a flood of memories that weren’t hers slammed into her mind.

Panic made her cough hard.

What is going on?!

She was a top sales pro—she’d just won her company’s top-sales title for the fifth year in a row. Her bonus hadn’t even hit her account yet, so how had she ended up here? And as some kind of vicious wife, no less!

She’d been a modern career woman, firmly in the late-marriage, late-kids camp, and had successfully become the last single friend. Past thirty and still unattached, aside from the occasional marriage pressure, her life had been downright comfortable.

Never mind that this body was a full ten years younger than she was—she was married, and she had two kids: one six and one four.

The man in front of her was her husband, Chen Yongnian, and the children were Pingping and An’an.

For a moment, she couldn’t decide whether to curse the universe for setting her up—or thank it for letting her skip marriage and childbirth and go straight to being a mom of two.

By the time Qiqi felt like she was about to cough up a lung, she finally stopped, slumping sideways on the bed, not wanting to move an inch.

“Mom! Waaah...” An’an saw that Mom wasn’t moving and burst into tears again.

Pingping watched his sister cry and immediately started bawling too.

Chen Yongnian stood there, at a loss. He didn’t know whether to comfort the kids first or check on his wife...

When the villagers heard Chen Yongnian had brought Qiqi back, they all rushed into the yard to gawk.

“Yongnian’s wife went back to her mom’s place to grab some stuff again. Heard she didn’t get any grain, got into a fight, and even fell into the river. Good thing Yongnian showed up in time and pulled her out.”

“The Wan family really blew up at her this time. If she tries to go back again, it won’t be easy! Honestly, the Wan family must’ve had the worst luck to end up with a daughter like that!”

“And Aunt Chen’s had it rough too—raising those kids all by herself. Thought her oldest son getting married would mean she could finally take it easy, but instead he brought home a nightmare!”

...

People who came to watch didn’t want things to calm down. One person after another chimed in, talking it up like they were gossiping in their own backyard.

Seriously—these people were just here for the drama.

Wan Qiqi never thought she’d be the day’s entertainment.

Back in the modern world, she was a social butterfly. Maybe not everyone’s favorite person, but anyone who met her would at least greet her warmly. At her company, there were never any scandals—just talk about how much she’d sold that day and how much money she’d brought in.

But here, she’d become the kind of woman everyone pointed at: disrespectful to her in-laws, always at odds with her siblings-in-law, and cold to her own kids. She didn’t support her husband, and even her birth family kept their distance. The whole village couldn’t stand her.

In short, the woman who’d lived in this body before her was universally hated—greedy, lazy, bossy, and infamous.

It all started when she got married. During a stop along the way, she climbed into the wrong wedding carriage. She was supposed to marry a wealthy official, but by accident she ended up in a poor little mountain village, married to a backwoods farmer.

Anyone would’ve been furious. She’d been headed for an easy life, only to land in a household where even making ends meet was a struggle. She had to pinch pennies, and on top of that, listen to the village women nag day after day.

But in those days, once the vows were said, you were husband and wife. Unless the husband cast her out, or both sides agreed to separate, she belonged to her husband’s family for life.

The Chen family had poured all their money into getting Chen Yongnian a wife, so there was no way they’d agree to a separation. And her own family didn’t want their married daughter coming back either—it would be a disgrace.

That’s how she spent the next few years—getting “made up to” by her mom’s side of the family and coddled by her husband’s. But all that gentle treatment didn’t calm Wan Qiqi down. It only made her worse.

She not only took plenty from her mom’s family, she even pushed her father so hard he suffered a stroke—and she left her older brother’s child permanently disabled. As for her husband’s family, she treated them like hired help, quick to hit or curse, hoarding anything good in the house for herself.

It became common knowledge. People said the Chen Family had married a “living ancestor” into the house.

Now that the original body had come crawling back from her mom’s family in disgrace, plenty of folks figured it was karma. They felt satisfied—and they also thought Chen Yongnian never should’ve saved her.

After a long while, Wan Qiqi finally got her emotions under control and decided to face reality.

“Wife! You’re finally awake!” Chen Yongnian’s anxious face finally broke into a smile, and the two kids stopped crying.