It was late June, and the midday heat was at its fiercest. Normally, the members of Shanzui Village’s production brigade would have been taking their afternoon naps at this hour. Today, however, they had all crowded into the yard outside the brigade headquarters, forming layer upon layer of people until the place was completely packed.
A shrill, piercing roar came from within the crowd.
“Tell him that if he doesn’t come back, I’ll drink pesticide! He can come home and collect my corpse!”
“My heavens, did she really drink it?”
“That’s highly poisonous 1605 pesticide!”
“Oh, Mother of Heaven! Someone’s died! Someone’s died!”
Everyone shouted over one another, and the crowd descended into chaos.
The brigade captain bellowed, “Are you all bloody dead? Where’s the barefoot doctor?”
The Party secretary glared at him before saying sullenly, “Send another telegram. Mark it urgent!”
……
Headache, dizziness, and thirst—those were Lin Lan’s strongest impressions of a hangover.
She had been in a bad mood the previous night and had drunk a couple of extra glasses. After returning to her apartment, she had fallen straight into bed. Nightmares had plagued her throughout the night, with the sounds of ringing telephones and someone pounding on the door constantly piercing her ears.
Unexpectedly, even after waking up, an irritating buzzing continued to disturb her sleep.
“Second Brother, do you think Mother…really drank pesticide and died?”
“Shh—keep your voice down. Mother was only putting on an act to frighten them. She wants Father to come home. Let’s go cut grass.”
Lin Lan struggled to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt as though they had been glued shut. No matter how hard she tried, she could not lift them.
A while later, another piercing voice drifted over.
“Third Brother is serving in the army. I saw that she couldn’t manage five children by herself, so I helped her out. But look at her! She spends every day making trouble. If she doesn’t want to live with us, she can get lost and go back to her parents’ home! Nobody wants her here! First she tries to hang herself, and now she drinks pesticide. She must think this old woman is in her way and wants me to die first! I’ve never seen such a vicious daughter-in-law in all my life! She wants to divide the family? Why doesn’t she just take a rope and strangle me to death? …Stop standing around! Get back to work and quit trying to laze around!”
The sound of a door slamming followed.
What pesticide? What division of the family?
What a complete mess.
Lin Lan’s head felt as though it were splitting apart. It took almost all her strength merely to force her eyelids open.
What entered her vision was a cramped, narrow room. She could not see a window, only a tattered straw curtain hanging nearby. The walls and ceiling were blackened with smoke, and long strands of soot hung from the corners. Her nose was also assaulted by a foul mixture of smells. Lin Lan could not distinguish whether it came from livestock manure and urine, children wetting themselves, mould, or some other strange source.
It was so suffocating and nauseating that she wanted to vomit.
There was a thunderous crash inside Lin Lan’s mind, like a bolt from the blue.
Could she have transmigrated?
Lin Lan closed her eyes and waited for a long while. When she opened them again, the smoke-blackened yellow mud walls were still there.
This time, she was certain that she really had transmigrated.
She could be so sure because information that did not belong to her had already appeared in her mind. It was as though she had read a book or watched a film about it, leaving an especially vivid impression.
It was the year 1970 in the nation of Huaxia, in a small northern village in D Province—Shanzui Village.
The original owner of this body shared her name. Her maiden family lived in Linjiatun, while her husband’s family surname was Han. Her husband, Han Qingsong, was a soldier, and the two of them had five children together.
The original Lin Lan had never attended school. She had only spent a few days in a literacy class and recognised fewer than fifty characters. From childhood, she had been stubborn, fierce, and rather bad-tempered. She was uneducated and inexperienced, and whenever she encountered a problem, she did not know how to calm down and think of a solution. Her most commonly used method was to argue and make a scene. As a result, even her maiden family had not liked her very much.
She had married Han Qingsong at the age of sixteen. He was away from home throughout most of the year, while she was suppressed and bullied by her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. Unable to think of any way to resolve their conflicts or improve their relationships, her temper grew increasingly explosive. She would start enormous arguments at the slightest provocation and later began threatening others by attempting suicide.
Han Qingsong, meanwhile, had joined the army at seventeen. After struggling and working hard for more than ten years, he had now become a company commander.
His future prospects were excellent.
That was precisely why the original Lin Lan could not feel at ease. She constantly suspected that he looked down on her and would abandon her for someone of higher status now that he had become successful.
Therefore, she had continually caused trouble and demanded that he return home to live with her, afraid that one of those educated, young, and beautiful vixens outside would seduce him away.
The reason she had staged this pesticide-drinking incident was that she had overheard people discussing reliable news brought back by a demobilised soldier—Han Qingsong had another woman outside, and she was the daughter of a certain commanding officer!
The thought that Han Qingsong was definitely going to divorce her became the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Again and again, the original Lin Lan ran to the commune to send telegrams to his military unit, insisting that her husband transfer out of the army and return home. If he refused, she would die—and she would take all five children with her!
When her mother-in-law found out, Old Madam Han naturally refused to agree. Her son had such excellent prospects. He was the pride and financial support of the entire Han family. If they forced him to come home, would that not send the family back into poverty overnight?
Absolutely not!
The original Lin Lan then demanded that her mother-in-law hand over her husband’s military allowance. Otherwise, she would force him to return home, and no one in the family would have a peaceful life. If her mother-in-law refused, she would drink pesticide!
She secretly instructed her second son, Han Wangjun, to pick up an empty bottle of 1605 pesticide. She assumed that since there was no pesticide left inside, no one would notice if she filled it with water and pretended to drink it in order to frighten everyone.
Of course, she also wanted to show the family how formidable she could be.
How could she have known that 1605 was an extremely poisonous pesticide? Even accidentally spilling some on the skin while spraying crops could cause poisoning, let alone mixing water into the bottle and drinking from it directly.
Although she had only pretended to take a tiny sip, it was still enough to poison a woman who had been unhealthy for years.
And so, Lin Lan transmigrated into her body.
In the original story, however, the original Lin Lan’s scheme really did succeed.
Han Qingsong became disheartened by all the trouble she caused and lost all interest in pursuing his military career. At last, he submitted an application to transfer to civilian work and would return home in a few days.
But his return did not bring harmony to the family. Instead, it marked the beginning of their tragedy.
The original Lin Lan had sworn that as long as her husband came home, she would settle down and live peacefully with him. Yet once he returned, she began suspecting that he looked down on her and that he was having affairs with other women. Whenever he left her sight, even for the time it took to eat a meal, she would suspect that he had gone to meet someone in secret.
Every unmarried girl and young wife in the village—even the widows—became an object of her suspicion.
Whenever her husband did anything that displeased her, she would scream, argue, and threaten to kill herself. In the end, she drove him to ask for a divorce.
Unexpectedly, after she caused yet another enormous scene, Han Qingsong died in an accident.
After his death, she became even more twisted. On the one hand, she wallowed in self-pity and took her anger out on her children. On the other, she was fiercely protective and spoiled them excessively. She ruined every one of her children, and in the end, not a single one of them met a good fate.
Wait!
Lin Lan suddenly realised that this familiar plot seemed to belong to a novel she had read a very long time ago. The male and female protagonists were childhood sweethearts who worked hard to make money and build a prosperous life together. One of the supporting female characters had left an especially deep impression because of her tendency to create endless trouble.
That supporting character was the original Lin Lan’s daughter, Han Maisui.
She was young, beautiful, and lively, but the original Lin Lan had raised her to be unbearably vain and ambitious. She always believed she was a princess and that she deserved to receive anything she wanted. Anyone who failed to treat her well was automatically a bad person.
The original Lin Lan helped her daughter relentlessly pursue and harass the male protagonist. Her sons were all rotten in their own ways as well, and none of them came to a good end.
Ultimately, the root cause could not be separated from the original Lin Lan’s parenting.
She had actually transmigrated into someone like that…
What was she supposed to do?
Go back? That was impossible.
Run away from home?
Get divorced?
Nobody divorced in this era. If she divorced and only cared about herself, her maiden family in Linjiatun probably would not accept her either.
In an age when a person could not survive without household registration, work points, and letters of introduction, it seemed that her only option was to continue living under the original Lin Lan’s identity.
But if she suddenly turned over a new leaf, she wondered whether the others would become suspicious.
Even if they did suspect her, she truly could not continue living the way the original Lin Lan had.
An idea suddenly occurred to her.
She could claim that her brush with death had left her disillusioned, causing her to suddenly come to her senses. She had decided to stop dwelling on the past and live a steady, honest life from now on!
Yes, that was a good idea!
Her problems were nothing more than an oppressive mother-in-law and a husband who had no feelings for her. They were not life-threatening matters. When it came to living her life, she still had plenty of ways to manage.
To her, the most terrifying thing was—
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