"If it wasn't for my poor family status back then, would I ever marry a loser like you? Without me propping up this home, you, Tian Fugui, would still be clueless about where to beg for mercy!" The middle-aged woman ferociously cursed at the man in front of her, a tall figure with a spiritless demeanor.
"Zhong Juying, stop flattering yourself. If I hadn't been broke back then, I wouldn't have ended up with a worn-out woman like you. Don't push your luck. Either we stay together, or we split up!" The man retorted with a stiff neck, shouting angrily.
"Tian Fugui, you think I'm dying to cling to you or something? Fine, let's divorce! The house was bought by me, and all the stuff at home was set up by me. Consider the clothes on your back charity from me. Sisi comes with me; you better get lost right now," the woman retorted unwillingly.
"Pah, the law states that marital assets are split equally. Zhong Juying, don't even think about swallowing it all by yourself. Humph, I don't want Sisi even if you'd give her to me. She was born just eight months into our marriage; who knows whose seed she is? I've been wearing the damn green hat for over a decade," the man sneered, refusing to give up on the property.
"Tian Fugui, how can you say such heartless things? You know very well whose child Sisi is. The doctor said she was premature, but you just wouldn't believe it. Say whatever you want, if you want to leave, leave, but don't you think about taking anything from this house," the woman said, her hands trembling with rage.
After another ten minutes of arguing, they finally came to blows. Tian Sisi, returning home from school, could hear the screams from her house from afar. Her footsteps faltered. Was it happening again? She shook her head and hurriedly walked home.
"Sisi, you're back from school, huh? Go and give your parents a good talking to; don't let them fight every other day. It's disturbing everyone's life." Sisi's house is in one of the earliest developed residential areas in Sui City, with poor soundproofing. The slightest louder noise could be heard by the entire apartment, which is why the neighbors above and below Sisi's house were quite resentful.
Sisi gave an embarrassed smile, nodded perfunctorily, and then rushed toward her apartment on the third floor. Just as she pushed open the door, a glass came hurtling towards her forehead.
"Ouch!"
Tian Sisi cried out and snapped awake, her back drenched in cold sweat. She instinctively touched her forehead; smooth and untouched unlike the large indent she had in her past life. There it was again, that dream of her lousy mother and father from her previous life. Tian Sisi let out a long sigh, and the moonlight filtered through the window frame, shining on the big red-lacquered camphor wood chest. She reached for her familiar cellphone on the bedside table, but it wasn't there — then she remembered she was no longer Tian Sisi from 2012, but Tian Zhaodi, the 10-year-old adopted daughter of Tian Manjin from Wangjiazhen in Yuequan Village of Sui City in the year 1972.
Tian Sisi gave a bitter smile. Judging by the moonlight, it was still the middle of the night, but she simply could not fall back asleep. Who would have thought that simply going to the supermarket to buy vegetables could lead to her death? She swore to heaven that she was only driven by curiosity to have a quick look because there was a crowd, she just wanted to have a glimpse.
But unexpectedly, as she edged closer, two large, plump women pulled her to the back, and with a slip on the spilled rice on the ground, Tian Sisi lost her balance and fell backward heavily. When she woke up, she had become the 10-year-old adopted daughter, Tian Zhaodi, in Tian Manjin's family in Yuequan Village of Wangjiazhen, Sui City.
In her previous life, her mother Zhong Juying might not have liked talking to her daughter, but she enjoyed reminiscing about her youth. She practically gossiped about every household in the village when she was a girl. Therefore, though Tian Sisi did not visit her grandmother's house often, she was very familiar with the village, especially Yuequan Village in the 1970s. This was the prime time of her mother, Zhong Juying's youth and also when she married Tian Fugui.
Zhong Juying always said, "If time could be turned back, she would rather remain an old maid than marry such a loser like Tian Fugui."
But Zhong Juying didn't come back; it was her daughter Tian Sisi who did. The day after Tian Sisi came to her senses, she searched the entire village for her mother Zhong Juying, who would have been 17 years old by then. In five more years, she was supposed to marry her lousy father, Tian Fugui. However, Tian Sisi couldn't find anyone with the surname Zhong in the village—not her mother Zhong Juying, nor her grandparents, uncles, or aunts. It was as if her grandmother's family never existed.
There were indeed people with the same names as her maternal relatives, but only the names were the same; neither the appearance nor age matched. It seemed that her arrival had changed the trajectory of some people's lives. Although Tian Sisi was disappointed, she had always been an optimist. She quickly accepted her situation and tried her best to adapt to life here.
Tian Zhaodi was someone her mother had mentioned in her past life—an actual case of Cinderella turning back into a sparrow. Tian Zhaodi's biological mother became a big boss in Hong Kong and found her daughter, giving her a not inconsiderable amount of money, rumored to be as much as 1 million US Dollars. She also helped her set up a company on the Mainland, and overnight, Tian Zhaodi turned from a rural girl into a rich young lady. However, Tian Zhaodi, despite being beautiful, was rather dim-witted.
The subsequent story was all too common: she ended up with an unreliable man who hooked up with her best friend, and she was robbed of her company, wealth, and child. Fortunately, they only went after her fortune and did not harm her life, leaving her destitute. It was her adoptive parents who couldn't stand to see her like this and took her back home.
Every time Zhong Juying talked about Tian Zhaodi, she would do so with contempt. Tian Zhaodi had been dealt a good hand but played it terribly, completely wasting her mother's 1 million US Dollars. If it had been Zhong Juying, she'd have become a big boss by now.
Tian Sisi still remembered always asking why Tian Zhaodi's biological mother didn't help her later on and let Aunt Zhaodi live such a hard life. Tian Sisi had seen Tian Zhaodi during her childhood visits to her grandmother's house for the New Year. Tian Zhaodi looked withered and had an abundance of gray hair, looking at least a decade older than her mother Zhu Juying—despite being seven or eight years younger.
Zhong Juying couldn't answer and vaguely said, "Maybe she didn't know?" But Tian Sisi didn't believe it. Certainly, Zhaodi's biological mother had no affection for her and didn't want to bother.
Tian Sisi quietly calculated. It was only 1972 now, more than a decade before her own mother would appear. It seemed she still had many hard years ahead of her! Tian Sisi surveyed the shabby furniture in her room. She frowned and sighed. Without electricity or water, lacking food and clothing, unable to fill her stomach or keep warm, and without Wi-Fi, television, computer, or mobile phone—how was she to live?
When Tian Sisi had just arrived, it was the third day of the first lunar month. The original occupant of her body and some cousins had gone to the Crying Girl River in the village to set off firecrackers and blast the ice. Eventually, she accidentally slipped into the icy water. After being soaked for about ten minutes in temperatures of minus ten degrees, the original Tian Sisi was taken over by the modern-day Tian Sisi without so much as a discussion. Tian Sisi thought of her mother from her former life, wondering how she would react to the news of her death.
Although her mother wasn't exactly loving in her previous life, she was still decent to Sisi. Zhong Juying was a strong woman who made a fortune in business and bought over a dozen storefronts in the city. Just the rental income brought in a couple of million a year. However, she had a bad temper, probably due to an unsatisfactory marriage. She constantly berated Sisi, her only daughter, calling her a disappointment and just like her useless father. But Sisi had become accustomed to it; at the very least, she had always had plenty of material wealth since a young age.
Zhong Juying never shortchanged her in life; she tried her utmost to cultivate her, but Tian Sisi was truly a disappointment, a pretty idiot who couldn't stand up straight and didn't inherit a single bit of her mother's shrewdness and competence, infuriating Zhong Juying to no end. Yet, after seeing her daughter divorced and jobless, Zhong Juying still gave her two storefronts to collect rent for a living, with the shop rentals alone bringing in over two hundred thousand a year. So, it was true that Tian Sisi had never lived a hard life in her previous existence. Suddenly finding herself in this era of political upheaval and material scarcity, she couldn't even cry.
Sigh! Tian Sisi let out a long sigh. Since she was here, she had to accept it. She had always been a go-with-the-flow person. According to her mother's words, she was a waste of space who lacked ambition, content to muddle through life, and as useless as her good-for-nothing father. But in her last life, she truly hadn't intended to be a waste.