"I want to marry into the Zhou family!"
When Qiao Lanlan uttered those words, Shi Qingqing knew at once that she, too, had been reborn, just like her.
The Lu Family was a prestigious military lineage spanning three generations.
The Zhou family was a "glory family" of three generations of dirt farmers.
Which of the two was better? Did one even need to think about it?
Qiao Lanlan was vain, which was why in their past life she had been hell-bent on becoming a Lu family daughter-in-law.
Now she was voluntarily proposing to give up the match with the Lu Family and marry into the destitute Zhou family.
Shi Qingqing could think of no other explanation than that Qiao Lanlan had been reborn.
Though this thought was both crazy and absurd, yet...
Since she herself could be reborn, why couldn't others?
So Shi Qingqing quickly calmed down.
It didn't matter. Even if Qiao Lanlan had also been reborn, what belonged to her could never be snatched away by Qiao Lanlan.
As for that scum Zhou Hongjun...
Ha!
If Qiao Lanlan wanted him, she could have him!
Did Qiao Lanlan seriously think whatever the Shi family gave was anything good?
In her past life, Wang Meifang had intentionally swapped the babies, letting Qiao Lanlan spend eighteen years in the Qiao family as the darling of everyone, while she herself had spent eighteen years in the Shi family acting like a dog to Wang Meifang and her family of three!
Having grown up in the Shi family until she was four, Wang Meifang had forced her—then barely taller than the kitchen stove—to start cooking for the entire household.
She would get beaten if the food didn't turn out well, beaten if she accidentally used too much cooking oil, and beaten even if she scalded herself...
In short, Wang Meifang had a thousand and one pretexts to beat her.
The phrase young Shi Qingqing had heard most often back then was: "You little wretch, you can't even handle such a small task, why don't you just go die!"
Back then, Shi Qingqing had genuinely believed she was the one who couldn't do things right, which was why her mother didn't like her and beat her.
She had studied even harder and tried even harder to please her parents, all just so her mother might scold and beat her a little less, and her father might look at her properly just once...
Yet by then, the Shi Jingye couple already had a son; where would they ever find the leisure to care for her?
Whenever Wang Meifang had to go to work, she would hand over the task of looking after Shi Wang to her.
Once, while she was busy cooking and failed to notice Shi Wang waking up and crawling around on the bed, Shi Wang accidentally bumped his head against the headboard and burst out crying in pain.
When Wang Meifang came back and saw this, she flew into a towering rage, raining heavy slaps across her face and head, and even giving her a kick.
That evening, when Shi Jingye came home and heard that she hadn't watched his precious son properly and let him get hurt, he walked over with a dark face, picked up a stick as thick as her forearm, and beat her until she cried heart-rendingly, continuously begging for mercy with her mouth: "Dad, Qingqing won't dare do it again. Dad, Qingqing won't dare do it again. Dad, please spare Qingqing, she'll never dare again..."
Even now, the scars from that beating by Shi Jingye were still on her body.
Of course, besides those, there had been countless more brutal beatings over the next decade or so.
Verbal oppression and belittling were countless as well.
The thing Shi Jingye had said to her most often was: "Everything in this family belongs to your younger brother. As the older sister, you need to help your brother build up the family fortune. In the future, you must cherish him, protect him, and give way to him, otherwise we would have given birth to you for nothing!"
Growing up year after year in such a family environment had warped Shi Qingqing's psychology; the worse the Shi family treated her, the more she wanted to please them, as if that was the only way to prove her worth.
In her past life, Shi Qingqing had dedicated everything to the Shi family.
Even when engineering her divorce from Zhou Hongjun, she had first transferred all her assets to the Shi family.
Yet that night, without giving any advance notice, she had returned to the villa she bought for the Shi family.
And she had accidentally overheard the conversation of that family of three...
"That fool Shi Qingqing, even at a time like this her brain still isn't clear, telling me: 'Awang, Sister's money all went to you and Mom and Dad, from now on Sister is going back to lie flat and let you support her.' My ass! Whose sister is she? Does she have a single cent of relation to me? If it weren't for the money, I wouldn't even bother dealing with her, and she still expects me to support her!"
"All right, now that the money is in our hands, we don't have to put on an act for her anymore."
"Awang, hurry up and call your sister, ask how she's doing abroad and whether the money is enough? That cheap wretch has been stingy since she was a kid, and now that she's a billionaire, after sending Lanlan abroad she actually only gave Lanlan five million!"
"..."
At that moment, Shi Qingqing felt as though she had plunged into an icy abyss.
Yet years of tempering had made her character sufficiently steady.
She hadn't alerted anyone and had quietly slipped away.
At the time, Shi Qingqing's thought had been to first calm her emotions, then figure out a way to take back what belonged to her and let those three scum get the retribution they deserved...
She just hadn't expected Zhou Hongjun to show up so fast!
And even less had she expected that in that brief span of an hour, the Shi family—anxious to contact Qiao Lanlan—had learned of Qiao Lanlan's death and gone completely out of their minds, convinced that Qiao Lanlan had been killed by her!
So they had proactively contacted Zhou Hongjun and exposed their own whereabouts!
Hearing the doorbell ring, Shi Qingqing, numb from crying, had thought it was her takeout delivery—thinking she needed to pull herself together and not collapse just like that, she had deliberately ordered food!
Yet the moment she pulled the door open, an unguarded Shi Qingqing had a knife stabbed straight into her abdomen!
Stab after stab!
Until she was too weak to resist, Zhou Hongjun—who had fallen from heaven to hell overnight—roared and howled like a demon as he beat her savagely.
Even Shi Qingqing herself couldn't remember how many times he had swung his fists.
After venting his rage, Zhou Hongjun ransacked the place for anything valuable and swaggered away.
And she, relying on the years of nourishment from the Spirit Spring, possessed an unexpectedly tenacious life force.
She could have survived; she truly could have...
Provided the Shi family hadn't arrived and subjected her to a secondary murder.
—Reaching this point in her memories, Shi Qingqing closed her eyes, hiding the murderous intent lurking deep within them.
"Fine, I'll swap with you!"
Shi Qingqing's voice was loud, the only way to drown out the opposing voices of the Shi couple and the well-meaning dissuasions of the Qiao family.
These people had not been reborn, and they had no way of knowing that two months later disaster would strike the Lu Family.
Whoever married into the Lu Family at this time would be the unlucky one.
So they—whether the Shi family or the Qiao family—all disagreed with Qiao Lanlan changing her mind to marry into the Zhou family.
Yet Qiao Lanlan's attitude was equally firm, and they couldn't talk her out of it.
Now Shi Qingqing's interruption instantly made her the target for everyone to vent their anger upon.
"Shut your mouth, you dead girl! Don't think that just because you're threatening Lanlan, you can snatch away the identity of the Lu family's daughter-in-law!"
Wang Meifang was so furious she rushed over to pinch her, but how could Shi Qingqing let herself suffer in vain anymore?
She slapped her right across the face. "I said stop moving your hands and feet around! Reach your claws toward me again, and I'll chop off those two pig trotters of yours!"
Wang Meifang instantly lost her breath, nearly dying of rage!
When the Qiao family saw how abominably Shi Qingqing treated her adoptive mother, their impression of her dropped several more notches!
The Qiao brothers wore dark expressions, utterly unable to accept that their younger sister had transformed from the gentle, polite, fair-skinned, beautiful, long-legged Lanlan into the vicious, sharp-tongued, unfilial, overbearing, and dark-and-skinny ugly girl before their eyes!
And how could the Qiao father not inwardly shake his head?
"Child, your personality isn't suited for marrying into the Lu Family. You'd better not compete with Lanlan anymore! I heard Director Shi say they arranged a match for you with the Zhou family in the Heyu Village of Hongsheng Production Brigade. I know that boy Hongjun; he's a good one—filial and sensible. Being able to marry him is your blessing."
Shi Qingqing twitched the corners of her mouth. "You want this blessing? Do you want it or not?"