Inside Feng Sixi's home in Zhangjiawan, several people were flustered as they carried a woman who had just hanged herself to the bed.
"Xiulan, why did you have to be so foolish? If you die, Jiayu's father is already gone, what will happen to Jiayu?" a middle-aged woman's voice choked out as she tried to persuade her.
"Mom, I don't want you to die! I won't go to court anymore, I won't!" Another young girl's voice, hoarse from crying, echoed in the room.
"Which foul-mouthed wretch said that? Just watch me go curse their family into the ground today! Jiayu, come, take Grandma there. If I don't curse right outside their door for three days and three nights, I'm not giving up!" A sharp, elderly woman's voice rang out.
The center of attention, the woman who had just been cut down from her suicide attempt, slowly regained consciousness. She couldn't speak yet, as the rope had crushed her windpipe during the hanging and her voice hadn't recovered.
Seeing her wake up, the three of them stopped talking and rushed over to check on her.
"Xiulan, you're awake! That's wonderful, thank God—" Before she could finish, the old woman interrupted her.
"Guifen, have you forgotten what the brigade said before? No feudal superstition! Be careful someone catches you and reports you."
"Oh, right, right, I won't say it. I was just so happy Xiulan woke up that I didn't pay attention. Xiulan, do you want some water? I'll go pour some right now." The middle-aged woman, called Guifen, snapped back to reality, afraid of running afoul of the rules, and hurried off to pour water.
"I'm afraid your throat won't fully recover until next year, you silly child. Don't ever do anything like hanging yourself again. Even though Daquan is gone and our whole family is heartbroken, people still have to live their lives.
"Look at me, Grandma—back when I was young, your grandpa passed away too. I raised four children all by myself as a widow, didn't I make it through? Don't be sad, I'll go sort those people out in a minute.
"You rest properly at home and stop having such dark thoughts. If you don't want to stay here, you can remarry later on; you still need to leave some hope for the child."
The old woman sighed. Seeing that her granddaughter-in-law couldn't speak and worrying she might still be despondent, she lowered her voice, noting that her great-granddaughter wasn't in the room.
The object of their concern, Li Xiulan, was still digesting the extra memories flooding her brain. Hearing the old woman speak like that, she nodded first.
After a little while, Zhang Guifen returned with her granddaughter holding a bowl of warm water. After watching her drink it, the three of them left the house.
Li Xiulan listened for a moment. Once all three had gone, she let out a breath of relief. Looking up at the ceiling, she began matching the people who had just appeared to her memories.
Originally, she had been a modern travel blogger with the ambition to travel across the entire country and taste local delicacies, only to get into a car accident on the road and wake up in this era.
Since childhood, because her biological mother had died in childbirth, her birth father had remarried and left her in her hometown to be raised by her grandparents. When she grew up, she decided on a life of neither marrying nor having children for her own peace of mind, staying constantly on the move, making a living by writing articles and posting videos as a travel blogger.
Now, she had somehow become a village widow in 1984 whose husband had just died, complete with a five-year-old daughter named Feng Jiayu.
That morning, just as Jiayu went out to cut grass, a local child had mocked her family for being left with no male heirs—saying that since her father was dead, her mother was going to remarry and abandon her too, calling her an orphan of a broken branch.
Jiayu had run home in tears to ask if the original Li Xiulan didn't want her anymore. Hearing what had been said, the original owner had already been utterly hopeless; thinking of her bleak future, she lost all reason in a moment of despair and tried to hang herself using the mourning cloth from her husband's funeral.
Terrified out of her wits, Jiayu had run out to cry for help, prompting the mother-in-law Zhang Guifen and grandmother Liu Facui to rush in and pull her down, showering her with desperate pleas.
In that very window of time, the original owner had slipped away, replaced by Li Xiulan from the modern era.
Her life now was essentially a gift, and she got to be a mother without any of the painful labor. Her husband was dead, but her husband's family treated her reasonably well. Rather than struggling elsewhere, she might as well stay right here. Thinking of Jiayu's report about someone cursing her, Li Xiulan remembered the child who had hurled the insults—that kid belonged to their "sworn enemy" family in the village. Feeling that her throat didn't hurt quite as badly anymore, she couldn't stay lying down. She opened the door, went into the kitchen, grabbed a kitchen knife, and followed her memories straight toward the culprits.
A large crowd had already gathered outside the enemy family's front gate. Since it was the noon break, villagers had returned from the fields; seeing a good show brewing, they decided to skip going home and watch the drama unfold first.
Before Li Xiulan even drew close, she heard the old woman's shrill cursing.
"You rotten whore, you filthy dog! You just can't bear to see my family doing well. Back then you ruined things so my Xiulan lost her child, and now you're teaching brats to come running around cursing people!
"You call my family childless and doomed? I'd like to see what kind of retribution your family gets! If you've got the guts, come out here and say it to my face! Let's see if I don't tear that foul mouth of yours to shreds!"
The old woman's fighting prowess was legendary. Rumor had it that when she was young, someone in the village tried to spread malicious gossip about her, and she had stubbornly camped outside their doorway, cursing for three days and three nights straight. Whenever she got thirsty, she made her children bring her water to drink, and she literally cursed that family until they brought out grain to apologize before she finally stopped.
"Chen Jinhua! Our family has practiced forbearance for all these years, yet you still teach brats to point fingers and hurl insults! I let it slide in the past, but today I'm going to beat the living daylights out of you—otherwise I'd never forgive myself for the grievances we've suffered all these years!"
Her mother-in-law, Zhang Guifen, was also locked in a scuffle, pulling hair and landing blows. The surrounding villagers stood by discussing the spectacle in whispers, with no one stepping in to help. Truth be told, Chen Jinhua had no filter on her mouth; the Feng family was already having such a miserable time, yet she still refused to let up—she had this coming.
Ignoring whatever the onlookers were saying, Li Xiulan strode toward Chen Jinhua's house with a kitchen knife in hand, a fierce, sinister look in her eyes. She started hacking wildly at their front gate. A series of heavy *thuds* echoed out, and within moments, the wooden doors were chopped into splinters.
"Li Xiulan! What do you think you're doing? You've hacked my front door to pieces!"
Chen Jinhua had just managed to shove Zhang Guifen away when she caught sight of Li Xiulan maliciously hacking up her courtyard gate. The door was teetering on the verge of collapse. Chen Jinhua tried to charge forward, but then she caught the flash of the blade in Li Xiulan's hand.
"Not only am I going to chop up your door, I'm going to hack you to death! Telling people my family has no male heirs—my Daquan's body isn't even cold yet, and you have the nerve to spew such filth! There are still people alive in this house, and I'll show you whether we're a broken branch or not!"
Li Xiulan delivered a brutal kick to the gate, and it collapsed inward with a loud crash. She then brought her knife down onto the Chen family's winnowing machine, hacking a massive hole right through it—the very same machine the Chens had just purchased to sift their grain.
"Li Xiulan, have you lost your mind?! You're smashing things up, and you won't be able to pay for the damage when the time comes!"
Seeing the usually gentle and quiet Li Xiulan acting like an absolute demon possessed, Chen Jinhua panicked and scrambled backward to keep her distance. If she had known this timid young daughter-in-law of the Feng family had such vicious backbone, she never would have taught her grandchild to run her mouth.
"Pay? I'll make *you* pay with your life, Chen Jinhua! You caused me to lose my child back then, and now you're cursing my household—I'm going to make you pay with your life!"
Li Xiulan didn't care about threats right now. Chen Jinhua had cursed their family behind their backs time and time again, and had even reported the original owner in the past. Now that *she* was the one standing here, she wasn't going to be easy to deal with. With a wretch like this, you had to scare them witless the very first time; otherwise, if you gave an inch, they would take a mile.
With that thought, Li Xiulan marched straight toward Chen Jinhua with the knife raised. Everyone else present turned pale with shock at the sight. Even Grandma Liu Facui and mother-in-law Zhang Guifen grew terrified that she was actually going to commit murder, and didn't dare hold onto Chen Jinhua anymore.
"Xiulan! Don't do it, don't kill anyone! Murderers go to jail! We can just beat her up so she never dares talk trash again!"
Villagers who had just been enjoying the circus suddenly grew terrified that the situation was spiraling out of control. Someone hurried off to fetch the brigade leader, though as it turned out, the Brigade Leader had already caught wind of the commotion and was on his way.
"Right! It was my fault! I shouldn't have run my big mouth! You—don't come any closer, Xiulan! It was auntie's fault, it was all me! I'm begging you, don't kill me, please don't kill me!"
Seeing the look in her eyes, Chen Jinhua was practically scared out of her wits, stumbling backward while crying out for mercy.
Even as she watched Chen Jinhua terrified out of her mind, Li Xiulan didn't stop. She carefully regulated her running pace, keeping herself consistently two steps behind Chen Jinhua while her tongue kept up a relentless barrage.
"You're begging me now? It's too late! I don't want to live anyway, so dragging you down with me is pure profit! Once I drag you down below, you won't be able to curse Jiayu anymore, and you won't dare bully our family ever again. I'm a dead woman walking anyway, so you might as well be my cushion down to hell! Chen Jinhua, pay with your life!"