"Good heavens! Whose child is this? How did they get onto the balcony?"

"Is no one home? The child is about to fall out of the window and no one's doing anything about it?"

"This is the fourth floor! What would happen if someone fell from here!"

"Help! Help!"

A chaotic cacophony of sounds filled the air. Fang Qiao, who was passing by, groggily looked up and saw a naked baby fall through a crack in the windowsill above her.

"ah--"

A panicked scream rang out. The man who climbed up to the second floor through the security window hurriedly reached out to catch the baby, but missed it by just a finger's width.

Fang Qiao's eyes widened in shock. Without thinking twice, she rushed forward and instinctively reached out her arms to catch the falling baby.

There was a loud 'bang'.

The baby landed in Fang Qiao's arms, but the huge impact of the falling object caused Fang Qiao's arms to dislocate instantly, knocking her to the ground.

The intense pain caused Fang Qiao's vision to go black, and she instantly lost consciousness.

After an unknown amount of time, Fang Qiao felt someone calling her ear.

Her eyelids trembled slightly, but she did not open her eyes.

Widowed young, her only motivation for living was to find her daughter who had been sold.

She searched for most of her life, only to find out in her old age that her daughter had died long ago.

Fang Qiao felt utterly hopeless and truly didn't want to live anymore.

"Sister-in-law, wake up? Wake up!"

Cheng Hongmei bent over and nudged Fang Qiao's shoulder as she spoke.

She tried to wake her up a few times but couldn't. Her mother, Huang Yan, grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the inner room.

"Alright, stop shouting. He must have fainted from the shock. Let's go outside and talk."

The two people went out of the main room one after the other. After a while, the sound of them whispering in hushed tones could be heard in the courtyard.

"Mom, Fang Qiao is almost seven months pregnant. She's likely to survive the baby. If we ask her to abort the child now, do you think she'll agree?"

abdomen?

What kind of belly?

She's almost fifty years old, where would she find the strength to...?

wrong!

Fang Qiao felt increasingly uneasy as she listened. She suddenly opened her eyes and saw a wooden bed frame that was both unfamiliar and familiar, along with a gray-white mosquito net.

The paper windows still had the half-worn double happiness character pasted on them.

This, this is actually... her wedding room in the countryside when she and Cheng Baidong got married?

What happened?

Wasn't she knocked unconscious by a child falling from a high-rise building?

How come I woke up not in the hospital, but back in the old house I lived in when I was young?

Her belly is bulging high, could it be...?

Could it be that the kind of rejuvenation and rebirth from TV shows, which has mysteriously happened to her?

Fang Qiao was a little stunned. Just then, a soft snort of dissatisfaction came from the courtyard outside the window.

"Why are you asking me? I'm not her mother-in-law. I'll get blamed for everything I do. I can't stand up for her and make decisions for her. If you want to know, ask your dad."

Fang Qiao recognized the voice as that of her husband Cheng Baidong's stepmother, Huang Yan.

This wicked woman stole her daughter and now stands in front of her, swaggering around.

She almost cried herself blind, begging her to tell her where her daughter was. But instead of telling her, the woman added insult to injury, saying that her daughter was destined to die young and that even if she found her, she wouldn't be able to raise her.

Fang Qiao hated her to the core, and even if he died and was burned to ashes, he would never forget her voice.

“I’m just a junior, how could Dad tell me about this?” Sister-in-law Cheng Hongmei said awkwardly.

She had had enough of living in the mud house and had wanted to live in her older brother's red brick house for a long time. However, she and her older brother, Cheng Bodong, were half-brothers and had never gotten along well since childhood. As they grew up, they stopped talking to each other altogether.

She hasn't stayed in that brick house for a single day since it was built.

So ever since she overheard her parents' secret plans, and thought about how the money and house left by her older brother would now belong to their family, her heart was pounding with excitement.

But after the initial excitement came worry.

Cheng Hongmei sighed and asked, "Mom, my eldest brother is dead, and Fang Qiao is carrying his only child. What if she insists on keeping the child and taking over the family's money and house? What will we do then?"

This afternoon, the military sent a telegram saying that Cheng Baidong went missing after falling off an ice cliff while trying to save a teammate during a mission. They have been searching for him for a week but haven't found him. For now, they are treating him as a missing person and have told his family to prepare themselves.

Although it was called missing, everyone knew that Cheng Baidong had most likely already died. After all, it was such a high icy cliff; how could he have survived a fall? It's just that they couldn't find his body and the incident happened so recently that they couldn't go through the proper procedures, so they classified him as missing.

Upon hearing the devastating news, Fang Qiao fainted at the village chief's house.

On the way back from the village chief's house, Huang Yan started to think about it: Fang Qiao's baby couldn't be kept.

Fang Qiao is an educated youth sent to the countryside, and who knows, she might have to return to the city in the future.

It's good that it's a daughter. Whether Fang Qiao returns to the city or remarries in the future, she can take her with her. The money and house left by Cheng Baidong will still belong to the Cheng family.

The three red brick houses facing south were the most decent houses in the entire Dacheng Village. They were perfect for Yajun and Moli to live in, so that the newlyweds wouldn't have to squeeze into the east wing of the house with their sister after they got married.

If it's a son, it will be bad. A son will carry on the family line, and he's the son of a martyr. Even if Fang Qiao remarries, she'll have to keep the son. With the elders of the whole family watching, she'll inevitably have to give some things away, and it will be difficult for her to keep the house all to herself.

Huang Yan didn't want to gamble on the odds.

My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!