Chapter 1 The “Accident” of Falling into the Water.

"What exactly do you mean?"

"I just want to get to the bottom of this..."

Zhong Ying's eyes twitched almost imperceptibly beneath her tightly closed eyelids. Her brows furrowed at the sound of the argument. Her consciousness was not yet fully restored, and a familiar sense of helplessness and exhaustion welled up in her heart.

Struggling to prop herself up on the bed, Zhong Ying tried to sit up. Her body, before her brain was fully awake, instinctively prepared to mediate the fight as usual.

Zhong Ying has done this kind of thing far too many times. It can be said that since she can remember, she has always been the "firefighter" in her parents' arguments.

Zhong Ying took a deep breath, her head was dizzy and throbbing. Without thinking much, she opened her eyes and prepared to get out of bed, but the next second she stopped.

What comes into view is a house that can be described as a “humble dwelling”. As far as the eye can see, there are rough yellow mud walls, and if you look closely, you can see thatch mixed in with the mud. The beams on the roof are exposed, and what’s on top of that is thatch.

Zhong Ying felt as if her head had been hit with a hammer, her face blank. Looking down, she realized she was lying on a wooden frame bed.

The workmanship was extremely rough, with only the simplest frame structure, devoid of any aesthetic appeal or decoration, and not a single piece of wood was used. The quilt that slid down to my waist was a heavy cotton quilt, the complete opposite of a soft silk quilt. At the foot of the bed was a wooden cabinet about half a person's height. These were all the things in the entire room.

The argument through the door grew louder and clearer.

"What else is there to ask? So many people saw it. Don't try to pin it on my daughter. She hasn't woken up yet. Or did you come here just to see if my daughter can wake up, or better yet, if she can't?"

"That's not what I meant. I'm just wondering, the two children haven't spent much time together before, how could the younger one..."

The first woman's voice was aggressive, each word louder than the last, and you could hear the relentless force in her words even without seeing her; the other woman's voice was choked with sobs, and she almost broke down in tears by the end, and you could hear her heartbreaking sorrow just by listening to it.

Zhong Ying remained seated on the bed, her expression blank. There were clearly more people outside than just the two women arguing; a cacophony of voices rose and fell.

"Sigh, nobody wants this to happen. Chunsheng's wife, don't be so angry. The team leader's family definitely didn't mean it that way..."

"Exactly, exactly. Losing one child is already heartbreaking enough, how can you expect another one to suffer the same fate..."

After being persuaded by her neighbors, the aggressive woman's voice softened considerably when she spoke again. "I, Deng Xia, am not a heartless person. My family will remember this kindness for the rest of our lives."

A male voice then promised, "Once my daughter recovers, my whole family will definitely come to thank you in person..."

It seemed like a short while had passed, yet it also seemed like a long time had gone by. The sounds outside had subsided, and the argument was over.

Zhong Ying only snapped out of her daze when she heard the creak of the door opening.

I came to my senses completely.

She remembers her body collapsing uncontrollably, the moment of her sudden death.

But the scene before her was beyond her imagination, and the extremely dated environment was proving another fact... She had traveled through time, and she had come back to life.

A middle-aged woman of average height opened the door and saw Zhong Ying sitting on the bed. Her face, which still showed glimpses of her youthful beauty, immediately lit up with joy, and she exclaimed, "Ni'er, you're awake!"

As she spoke, the woman strode in.

Hearing the sound, a thin, dark-skinned middle-aged man also peeked into the room, his eyes lighting up. "Yingni'er is awake?"

Their identities are easily discernible from the affectionate terms they use to address each other.

Zhong Ying's gaze fell on the face of the middle-aged woman in front of the bed. This face, still flushed with anger, was eight parts similar to her modern mother. The difference of two parts was probably due to different life trajectories. The woman in front of her had a healthy sun-kissed complexion, a kind of pure, natural simplicity that had not been maintained by cosmetics.

She turned to look at the man at the door. He looked nothing like her father, neither in appearance nor in demeanor. He seemed like an ordinary middle-aged man from the countryside, with the kind and honest nature of the Loess Plateau.

"Let me touch your forehead. No, you still have a slight fever. Lie down again! Cover yourself with the blanket. You were feeling cold all over before... Is it hot to be covered with a blanket in the middle of summer? That's good, you need to sweat it out to bring down the fever. Does your head still hurt? The river swept you against the rocks, but luckily, two rocks got you stuck, which gave us the chance to pull you out..."

Deng Xia quickly pressed her daughter back onto the bed. Zhong Ying obediently lay down, her gaze falling on Deng Xia's face. Oh well, as long as Mom is still Mom, Dad... whatever.

"Are you hungry? I'll make you something to eat?"

Zhong Ying shook her head. She had no appetite and was still in a drowsy state. It turned out that the headache was not caused by lack of sleep, but by fever and the impact injury.

"Then you can sleep a little longer. After you wake up, you can eat something. Your sister-in-law left some porridge for you in the pot, and it's been kept warm."

Zhong Ying nodded, her physical discomfort causing her to close her eyes and quickly fall into a deep sleep.

The intertwined memories create a bizarre and absurd feeling, as a tidal wave of unfamiliar memories surges forth.

In her sleep, Zhong Ying's brows were furrowed. On one hand, there was her daily overtime work at a major game company in the modern era, and on the other hand, there was her rural life in the Tonggan Production Team. Even installing Windows on her Apple computer would cause it to lag. The increasingly severe headache seemed to be her body warning her how difficult it was to carry two sets of memories.

It was like sleep paralysis; my consciousness struggled to wake up, but my body remained as still as stagnant water.

After what seemed like an eternity, Zhong Ying woke up drenched in sweat, as if she had finally struggled to the surface of the water and was able to catch her breath.

The room was already half-dark, and the dim light shone on the young man sitting by Zhong Ying's bed. He had a short, spiky haircut and seemed to have been sitting by the bed for quite a while. When he saw Zhong Ying wake up, the man's face lit up with joy, but his words, as always, were sharp and sarcastic.

"I told you you had bad taste."

Zhong Ying turned to look at him. This person was her brother, or more accurately, Zhong Ying's brother who lived in the 1960s. His name was Zhong Cheng. He had joined the army four years ago and was loyal to the country in his actions.

He had strong facial features, prominent brow bones, a high nose bridge, and a pair of willow-leaf eyes similar to his sister's. His wheat-colored skin complemented his crisp green uniform perfectly. However, his expression wasn't serious at the moment; instead, it was a friendly, slightly pouting look as he continued his incessant chatter about his sister, "Look at those young men you've got your eye on, their arms and legs are so thin they have no strength at all. A man should be strong, not just smart and useless."

If it were him, let alone Zhong Ying, Zhong Cheng was confident he could bring both of them out of the river with one hand each, instead of risking one life for the other.

Zhong Yingren was still a little dazed. She propped herself up and sat up, but her mouth seemed to have muscle memory as she blurted out words of retaliation, "Ha, sour grapes."

"Did I say something wrong?" Zhong Cheng was always so easily provoked by his sister's words. He wasn't good at studying, but all his limited intelligence was used in arguing with his sister, and he could always keenly perceive the underlying meaning in Zhong Ying's words. What does "sour grapes" mean? Does it mean he's stupid and jealous of smart people?

He recalled the group of educated youth he had seen on his way back to the village that evening, passing through the fields. They were all typical intellectuals. Zhong Cheng frowned in displeasure. "Thin arms and thin legs, their faces turned pale after cutting three or five rows of wheat. They looked weaker than our mother. No wonder they got themselves killed trying to save someone—"

He abruptly stopped speaking, realizing his slip of the tongue.

As if someone had suddenly cut off the sound, the room became deathly silent.

A look of grief appeared on Zhong Cheng's face. Even though they didn't get along well when they were young, anyone would feel this way upon learning of the unexpected death of someone they knew.

This year, the army made an exception and approved his short-term family visit application. Zhong Cheng took advantage of the busy "Three Summers" farming season to return to his hometown. Unexpectedly, he learned about this incident as soon as he returned to the Tonggan production team from the army. His sister accidentally fell into the Ganlin River while washing her hands at noon. Li Linshi, who was not far from her, jumped into the water to save her. In the end, Zhong Ying was rescued, but Li Linshi sank into the river.

"Huff—" Zhong Cheng let out a heavy sigh of frustration, raising his hand to rub his face vigorously. "What kind of mess is this? If he had come up here too, at worst you two would have gotten married, just like Mother said, like what happened in the Liwangou production team downstream a while ago. I don't know much about this kid, but he definitely has the intelligence you've always valued, otherwise he wouldn't be the only one from the village to go to university. But now..."

Zhong Cheng felt as if a heavy stone was pressing on his heart. Debts of gratitude could be repaid eventually, but how could he repay the debt of a life? The kindness of exchanging one life for another was truly immense.

Deng Xia walked in from outside and immediately chased her eldest son away, saying, "I could hear you nagging endlessly outside! You insisted on seeing your sister wake up with your own eyes, and now that she's awake, you're bothering her again. Go away, I get annoyed just looking at you. Go find your wife and kids, and tomorrow you'll be working in the fields!"

"Mother, you always take my side. I should go find my wife; only she's on my side!" Zhong Cheng rubbed his arm, pretending to be in pain, and obediently walked out, but he was still unconvinced. "I haven't been home for four years, why don't you care about me? You only care about your old daughter..."

Zhong Cheng was just complaining casually, but he accidentally touched a nerve with his mother, Deng Xia, who couldn't stand the words "old girl" anymore.

People in rural areas marry young; most girls get engaged at sixteen or seventeen, or marry directly at eighteen. Zhong Ying is twenty-one this year. Ever since the New Year, some gossipy idlers in the production team have started teasing Deng Xia, saying that if Zhong Ying doesn't hurry up, she'll become an old maid.

Still angry at the thought, Deng Xia's slap, which was originally just a pretense, suddenly became a real one, landing hard on Zhong Cheng's arm. This time, she really wasn't happy about it and told him to get lost.

After Deng Xia chased her son away, she immediately closed the door. She walked to the stool where Zhong Cheng had just been sitting and sat down, and couldn't help but let out a deep sigh.

"well……"

Zhong Ying even suspected that there was some kind of sighing trigger mechanism by her bedside, as everyone sitting next to her couldn't help but sigh.

Deng Xia looked at Zhong Ying with a complicated expression. "Now everyone in the village treats this as an accident. Fortunately, we are busy with the 'Three Summer Harvests' right now, and no one could care about others at the time."

"Sanxia" is short for "summer harvest, summer planting, and summer management". During the "Sanxia" period, production teams in the north enter a "battle mode" to harvest winter wheat and rapeseed, plant corn, soybeans, cotton, etc., and manage crops by applying fertilizer, spraying pesticides, weeding, etc. All these tasks must be completed as soon as possible within a little over a month.

Wheat harvesting is vulnerable to rain, and late autumn sowing can easily lead to frost and reduced yields. "Strive for the day in spring and the hour in summer"—people race against the weather, competing for speed and for real grain.

During the busy farming season, the villagers of Tonggan Production Team, led by team leader Li Ming, would plunge into the fields. Almost everyone was on high alert, working against the clock, starting at dawn and working all day under the scorching summer sun, only stopping when it got dark, with only a short break during lunchtime.

During that precious lunch break, people scattered across the fields to find shady spots to eat. Some would quickly eat a few bites and then lie down under the shade of a tree to rest for a while, while others would go to the Ganlin River beside the fields to wash away the sweat from their faces and use the cool river water to soothe the heat brought by the scorching sun.

The accident happened when people were most relaxed.

After hearing the splash, the villagers all looked over, and what they saw was a young man and woman falling into the Ganlin River.

Falling into the water isn't really a big deal. The Ganlin River is adjacent to the Tonggan production team, and most of the villagers used to run into the river when they were young. There are very few people who can't swim.

Moreover, the two people who fell into the water were both young men in their twenties, so swimming out wouldn't have been difficult. But who would have thought that there would be an undercurrent in the river at that time? Even the best swimmers couldn't escape the churning and swallowing force... In short, it was very sad. In the end, everyone worked together to pull Zhong Ying out of the crevice in the riverbank, but Li Linshi, the promising young man who was admired by the villagers, sadly passed away in the river.

Regret and grief flashed across Deng Xia's face, finally turning into a sigh of lingering fear as she looked at her daughter, "Although it's very unfair to say this to the fourth son of the Li family, but... thankfully you're alright."

Zhong Ying looked at her, her feelings a complex mix. This mother, still feeling fortunate, didn't know that her daughter was already gone.

Seeing only a subtle expression on her daughter's face, Deng Xia assumed Zhong Ying was still reeling from the whole incident and had lost her focus. She reached out and squeezed her daughter's hand tightly. "Listen to me, it was an accident. None of us wanted it to end like this, so his... death..."

Her breathing became rapid, and she lowered her voice and continued quickly, trying to convince her daughter as if she were trying to convince herself, "Don't take it to heart. You didn't want him to die, so it's not your fault. It was just an accident!"

Deng Xia gritted her teeth and said, "If you have to blame someone, blame me. By the Mountain Goddess, if there is any retribution, it should be on me. I will go to hell after I die!"

Zhong Ying gripped her hand, which was already damp with cold sweat, and couldn't help but sigh. She felt a headache and worry. What was going on...?

Yes, this is not what the villagers believe; it is not the tragic story of a hero rescuing a damsel in distress only to perish in the river.

Zhong Ying saw a different perspective from the memories within her original body: when "Zhong Ying" herself was falling into the river, she unexpectedly reached out and pulled the person down with her.

A note from the author:

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The story has begun! This time, the female lead isn't a perfect character. While she's not purely evil, she does have some flaws in her personality. Please be understanding, and I hope you all like our Zhong Ying (bows).

All the non-human characters in the story are fictional creations of humans, serving only the purpose of the story's development. Please, please do not take them seriously.

I'll be updating every day at 12 PM, and I'll keep doing it daily. Welcome to join the fun!