1.001 Body Replaced by a New Soul
Startled awake, Su Yu opened her eyes and found the entire space distorted. She quickly closed her eyes again. She should be in the hospital, but even though she was awake, no doctors or nurses came to her.
Her ears were ringing, she felt dizzy and nauseous, and she couldn't breathe. She opened her mouth wide, putting all her strength into her mouth and nose. She vaguely heard the creaking of a door opening and closing and the sound of footsteps. She opened her eyes again and could only vaguely see a figure. But the figure was elongated and distorted. It seemed like the doctor was facing her and examining her. She saw distorted facial features, with one eye on the top of the head and the other on the chin. The dizziness immediately worsened.
Hearing a loud voice, she squinted toward the side where there were people and struggled to say, "Doctor, I can't breathe..."
Zhao Guixiang jumped up and down and ran out to call for help. She was holding her breath and wanted to teach her daughter-in-law a lesson. When she got to the door, she found that the front door was wide open, as were the kitchen and living room doors. Only the bedroom door was closed, and there was heavy breathing coming from inside. She stood at the door and called Su Yu's name several times, but no one answered. However, the heavy breathing continued from inside the room.
In a moment of rage, she thought her daughter-in-law was having an affair while no one was home. Her face flushed and her neck thickened, she grabbed a kitchen knife from the kitchen and kicked open the bedroom door. What she saw was her daughter-in-law, who had only been married for half a year, lying diagonally on the bed, her pale face facing the doorway, and the heavy breathing coming from her.
Zhao Guixiang breathed a sigh of relief, picked up the kitchen knife and rummaged through the room, shaking out all the clothes piled on the chair before she felt at ease. She stood by the bed and ruffled the clothes, frowning as she asked, "Are you still dreaming? Why are you acting so strangely?"
As soon as the words were spoken, the woman on the bed opened her eyes, her eyeballs rolling sideways. Coupled with her pale face and the bulging veins on her neck, she was so frightened that she almost hid in the ground. Zhao Guixiang didn't hear anything the person behind her was saying. She finally realized that something was wrong with her daughter-in-law and ran out of the courtyard to call for help.
From the moment someone came in to lift her up until she was put in a car to get on the road, Su Yu was fully conscious. However, she was so dizzy that she dared not open her eyes and could not see clearly. At this point, she could feel that something was wrong, but she was too weak to do anything. She could only let the people in the car do whatever they wanted to her, such as flipping her eyelids, slapping her face, and pinching her philtrum. She didn't even feel any pain, only numbness, the kind of numbness that you feel when you get off the operating table and the anesthesia hasn't worn off yet.
Later, she arrived at the hospital. A doctor pressed on her chest, presumably performing CPR, and also gave her a numbing and astringent medication. An IV was also inserted into her hand. By the time she fully regained consciousness, it was already dark outside the ward, and the IV drip was no longer in her hand.
She glanced around the damp, musty-smelling ward through the light streaming in from outside. Memories of the original owner of this body flooded her mind. It was the summer of 1970 in China. The body's owner was also named Su Yu, a 27-year-old remarried mother with a child. Her biological son was 7 years old, and she had a stepson who was 8 years old and had lost his mother 6 years ago. Her second husband was a truck driver who only came home once every ten days or so.
The original owner worked in the canteen of a canned food factory. She was an honest and hardworking person, spending her days in the sweltering heat, diligently tending the fire and preparing vegetables. After the food was ready, she would bring it home to feed her two children. The combination of being cooped up in the heat and the heat left her feeling dizzy and weak by the time she got home. However, the two children got into a fight over a stray black puppy they had brought home, each giving their own reasons and demanding that Su Yu decide who the puppy belonged to. At the time, Su Yu was only focused on catching her breath and didn't pay attention to the children's opinions. Her suggestion that they both raise it together stirred up a hornet's nest. One felt their biological mother was biased, the other thought their stepmother was biased, and they fought again. Both ran out crying, without even eating.
The original owner, already suffering from severe heatstroke, was both angry and anxious, but unable to walk. She tried to lie down for a while, but as soon as she lay down, she collapsed. When she opened her eyes again, she was in a different body. Su Yu suspected that the original owner had suffered a heart attack and died. When she was conscious, she could feel her heartbeat was very slow, and she couldn't control her body. All the physiological reactions were extremely difficult and painful, leading Su Yu to guess that the original owner had already passed away some time ago when she arrived.
This guess made Su Yu feel a little relieved. She was afraid that she had taken over a living person's body and come back to life, forcing the original living soul to wander or die.
She fell asleep while thinking, and woke up just as dawn broke. Apart from going to the toilet, she didn't know what to do. Everything outside was unfamiliar, so she could only lie in bed and listen to the footsteps outside.
"Oh, you're awake?" Dr. Hu entered the ward and saw that Su Yu had opened her eyes. He examined her again with his stethoscope and said to the old woman behind him, "Your daughter-in-law is all better now. She's in good health. She had such a severe heatstroke yesterday, but she's not showing any symptoms today."
"Then why is she still so dazed? Should we give her another IV drip?" Zhao Guixiang glanced at the woman on the bed, not daring to look any longer. She had a nightmare last night when she got home, dreaming that Su Yu was dead, her face was pale, and her eyes were rolled back and couldn't be closed. She managed to close her eyelids all night, and when she woke up in the morning, her clothes were soaked with sweat.
Dr. Hu was puzzled. This person was cursing and swearing when she went to pay yesterday, but now she's asking for more IV fluids? She glanced at the woman on the bed and agreed to the request, "Okay, let her be discharged this afternoon. She's lucky to be alive. When she was brought in yesterday, her heart rate was worse than that of a seventy or eighty-year-old. I even suspected that her heart had stopped beating yesterday, but somehow it came back to normal. She's really lucky. If I don't immediately resuscitate someone whose heart rate drops suddenly, they basically won't survive."
"Of course it didn't survive; now it's a different person who's alive." After the doctor left, Su Yu said to her mother-in-law, who was standing at the foot of the bed with uncertain eyes, "I'm hungry. I haven't eaten since yesterday noon."
"Oh, okay, I'll go buy it for you now." Zhao Guixiang had eaten at home and had leftovers, but she was absent-minded all morning. She didn't expect that her daughter-in-law, who was lying in the hospital, would need to eat. She forgot that no one else in the family had reminded her. She finished eating at six in the morning and was in a daze until eight o'clock before coming to the hospital empty-handed.
It seems that the mother-in-law was quite frightened yesterday. The original owner had been married to Ning Jin for more than half a year, and this mother-in-law had never given her a kind look from beginning to end. She was afraid that the original owner would cheat on her son and that the original owner, as a stepmother, would bully her grandson. The original owner did not dare to talk to men outside because this old woman had followed her and even slapped her on the spot for smiling a few times when she greeted a male classmate from the past.
Even just being a bystander in her memories made her furious.
After Su Yu finished a bowl of plain rice porridge, the nurse came to give her another IV drip. She asked the person who was about to leave, "Is Ping An at your house or at his maternal grandma's house?"
“He was at my house yesterday at noon, and then went to his grandma’s house in the afternoon. Now that you’ve been discharged from the hospital, hurry up and go pick him up. You’ve made him leave in a huff, you need to coax him back, you…”
"Alright, I understand, you can go now." Seeing that she was about to relapse into her old ways, Su Yu quickly interrupted her, gave her a cold look, and closed her eyes to rest.
"How dare you talk like that? Who are you talking to? I paid for your injections and medicine, and I saved your life." As soon as Su Yu retorted, the fear in Zhao Guixiang's dream immediately dissipated.
In Zhao Guixiang's eyes, Su Yu was only presentable on the outside, but she was also quiet, stupid, and had brought a burden with her son after marrying him. Even her current job was bought with money from her son. Su Yu should have kept her head down in front of her family. For the past six months, she had indeed been meek and submissive, never fighting back or arguing. This sudden coldness was hard for her to accept, and she was filled with anger. She tried to extinguish Su Yu's sudden rebelliousness by questioning her loudly.
“I died once yesterday and came back to life. Otherwise, how could a bottle of saline solution have saved my life? You saved my life? Ha, life isn’t that easy to save. Did you see me yesterday? I wanted to die but couldn’t. You’ve never experienced that, have you?” Su Yu looked at Zhao Guixiang. “I’ve died once and I’m not afraid of death anymore. You have to keep a close eye on me. If I want to die again someday, I’ll definitely take a few more people with me. After all, quite a few people have bullied me in the past six months.”
"Are you crazy? What do you mean by death?" Zhao Guixiang asked in a panic.
"What are you yelling about? Go back and yell if you want to go crazy." A nurse pushed open the door, glaring at the old woman with a cold look. "What are you yelling about in the hospital? You're dressed neatly, but is this the kind of manners you have?"
"I'm so sorry, my mother-in-law has a loud voice, she's always yelling. I'll make her leave right away." Su Yu apologized on behalf of her mother-in-law, which earned Zhao Guixiang another eye roll. Zhao Guixiang snorted angrily and walked out the door before the nurse.
Everyone had left, and the sun outside was getting increasingly glaring. Su Yu got out of bed and left the hospital after her IV drip was finished. She walked back along the route she remembered. The sun beat down on her bare skin, and after a few minutes, she lost interest in the unfamiliar street scene. As she hurried along, all she could think about was the dusty street, with no dazzling array of goods, no noisy music, and no piercing car horns.
She walked into the alley, which felt strange yet felt familiar. There wasn't a soul on the street, and the scorching sun kept even the dogs away. She took out her keys from her pocket, unlocked the door, and went inside. There she saw the little black dog hiding by the water tank, watching her warily.
"Oh, you're still here? Didn't take the chance to run away?" Su Yu closed the door behind her. There was a bolt inside the wooden door, a style Su Yu had never seen before. Whether she was a child or an adult, the doors she used were all iron, and they would lock as soon as she touched them.
Only the main gate was locked; the kitchen and living room doors were open. Upon entering, a sour smell filled the air. It turned out that a lunchbox had been overturned on the floor, and the spilled food had been eaten by the dog. The food inside the lunchbox had spoiled, and it was crawling with ants.
Su Yu walked around the house. There were two bedrooms, a main room, a kitchen, and a small courtyard. There was also a toilet that was about the height of a person against the back wall. As she walked around, the little black dog peeked out and then followed her around. It was so small that Su Yu almost stepped on it several times when she turned around.
"Little guy, you're so clingy. No wonder you made those two boys fight over you." When Su Yu was boiling water to take a bath and wash her hair, she also washed the little dog with fleas on it. It was quite obedient, standing in the basin without making a fuss or fuss, and not afraid of water at all.
After her hair dried, she soaked her clothes in a basin of water, locked the gate, and left the town, heading to Xinhe Brigade, not far from the town—the original owner's maternal home.
"Su Yu is back? Is she here to pick up Xiao Yuan?" An old man carrying a basket was encountered as soon as they entered the village.
"I've come to see my parents." Strangely, she said "parents" very naturally. She used to call her parents "Dad and Mom," but now she said it without any hesitation. It seems that her body has a strong memory.
"Xiao Yuan went to the field to pick up wheat ears, go and look for him." Obviously, the old woman opposite did not believe that she had come just to visit her parents. Su Yu was also sure from her that Xu Yuan had come to his maternal grandparents' house, so she didn't have to worry about him getting lost or being abducted on the way.
Knowing that Xu Yuan was safe, Su Yu turned around and walked back to town after the old man left. She had come back to life in the body of "Su Yu". It was "Su Yu" who saved her life. She should accept all the social relationships of the original owner and also take on the responsibilities and obligations of being a daughter and a mother.
However, she has a different personality from the original owner. People close to her will feel unfamiliar and awkward when they come into contact with her. She was Su Yu before, and she will be Su Yu in the future. Her identity cannot be questioned, so she does not go to see Su's parents immediately.
What she wants most now is a divorce. She is 37 years old in the 21st century, but she has never been married or had children. "Su Yu" has spent half a year trying to improve her relationship with her in-laws, and her relationship with her stepson is getting worse and worse. She doesn't think she can handle it.
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