Lin Cuiying suddenly opened her eyes, feeling dizzy and disoriented. Everything around her was both unfamiliar and dilapidated.
Has she...time-traveled?
The original owner's memories came flooding back: her husband was dead, her mother-in-law was mean, her uncle's family was heartless, and she had two young daughters who were struggling to make ends meet with her.
At this moment, because her husband's family is greedy for money, they want to sell the original owner to the next village!
The original owner refused to comply and died by crashing into a wall, which benefited Lin Cuiying, a soul from another world, who was able to possess his body.
"Hmph, you want to sell me? You'll have to see if I'm willing!" Lin Cuiying sneered inwardly, a cold glint flashing in her eyes.
She's from the post-apocalyptic world and has fought zombies, how can she let herself be manipulated?
At that moment, the chirping of cicadas mixed with curses pierced Lin Cuiying's eardrums.
"You jinx who killed my son! Go die somewhere far away!" The original owner's mother-in-law, Granny Wang, stood with her hands on her hips under the jujube tree, spittle flying onto the wilted vegetable leaves.
The cicadas' chirping stopped abruptly, and Granny Wang's oily face gleamed bluish-green under the blazing sun.
She grabbed a broom and banged it hard on the drying rack, the loud crash startling the sparrows flying from under the eaves.
"Stop pretending to be a corpse!" The broom tip poked at the undried bloodstains on the muddy ground, the rough noise hurting one's eardrums. "If it weren't for the Zhang family taking a liking to you and paying you, they'd still treat you like a jinx..."
Lin Cuiying touched her head, and the sunlight filtering through the crack in the wooden door shone on her.
She got up from the ground, and even through the mud wall, she could smell the musty smell of fermenting sauerkraut jars, as well as the sour smell of old sweat stains on Granny Wang's body.
"Mother..." Two little heads popped out from the doorway. Daya's patched trousers were stained with chicken droppings, and Erya was clutching half a blackened bun in her hand.
The child's fingers had barely touched the door frame when Granny Wang splashed a ladle of swill on them, soaking them completely.
"Don't you dare touch my door, you worthless brat!" The wooden ladle shattered in two against the rammed earth wall. Granny Wang rushed forward, grabbing the child's collar, "Your mother is taking you down to the eighteenth level..."
Before the words were finished, the broken door panel crashed to the ground.
Lin Cuiying stepped on the door panel, and wood chips brushed against Wang Pozi's nose.
She lifted the two terrified children with one hand and shoved them behind her back; her blood-scabbed forehead looked like it had been smeared with cinnabar in the sunlight.
"The eighteenth floor?" She tilted her head and chuckled, her knuckles, hardened by the apocalypse, cracking loudly. "How about I send you to the Yellow Springs to scout things out first?"
Granny Wang stumbled backward, knocking over a jar of pickled vegetables, the dark brown liquid spilling over her shoes.
She suddenly noticed that her daughter-in-law's eyes had changed—her previously evasive gaze now seemed frozen, reflecting the twisted branches of the jujube tree, making her look like a demon possessed.
"You...you dare..."
"Why wouldn't I dare?" Lin Cuiying bent down, picked up the broken half of the ladle, and threw it at the well platform, severing the straw rope binding the firewood with a "clang".
The scattered, withered branches rustled and rolled to Granny Wang's feet, startling her so much that she pressed her plump body against the sauerkraut jar.
"You wretched wretch!" The curtain in the kitchen was suddenly lifted, and a plump woman in an indigo apron rushed out carrying rice-rinsing water.
Soot from the stove clung to the creases at the corners of her eyes, and her thick arms slammed the wooden basin down with a loud clang.
This is Aunt Liu—the gossipy woman in the original owner's memories who loved to pinch people's soft flesh.
"You dare hit your mother-in-law? May the heavens strike you dead, you heartless wretch!" Liu spat on the dried corn, her greasy fingers almost poking Lin Cuiying's nose. "Who in the surrounding villages doesn't know you're a jinx and a spendthrift? If it weren't for our Wang family taking you in..."
Lin Cuiying suddenly grabbed the radish-thick finger and twisted it backwards, causing Liu's pig-like scream to startle all the chickens and ducks in the yard.
She whispered in Liu's ear, "Auntie, those fingers of yours, they must have touched the money bag of Peddler Du at the village entrance last month, right?"
Liu's face turned deathly pale and she fell silent, her flabby cheeks jiggling more violently than a leaf.
Lin Cuiying pressed her fingertips down another half inch, and Liu's wrist made a teeth-grinding cracking sound.
"Du the peddler's money pouch had words embroidered on it." She slowly twirled Liu's dislocated index finger, watching the large beads of sweat appear on the other's nose. "Can you still find those oil-paper-wrapped copper coins in the hollow of the old locust tree at the east end of the village?"
"Nonsense...nonsense..." Liu's eyes darted around, then she suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs, "Mother, come quick! This jinx is going to kill..."
Granny Wang thought the two of them couldn't handle Lin Cuiying alone, so she shuddered with her fat body and lunged at the well, grabbing a clothesline pole and whipping Lin Cuiying: "You jinx who killed my son, now you want to bring misfortune to your whole family! Go die in the mass grave on the mountain!"
The bamboo pole made a whistling sound as it cut through the air, but Lin Cuiying grabbed the coarse cloth that was drying in the sun and shook it in the wind.
The stiffened cloth lashed out at Wang Pozi's wrist with a "smack," and the bamboo pole smashed a nearby earthenware jar with a clang.
Granny Wang, clutching her swollen, red wrist, slumped down onto the broken pottery shards. Her bloodshot eyes nearly bulged from their sockets, and a hoarse, phlegmy sound billowed in her throat: "Help! Someone come here—"
Scattered figures drifted along the distant field ridges, but the mud-brick houses by the drying ground stood forlornly at the foot of the mountain, and even the barking of dogs could not be heard from two miles away.
Lin Cuiying hooked the well rope with her toes and swung it around, the rope wrapping around Liu's neck like a venomous snake.
On the muddy ground dampened by rice water, Liu's eyes rolled back as she was strangled, her fingernails scraping fine bits of grass off the hemp rope.
"Shh." Lin Cuiying pressed down on Wang Pozi's kicking legs with one knee, and icy well water dripped down the windlass into the back of her neck. "Guess what? When the wild dogs in the mass grave are gnawing on bones, do they rip out the heart and liver first, or gnaw on the eyeballs first?"
The curses that were escaping Wang Pozi's throat were suddenly cut into a rooster's crow by the well rope, and her bluish-purple lips were still moving, spitting out droplets of saliva.
"A...jinx..." The hemp rope trembled with her gasps. "He...he deserves to be drowned in a pig cage..."
Lin Cuiying flicked her wrist, and the hemp rope suddenly got stuck in the fat of Liu's triple chin.
"What did Grandma just say? She wanted to die somewhere far away?" Her toe crushed the wooden hairpin that Granny Wang had scattered, breaking it in two with a snap.
The two little girls clung to the door frame, trembling, when suddenly their mother winked at them.
They didn't know why their mother had become like this after waking up, but this kind of mother inexplicably gave them peace of mind.
Lin Cuiying's stomach rumbled, making the hemp rope tremble.
She turned her head to look at the smoke rising from the kitchen, and suddenly caught a whiff of fragrance.
"Consider yourselves lucky." She flung the rope aside and kicked away the broom beside the well. Liu slumped in the pickled vegetable juice like a rag doll, gasping for breath.
A dog barked from the west end of the threshing ground, mixed with Granny Wang's slurred curses: "That damned little bitch..."
Lin Cuiying glared at her and then went straight into the kitchen.
The earthen stove in the kitchen was still steaming, and the porridge simmering in the earthenware pot was bubbling away.
Lin Cuiying lifted the bamboo steamer lid, and the steamed white steamed buns were vaguely visible.
These white flour buns are not usually available to the mother and her two children.
She picked up the steamed buns from the steamer and called the two little girls over.
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