Chapter 1: The Tragic Su Zhaozhao

Chapter 1: The Tragic Su Zhaozhao

"Xiao Nian, how is your mother feeling?"

Gu Nian, carrying half a basket of wild vegetables, lowered her head as she hurried home. As she passed by a courtyard gate, a middle-aged woman who had just stepped out of the house called out to her.

"Aunt Guo." Gu Nian stopped and politely greeted her, "My mother is feeling better..."

But something was strange... Just thinking about it, her little brows instinctively knitted together in worry.

"That's good to hear," Aunt Guo's sun-tanned face broke into a smile, "Tell your mother to rest for another day. After the autumn harvest, there isn't much work in the fields. She doesn't need to rush back to work; we have plenty of men in the cooperative who can handle the tasks."

"Yes, I understand."

After Gu Nian left, a middle-aged man emerged from behind the house, carrying a hoe. "Who were you talking to?"

"To Xiao Nian, that girl," Aunt Guo stepped forward and patted the grass stains off the man's clothes, "Her mother fainted yesterday, and I was just going to visit later. When I saw Xiao Nian passing by, I chatted with her a bit and told her to let her mother rest for another day, not to rush back to the fields."

The man put down his hoe, brushed the mud off his pants, and grunted, "You're good at assigning tasks. The cooperative leader might as well be you."

The man was none other than Su Gensheng, the village chief and cooperative leader of Sujiagou Village, and also Aunt Guo's husband.

Aunt Guo shot him a glance, "What? Is my arrangement wrong? If it weren't for that one vote last year, who knows who would be the leader!"

Mentioning that one vote, Aunt Guo's resentment flared up again, always suspecting that her husband had rigged it.

"Cough!" Su Gensheng coughed guiltily, "Enough about the past. Why bring it up?" He quickly changed the subject, "If you have time, go see Xiao Nian's mother. It's not easy for a woman to raise two children alone, with no one to help. Su Laibao is useless and can't control his wife. He doesn't even dare speak to his sister, let alone help."

"I know, I'll go over later," Aunt Guo responded, taking a sickle to cut some vegetables for lunch from the garden beside the house, still chatting with her husband, "If Xiao Nian's mother found someone else, she wouldn't be so exhausted. Without a man in the house, things just don't work out."

Su Gensheng pulled a chair into the yard and picked up a half-finished basket he was weaving, "Don't mention that in front of her. You might offend her."

"Even if she gets offended, it needs to be said. At least they're family. No one thinks about them, and as a leader, you should consider them more!"

Aunt Guo straightened up, shaking the mud off the vegetable roots, "In the past, she didn't want to remarry because she feared others would mistreat her children. No one wanted to take on two kids. Now the children are older, can work, and are both sensible and hardworking. It might be easier to find someone. In a few years, when Xiao Nian marries and Xiao Xiang starts a family, having someone around could help a lot..."

She talked on and on, and Su Gensheng's ears hurt. Shifting the topic, Aunt Guo began discussing potential matches.

"Alright, alright, the parties haven't even spoken, and you're already setting wedding dates."

This woman talks too much. It's a good thing she's not the leader; the members would be driven mad by her chatter.

"I'm just talking to you. Seriously, what do you think of the ones I mentioned?"

"They're all not great."

"Tsk! You... How about we have vegetable porridge for lunch? I'll make a cold vegetable root salad..."

Aunt Guo and her husband chatted warmly, while at the same time, the woman they were discussing, Xiao Nian's mother, sat at the door of her house, staring blankly at the hawthorn tree in the courtyard.

Her eyes were lifeless, perfectly describing Su Zhaozhao's current state.

She had only stayed up late reading a military romance novel, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself in a dilapidated thatched cottage, a place so poor that even rats would turn away.

In the thatched cottage were two children, unfortunately, these two were hers.

From being a single, beautiful twenty-five-year-old, she suddenly became a mother, and a mother who was two years older than her!

Looking in the mirror, Su Zhaozhao almost threw it!

She couldn't believe that the dark, thin woman in the mirror was her. Judging by appearance, she looked not just two years older but possibly ten or more.

The only consolation was that her features were still somewhat delicate; with proper care, she could look good again. But how could she improve in such a poverty-stricken home?

Worse still, the original body wasn't just a mother but also a widow for many years.

When she woke up, Su Zhaozhao was force-fed a flood of memories from the original body. After absorbing them, she summarized the original's fate in one sentence:

A woman with a tragic life.

The original was named Su Zhaodi, and from her name, it was clear she came from a family that severely favored boys over girls. Below her was a younger sister, Su Lai Di, and a younger brother, Su Laibao.

Over a decade ago, Su Zhaodi and her sister were sold by their parents during a famine.

Su Lai Di disappeared after being sold, while Su Zhaodi became a child bride.

Fortunately, the family that bought her treated her well, allowing her to live a peaceful life for a few years.

At seventeen, she was arranged by her in-laws to marry a man she had barely met. On the second day of their marriage, the man ran away.

It was obvious he didn't want to.

(Su Zhaozhao: Didn't want to consummate the marriage? What a scumbag!)

Two months later, Su Zhaodi discovered she was pregnant. Before the family could fully rejoice, news came that her husband had died.

It was like a bolt from the blue!

As for how he died, the original only knew roughly that someone reported seeing him hit by a bomb in the provincial capital. Her in-laws went to the city but didn't bring back his body, only confirming that there had been an air raid recently, killing many people.

The unborn child in Su Zhaodi's womb became the family's only hope.

If things had stayed this way, the family could have lived a stable life, but a bandit raid destroyed everything.

The small village was burned to the ground overnight!

Su Zhaodi was hidden in a cellar by her in-laws, which saved her life.

Otherwise, she would have been kidnapped and sold like most of the young women in the village, with unknown fates.

And the two elders lost their lives in this bandit raid, their faces unrecognizable from the fire.

The village was burned to the ground, and with no home left, Su Zhaodi, heavily pregnant, had nowhere to go. Because her in-laws had settled in this small village to escape war years ago, there wasn't a single relative nearby who could help. Fearing the bandits might return, the survivors fled the village. In a state of utter confusion, Su Zhaodi hastily left the village and set out on the journey back to her parents' home.

In her haste, she didn't even have time to collect the bodies of her in-laws, which remained a deep-seated regret for Su Zhaodi.

The journey back to her parents' home was not short; though it wasn't a thousand miles away, it was still several hundred miles. A pregnant woman, relying on her own two feet and the kindness of strangers along the way, finally returned to her hometown just before giving birth.

After years of no contact, her sudden return with a large belly did not bring joy to her parents. The elderly couple cared about their reputation and feared gossip, but they reluctantly accepted their daughter who had come back alone.

Once the child was born, the family suddenly had two more mouths to feed. Worried that their son would have trouble finding a wife, Su's parents, shortly after Su Zhaodi recovered from childbirth, forced her and her child to move into an old, dilapidated house.

A married daughter is like water spilled out; the elderly couple felt they had done enough.

A woman with two infants to feed, life was predictably difficult.

During the hardest years, she was almost reduced to begging with her children.

Fortunately, after the national liberation, Su Zhaodi, as a married daughter, was registered and given land. Although life was still hard, it wasn't so dire that she faced starvation at any moment.

In recent years, Su's parents also passed away due to illness one after another.

Last year, the village established a cooperative, promoting mutual assistance and shared prosperity. As the only labor force in her household, Su Zhaodi, fearing others might say she was taking advantage, worked tirelessly like a cow. After a busy autumn harvest, she was utterly exhausted, and Su Zhaozhao seamlessly took over.

After receiving the memories of her original self, Su Zhaozhao subconsciously immersed herself in the novel she had been reading late into the night before bed.

What a coincidence, the man was named Gu Heng, with a nickname of Gu Shitou. The male protagonist in the novel also surnamed Gu, though it wasn't specified if he was called Gu Shitou, his name was indeed Gu Heng.

This Gu Heng, whose parents died early due to bandit raids, also lost his newlywed wife in the same incident.

The novel barely mentioned Gu Heng's parents and ex-wife, not even giving them names, referring to them simply as Father Gu, Mother Gu, and Ex-Wife.

As for why Gu Heng left home the day after his wedding, it was said that he had secretly joined the Party years ago and left hurriedly the next day due to a mission. Unbeknownst to him, this departure meant he could never contact his family again. When he returned, all he found was a destroyed home and a rebuilt village. From the surviving villagers, he learned that his entire family had perished, without even a grave to visit.

He scooped up three handfuls of soil from where his home once stood, placed it in a clay jar, and left, never returning.

The novel then rarely mentioned them again, focusing instead on the love story between the male and female protagonists, their marriage, and daily life.

While reading the book, Su Zhaozhao had commented on how pitiful the male protagonist's ex-wife was, having just married when her husband ran off. It seemed that the capable and loving male protagonist was reserved for the female protagonist, while the ex-wife was merely cannon fodder.

The role of the cannon fodder was to make the female protagonist feel jealous occasionally and give the male protagonist a reason to be upset.

Could it be because of this that she had been randomly transported here?

For some reason, perhaps it was a woman's intuition, she felt she had entered the world of the novel based on the limited information she had.

How unfair!

Others who wanted to be princesses or princes were granted their wishes, but she became cannon fodder.

Cannon fodder was bad enough, but being forgotten by the male protagonist, dead for many years, made it even worse.

So many people who dreamed of crossing over weren't given the chance, yet she, who had never wished for such a thing, was chosen.

What were you thinking, heaven?

Even with divorced parents who sent her to a boarding school and gave her ten thousand yuan each after graduation, telling her to stay away from the family property, she hadn't complained.

She used the twenty thousand yuan and the money saved from part-time jobs over the years to buy a tiny apartment.

At least she had a place to call home, and she loved it. Having a home and a job, living freely without anyone's interference, was incredibly comfortable.

No matter what era, she had never wanted to leave the 21st century!

Speaking of which, since her soul had entered someone else's body, did that mean she was already dead?

Or, as in other novels, would dying here allow her to return to her original body?

Su Zhaozhao thought about dying.

Preferably, a death that would send her back.

But what if she couldn't return?

Holding a knife to her wrist for 2.5 seconds, Su Zhaozhao gave up.

Putting down the knife, she couldn't help but cry. She had just secured a stable job!

After being exploited as a corporate drone, she had finally landed a secure position and hadn't even had the chance to subtly show off to her ruthless boss...

The sumptuous banquet was cold before she could taste it.

Tragic! So tragic!

Holding her growling stomach, Su Zhaozhao felt like crying again.

Her home, her stable job...