Chapter 22

Heart pounding with uneasy anticipation, Jiang Wei dropped into a world called Seventies Happy Life.
The body she was supposed to take over belonged to a woman named Bai Xinmei.
She thought of Victor’s three rules: complete the task, stay in-character, win over the audience.
She’d never acted a day in her life. The only way to make it work was to become Bai Xinmei from the moment she entered, think like her, feel like her. That was the only way to preserve the character’s traits and avoid jarring the countless unseen viewers watching her every move.
[Main quest: conquer Song Jinping, that dog of a man.
(PS: We lowered the difficulty a bit for our newbie streamer, from VIP viewer “LetTheHeroineEatShit”)]
Jiang Wei: …Clearly this patron doesn’t think much of this world’s heroine.
She’d just learned that the quests weren’t generated by the system at all, but thrown out by the audience watching this little “tournament.” The VIP viewers could bid on the right to define the objective.
Whoever tipped the most got to decide what the “streamer” would have to do.
From the plot dump Victor fed her, Bai Xinmei was… speechless.
Why wasn’t this world just called The Love-Hate Tangle of Two Widows?
The female lead, Wang Changlan, was a self-made businesswoman who went to sleep one night and woke up back in her childhood, in that hungry, bare-bones decade.
She swore that this time, she’d fix all her regrets.
First, stop her father from going up the mountain in the dead of winter and getting mauled to death by a bear.
Second, absolutely do not marry Hao Jianguo, a woman-beating, hooker-visiting piece of trash.
While she was scrabbling for her happy life, she discovered, to her shock, that the educated youth who’d just been sent down to the next village was actually her second husband from her previous life: Song Jinping, son of a high-class intellectual family from the capital.
He’d only just been sent down…
He hadn’t yet been ensnared into marriage by Bai Xinmei, that vain, greedy “capitalist miss” who sold her own child, shamelessly climbed into his bed, and couldn’t keep her legs closed while widowed…
They’d really piled it on.
Yes, she knew she was the “vicious supporting role,” but this was a bit much.
Two-thirds of the novel, from what she’d seen, was devoted to Wang Changlan: how strong and independent she was, how kind and virtuous, how sweet things were between her and Song Jinping.
The remaining third was all about Bai Xinmei being lazy and greedy, a pampered ex-rich girl who liked to freeload, sneak into men’s beds, and eventually crawled off to sleep with some local scoundrel.
Jiang Wei had a very strong urge to swear out loud.
The day she took over the body, it was a sweltering summer night. Just sitting on the kang without moving was enough to soak a person in sweat. The room was pitch-dark.
Tonight… was Bai Xinmei and Qin Yuanzheng’s wedding night.
“Maybe I should… I’ll just sleep in the outer room,” a deep voice stammered.
Pale moonlight poured in through the tiny mud-framed window, stretching the tall man’s shadow long across the earthen floor.
Qin Yuanzheng.
The original owner’s short-lived, doomed husband.
Before the revolution, the Bai family had been the big landlords in town, the very picture of “evil capitalists.” Their sons and daughters ate off silver plates, wore shiny leather shoes, and got shipped overseas to “drink foreign ink” as soon as they hit sixteen.
Qin Yuanzheng’s mother had once been a cook in the Bai household. Later, when her eyesight began to fail, the Bai family hadn’t thrown her out. They’d kept her on as the night watch at the gate, no need to see faces, just listen for sounds.
His two older brothers worked as clerks at the Bai family’s clothing shop, with a real shot at becoming managers someday. The Bais thought the Qins honest and dependable, so they trusted them with their business.
That year, Bai Xinmei was only six.
She spent her days on the swing in the back garden, with a foreign-educated governess coming to the house to teach her lessons. Her world was carefree and bright.
Qin Yuanzheng was fourteen then, a half-grown boy, studying thanks to the Bai family’s support.
Two or three years later, the Bai family business began to falter, but it didn’t stop them from putting on airs and living like big shots.
One day, Father Qin and Mother Qin brought Qin Yuanzheng with them, their faces wrinkled and weathered from years in the fields. They knelt in front of Madam Bai, smiles forced and pitiful.
“Madam,” Father Qin said hoarsely, “you’ve watched Yuanzheng grow up. The boy’s done well in his studies, seems he’s even gotten into some military academy. But these past days… my eldest son’s wife had a hard labor, one body two lives gone, we have to pay for the funeral. Her family gave some money, but…”
His throat closed up. A man who’d worked the fields forty, fifty years now had tears trembling in his eyes.
Mother Qin sobbed outright, but when her wails got too loud, Father Qin shoved her, muttering that she’d scare the madam off with her bad-luck crying, and then no one would help them.
Madam Bai cradled a thin-boned porcelain cup, steam curling up in pale white wisps. She sighed.
“I know what you’re asking. But you also know what our family’s been like these last years…”
As the Bai family declined, her mood had been sour for a long time. And this kind of “lend money you’ll never see again” deal… left an even worse taste in her mouth.
Just then, a rapid thump-thump-thump sounded from upstairs.
“Mother, why are Aunt Qin and her husband and son kneeling on the floor?”
Madam Bai looked up to see her daughter come running down, cheeks flushed, eyes bright and clear as she peered curiously at the scene.
She cleared her throat twice, told the three on the floor to stand, then pulled out a handkerchief to dab away the sweat on her little darling’s face.
She’d had another daughter once, even picked out the name, Yongmei, but the child hadn’t survived. Many years passed before this precious little girl was born.
“They’ve come to ask Mother for help,” she said gently.
“What kind of help?” Bai Xinmei puffed up, aggrieved. “Mother, it’s a new era. Everyone’s equal now. Don’t make people kneel to you all the time. That’s not respecting them!”
“You little brat.” Madam Bai flicked her on the forehead. “Who taught you to talk like that, lecturing your own mother?”
“The lady teacher,” she huffed.
Father Qin, seeing an opening, quickly launched back into his plea between sniffles and tears.
“Then just let Brother Yuanzheng go study, what’s the problem?” eight-year-old Bai Xinmei said matter-of-factly. “It’s not like he can’t find his way to Nancheng, right? Uncle Qin, I’ll have our driver take you.”
“To answer young miss…” Father Qin’s voice shook. “It’s the military academy fees. Thirty, thirty silver dollars. But Yuanzheng says, once he’s in, we won’t have to worry about anything after that.”
He held up three fingers, eyes full of desperate hope.
Qin Yuanzheng had kept his head bowed the whole time. When they told him to kneel, he’d dropped down immediately without protest.
“I see. Thirty silver dollars… that’s kind of a lot,” Bai Xinmei said seriously. “Mother, just lend it to Uncle Qin’s family. A man’s knees are worth gold, look at them now.”
She clung to Madam Bai’s arm, wheedling.
Madam Bai waved her off. “I really don’t have money, child. The household, the servants, the driver, your lady teacher, keeping all this going costs me ten silver dollars a month.”
“Hmph. Then I’ll pay for it myself.”
She thump-thump-thumped upstairs, came back hugging her little ruby-and-agate jewelry box, stuffed with New Year’s money she’d saved.
“One, two… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-nine…”
“One, two… twenty-nine, twenty-nine…”
Not enough.
She looked at her mother, blinking, and her eyes began to fill, lips trembling.
Madam Bai was helpless. She wiped away her daughter’s tears. “You little crybaby. Their whole family isn’t crying, and you are? We’ll make up the last dollar.”
Only then did Qin Yuanzheng finally raise his head to look at the little miss who had all but changed his fate.
She wore a pale pink puffed dress and wine-red leather shoes with a bow. Her fine features were a softer, younger echo of Madam Bai’s; her skin was as white as the steamed buns his family only saw at New Year.
Nestled in Madam Bai’s arms, eyes and nose still pink from crying, she looked just like the porcelain dolls in those department store window displays.
She’s so cute, he thought quietly.
“Yuanzheng, kowtow to Madam and the young miss!” Father Qin said.
And then the nightmare began.
Crowds stormed the Bai family’s shops, beating people and smashing everything in sight.
Even their pretty little Western-style villa was burned to the ground. The Bais were driven out to some remote village, labeled exploitative landlords and evil capitalists, everyone shouting that they deserved to be punished by the people and “reformed” through the harshest labor.
By the time the Bai family got wind of it, it was already too late.
On the eve of the chaos, Father Qin had gone to see Madam Bai with a letter from Qin Yuanzheng.
He asked if she would marry Bai Xinmei to Yuanzheng, so the girl could escape the storm.
In the letter, Qin Yuanzheng said he’d already become a company commander. He didn’t have the power to shield the entire Bai clan, but he could protect his wife from the coming purge.
Madam Bai flew into a rage at first. How could she marry her daughter to some mud-legged soldier whose family had been farmers for three generations?
But when flames lit up the sky outside and her daughter shook in her arms, she finally understood: the tide had turned.
“You swear to me,” she’d said, voice shaking, “if you dare treat Meimei badly…”
Now Qin Yuanzheng was twenty-six, about to return to the army again.
In the three years they’d been married, the Qin family had treated Bai Xinmei like a household ancestor, serving and humoring her.
Remembering the debt they owed the Bai family, Qin Yuanzheng had never laid a hand on her.
Part of it was that she was eight years younger than him; when he married her, she’d only been fourteen or fifteen, her monthly cycle barely started.
He wasn’t an animal.
The other part… he simply didn’t know if she wanted him to.
But he was leaving again soon, and Mother Qin’s heart had been uneasy.
Her youngest son was twenty-six, on his way to thirty, and he’d never so much as touched a woman’s backside.
This little daughter-in-law had come in, and it was as if he were still single. Once, when the political winds weren’t quite as sharp, she’d suggested to her son that he sit down and talk with the young miss: if they could arrange things properly, maybe they could part ways amicably. Then he’d be free to marry a “real” wife to keep warm at night.
Her son had only lifted his eyelids and said, “Mother, we can’t be ungrateful. The Party’s principles and spirit guide me forward at all times. I’ve just been promoted to battalion commander, if people find out I’m a faithless, heartless man, the army won’t keep me. There’d be no place for me in society. This is a problem with your thinking. In troubled times, you’d be put on trial for saying this.”
He scared Mother Qin half to death. She waved her hands, insisting she wasn’t that kind of person, she was just talking nonsense.
When she quietly floated the idea to Father Qin, she got an even harsher tongue-lashing for her trouble.
Over time, she pieced together her son’s thoughts. That fallen rich girl from the Bai family… she really did look like a little fox spirit.
Her son had watched her all these years; he couldn’t possibly be interested in the other village girls. Odds were, he’d already fallen for her.
So she changed tactics.
If she couldn’t pry them apart, she’d just have to get that delicate little miss to accept her son and become a proper wife.
It was a new China. The Bai family would never rise again.
But Qin Yuanzheng was as stiff as a wooden stake. At this rate, she’d never hold a grandson before she died.
So Mother Qin rolled up her sleeves and got to work, day in, day out, dripping water on stone.
At last, Bai Xinmei relented.
Truthfully, she’d been uneasy these past years herself. With the Bai family gone, she needed somewhere to rest her weight. But Qin Yuanzheng always held himself so straight and distant, treating her politely and carefully. With the way she’d been raised, even in disgrace she couldn’t take the initiative to throw herself at him.
When Mother Qin finally couldn’t stand it anymore and pushed from behind, she simply went with the flow.
Which led to the scene playing out now.