Set in an era of military marriages, sweet revenge, and face-slapping satisfaction, this story features elements of spatial magic and mind-reading. She had a worthless father who lived off others, a scheming stepmother who played the perpetual victim, and, after being plotted against, spent a decade suffering in the countryside until it cost her life. Now, reborn as Zhong Xiao, she’s here to settle old scores and punish the wicked. Did her useless father enjoy sponging off others? Every bit of family wealth he devoured over the years—he would cough up to the last cent. Was her stepmother a cunning manipulator? Fine, she’d use her own tricks against her, driving a wedge between mother and daughter until they turned on each other, exposing every secret, and ultimately shipping them off to the harshest reform farm together. Did her stepsister love to steal what wasn’t hers? Then she’d gift her a worthless scoundrel in return and tear up her university recommendation letter. “You like snatching men? Well, the livestock sheds of the Northern Wastelands are short one worker!” As for the scumbag ex who deceived her into eloping—she reported him for hooliganism, dragging him through public shaming and consigning him to a life of disgrace in the countryside. On the very day news came from the military district that her fiancé had “sacrificed” his life, she sold the family estate overnight, packed up her vast stores of supplies, and marched straight to the frontier to join the military. Everyone mocked the delicate capitalist’s daughter for rushing to become a widow, but none knew she would soon save the commander’s life with her mind-reading, and heal her gravely injured, amnesiac fiancé with the mystical spring water she possessed. With her endless supplies and miraculous medical skills, she swiftly became the Rose of the Battlefield. Then, one sultry night, a feverish officer cornered her against the hospital wall. “I hear you’ve been telling everyone I’m dead?” Zhong Xiao pressed her hand against the fierce gunshot wound on his chest. “When you pretended not to know me, Captain Song, did you ever imagine the capitalist’s daughter would help you earn three consecutive promotions?” His voice was hoarse. “What’s three promotions? I want you to give me three children.”
In 1977, Zhong Xiao never lived to see the spring of liberation. She died alone and in despair, on this land to which she’d been exiled by the scheming of those she had trusted as “family.” Her final words before death were—
“I want to go home, I want… to eat meat.”
She was only thirty, yet her voice was hoarse as an octogenarian’s, her eyes sunken, her face aged and haggard, with a deep, long scar slashing across her left cheek, red and black and terrifying.
Those ten years in the countryside had been ten years of living hell—finally, it was over. She was free. Yet she was unwilling, Zhong Xiao was still unwilling...
When she opened her eyes again, the scent of meat woke her.
She snapped her eyes open and sat bolt upright in bed, only to be met with a piercing pain in her forehead.
But Zhong Xiao had no time for pain.
In ten years of exile, she’d suffered every hardship, endured every agony. When that stepmother had deliberately arranged for a man in the village to try to violate her, Zhong Xiao had grabbed a pair of scissors and slashed open her own once-stunning face, then pointed the bloodied tip at the man, shrieking that if he dared take a single step closer, they’d die together.
The man, seeking only a bit of profit and tempted by her beauty, was not about to throw his life away. Seeing how ruthless she was with herself, he panicked and fled.
So this little pain now was nothing. Zhong Xiao shouted immediately:
“Meat! Where’s the meat? Give me meat to eat!”
The people beside her were obviously stunne