"Mother—"
The piercing cry that echoed through the heavens startled Shen Linglong from her slumber.
As soon as she opened her eyes, she was met with horrific flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, the sound so close to her ear that it left her stunned.
It was not until a streak of purple lightning struck, illuminating the precarious straw hut for a moment.
She could hear torrential rain outside and smell the damp and musty air inside the hut. Before she could comprehend her surroundings, a snotty and tearful little boy darted into her arms and yelled, "Mother!"
By reflex, she wanted to push the child in her arms away, yet two other kids rushed over to hug her, crying and shouting, "Mother, don't die!"
Shen Linglong was slightly shaken. Although she was in her thirties, she was not even married yet, let alone had children.
Moreover, she should have died in a car accident on the highway. Even if she was still alive, she should be in the hospital, not in this dilapidated place.
The crying children gave Shen Linglong a headache. She raised her hand, hammering her head fiercely, trying to awaken from this bizarre dream.
Regrettably, she did not return to the hospital. Nor did she end up in the underworld; instead, she was bombarded with a tide of memories that were not her own.
A few moments later, she finally understood her current predicament.
She had transmigrated, traveling back to Huaxia in 1970. She was a mother, and needless to say, a mother to five children.
As for the children's father, a soldier, he was unfortunately reported to have died in action shortly after the New Year. The original owner of this body became a widow left with five children to raise on her own.
Without the money sent by their father, the once supportive in-laws turned against them. Sheltering her husband's younger siblings, they turned a blind eye and cast her and her children aside.
Euphemistically, they termed it as 'separation', but in reality, they left them with only one hundred jin of rough grain. The accumulated work points she had earned were also usurped by her in-laws, and she was left with an abandoned thatched hut at the foot of the mountain by the edge of the village.
The original body was so timid and spineless; like a clod of mud that couldn't be turned into a brick, she withstood such humiliation without uttering any accusations against her husband's family for abusing the bereaved child of a fallen soldier.
As if that wasn't enough, she even surrendered her two daughters- the eldest sister and the fourth girl to others!
Glossing over it with the excuse of her inability to feed her children, she sent her eldest child of no more than eight years old and the youngest of four, to other people's houses to serve as child brides. It was in the neighbouring village, and the family had two sons, one of whom was mentally slow!
Her mother-in-law stated, "They're just two girls anyway, worth less than money. At least they could survive if sent to another home."
The poor woman believed this and let her mother-in-law take her daughters away.
But yesterday, she heard her younger brother and her family saying that her daughters were not given away, but sold. The contract of their sale was hidden in her mother-in-law's room.
She worked herself to the bone trying to feed her three sons, toiling vigorously to earn some work points. She was as hardworking as a man even though she would only earn twelve public points per day. After a whole month, she found herself unable to keep up.
Upon discovering that her daughters were sold to serve as child brides, she was overwhelmed by heartache and fatigue. This resulted in her collapsing onto the straw pile in her cottage, where she passed away. The one who woke up in her body was Shen Linglong, a woman from the 21st century.
Shen Linglong felt agonized from just accessing these memories.
What on earth was all this!?
She sighed and patted the heads of her three boys in her arms, saying, "Why are you crying? I didn't die, did I?"
Her second son, Chen Dafu, touched Shen Linglong's forehead with his dirty little hands, and said in both shock and fear, "It’s... It's... still so hot..."
Shen Linglong comforted him, "It's okay, I will be fine by tomorrow. Now let's all go to sleep."
