Outside, the scorching sun was like a blazing flame, searing the Earth.
Within the adobe houses of the Li family, Yang Qingning was, at this moment, shivering with cold, her face frosty as she looked around the familiar room which made her feel nauseated.
An old-style calendar hung on the wall, it showed that today was the Army Day of August 1st in the year 1981, a Saturday.
In her past life, it was just tomorrow when within this short, dilapidated room, she was handed over by her husband and mother-in-law to her loathsome and lustful stepbrother.
All because after four years of marriage to Li Xiaolin, she still had no signs of pregnancy.
After ineffective old remedies like black dog's blood, rooster's blood, and child's urine failed to have any effect, her mother-in-law heard some strange theory from a supposed psychic. The theory stated that her body was heavy with yin energy which suppressed Li Xiaolin's yang energy. It would require a strong man, filled with yang energy, to sleep with her to balance the yin energy, only then would her husband be able to impregnate her.
In the plain truth, wasn't this just talking about letting another man father her child?
She was no fool and naturally, she didn't agree.
Even then, she sincerely believed Li Xiaolin to be the only man in the world who would treat her well. She, of course, refused to consent to such a horrific act.
She could have never imagined in her wildest dreams that the real reason for her inability to conceive was Li Xiaolin's impotency.
Seeing her refusal, Li Xiaolin put on an act of protecting her and argued with the mother-in-law. But behind closed doors, he drugged her and let her lecherous stepbrother from her maternal home bed her unknown times.
After she finally got pregnant, she naively thought the child growing in her belly was Li Xiaolin's.
The child she had been eagerly waiting for, however, never truly warmed up to her.
Moreover, he often joined her mother-in-law in ridiculing and insulting her, labeling her as a worthless creature.
Though feeling sorrow deep down, she knew it was her mother-in-law's intentional teachings. She hoped, as he grew older, he’d understand her better.
Yet, just before her demise after slaving away for the Li family, she discovered from her sister-in-law's jeering and despising words that the child she bore wasn’t of Li’s lineage at all. Even her marriage was a calculated plot contrived by Li Xiaolin and her stepmother.
Reminiscing about her past, Yang Qingning's seemingly innocent face distorted into a twisted grimace revealing a hint of madness.
She knew, in the eyes of others, she, Yang Qingning, was nothing more than a timid and pitiable woman who couldn’t fight back against the abuse of her husband's family, not even daring to let out a peep.
But only she knew how terrifying she could be when driven to madness.
Otherwise, with a body that her own mother had cursed as being born seductively cheap and lowly, how could she possibly have remained unscathed under the leery eyes of those country bumpkins until her marriage?
Even her stepbrother, who had long coveted her, dared not lay a hand on her while still in her maternal home.
When she was driven to the edge, she had the audacity to pick up a knife and strike a person.
Had it not been for not wanting to force Li Xiaolin into awkward situations between wife and mother, and the fact that even after four years of their marriage she had not been able to conceive and yet Li Xiaolin never blamed her but protected her, how could she willingly submit and be treated as a slave by her in-laws?
But the reason she devoted herself wholeheartedly to Li Xiaolin, and endured any hardships for him in her in-laws' house, was that he had once saved her when she was surrounded by a group of local thugs.
After that, she regarded Li Xiaolin as the only beacon in the dark journey of her life.
For him, she was willing to retract all her spines, just to please him, and what was a little servitude to her in-laws and their extensive family?
However, only on her deathbed did she discover that the thugs were actually employed by Li Xiaolin.
The purpose was to play the hero saving the beauty, so as to make her fond of him and agree to marry him when they were arranged to meet.
Li Xiaolin's protection of her in front of his tyrannical parents was merely a good cop, bad cop strategy, to make her feel indebted and devoted to him.
Near the end of her life in her previous incarnation, Li Xiaolin finally revealed his hypocritical true colors, berating her for trying to seduce her own stepbrother, claiming that marrying her was his deepest regret, and that the sight of her voluptuous body made him sick to the stomach, and so on.
