“Louisa’s whole life is still ahead of her. We can’t let it be ruined just like that!”

“You’re going to take the blame for her, hear me?”

The moment Cecilia Sheffield opened her eyes, that cold, hard voice crashed into her ears.

She froze on the spot, completely dazed.

Hadn’t she already died? So why was she hearing her mother’s voice again?

By instinct, she tried to lift an arm to shield her face, but then she caught sight of her own hand.

Fair. Slender. Clean.

No thick calluses, none of those rough patches she used to scrub at again and again, only to find they never came off.

She slowly looked around her.

Good heavens.

Sixteen.

She had actually gone back to the year she was sixteen.

“You damned girl, are you deaf or what? I told you to go to school and take the blame for her. Did you hear me or not?!”

Her mother’s face was red with fury, exactly the same as Cecilia remembered.

Back then, it had happened just like this. The adopted daughter, Louisa Sheffield, had been fooling around with some man at school and got caught.

And her mother had forced Cecilia to carry that filthy charge for Louisa, to wear the name of being “loose” and “shameless.”

After that, she was thrown out by the school, kicked out by her family, and no matter where she went, people whispered behind her back and pointed fingers.

Then came that pitch-black night.

A gang of street punks cornered her in an alley, beat her bloody, and violated her...

Her little brother had tried to get justice for her.

They beat him to death.

And when she went to find her parents, what had they said?

“If he’s dead, he’s dead. Don’t come bringing bad luck to this house.”

She had only managed to keep herself alive because she wanted justice for her little brother.

But that hard, bitter life had wrecked her body and left her full of old illnesses.

Day after day, she ran to one office after another, and all she ever got back was a careless, weightless line: "We know."

Just for one answer.

She spent her whole life without proper registration, her whole life doing the dirtiest backbreaking jobs.

Her whole life was strung together by medicine, her whole life soaked in misery.

And when her last breath gave out, what had she seen?

Her mother was there celebrating Louisa Sheffield’s birthday, smiling by the adopted daughter’s side, without the slightest clue that her own flesh and blood was crouched off in a corner, scrubbing bowls and plates.

Heh. Even if she had known, she probably would’ve pretended not to see it.

A faint, bitter smile tugged at Cecilia Sheffield’s lips.

Mrs. Sheffield looked at the girl in front of her—patched clothes, thin frame, stubborn face—and her eyes were full of disgust.

She truly could not understand how her own daughter had turned out so rough and shabby. A girl like Louisa, now that looked like the kind of daughter she wanted to claim.

But Mrs. Sheffield had never once asked herself this: if she had not tossed her own child back to the countryside and ignored her for sixteen long years, how could Cecilia have grown up like some wild country girl?

And now that Louisa had gotten herself into trouble, Mrs. Sheffield suddenly remembered that she still had a "real daughter" left in the village.

What a joke.

Seeing Cecilia lower her head and stay silent, Mrs. Sheffield grew more irritated. Her voice shot up at once, sharp and harsh.

"I’m talking to you! If you still want me as your mother, then go to school and take the blame like a good girl! Otherwise don’t blame me for refusing to acknowledge you as my daughter!"

Mrs. Sheffield knew perfectly well what the old Cecilia feared most.

Every word she threw out was like jabbing a knife straight into that girl’s heart.

But the one standing here now was no longer the sixteen-year-old Cecilia Sheffield who still waited and hoped for her mother’s love.

Anyone who had died once and come back could see this so-called motherly love for what it really was.

"I’m not going."

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it still stunned Mrs. Sheffield on the spot.

Cecilia Sheffield lifted her eyelids and stared straight at her mother.

"I’m not cleaning up your mess anymore. Whatever filthy business Louisa Sheffield got herself into, she can carry it herself. I won’t take the blame, and I sure won’t help."

Mrs. Sheffield stood there in a daze for a long while before she finally reacted.

"Have you lost your mind? Louisa gets good grades. She absolutely cannot be stained by something like this.

Anyway, you were never any good at school. So what if you get expelled? You can just marry somebody later..."

As she spoke, she seemed to remember something.

Her voice dropped, and her tone softened a little too.

"Don’t go getting strange ideas. You’re our real daughter. How could we not look after you? When the time comes, we’ll definitely find you a decent husband, marry you off properly, all nice and grand, and even get you a city household registration."

But Cecilia’s thoughts had already drifted back to the past.

Taking the blame for someone else—she would never do that again in this life, not even if it killed her.

But the problem of being without proper registration...

That was right. In her last life, Mrs. Sheffield had moved her registration back to the city to keep a tighter grip on her, and also to make the whole blame-taking business go smoothly. But no matter what, she refused to let Cecilia see it.

Seeing that she stayed silent, Mrs. Sheffield thought Cecilia had agreed by default.

"Then it’s settled. Be at the school by eight tomorrow morning. I’ve still got the night shift tonight. I don’t have time to keep arguing with you here. What a rotten place—not even somewhere proper to sit!"

With that, she turned and left, face full of impatience.

The sound of her footsteps faded farther and farther away.

Only then did Cecilia suddenly snap back to herself.

She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to move now.

Before Mrs. Sheffield made her move, Cecilia Sheffield had to get her household registration changed first.

She needed to add two years to her age, find work fast, and move her registration out. No matter what, she could not end up like she did in her last life.

Lucky for her, Mr. and Mrs. Sheffield loved playing the good Samaritan, always taking night shifts for their coworkers. Otherwise, she never would’ve had the chance to swipe the household booklet today.

The second her fingers touched it—

her whole body started shaking.

In her previous life, this very thing had been clutched tight in their hands, and because of it, she had gone her whole life without ever having a proper identity.

While searching around, she lost her footing by accident and slipped straight off the edge of the earthen kang, dragging down a bundle thick with dust along with her.

It was something her grandmother had left behind.

Back when Grandma was still alive, the family had land to farm and grain to harvest. At the very least, she and her little brother could still get a hot meal.

But the moment Grandma died, those two “kind-hearted” parents of hers returned the land to the village.

Even the few newly built brick rooms were handed over to families in the village who were having a hard time.

As for her and her brother, they could only squeeze into that broken-down old house and figure out for themselves how to stay alive.

Inside the bundle was a jade pendant, and hidden with it were several dozen yuan.

Cecilia stuffed everything into her clothes and took off running toward Captain Exton’s house.

At the village entrance, Louisa Sheffield’s biological grandmother was squatting there sewing shoe insoles. The moment she saw Cecilia, she lifted her voice and called out in that odd, mocking tone of hers.

"Well now, little Cecilia, your mother finally come to take you into the city so you can live the good life?"

What villagers loved most was watching other people’s family business blow up. The mess in the Sheffield family had long since become prime gossip for the neighbors.

Behind their backs, everybody said that couple had water in their brains—leaving their own flesh and blood in the village without a care, while doting on the adopted children like treasures. If that wasn’t madness, what was?

And those sharp-tongued women—every time they saw Cecilia and her brother, they just had to throw out a few cutting remarks.

Without slowing, Cecilia Sheffield turned her head and flashed them a smile.

"That’s right," she said lightly. "My mom said she’s raised Louisa Sheffield long enough to get her money’s worth. She’s already thinking of marrying her off and taking three hundred yuan in bride price."

The old woman’s needlework dropped straight from her hands. She whipped around and hurried back toward her own yard.

Cecilia kept walking.

Among the people she hated, besides her birth parents and Louisa Sheffield, there was one more: Maxwell Morrison.

That Maxwell Morrison was the son of the food factory director, and the man sneaking around with Louisa Sheffield behind everyone’s backs.

He was already engaged too. His fiancée was the daughter of the deputy director of the textile mill.

In her last life, Cecilia had taken the blame for Louisa, and because of that she ended up offending Maxwell Morrison’s fiancée. Those street thugs who bullied her back then had been sent by that very woman.

And then there was her younger brother. When he was beaten to death, he hadn’t even had one proper meal in his stomach...

But not yet.

Now was not the time to settle that score with them.

These days, if you wanted to leave the village, you needed a letter of introduction.

She had to go see Captain Exton first.

Her grandmother had helped his family before. He ought to be willing to return the favor.

Changing her age, splitting the household registration, getting a letter of introduction—every one of those things had to be handled properly, one by one.

Speaking of the sister and brother Xi’s mother had adopted, the older one was the granddaughter of old Mr. Churchill from the village. Her parents had both died, and when she was little she’d cried in front of everybody until she was gasping for breath. Xi’s mother saw her, felt softhearted, and brought her home.

But the Churchills weren’t about to hand over their granddaughter for nothing.

Xi’s mother had paid a full one hundred yuan for her.

Ten-odd years ago, a worker’s monthly wages were only a dozen yuan or so.

As for the boy, he was an orphan from the factory. It wasn’t that he had never had parents. It was just that his father had died in a workplace accident, and his mother turned around and remarried not long after.

Back then, in order to bring that boy home, Xi’s father not only handed over every bit of the compensation money, he even added more than two hundred yuan of his own.

And he even gave that child the name Tobias Sheffield.

Just thinking about it made the whole thing seem downright ridiculous.

Their own son was still being called "Xi Er," plain as dirt, yet the child they took in got handed some precious, fancy name like she was born to sit on a cushion.

If Cecilia Sheffield hadn’t known for a fact she was born right there in the village, she would’ve started doubting whether she’d really come out of those two at all.

These were tense times.

If a man and woman were caught fooling around improper-like, caught red-handed—

that could get someone shot.

But her parents didn’t take any of it to heart. In their eyes, there were only those two adopted ones.

Cecilia Sheffield truly didn’t know what to say about those parents of hers. She only felt a coldness spreading through her chest, like her heart had dropped into an ice pit.

When Cecilia Sheffield got to Captain Exton’s place, she didn’t waste words. She said straight out that she wanted to change her name.

After all, her younger brother was still being called "Xi Er, Xi Er." Captain Exton thought it over and figured she had a point. A child ought to have a proper name.

So he picked up his pen and wrote her a letter of introduction on the spot.

When she reached the village entrance, Cecilia Sheffield turned back and looked into the village one more time.

They wanted her to take the blame? Dream on.

Not only was she not going to do it, she was going to drag every filthy secret of the Sheffield family out into the light, one by one, so everybody could see.

Let everyone get a good look at those parents who acted so decent and upright—and see just how "kindhearted" they really were.