"Cough, cough, cough!"
"Splaaash!"
After a few harsh coughs, Clara Whitfield spat out the water in her stomach and slowly came to.
"Thank Heaven, Qingxue is awake." Old Mistress Song from the village looked badly shaken as she spoke. "If that old beggar who knows how to swim hadn’t pulled her out just now, the child would’ve drowned for sure."
Clara Whitfield’s head spun. She opened her eyes and looked at the people around her. The memories buried deep in her heart crashed over her all at once.
This was Old Mistress Song of Dujia Village. Back then, she had been on good terms with Mother.
Clara Whitfield didn’t even bother speaking. She crawled to the edge of the stream and looked at her reflection in the water.
It was this very day, when she was twelve, the day she fell into the water and was saved.
And also the day her mother, humiliated beyond bearing, threw herself into the river.
Just then, a shrill, nasty voice rang out behind her.
"You useless little wretch! Instead of washing clothes properly, you’re staring into the water. What’s there to look at?"
Her eldest uncle’s wife, Harriet Mercer, came stomping over. The fat on her face shook as she cursed, her mouth stretched wide, making her look almost frightening.
With a vicious look, Harriet Mercer raised her big hand high and swung at Clara Whitfield.
But Clara Whitfield was no longer the timid, frightened little girl from her last life.
She had drifted as a lonely ghost for ten years in the burial mounds.
While she was alive, her mother had been driven to death, and she and her younger brother had been sold off by their own kin.
She had been naive, foolishly given her heart to the wrong man, been framed, then beaten to death alive. Unwilling to enter the next life, she became a vengeful spirit.
There was hatred in her heart.
She wanted revenge.
That tragic end had taught Clara Whitfield one thing clearly.
If you want revenge, beauty means nothing. You cannot count on others. You can only rely on your mind, your own hands, and every skill you manage to learn.
There in the burial mounds, she had learned from every ghost who knew a craft, picking up one skill after another until she had a whole body full of tricks.
And now, at last, they were useful.
Clara Whitfield held her breath, focused herself, and swiftly shifted aside.
Harriet Mercer’s slap hit nothing. The force in her arm and body didn’t stop in time, and she lurched forward uncontrollably.
"Eh? Eh—?" Harriet Mercer yelped, both chubby hands flailing wildly in the air as she tried to steady herself, but it was no use. Her body tilted, and with a loud splash, she fell straight into the water.
Clara Whitfield had no time to waste words on Harriet Mercer, and even less patience to waste time.
"Don’t hit me! Don’t beat me to death!"
She deliberately put on a panicked face. Her hair hung loose and dripping, her eyes looked dark and huge, and her skin, soaked by the river, was pale and wrinkled.
Mother was in danger right now.
Clara Whitfield turned and ran toward the village without another thought.
Even though Harriet Mercer was still thrashing in the water behind her, shouting and cursing without stop, Clara Whitfield acted as though she heard nothing and ran with all her strength.
Her clothes were soaked through. As she ran, drops of water kept falling to the ground.
The autumn wind was cold.
But it was not as cold as her heart.
Clara Whitfield ran and wiped away her tears at the same time.
Heaven had let her come back.
This time, she had to save Mother.
And she had to find the thug, the beast, the filthy man who had ruined her mother!
"Mother, wait for me!"
"Heaven above, if You let me get home before Mother is disgraced, I, Clara Whitfield, swear to the skies that I will do good and build virtue in the days to come. If I break this oath, may lightning strike me dead!"
As she ran, Clara Whitfield kept praying, begging Heaven to hear her, begging for one chance to turn her mother’s miserable fate around.
When she reached her house, she found the front gate tightly shut, bolted from the inside.
A wave of icy fear and despair shot from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.
Was she still too late?
If she still couldn’t save her mother from being violated, slandered, and thrown into the river in a pig cage, then what was the point of being reborn at all?
It was the busy autumn harvest. In the village, young and old alike were all out in the fields working. Under normal circumstances, at this hour her mother, Margaret Whitfield, should also have been in the fields.
So why had she returned home at this exact time?
Clara Whitfield had too many questions, and even now she couldn’t sort them out. But from that doubt alone, she could be certain of one thing.
There was someone inside the Whitfield family helping to kill her mother.
She didn’t dare waste time thinking further. She ran into the alley.
Thank Heaven.
Back in the burial mounds, she had learned many things from those lonely ghosts. Martial skill was one of them.
And now it finally had its use.
Bracing both hands and feet against the earthen walls of the two neighboring houses, Clara Whitfield climbed up with nimble ease and slipped lightly into the courtyard.
She could hear that the door to her mother’s room was not shut. From inside came rustling sounds, and when she got closer, she could hear her mother’s muffled sobs and struggling.
Near the main entrance lay a sickle.
It should have been Mother’s.
Clara Whitfield snatched it up at once.
Her eyes burned with fury as she gripped the sickle and charged inside.
She was going to hack that bastard to death.
In her previous life, even when she died, she had never known who the man was who had forced himself on Mother.
Now that scum was trapped in the room by her own hands.
Clara Whitfield’s eyes split wide with rage, red to the rims.
Hatred flooded her chest.
Either he died, or she did.
Inside the room, a burly man with his face covered was pinning Margaret Whitfield down. His rough, powerful hands pressed both of her wrists while he deliberately changed his voice and threatened her in a vicious growl.
"You filthy woman, I’ve wanted to have you for a long time. If you behave today, I might even make you feel good. But if you don’t, I’ll kill you first, then I’ll kill your daughter too."
"Mmph, mmph—"
Margaret Whitfield was pinned to the bed, her mouth stuffed so she could neither shout nor call for help.
Her beautiful eyes were full of despair and pain.
Who could come save her?
If she died, her daughter and son were only twelve!
They weren’t even grown yet.
Who would they rely on then?
Just as Margaret Whitfield was sinking into despair and about to give in to fate, she suddenly saw her daughter.
Hair disheveled, clothes soaked through, holding a sickle, Clara Whitfield had come silently to the bedside.
Margaret Whitfield’s eyes flew wide. She shook her head over and over, wanting her daughter to run, terrified that the brute before her would not spare the child either.
Clara Whitfield lifted the sickle high and brought it down hard toward the brute’s neck.
She was going to see exactly who this bastard was who dared dishonor her mother.
In her last life, after he violated Mother, that scoundrel had climbed over the wall and escaped when the villagers rushed in to "catch them in the act."
The only one left behind was Mother, barely covered, her whole body in a pitiful, ruined state.
She was obviously the victim.
But those people said Mother had secretly slept with another man, and they demanded she name him.
But Mother didn’t know who he was at all!
Several families in the village, poisonous at heart and already at odds with the Whitfields, kept stirring things up, determined to drive Mother to her death.
And the Whitfield family had not truly tried to protect her.
They actually agreed to it, and simply stood by watching as Margaret Whitfield was thrown into the river in a pig cage.
Could people like that really be Mother’s kin?
Clara Whitfield doubted it.
She would look for the truth later.
Right now, she wanted revenge.
Right now, she wanted to seize this unforgivable beast with her own hands.
The brute, who had been about to force himself on her mother, sensed someone beside him. He whipped his head around, startled, his pupils shrinking sharply.
Clara Whitfield had aimed the sickle for his neck.
But when he turned, the blow went off.
Instead of his throat, the blade hacked into the spot below his neck, to the right side, biting deep into bone.
Blood poured out at once. Flesh split open.
"Ahhh!" The brute let out a scream. Pain twisted his face, baring his teeth, his eyes savage. "No sound at all—you came at me like a damned ghost!"
