Lu Yichen finished speaking and went out. Luo Qiao lay alone on the kang, thinking it would be great if she had a Special Ability so that she could get better sooner. Now, in her current state, she couldn't do anything and still needed others to take care of her.
The thought weighed heavy on her heart. She needed to recover quickly to resolve her household registration issue, unsure if Qingshan Village would allow her to settle down.
Thinking of the melodramatic plot of that book, she figured it must be the spring of 1980 now. Fifteen years ago, Zhao Pulin, the second son of the Zhao family from Qingshan Village, and his wife Gao Suhua went to the city to run some errands, not expecting that the pregnant Gao Suhua would suddenly feel the pangs of childbirth.
After knowing she had given birth to another daughter, she couldn't stop crying under the blanket, thinking that they already had four births and five daughters. It wasn't hard to guess that her in-laws definitely wouldn't like this baby girl.
Seeing another pregnant woman in the same ward, still in a deep sleep and dressed unusually, Gao Suhua was filled with wicked thoughts. She took the opportunity when no one else was around to switch the two baby girls. She had just finished her misdeed, her heart pounding with fear, when the relatives of that pregnant woman completed the hospital transfer procedures and left.
The melodrama was, no sooner had she switched her daughter without taking a closer look at the baby girl, than she was startled by an unexpected turn of events. A couple that moved into the adjacent bed suggested swapping children when they learned that the Gao Suhua couple wanted a son.
They expressed their desire for a "little coat for the heart," which made Gao Suhua incredibly happy. After discussing it with her husband upon his return, they agreed to the exchange.
Zhao Pulin and Gao Suhua could never have imagined that the son they had cherished for fifteen years would leave them without hesitation to go with his biological parents from the city. Their branch of the Zhao family became a laughingstock in Qingshan Village.
Now, the Zhao's Second Wife already had six daughters to raise and was unwilling to acknowledge Luo Qiao, whom they returned. What's more, Gao Suhua knew that Luo Qiao wasn't her biological daughter.
What the people of the Zhao family didn't know till now was that the couple from the Luo family only wanted to secure a good identity for their newly born son back then. They didn't want their son to suffer with them in the labor camp where they were sent during the Cultural Revolution.
Now that the couple had been exonerated and returned to the city, they wanted to reclaim their son to raise him properly and dote on him. Luo Qiao, who grew up beside them, never won their affection and was conveniently sent back to her biological parents.
What the Luo couple didn't know was that Luo Qiao wasn't actually the daughter of the Zhao family. They were now focused on setting their lives back on track, each returning to their own homes, and finding their own mothers.
Sadly, during the tug-of-war between the Zhao and Luo families over the child, the original owner of this body was pushed and hit her head on the steps, bleeding profusely and losing consciousness. When she woke up, she had become the current Luo Qiao with a different soul.
Luo Qiao sighed deeply, recalling the scant parental affection she had in her previous life. Her parents were always busy, busy, busy, the only things they could give her were money, money, money, and all she knew was to enroll in various study classes.
She had always thought that if she was good enough, she could make her parents notice her. But before she received any attention, she first encountered the apocalypse. In this life, she would no longer chase those elusive things and was content living freely on her own.
Turning over, she saw a grain of rice in the kang crack, probably left over from drying grain last year, and casually pinched it in her hand. As she was absorbed in her thoughts, she instinctively used her Special Ability to quicken the growth.
By the time Luo Qiao realized what she had done, a sprout over two inches long had already grown, which terrified her. She hurriedly destroyed the evidence. After the shock passed, she was filled with excitement—her Special Ability had followed her here.
Luo Qiao began to probe her own body and faintly sensed the familiar wave of her Special Ability. It was a pity that it was now very weak, only at the level of Second Rank. It was enough to accelerate the growth of plants, but she was incapable of doing anything else.