Bai Xiao woke up amid a bout of severe headache, feeling a lump the size of an egg on the back of her head. She opened her eyes to see only darkness engulfing her, followed by a sky full of stars and the pungent smell of cow and pig manure. She decided to close her eyes to endure the intense pain, as too many doubts troubled her heart.
Where was she? Had she gone blind? Yet, her entire head felt as if it were being hammered by hundreds of hammers, neither asleep nor awake. Gradually, she began to notice the things around her.
The icy feeling on her cheeks, transmitted from the ground, was both cold and hard. The air was suffused with a stifling pressure, and a familiar smell. She tried to sit up, but was forced back down by a piercing pain that shot through her brain.
Damn it, she knew she was dead, but can the dead still feel such agony?
Wasn't she supposed to have been killed by a car? Yes! She saw the eyes of Bai Mei, filled with resentment and venom, truly wishing her dead.
So she should be in a hospital now, right? But a hospital shouldn't have the smell of cow and pig manure.
This familiar smell instead reminded her that, before she was 18, the small storeroom in front of the cowshed where she lived was always filled with this suffocating odor. Since the age of ten, she had lived there. Her grandmother Wang Chunhua had once said with a good cause that the family had too many people and not enough space to live. They had done her a great kindness by taking her in to care for her, and since there was no space, she had no choice but to live in this storeroom; it was better than having nowhere to live at all.
Only when her elder brother Bai Song came home on leave could he take her to live in the little house of the cowshed where the brigade kept their cattle. That was probably the happiest time of her life.
Many years had passed since she had smelled the odor of cow and pig manure. Even a hospital shouldn't have that smell, not to mention that when she opened her eyes, she noticed how dark it was. And if her senses were right, she was now lying on the cold ground.
Which hospital would leave a patient lying on the floor?
Then, had someone locked her up? The faint voices grew clearer, leaving no doubt that she was in a familiar place.
Struggling to her feet, Bai Xiao still found herself in darkness, but a rush of cold, fresh air entered. She widened her eyes in surprise at what she saw; the worn calendar on the wall showed the date: "July 8, 1985!"
She trusted that her eyes weren't deceiving her because Bai Song had bought that calendar for her five months before her high school examination, especially so she could have a sense of time and plan her daily study schedule effectively—counting down the days seemed better than relying on the numbers on the school teacher's blackboard.
More importantly, because her elder brother Bai Song knew that their grandmother Li Chunhua and their uncle Bai Jianguo, who lived in the east wing room, would absolutely not let her see their calendar, let alone step near their house—she had even been considered a bad omen just for stepping on their bricks and stones.
She stared blankly and raised her hand to touch, curious whether the calendar was real, eager to confirm if everything in this room was real.
Yet she was fiercely struck by the sight of her own fingers. Though they were covered in calluses and various wounds, she could still tell they were the slender hands of a young girl, not the slightly twisted fingers caused by years of labor.
She chuckled softly, but it brought on another wave of headache, and she reached out to rub her head again.
Good heavens! Humph.
She had returned, returned to the time when she was 18 and about to take her college entrance exams.
There seemed to be enough time, so don't blame her for being impolite. Having gone through the hardships of her past life and returning to her 18-year-old self, it would be absurd not to be excited and exhilarated.
Rebirth!
Of course, Bai Xiao was familiar with the term—a popular concept that had been depicted in many TV dramas. Yet, as luck would have it, she'd hitched a ride on the rebirth train. How could she not seize the opportunity and give it her all?
Otherwise, she'd be letting herself down, as well as her elder brother, Bai Song, and her two sisters, Bai Mei and Wang Meihua, who had been oppressed and exploited by their grandmother and uncle in an effort to protect her. How many chances at rebirth does one get in life?
Since she had the chance to start over, there was still time for everything.
Struggling to sit up, the stars in her vision multiplied. Bai Xiao remembered this was right after she'd finished her college entrance exams. She hadn't followed her grandmother's orders to work with the other village girls because she was waiting for her acceptance letter. That resulted in her grandmother, Wang Meihua, furiously beating her with a fire poker until her head was bloodied, and then leaving her unattended in her small room.
It seemed to be in that period, since after the beating, without anyone to care for her or feed her, the infected wounds led to a high fever. She burned for three days. By the time she woke up, her acceptance letter had been taken by her grandmother, who also lied to her, saying she hadn't been admitted.
She had waited hopelessly until everyone else had started school, only to finally realize that she truly hadn't been admitted to college.
Who would have thought that her acceptance letter had already been intercepted by her grandmother and thrown away in the bamboo forest on the back hill? All just to keep her from attending college. If she left, Bai Song, who was working, and her two married-off sisters would no longer provide living expenses to the grandmother, and why would her uncle's family spend their own money? For such a silly reason, an admission ticket to college was wasted.
Bear in mind, in 1985, a college student was enough to make the whole village envious. Sometimes, even an entire county might not produce two college graduates. Yet here she was, a potential college student, resigned to farming and toiling at home as a beast of burden for her grandmother and uncle.
This time, nobody would fool her.
Her priority now was to avoid slipping into unconsciousness, but given her condition, her grandmother and uncle definitely wouldn't get her medical help. The village did have a clinic, but she didn't have a penny to her name.
Everyone knew how stingy her grandmother was and would absolutely refuse to extend credit to her; giving credit to their family meant never seeing a return.
Now, she had to recover quickly. This time, she must get her acceptance letter in her own hands.
And to do that, she needed to retrieve her special ability.
Special ability?
Yes, in her previous life, after her grandmother married her off to that inhuman, despicable gambler, she was subjected to nothing but beatings and scoldings. Eventually, he even tried to use her, his wife, as collateral for his gambling debts. A kind-hearted person secretly warned her, and she fled on foot along the mountain roads at night, seeking escape. But the gambler, along with others, chased after her in the darkness. In her panicked flight, she fell off a cliff, nearly losing her life. If not for two small trees that caught her in their branches.
She might have died there, shattered to pieces, rather than just suffering from a full-body fracture. As she lay at the bottom of the cliff, gasping for her last breaths, on the verge of death, a powerful energy burst forth from within her body. She could feel this energy healing her.
From that moment, she knew she possessed a special power, a healing ability, which also changed everything for her afterward.
Now, she had to reclaim this ability, and it seemed, she had to die once to do it.