In the inner room, the two Jinhua sisters who were eavesdropping heard Second Miss speak up to Mrs. Lai, "Mother, you're right, we can't hire a doctor without money for my dowry.
"Yes, Mother, I'm hungry. We should have some delicious... wild chicken eggs," Third Miss chimed in.
Mrs. Lai twisted her plump body around, irritated, and shot another glare at Mrs. Li's room, "Gave birth to a loss-making good-for-nothing, and now old mother has to cook herself."
Panicked after seeing her father not calling for the doctor, Daya rushed out of the courtyard. She needed to seek help from a neighbor, and the first person she thought of was Granny Li who had helped them earlier.
Mrs. Li was fainting in the room, her pale face from childbirth slowly turning a faint shade of purple, her pulse growing weaker by the minute.
Her face and hand, swollen from wasp stings, were gradually subsiding.
The stench of blood in the room grew stronger, and the baby wrapped in a piece of torn cloth by her side was waving its hands and kicking its legs, as if sensing the danger its mother was in.
The baby who hadn't cried since birth stared with round wide eyes, wanting to speak but only managing to make "ah, ah" sounds.
Tang Shiqi felt utterly cursed, just a moment ago she was enjoying the thrill of driving a luxury car when she unluckily crashed into the railing.
The next moment, she woke up as a baby. Racking her small brain, she found the situation oddly familiar; despite never reading novels, she was influenced by her best friend, who claimed online fiction was enjoyable.
She had opened up a novel reading app and inadvertently clicked on a story about farm life.
The second and third chapters of the story described this very scene, where her mother dies from excessive bleeding during childbirth, and her father remarries a stepmother...
The word 'stepmother' was repulsive to her. After her own mother's death, her wealthy father took a stepmother for her who spoke to her coldly every day, and brought along an elder sister as well. They were always at odds, with her father siding with his new wife and her daughter.
No, she had to find a way to save her mother. Unable to walk or speak, and with the family being so poor, she couldn't just let her mother die.
Suddenly, she remembered she had a space. In her past life, she was born into a wealthy family where her Spiritual Spring Space was treated as a swimming pool. She swam there in her free time and never used the space to make money.
Thinking of the Spiritual Spring, Tang Shiqi struggled to flap her little hands, feeling them touch her mother's face. She summoned a few drops of Space Spiritual Spring from her fingertip, dripping them into her mother's mouth.
With her tiny body, it felt like using the strength of nine bulls just to feed her mother a cup's worth of the Spiritual Spring.
Tang Shiqi didn't see how, after she had fed her the Spiritual Spring, Mrs. Li's complexion shifted slowly from a pale purple back to a healthy rosy glow, and how her face and hands had no longer been swollen, no longer resembling a pig's head or feet.
...
Anxious, Daya pushed open the gate of the neighbor's yard. She saw their family having a meal. With her stomach growling loudly, she couldn't help but salivate at the sight of the food on her neighbor's table.
Granny Li's family had a plate of sweet potatoes, a plate of greens, a dish of salted fish, and they were each holding a bowl of millet porridge in their hands.
Daya's arrival didn't prompt Granny Li's family to invite her to share their meal since they were also not well off.
Holding back her hunger, Daya wiped away a tear and said to Granny Li, "Granny Li, my mother has lost a lot of blood after giving birth to my younger sister."
"This... another girl was born..." whispered the people in Granny Li's household.
"Mother, don't get involved with their affairs," Granny Li's daughter-in-law, who had always disliked Mrs. Li's timid nature, felt sympathy for her but also despised Mrs. Lai.
"Severe bleeding is a matter of life and death. We're neighbors; we should go check on them! This is a human life," Granny Li had been feeling uneasy, believing she hadn't done enough to save the pitiful woman.
Granny Li agreed to visit, and her husband told her to take a few eggs from their home to help nourish Mrs. Li.
"Thank you, Uncle and Auntie. There's no need to bring the eggs. Even if you did, my mother wouldn't be able to eat them."
In Daya's young heart, she hoped her mother could eat the eggs to regain her strength. Her mother kept giving birth to sisters, and all the eggs and chickens brought by relatives and friends, including her grandmother, never reached her mother's stomach—Daya knew exactly whose belly they ended up in.
"Alright then! The important thing is to go and call the doctor."
Granny Li returned to her room to retrieve the money from the bottom of her chest, in Daya's anxious demeanor, she hurried next door.
The heavy scent of blood was discernible even from the courtyard's wide-open gate.
Hongji stood at the doorway of the room, his father still engrossed in woodworking, smoke billowing from the kitchen, with two young ladies peering out from the windows of their rooms.
"Hongji, your wife is bleeding profusely, you need to call a doctor," someone uttered.
"Granny Li, I... I don't have any money," Hongji said, head hanging low, fists clenched.
"Sister-in-law, you better not meddle in our family affairs," Hongji's father disdainfully glanced at the blood-scented room, irked by Granny Li's arrival.
"Foolish, all of you... That's a human life, are you not afraid of facing a lawsuit?"
Mrs. Lai emerged from the kitchen, her plump body hastening to the doorway, venomously pointing her finger at Granny Li as she spat, "How dare you, Mrs. Li? Aren't there already enough people who have died in childbirth? Besides, it's just this one, who only gives birth to burdensome children—better dead, sparing us her occupation of a place without contributing; I still hope for my son to father a boy to carry on the family line. You play the good Samaritan, but it's nothing but hot air. Why don't you go call the doctor?"
"You... as a mother-in-law you should at least take a look inside, how could you let a child tend to the birthing woman?"
"Hmph, she only births burdensome children, and you expect me to look after her? In your dreams..."
Daya ignored their squabbling, her mind fraught with concern as she rushed into the room ahead.
After all, Daya was just an eight-year-old girl and could not see her mother's complexion had improved; thinking her mother, who was sound asleep without a sound, had passed away, she cried out shaking her, "Mother, wake up..."
By Mrs. Li's side lay the little baby. She had just fed her mother with the Spiritual Spring, and was a bit tired. The baby, just having fallen asleep, was awakened by Daya's commotion and wanted to tell her elder sister that their mother had not died, but the only sound that came out was, "Ah, ah, ah."
Upon hearing Daya's cries, Granny Li, who was outside trying to reason with the family, hurried into the room that reeked of blood.
"Mrs. Li, if you go in and the person is dead, you will have to face a lawsuit," Mrs. Lai shouted fiercely from the kitchen doorway.
Upon hearing Mrs. Lai's words, Granny Li hesitated for a moment as she stepped inside the door.
"Scared, aren't you? You meddle in our family matters, so nosy..." Mrs. Lai's voice was laced with smugness.
Granny Li resolutely walked in, pulled the kneeling and crying Daya up, and examined Mrs. Li.
The rotten bed linens were drenched in blood, yet Mrs. Li's complexion was not the ghastly purplish-white of the gravely ill, but a normal person's healthy bloom.
Granny Li thought it might be her last rally and reached out to check her breath at her nose.
She pulled out an old handkerchief to wipe the sweat from Mrs. Li's face and said to the weeping Daya, "Your mother is fine, she's just asleep."
"Really? My mother isn't dead?"
Daya's face brightened with a tearful smile. Looking at her mother, whose swelling had subsided and whose previously bruised complexion had turned rosy, even better than before, her young heart didn't think any further, only knowing the joy that her mother was all right.
"Yes, Mrs. Li's time has not come to an end, Granny will help clean up your mother," Granny Li reassured her.
Granny Li felt very odd inside, the pig-headed swelling from the wasp sting had subsided so rapidly, and her complexion was rosy, not at all like someone who had just given birth and lost a lot of blood, which should leave one pale.
Seeing it as Mrs. Li's good fortune and robust life, Granny Li fetched a ragged handkerchief from a basin of warm water to clean Mrs. Li's soiled body.
She picked up the dirty, tattered linens, replacing them with clean garments and old bed sheets for Mrs. Li.
Daya picked up her little sister, whose gaze remained fixed on Granny Li's actions, the young heart marveled in silence that there were indeed good people in this world.