Chapter 1

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“There are some students—I won’t name names—who, with the semester about to end, still haven’t paid their tuition. You’re making things very difficult for me as your teacher! I know life is hard for your families, but our school’s development hasn’t been easy either. We can’t let your tuition debts keep piling up. I hope you’ll go home after school this afternoon and urge your families to come up with the money. Only return to school once you have your tuition with you,” said Ms. Liu, the homeroom teacher, her voice neither too harsh nor too soft.

A few students blushed deeply at her words.

They lowered their heads, not daring to meet her gaze.

A closer look revealed that, though not exactly gaunt or sallow, these students wore faded, patched clothes and had a nervous air about them, clear signs of the hardship at home.

By the window, Li Shanshan seemed jolted awake from a dream.

Her eyes were wide, her face full of disbelief.

Just a heartbeat ago, she’d been sitting in a thirty-million-Hong-Kong-dollar mansion overlooking the city, sampling pastries crafted by a Michelin chef and sipping the finest Darjeeling tea—though, being a descendant of the renowned Da Hong Pao tea from Wuyi Mountain, she’d just been complaining about it to her husband.

But what was she seeing now?

Whitewashed walls with a strip of green paint along the bottom, a large rectangular blackboard. The blackboard was covered in dense mathematical formulas scrawled in white chalk, and above it, eight bright red characters, perfectly aligned, flanked a small red flag with five stars in the center. Beside the blackboard hung a massive wooden protractor and a ruler.

She herself was slumped over a battered, pitted desk, her arm pressing an open math textbook. To her left was a thick stack of schoolbooks, and the timetable was taped to the upper right corner of her desk.

It felt like she’d stepped into a primary school in a remote, underdeveloped mountain region.

But Li Shanshan knew that wasn’t it!

She saw she was still holding a half-used fountain pen in her right hand. The nib was worn, and under it, the paper was filled with the endlessly repeated number “900.” The more she wrote, the messier it became, some even scribbled over into thick black smudges.

This was...

“We really can’t postpone tuition any longer. I’ve been your teacher since you started high school and will stay with you until graduation—I don’t want to keep repeating myself like this, making everyone uncomfortable.” Ms. Liu, the short, stout math teacher standing between the podium and the blackboard, wore a stern expression. “It’s only nine hundred yuan for the whole year—just sell a bit over a thousand jin of wheat and you’ll have it. If you can’t even bring in your tuition, what’s the point of staying in school?”

Tuition!

Suddenly, the floodgates of Li Shanshan’s memory opened.

She remembered. She was one of the poor students who couldn’t pay her tuition.

Three years of high school, each year costing eight hundred yuan for tuition and another hundred for boarding—nine hundred in total. Only the first year did she pay on time; the next two years, she was always behind, and her middling grades only made Ms. Liu more critical of her.

This time, she’d gone home without bringing back her tuition. On Monday afternoon, during Ms. Liu’s math class, she was sent home to get the money.

It hadn’t happened yet, but Li Shanshan now knew exactly where she’d landed in her life.

The first semester of her second year of high school—just one month until final exams.

She remembered it clearly.

After being sent home, her father was nearly forced to sell his own blood to raise the money!

Staring at the still-chattering Ms. Liu, Li Shanshan suddenly sat up straight and raised her hand.

Ms. Liu frowned. “Li Shanshan, what do you want to say?”

Li Shanshan stood up, her voice clear. “Ms. Liu, I’d like to request a leave of absence. I won’t attend the upcoming classes. I’d like to take a week off to travel and borrow money from some relatives, so I can pay my tuition as soon as possible.”

Ms. Liu’s face softened and she praised her, “That’s a very positive attitude. Approved.”

Li Shanshan quickly stuffed her books and stationery into her desk, went to the dorm supervisor to explain, and packed her things.

Just a few jars—one for pickled vegetables, one for salted beans, and another for rice—some cloth for wrapping pancakes, an aluminum lunchbox for steaming rice, and a couple of sets of unwashed old clothes. She stuffed everything into a canvas bag.

There were still two pancakes left—her lunch for today, and the last meal she’d have at school for the week. After school, she’d be able to eat at home.

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Li Shanshan attended Sophora High School in Sophora Town, though she wasn’t a local. Her home was in Xiao Li Village, a small settlement under Baiyun Town, more than twenty kilometers from the school.

If she took the rural bus, it cost one and a half yuan from Sophora Town to her village, with only three trips a day—morning, noon, and evening.

Every week, Li Shanshan brought ten yuan. Subtracting three yuan for the round-trip fare, she had seven yuan left for the week’s living expenses, including supplies for school and personal hygiene.

On Sunday afternoons, she often set out two hours early, walking to school to save the one and a half yuan fare.

But going home, she had no choice but to spend it—school ended too late on Fridays.

With her canvas bag slung over her shoulder, Li Shanshan walked out of the school gates without looking back.

Watching the uneven rows of dusty shop fronts along the street and listening to the vendors’ calls rising and falling, she finally felt the reality of rebirth.

She had been reborn.

She was back in 1996.

It was early January by the Gregorian calendar, just a few days past New Year’s, and the eleventh month by the lunar calendar.

But Li Shanshan felt like crying.

She really didn’t want to be reborn!

Why should she be? She didn’t feel her life had left any regrets.

What good was rebirth, when she now had nothing?

No money for tuition.

No money for meat.

No money for clothes.

Her memories were filled with poverty, with little that was beautiful.

But before her rebirth, she had ranked in the upper middle of the rich lists—even if that wealth wasn’t earned by her own hands.

Most of it came from her husband, who was twenty years her senior, with a smaller portion from her in-laws.

Company shares, funds, bonds, real estate, jewels, antiques, luxury cars and yachts, private jets—Li Shanshan had possessed it all.

The real reason: she had a fertile womb, birthing six children in four pregnancies—four sons and two daughters, including two sets of twins—turning the once single-threaded Zhou family into a flourishing clan.

Her mother-in-law had adored her, leaving her the entire inheritance.

A typical case of marrying well to change one’s fate.

The real reason was her stunningly beautiful face.

Even in the entertainment industry, she would have been called a peerless beauty.

But that was all in the future. Right now, not yet sixteen, she wore thick bangs that made her look less striking. Her hands were covered in chilblains, her cheeks cracked red from the biting wind.

Even her finely shaped features couldn’t withstand such sun and wind.

In the countryside, without proper care, it was impossible to have the flawless skin of a peeled egg!

No one on earth is immune to the sun’s darkening touch.

The mountain winds were especially harsh, cutting like knives.

The sun blazed fiercely.

Luckily, the skin hidden beneath her clothes was still pale and delicate; otherwise, she wouldn’t have managed to keep her porcelain complexion for over twenty years in her other life, much to her husband’s delight.

Those beautiful days were gone forever!

Oh, how she missed her top-tier, custom-blended skincare products!

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To have them again would be nearly impossible.

Li Shanshan’s first goal after rebirth was to get into a university better than Fengcheng Normal College. Her life would diverge from its previous course, and she might never again encounter her wealthy former husband.

The gap between their social classes was like two parallel lines, never crossing.

Back then, a poor girl transformed into the wife of a magnate, stirring countless envy, jealousy, and gossip—she was the talk of the town, both openly and behind her back.

But Li Shanshan had always been unbothered; she’d simply had enough of poverty and married Zhou Yuqi for money.

Zhou Yuqi—her husband in her previous life.

Time flowing backward was a farewell for eternity.

Swallowing the bitterness in her throat, Li Shanshan looked herself over: a bulky cotton jacket and pants, covered by a black-and-red corduroy shirt and black corduroy trousers, with five-eye black corduroy cotton shoes on her feet. She looked utterly provincial.

Even actresses in rural period dramas wouldn’t wear such clothes nowadays!

Her hand itched fiercely where the chilblains were, but she resisted scratching, instead stepping onto the city-bound bus.

There was a direct bus route from Sophora Town to Fengcheng.

Before graduating, Li Shanshan had never been to the city and couldn’t remember how much the fare was. She asked the middle-aged ticket lady, “Auntie, how much is it to get to the city center?”

The woman glanced at her. “Two yuan.”

Li Shanshan had managed to save over thirty yuan, so she pulled out two yuan, handed them over, and took the ticket.

The bus was crowded, maybe twenty or thirty people, but since it wasn’t rush hour, a few seats remained. She grabbed a window seat and gazed at the scenery rushing by.

Her most urgent need was money.

She’d never had the luxury of relying on her parents—she had to count on herself.

In her past life, she hadn’t continued her studies after high school simply because she couldn’t afford the tuition.

She didn’t know the fees for other universities, but she remembered that her acceptance letter to Fengcheng Normal College listed total tuition and boarding at 7,600 yuan.

Her family simply couldn’t come up with the money.

It was just her and her father, with only 4.6 acres of land.

Land was allotted per person, and since Li Shanshan had no mother or siblings, that was all they had.

Her mother had been a city youth sent down to the countryside at seventeen, spoiled and unable to work, married to her handsome, hard-working father, and lived peacefully for a few years. When the policy allowed city youths to return home in 1980, her mother left right after Li Shanshan was born—never to return.

Her father never remarried, raising Li Shanshan as both father and mother, relying on those 4.6 acres.

The wheat yield averaged 800 jin per acre, with 200 jin per acre owed in tax. What remained after saving enough for food and selling the rest at sixty or seventy cents a jin, with seeds, pesticides, and fertilizer deducted, was almost nothing.

Just enough to keep a family from starving—barely a drop in the bucket for daily life.

With a daughter to care for, her father couldn’t travel for work, relying instead on odd jobs with the village construction crew in nearby towns. The work was hard and paid little, daily wages rising from five to eight yuan over the years.

And it wasn’t steady—at most a hundred days of work a year.

The future would depend on herself!

Li Shanshan exhaled slowly.

She needed to raise some capital.

Without her first pot of gold, everything else was just empty talk.

After an hour or so, the crowded bus reached its final stop. She still had three or four kilometers to walk to her destination, which she covered on foot.

Half an hour later, she stopped in front of the Fengcheng Translation Agency.