I survived the famine by scavenging and supported my family.

"I don't care! I absolutely cannot stand by and watch Ningning become that damned child bride!"

"You disagree? Since when did you become the one making decisions in this family?!"

"Even if you're Ningning's biological grandmother, you can't do this! What's the difference between this and selling a child?!"

"You good-for-nothing Zhao Tieniu! I've gone to great lengths to save the family from having to feed one more person, and you turn around and criticize your own mother behind her back? You damned wretch, a scoundrel who deserves to be struck by lightning... Who am I doing all this for?! If it weren't for these tough times and your crippled leg, would I need to come up with any ideas for Fifth Sister?!"

……

Before Zhao Ningning even opened her eyes, she heard a wail that sounded like a winding mountain road.

—Where's that arguing noise coming from? What melodramatic soap opera is Mom watching again?

She opened her eyes, still half-asleep.

What came into view were dark, grimy wooden beams that only appear in period dramas.

Wait a minute! What's going on?!

Zhao Ningning's heart skipped a beat. She slowly sat up, her body aching, and her eyes quickly scanned her surroundings: thatched roof, mud walls, small windows that let in little light, and hard, solid earth on the ground.

The room was no more than twenty square meters, crammed with two beds, one large and one small. Next to the small bed were two wooden boxes with peeling red paint, and on top of the boxes were two thin, patched-up cotton quilts.

"...I've time-traveled?"

Zhao Ningning's eyes widened.

She was looking around the newbie village when the door creaked open and a head poked in.

Her face was sallow and thin, and her features appeared somewhat prominent due to malnutrition. If it weren't for more than a decade of living together day and night, Zhao Ningning would hardly have recognized her.

"elder brother?"

Seeing that Zhao Ningning was awake, the man quickly squeezed in and whispered, "Sis! You're finally awake! Mom... Mom's already arguing with them!"

Zhao Ningning tried to sit up straight, but as soon as she exerted herself, she felt a sharp pain in her forehead. She instinctively reached out to cover it and then noticed that her brother Zhao Qi also had a noticeable bump on his forehead.

"Don't ask, it's time travel. Mom's in the middle of a battle." Zhao Qi quickly came over to help her, pressing her onto the bed while rapidly relaying the information, "The old lady here, our 'Grandma,' is going to sell you as a child bride to get money for her precious grandson's wedding."

"When Dad transmigrated, his leg was injured, Mom was also bruised, I got beaten up, and you... the original owner was pushed down a ravine and hit your head on a rock."

After saying that, he looked closely into his sister's eyes: "How is it? You're not stupid, are you?"

"You're the idiot!" Zhao Ningning retorted irritably, then asked doubtfully, "How can you be sure it's me? What if it's someone else who transmigrated?"

Zhao Qi rolled his eyes at her: "I've been with you from birth to seventeen, I'd recognize you even if you were ashes. Don't move, lie there and pretend to faint. Mom wants to use this opportunity to make a scene about dividing the family property."

"That won't do." Zhao Ningning abruptly threw off the stiff, thin blanket covering her. "Can Mom fight alone? We need to think of something quickly."

Zhao Qi couldn't stop her—and rightly so, before he transmigrated, his younger sister was only a year away from adulthood, and she had a lot of ideas.

As Zhao Ningning rubbed her throbbing temples, she followed the fragmented memories of the original owner of the body as she walked outside. Just as she reached the gate, the sharp sounds of arguing from the courtyard came through clearly.

She listened intently for a few moments, then nudged Zhao Qi, who had followed her: "Make a long story short, what exactly happened?"

"This family's father is the second oldest, with an older brother and younger siblings. He's neither loved by his father nor his mother. These past few years have been plagued by drought, and the family is dirt poor. They were counting on our father, their strong laborer, but he broke his leg a few days ago while working in the county town." Zhao Qi caught his breath and continued, "The treatment cost five hundred coins, but it didn't get better, so the family is unhappy. They say our father is now a cripple, a freeloader. Plus, their eldest grandson wants to marry a girl from town, and he's asking for a dowry of twenty taels, which the family can't afford, so they've set their sights on you..."

Without Zhao Qi needing to explain, Zhao Ningning "remembered" everything that happened afterward as her memories returned.

The old woman had already found a "buyer." First, she tricked the original owner into going up the mountain alone to dig for wild vegetables, then she had her eldest daughter-in-law follow her, planning to knock her unconscious and send her there directly. To the village, she lied and said that Fifth Sister had been carried off by a wolf, leaving no one to verify the story.

Even if the truth comes out a few years later, the deed is done, and they and the buyer will have already agreed on a story, saying that the person was "rescued".

Unfortunately, man proposes, God disposes. The original owner couldn't find any wild vegetables on the mountain, but found a small patch of wild vegetables in a ditch. Just as he was about to dig them up, Granny Qian followed him. When she tried to dig them up, the original owner struggled and resisted, and Granny Qian accidentally pushed him down into the ditch. The back of his head hit a rock hard, and he died instantly.

The two women were so frightened that they didn't dare to look at each other for long and scrambled home, swearing to each other that they would never reveal a word of it.

As night fell, the original owner's mother, having yet to find her daughter, went up the mountain with her son to search for her. They finally found her daughter, who was still faintly breathing despite being unconscious, and carried her back to the house.

Seeing that Wuya was still alive, Granny Qian breathed a sigh of relief, but stubbornly refused to pay for a doctor. The original owner's mother had no choice but to go back to her parents' home and borrow a few dozen copper coins to find the village's barefoot doctor. The doctor shook his head, prescribed some common herbs, told her to decoct them and feed them to Wuya, and said whether she would wake up was up to fate.

—What kind of den of wolves is this!

Zhao Ningning grew angrier the more she thought about it, a surge of anger rushing to her head, even suppressing the pain in her forehead. She turned and rushed out, and Zhao Qi couldn't stop her even if he tried.

The argument grew louder as they moved from the backyard to the front yard.

In the courtyard, a man in his early thirties, with dark skin and a thin build, was leaning against the earthen wall, barely able to stand, his face filled with grief and indignation. Beside him was an equally thin woman; the two of them were cornered against the wall by seven or eight people, outnumbered and outmatched.

Zhao Ningning glanced at her "parents'" predicament, her eyes darted around, and instead of rushing over, she quietly slipped out of the courtyard.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Zhao Qi moved close to Ning's mother along the wall and quickly whispered, "Your sister is awake, she's alright."

Ning's mother's tense back relaxed almost imperceptibly for a moment. All four members of the family were awake, which was the best news at the moment.

With her worries put to rest, Ning's mother didn't have time to ask any questions. After the person opposite finished cursing, they immediately started hitting her.

"I think you've lost your mind! Wuya is a worthless piece of trash. In this year, it's a miracle she even managed to get a bag of grain! I spent so much effort finding her a good place, and you call it selling her?!" Granny Qian cursed, spitting as she reached out to pinch her second daughter-in-law's waist—a common tactic she used to manipulate her daughter-in-law.

But she never expected that her second daughter-in-law would be a completely different person today. The usually submissive quail now had a frighteningly sharp look in her eyes.

Just as her hands were about to touch Ning's mother, Ning's father, who had been holding onto the wall, suddenly pulled his wife behind him, using half of his body to block her, and shouted hoarsely, "Stop!"

"You...you've gone too far?!" Granny Qian stared incredulously at her usually honest and simple second son, trembling with rage. "You unfilial ingrate! I've raised you for decades for nothing, and you dare side with outsiders?!"

Before she could finish speaking, she slapped him hard across the face!

With a sharp "smack," a clear handprint appeared on Ning's father's face. His already unsteady body staggered from the blow, only managing to stay upright thanks to Ning's mother's strong support behind him.

Ning's mother steadied her husband and gently pushed him against the wall. When she looked up again, her eyes were filled with rage.

"You dare hit him?!" Ning's mother's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a chilling ferocity.

Granny Qian was startled by her appearance.

In that split second, Ning Ma moved. She stepped forward, grabbed Granny Qian by the front of her clothes with one hand, and slammed her against the earthen wall without giving her a chance to resist!

"Bang! Bang!"

The dull thud sent chills down the spines of everyone else in the courtyard.

Before anyone could react, Ning Ma's gaze had already swept to the pile of firewood waiting to be chopped in the corner. She quickly went over, pulled out the most handy piece, turned back, and swept it with a gust of wind—

"Ouch!"

"Oh my god!"

Those standing closest to the stick were caught off guard and were hit on the calves. They cried out in surprise and shoved each other, falling into a heap.

Zhao Qi silently shrank back, taking another half step closer to his father... He almost forgot that his mother used to be able to take on a gang of thieves single-handedly. This family had really kicked a hornet's nest.

Old Mrs. Qian was knocked to the ground by the blow and refused to get up. She slapped her thigh and began to wail: "This is outrageous! My daughter-in-law hit her mother-in-law! My son, whom I raised with such care, just stood by and watched… ungrateful wretch! They're all ungrateful wretches!"

The younger daughter-in-law cautiously reached out to help, but was slapped away by Granny Qian: "Get out of here! Useless thing!"

Just as the scene was in complete chaos, hurried footsteps came from outside the courtyard gate.

Zhao Ningning, along with the village head and the head of Wangli Village, returned just in time.

"What's going on here! What kind of behavior is this!" As soon as the village chief entered the courtyard, he saw Granny Qian sitting on the ground wailing and felt his temples throbbing.

"My life is so miserable—" Granny Qian wailed even louder, pounding her chest and stamping her feet, "I raised Tie Niu with my own hands, shoved him through the womb, and even after I got him a wife, he lets this shrew beat me! Folks, come and see, is there no law left in this world!"

"The law?" Ning's mother sneered, completely unmoved by her tantrums, and raised her voice directly, "Village Chief, Village Head, you two have come at the right time! I was just about to ask if there is any law in this world that allows a grandmother to secretly sell her granddaughter as a child bride in order to raise money for her grandson's dowry?!"

The words "selling granddaughter" were like a bucket of cold water poured into a pot of oil.

The explosion abruptly stopped Granny Qian's crying. She scrambled to her feet and tried to cover Ning Ma's mouth: "What nonsense are you spouting! I'll tear your mouth apart!"

"Don't hit my mother—"

A child's voice, trembling with sobs, screamed.

Suddenly, a small, thin figure lunged from the side and crashed heavily into Granny Qian. Caught off guard, Granny Qian stumbled.

It was Zhao Ningning who hit the person. She threw herself into her mother's arms, only revealing the large, blood-soaked bump on the back of her head. Her body trembled, and she sobbed, saying:

"Grandma...Grandma, please don't sell me...I'll be good...please don't hit my mother..."

The wound was shocking to behold in the midday sun.

The village head's face instantly darkened.

"Old Zhao, you come and tell everyone what exactly happened?!"