“You filthy bitch! Useless whore! Still got some fight in you? I, Li Ergou, will have you today no matter what!”
The disheveled Li Ergou had one hand clamped around the woman’s throat while the other clawed wildly at her clothes. When he caught sight of her neck, pale as fresh snow, his face, pocked with festering boils, instantly lit up with lecherous excitement.
Noticing that the woman beneath him had stopped struggling, Li Ergou let out a perverted laugh, thinking she had fainted. He loosened the grip on her throat.
His narrow, beady eyes brimmed with filth as he swallowed hard, impatiently lowering his mouth toward that snow-white skin. He muttered under his breath, “Who would’ve thought this crazy widow’s skin could be so tender?”
His foul, stinking mouth slobbered against the woman’s neck, cursing as he did. “Damn, this crazy widow tastes pretty good!” At the same time, his other hand eagerly fumbled toward the ragged crotch of his pants.
Tearing open her outer robe, Li Ergou leaned close to the woman’s face, pinching her jaw as he prepared to take the next step. But suddenly, he froze. A trace of terror flickered across his boil-ridden face as his trembling fingers reached under her nose to check for breath.
“Ah… Shen Cuihua…” Li Ergou shuddered violently, tumbling off the lifeless woman. Scrambling to his feet, he clutched at his clothes and bolted for the door of the thatched hut.
After only a few steps, he stopped, stomped his foot, and spat twice onto the ground. His beady eyes darted about, making sure no one was around, before he hunched over and scuttled back into the hut.
“Damn it, what rotten luck!” He cursed, as he straightened the clothes of the dead madwoman, Shen Cuihua.
Though he was lazy and idle, he had enough guts from years of petty thievery to know he couldn’t just leave the body there. Even if she was a crazy widow, the old crone of the Li family was a hard one to deal with. If this turned into a big fuss, someone might trace it back to him.
After all, he’d done no shortage of sneaky, shameful things in the village over the years.
He had only wanted to sample the taste of this crazy widow, but who knew she’d be so frail? He hadn’t even had his fill before she ended up strangled to death under him! The unfairness of it gnawed at him. Furious, he kicked Shen Cuihua’s stiffening corpse twice.
These past years, he had snuck into her hut more than once, but each time he had only been beaten senseless by her madness. He never managed to take advantage, and instead always left stinking and scolded by that old hag Li in the village.
Thinking of this, a ruthless gleam crossed Li Ergou’s pockmarked face. He had to find a way to destroy the body, leaving no trace for the villagers to suspect him.
He failed to notice that the corpse, which had drawn no breath moments ago, suddenly stirred with faint signs of life.
“Host’s soul implantation complete. Body repaired. Insufficient energy. System pending activation.” A mechanical voice chimed faintly within the corpse’s mind, though no one could hear it.
The body’s fingers twitched slightly. Intent on covering up his crime, Li Ergou didn’t notice. Hearing the trickle of water from behind the hut, a plan formed in his mind. If he tossed the body into the Dongjun River behind the village, who knew how far it might drift? Even if discovered, people would simply assume the crazy widow had wandered off and fallen in by accident.
Feeling clever, Li Ergou grew smug. He bent down, hoisted Shen Cuihua’s “corpse” over his shoulder, and after checking that no one was around, carried it toward the river behind the hut.
The Dongjun River flowed from streams gathering at the foot of Dongjun Mountain, encircling the entire village before merging with three other rivers to feed into the mighty Bian River that ran north to south across the land.
Walking along the riverbank with the body, Li Ergou glanced around once more. No one. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, Shen Cuihua’s hut stood in this remote spot at the foot of the back mountain, rarely visited. If anyone had seen him, he’d be finished.
With a forceful heave, Li Ergou hurled the crazy widow’s “corpse” into the middle of the river. A triumphant, twisted grin spread across his lips, completely unaware that at the very instant her body hit the water, Shen Cuihua’s eyes snapped open.
Ying Su instinctively held her breath, letting herself sink into the depths as she began to process the flood of information in her mind.
She had been reborn! In the water, her eyes widened in disbelief. Damn! Heaven really was watching out for her! If not for being underwater, she would have shouted for joy.
According to the memories in her mind, this dynasty was called the Great Qing, an era that had no record in the history of her previous world. The body she now occupied belonged to a farmwife named Shen Cuihua, living in a remote mountain village in the north of Great Qing. The original owner of this body had lived a pitiful life.
Shen Cuihua had once been the daughter of a respectable family in the village. The Shen family had produced officials in the past, though their fortunes had since declined. Even so, they remained relatively well off, with a tradition of learning and literacy. Her grandfather had been a xiucai, later serving as the village head. Their family life had been comfortable.
Shen Cuihua herself was stunningly beautiful, famous as a village beauty. At fourteen, she experienced her first stirrings of love and fell for a poor scholar named Liu An, who lived with his widowed mother. Shen Cuihua knew her family would never agree to such a match, so she and Liu An met secretly in private.
Liu An, coveting her beauty, sweet-talked her into eloping with him. Naïve and foolish, Shen Cuihua cast aside everything for love and ran away with him.
But Liu An never had good intentions. Once he lured her out of the village and into the city, he sold her straight into a brothel, using the silver he gained to fund his participation in the imperial exams.
Shen Cuihua was devastated beyond words. Though ignorant of many things, she knew chastity mattered above all. She refused to submit to clients, even under the madam’s brutal beatings that nearly killed her.
One day, the madam forced drugs down her throat and locked her in a pitch-black room with a man for the night. She never even saw his face.
The next morning, realizing her purity was gone, Shen Cuihua was consumed with despair. She leapt from the second floor of the brothel in a bid to end her life. Yet she survived, leaving the madam so enraged she nearly flayed her alive.
Because Shen Cuihua was strikingly beautiful, the madam hoped to earn a fortune from her. Believing that once she had slept with a man she would eventually resign herself, the madam hadn’t expected her to attempt suicide.
