Volume One, Chapter Four: Meeting Gu Xianglin Twenty Years Ahead of Time?

In her previous life, she only married Gu Xianglin at the age of thirty-three. Before that, Gu Xianglin had devoted over a decade of his youth to the country's border defense. Along the way, he had married once and divorced once... But Shen Lingshuang loved him for who he was, never minding his past.

However, starting over now, she never expected to reunite with Gu Xianglin at such a crucial moment.

Every night before sleep, this man would fill a thermos with warm water at just the right temperature and place it by her bedside, so she wouldn’t be thirsty in the middle of the night.

Whenever she suffered from stomach pain late at night, he would crawl out of bed without complaint to make her porridge.

When he got paid, he handed his wages over to her immediately.

In hot weather, he would find creative ways to prepare side dishes.

In cold weather, he would tuck her cold hands and feet into his warm embrace.

He ignored others’ insults directed at him.

When Shen Lingshuang scolded him, he accepted it willingly.

If anyone insulted Shen Lingshuang, he made sure they paid dearly, sometimes even causing trouble for their entire family.

They had bickered and argued for half a lifetime, yet he remained her most trusted confidant.

And at the end of her life, the person who stayed by her side was also him.

After being reborn, Shen Lingshuang expected they would meet again.

But she never imagined it would be at this very moment.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, reddened to an alarming degree.

“Why are you crying?” Gu Xianglin scolded her using her own words. “Alright! Stop crying! Fine, I won’t hold it against you this time!”

He glared at Shen Xiangdong, who was hiding behind a tree. “But if you dare steal sweet potatoes from our village again, next time I’ll beat you until your backside blossoms!”

With that, Gu Xianglin yanked the nosebleeding little companion out of Shen Lingshuang’s hands and hurried off with a group of boys.

“Lingshuang… Shen Lingshuang!” Shen Xiangdong peeked from behind the tree nervously. “Let’s run away too! Otherwise, if they come back to retaliate, we’re no match for so many!”

Shen Lingshuang shot him a sharp look. “You still have the nerve to speak! Tell me, why did you dig up sweet potatoes in their village?”

“Ah…” Shen Xiangdong hung his head in shame. “I didn’t find any… but I saw them loading such a big bag of urea filled with sweet potatoes and just thought, can’t I have a few? It’s not too much, right…”

“It’s too much! You’re a thief—that’s plenty!”

At that moment, Shen Lingshuang couldn’t help but glance repeatedly in the direction Gu Xianglin had gone.

The young Gu Xianglin was spirited and radiant.

She had missed that part of his growth once; now, could she make up for it?

Her heart suddenly burned with fervor.

“Let’s go, we’ll find a place to dig sweet potatoes too.”

Shen Lingshuang grabbed Shen Xiangdong, hoisted a borrowed ten-pound sack of coarse grain, and headed toward the eastern edge of the woods.

“We’ll dig plenty, then bring it to Gu Xianglin as compensation!”

Shen Xiangdong was immediately displeased.

“Compensate? You go then! I’m not going!”

Before he finished, he had already run far ahead.

“Well, good riddance…”

Shen Lingshuang crouched in the small grove and summoned Afu.

“Give me five more wild eggs!”

After a moment’s thought, she added, “And exchange for a wild rabbit!”

Afu: [Exchange successful!]
[Owner’s remaining fortune points: 975]

A five-pound gray rabbit, still alive, thumped its legs as it jumped into Shen Lingshuang’s arms!

She quickly covered the rabbit with clothing and hugged it close.

Then she tucked the wild eggs into the sack of grain and quietly made her way home.

When she returned, Li Lanfang was cooking dried vegetable and potato soup in the kitchen.

Li Lanfang’s skill at cooking dried vegetables was unmatched—appetizing even in lean years, making the family’s meals flavorful and satisfying.

“Mom, look what I brought back!” Shen Lingshuang eagerly showed Li Lanfang the sack of coarse grain she carried.

At first, Li Lanfang thought it was full of sweet potatoes.

But on closer inspection, it was a sack of brown rice, and her eyes widened in surprise.

“Lingshuang! Where did you get all this grain?!”

“Aunt San lent it to me.”

Shen Lingshuang brushed past the topic lightly, then reached into her clothes, grabbed the rabbit by its ears, and pulled it out.

“Mom, look at this!”

The plump wild rabbit made Li Lanfang’s eyes sparkle.

Shen Lingshuang shouted, “Brother! Come to the woodshed quickly, I need you!”

Shen Aodong had been awkwardly making the bed with Song Qiuran in the inner room, both silent and uneasy.

Hearing his sister’s call, he dropped the bedding and came to the woodshed. “What’s up?”

“Killing the rabbit!” Shen Lingshuang grinned, hands on hips. “Tonight, we’ll cook rabbit soup to celebrate my brother getting married!”

Seeing the fat rabbit on the ground, weighing at least six or seven pounds, Shen Aodong’s expression mirrored Li Lanfang’s astonishment.

“Where did you get it?”

“When I went to dig sweet potatoes in the mountains, I happened upon this silly rabbit. It ran into a tree and knocked itself out!” Shen Lingshuang narrated vividly. “Right in that small grove west of the village!”

Then she rummaged through the sack of brown rice. “Not only did I find the rabbit, but also a whole clutch of wild eggs!”

The eggs had sunk beneath the rice on the way back.

Now, she pulled out five glistening white eggs, leaving her mother and brother speechless.

“Surely Heaven saw my brother marrying today, knew our family had nothing ready, and blessed me with a bit of good fortune!”

She passed a knife to Shen Aodong. “Brother, don’t just stand there—hurry up and kill this rabbit! Both little sister and sister-in-law must be hungry!”

“Okay.”

Her mother and brother seemed to accept her explanation, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The woodshed buzzed back to life.

While helping her brother, Shen Lingshuang seized the chance to urge him again to go up the mountain.

“Brother! Let’s check the mountain tonight! Even without a gun, with spears, machetes, slingshots, it shouldn’t be hard to catch some birds or wild chickens!”

Shen Aodong’s face remained expressionless, weighed down by his thoughts.

“The mountain isn’t that easy. Today was pure luck.”

He frowned and fixed her with a stern look. “You’ve been sick for so long and aren’t fully recovered. Why do you keep thinking about going up the mountain? Absolutely not allowed!”

Shen Lingshuang furrowed her brows and fell silent for the moment.

She understood her brother’s pain.

Their father had gone hunting up the mountain and had fallen into an icy lake, never to return.

But if she didn’t hunt, how could she exchange the meat in the fortune system for food?

She could try telling her family the truth—that she was blessed and could conjure meat from nowhere.

But in a village full of people, if everyone noticed their house always smelled of meat but no one worked, the secret wouldn’t stay hidden.

If that happened, she might be caught and treated like a monster...

No, no!

She had to keep going up the mountain!

If her brother refused, she would go alone, secretly.