Back to Sixteen
An Mingji had been a free-range child in the village for the past few years; he was unruly.
He was as dangerous as a wolf and so aggressive that it seemed like he could bite when provoked.
Gu Jin stroked his hair affectionately. Her emotions were overflowing.
She slowly got to her feet and studied the surrounding environment.
She found herself standing at the village entrance with Blackmount Village's houses in her field of vision. Mount Blackbird acted as the background.
That was where she had lived for a good eighteen years of her life.
After she eventually left, it became the last place she had ever wanted to remember. There, she had been scoffed at and forced to endure endless humiliation.
It was all because she was not a true descendant of the Gu Family and the blood flowing in her veins was not of the Gu Family although she adopted the family name.
She did not know who her biological father was. She was just a child who had been abandoned by her mother.
Yet, why was she back there again? She remembered that she had died.
Gu Jin gazed at An Mingji, who was standing beside her.
The wild child was looking at her quietly. He appeared bedraggled, but his eyes were crystal-clear and genuine.
Gu Jin took a deep breath, raising her hands to pinch herself in the arms.
She sucked air through her teeth in pain because it hurt so much that her eyes welled up.
"Why did you pinch yourself, Sister Jin?"
An Mingji quickly stopped her by pulling her hands away.
However, Gu Jin just burst into laughter as warm tears flowed down her cheeks.
She cried because of the pain; it was not a dream.
Despite the tears, she had a smile on her face. She looked at An Mingji. "Tell me, An, what year is it now?"
Confusion filled An Mingji's swollen face, and he frowned like an adult. "Are you sick, Sister Jin? It's May 1986."
Nineteen eighty-six! Holy moly!
Gu Jin's fingers were trembling slightly. She could not believe that she was back to sixteen, two years before the Zhen Family brought her back to the city and made her a pawn in a marriage of convenience.
She had been shallow in her past life, thinking that she could finally have a good life with her parents coming for her.
Little did she expect that she was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Her biological parents had come looking for her when she was eighteen and brought her back to the Zhen Family.
The Zhen Family was more farsighted, and they knew that Hua Country would help entrepreneurs.
They had the capability but no background. Through personal connections, they got to know someone from the Liu Family, who was a government official. They fawned over the Lius and proposed for a marriage between the two families.
As her parents could not bear to use their younger daughter as a pawn, they came to Blackmount Village to look for Gu Jin.
The Zhen Family brought her away when she was eighteen, just when she was eager to leave the depressing village and experience the outside world.
She could not refuse it when her parents duped her into believing that she would lead a good life in the city with them. Therefore, she left Blackmount Village with no hesitation.
She had indeed lived high off the hog for two years in the city.
The family had allowed her to learn all kinds of knowledge and nurtured her to acquire proper decorum. She was never very good at it, but at least she had learned something.
It all started to change when she hit twenty. She turned into a lamb for slaughter.
Her family forced her to marry into the Liu Family, becoming a pawn to a dirty deal.
Since then, she had gone through over twenty years of mental torture because her so-called husband was ineffectual and perverted even though he occupied a prominent position.
He kept many mistresses, and whenever he was not happy, he would hit them and torture them physically as well as mentally.