Miss_Little_Secret

When Jian Yiling wakes up in the body of a struggling village woman in 1960s rural China, she finds herself burdened with two malnourished children, an empty kitchen, and a reputation as a fragile, abandoned wife. But Yiling is no ordinary woman—she has knowledge, survival skills, and a sharp mind.

With foraging, hunting, and rare medicinal herbs, she fights to turn their fate around, one meal at a time. But just as she begins to rebuild her life, strange occurrences shake the village. Her supposedly missing husband returns—but why does another man, identical to him, appear in the shadows? And why does the village chief seem to know more than he lets on?

As Yiling digs deeper, she uncovers secrets buried beneath generations, a mystery tied to a hidden legacy, and a force that threatens to unravel everything she’s worked for. Along the way, fortuitous encounters bring her riches, knowledge, and influence—enough to not only transform her own fate but that of the entire village.

Her children, once weak and forgotten, will rise as geniuses of their time—one in business, the other in medicine.

But first, she must survive.

In a world where history is set in stone, can a single woman rewrite the future?

THE FORAGER'S LEGACY.

A Secret That Should Have Stayed Buried

The wind howled through the trees, carrying the scent of damp earth and pine. Yiling's pulse pounded as she waited, the knife steady in her grip. The man before her—the husband she had long since buried in her mind—looked as if he were fighting a battle just to stand.

His lips parted. His voice was barely a whisper.

Yiling felt a cold chill crawl up her spine.

"What do you mean?" she demanded, her voice sharper than the blade in her hand.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his sunken eyes darting toward the shadows of the trees. "I tried to come back," he rasped. "I tried, Yiling. But something… something wouldn't let me."

The words sent a deep unease curling through her stomach. "That's impossible."

He flinched, as if the very thought pained him. "You don't understand. I never made it out of the forest. I—I walked, I ran, I followed the river, but every time… I ended up back here."

Yiling stared at him, her mind fighting against the weight of his words. He was lying. He had to be.

"You expect me to believe that?" she said coldly.

His breath came out uneven. "I don't care if you believe me. I don't even know if I believe it myself."

The wind picked up, rustling the trees. The moonlight flickered through the branches, casting shifting shadows on his hollowed face.

"How did you survive?" she asked, her grip on the knife never wavering.

A flicker of something—dread, maybe—passed through his expression.

"There were… others," he continued, his voice hoarse. "People who shouldn't be there. I heard them whispering at night. I saw shapes moving through the trees. And sometimes—" He hesitated. "Sometimes, I saw myself."

He shuddered. "I saw someone—something—that looked exactly like me. Walking through the trees. Watching me."

A silence fell between them, thick and suffocating.

She had heard the old stories. Whispers of the things that roamed the mountains. Spirits that mimicked the lost. Shadows that followed travelers, waiting for them to make a mistake.

"Yiling," he said suddenly, his voice raw with desperation. "I don't know if I ever really left. I don't even know if I'm me anymore."

For the first time, she realized something was deeply, deeply wrong.

Her husband stiffened, his body going rigid. Slowly, as if afraid to turn, his head tilted toward the trees.

Because standing just beyond the tree line, half-hidden in the shadows—

Chapter 29: A secret that should have stayed buried.