2 Chapter 2

While Feifei's life was like an ascending elevator after her rebirth, Chang Ying's life was on a downward spiral in that second timeline. 

First, Chang Ying was lured into a trap by the village rascal while her husband was away. After her wedding, Lu Chen had to leave the next day to join in the compulsory community service of digging trenches. While he was gone, that village rascal approached her nicely like a good, trustworthy person. 

In the unfamiliar village, Chang Ying was just happy to have a friend. Their interactions were pure and platonic and she thought she had met an honest person. But on the day, Lu Chen was to return home, that rascal kindly invited her to his farm to harvest a few vegetables so she could make a sumptuous meal for her husband. 

Originally, the Lu family was dirt poor. Their pantry was almost empty, so Chang Ying easily fell for this low level trap. When she got to the rascal's farm, he pounced on her, held her down and force-fed her some drugged local wine. 

But before Chang Ying fell under the effects of the wine, she fought hard till the rascal had to knock her unconscious. Then he dragged her to his farm hut and stripped her so it would look like she was having an affair with him. 

When Lu Chen returned home that day, before he could even take a sip of water, someone timely informed him about his wife's adultery. Lu Chen rushed to the scene of the illicit affair and was met with the nasty confirmation of her adultery. He saw the rascal and his wife quietly sleeping together on the straw mat with their clothes discarded to the side. 

Little to say, in the rural areas at that time, an adulterous wife could be beaten to death in the village with no qualms. Lu Chen did not lay even a finger on her. Instead he grabbed the naked rascal and beat him black and blue. It was at this time Chang Ying regained consciousness, but when she opened her eyes, all she met were sneers and looks of disdain from the spectacting villagers. 

When she finally realised the situation she was in, no matter how much she pleaded, who would believe her? Everyone had seen her sleeping naked next to a naked man inside the hut. What else could she be doing other than having an affair? It was even more incriminating because many people confirmed she had been sighted acting chummy with this rascal while her husband was away too!

Even if she had a thousand tongues at that moment, she could not prove her innocence. Meanwhile, after Lu Chen vented his anger on the rascal, he didn't bother to even look at her. He went straight home. That night, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law packed her things and sent her back to her parents' home in the town. 

Their marriage did not even last a month, and their time together in that month could be counted in mere hours. 

It was clear Lu Chen wanted nothing to do with her. After that, Chang Ying faced a lot of bitterness in her family. She had to bear the stigma of a loose woman from that day forth. Her parents were so disappointed in her, they never looked her in the eye afterwards. In their neighbourhood, every one gossiped about her. She had obviously been married but barely a month later, she was back with her parents. Like so, unpleasant rumours about her quickly circulated. The entire Chang family had to hang her heads in shame. 

Her father did not allow her to go back to beg Lu Chen. In her father's eyes, Lu Chen had already done them the utmost respect by not exposing the matter and letting Chang Ying return quietly. 

In this manner, no matter how much Chang Ying begged and moaned, her father did not bulge. Once her return home spread, she quickly became the black sheep among her relatives too. 

But Chang Ying did not even have time to catch her breath or think of reconciling, her bad luck continued to persist. News of her adultery spread to her father's school. As a teacher, the reputation of his family as moral pillars of the society was very important for the job at that time, so Chang Ying's father lost his job. 

When father's friend offered him a new job at his company, before her father could even go for the interview, the company suddenly went bankrupt. Chang Ying's aunt helped them out financially a few times but her aunt had an accident after visiting them to give them money and died. 

Her father decided to become a private tutor to earn a living, but his first student went mad on the day he was supposed to start teaching. Her mother tried to start several small businesses but each one failed quickly and the family lost all their savings. 

The small family was soon known as a jinx, no one would even hire them. 

Her father fell into depression and his health deteriorated till he died of stroke a few months later. The sequence of tragedies affected her mother and she too got sickly and weak. Moreover, the nasty adultery rumours about Chang Ying even affected her relatives reputation. Her cousin's fiance called off their wedding because his family was wary about her cousin's moral character. Because of this, everyone distanced themselves from Chang Ying and she had no one to help her or her sickly mother. 

Like this, Chang Ying never met Lu Chen again. Years later, she heard Lu Chen had already married Feifei, so she had to give up hope then. Nevertheless, the thorn remained in her heart, and she was unsettled about their separation.

Still, her bad luck did not end there. Somehow people kept popping up to tarnish her reputation; from accusing her of lusting after their husbands to being a common market thief. Chang Ying eventually moved to another city to get work. She worked low-end jobs for twelve hours daily every day of the week. She struggled to make ends meet and barely had time to care for herself or pity her own misfortune. 

This was till one particular new year's eve. That night, when she was returning from her minimum wage job, lightning struck her and she died.

Yes. Lightning. Struck. Her. 

Honestly, Chang Ying was ready to drink Mama Ming's memory-erasing soup and move on to her next life but...

After finding out so much, she looked at the red jellyfish creature located in front of her. "How much of what happened to me was caused by Feifei and you?"

"Me? Hey, hey, aren't you mistaken? I did not do anything!"

Chang Ying narrowed her eyes at the red creature. "Aren't these events set off by your mistake, great, honourary world observer?"

"Hmph! Don't act sassy with me, missy. That pearl thing is just a tiny, teeny, weeny, little, miniscule bit of my responsibility. Let me tell you, if Feifei used the pearl well, it could have ensured prosperity for her many generations to come. You think she caused problems for you?" It snorted derisively. "A few years after your death in the second timeline, that Feifei released an evil cultivation demon into your world! Because she kept using the pearl for bloody deeds, she stimulated the evil chi energy in the pearl. The evil chi energy grew stronger over time and manifested itself later. Our headquarters went into a level yellow alert because of her! Now everyone is running around to reset things again."

Chang Ying blinked several times in part surprise, part shock. A cultivation demon? She was not even sure what that was but it had to be something troublesome to send this red jellyfish's friends into any level of alert. 

"So Feifei's rebirth disrupted a lot of lives, not just mine," Chang Ying mulled out loud. 

"Yes and no. It's okay if she found the pearl and used it to change her fate. That can be written off as her good fortune, I might even have gotten some recommendation if she did a lot of good deeds. That girl, she went and got revenge, well, that's not bad either. What is terrible is that so many people got hurt as collateral damage due to her ruthlessness and bloodthirsty means. And she also used the strange means within the pearl to afflict those she hated when she could not manipulate others or use money to harm them."

Conventional methods...an alarm rang in Chang Ying's head. 

What if...no, that would be too vicious. 

She couldn't consider it but there was really no other explanation. All those years, she always thought that bad incidents seemed to happen to her and her family at the most auspicious moment. Several people in her family even suspected they were targeted but no one found any evidence, they did not even know who they could have offended to such a degree!

"Did Feifei...my marriage, my family, she did that?"

"Still have to ask? She was behind the setbacks around you and your family. Either she manipulated people or she used the pearl to jinx you once she got stronger. That vixen likes to borrow other people's hand to hut her enemies," The red creature answered in a bored manner. "Your matter wasn't even a big deal. Chang Ying, I looked at you life records, I expected you to be smarter...or at least, not be this dumb."

Chang Ying grit her teeth. On the scale of things, to this creature, her destroyed marriage and family was not a big issue but still...this little thing waved it under the carpet like collateral damage. "How many people did she ruin?"

The red jellyfish waved its tentacles in the air excitedly. "Feifei used the pearl to curse many people, including your family, and indirectly strengthened the vicious chi in the pearl. That chi did not dissipate because there was no spirit energy in the air to nullify it in your world, unlike in cultivation worlds. So some time after you died, the cultivation demon was released in the form of a plague. It spread throughout your world. The disease broke down the flesh, the organs and the brains of the people it infected turning them into something akin to undead zombies, hundreds of millions died in just a few years. Our upper management can't interfere with Feifei's fate of rebirth, but we can turn back the world to the early days after her rebirth and hope for a different result."

Chang Ying let out a surprised gasp. Just one item from another world and it cause so much disaster in the world by merely being in the hands of a woman from the countryside. 

"This is almost...unbelievable." Chang Ying shook her head and recollected herself.

The red creature suddenly swam closer to her. It's little, soft tentacles held her hands and it said in a meek, pitiful voice. "So, you have to help me too!"

Chang Ying had to stop herself from shuddering and pulling her hands away. This red creature's pitiful pled was so fake, it could not even trick a child. 

"What do you want?" she asked tentatively. 

"To help you help me, of course! My sentence can be reduced to 1,000 years if things change this time. If you don't help me, I will... I will die! Because of this small incident with Feifei, I got some bad karma and have to spend time in this low-tier, weakling body! And my superiors put me on scrubbing duty in the netherworld. Each minute is like having to wash toilets for a thousand years!" The red jellyfish bemoaned in a self-righteous tone. 

Chang Ying's fingers itched. She wanted to grab this little guy and squeeze and squeeze till it popped like a balloon. But she held herself back and clenched her fist. "So, why me?"

"Huh?" The red creature raised a tentacle and scratched its round head in confusion. "Don't you want your man back?"