004: Back to the Past_1

Inside the room.

As the fierce banging on the door echoed around her, Mu Qingli slowly opened her eyes, her head, still throbbing.

She couldn't resist stretching out her hand to massage her temples.

Golden sunlight streamed in through the window.

Under the sunlight, her hands were so white they were almost transparent—smooth like milk, far from resembling the hands of an ordinary country girl raised by a farming family.

Her heart in her chest thumped relentlessly.

Mu Qingli raised her hand to touch her chest, feeling the beat. Suddenly, warmth welled up in her eyes.

The surrounding environment reminded her: this wasn't the Mu Family, nor was it an operating room.

This place was—

Her foster parents' home on Hua Mountain!

She was alive, she was still alive! She had lived to a time before everything had even started!

At that thought, a hoarse laugh emerged from deep within Mu Qingli's throat...

She laughed until the tears came pouring out.

Since she was still alive, everything that happened before must have been real. Where was that spirit called Little Baba?

Feeling the summon of its host, Little Baba immediately responded, [My dear master, your adorable Little Baba is still here~]

Mu Qingli immediately looked around with caution, but she saw no suspicious objects anywhere.

[My dear master, your adorable Little Baba is on your hand.] Little Baba's voice continued.

Mu Qingli immediately raised her hands and only then noticed a fine silver bracelet adorning her right wrist, from which dangled a blue pearl. Under the sunlight, the pearl emitted a rainbow light, dazzling and enhancing the fairness of her wrist like fine jade.

Mu Qingli frowned slightly and whispered, "Are you here?"

[Yes, yes, right here, this is the Pearl House Headquarters, and oh, you can just communicate with me directly with your mind. No one except the master can hear our voices.]

"Okay," Mu Qingli nodded slightly.

Outside the door.

The pounding continued, the angry voice shouted, "Mu Qingli, did you die in there? Hurry up and come out!"

Mu Qingli frowned slightly—her foster mother calling her Mu Qingli meant that the Mu Family would soon come to fetch her.

Mu Qingli pulled out a tissue to wipe away the tears on her face, and in the blink of an eye, the coldness in her eyes disappeared, replaced by an innocent and naive look.

Mu Qingli looked at the reflection in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction.

If she had to describe the person in the mirror with a line of poetry,

It would be:

The hibiscus pales next to the beauty's makeup; the wind from the water hall brings the scent of jewels and emeralds.

This was her appearance at seventeen.

From twenty-four back to seventeen, she had regained a full seven years. The feeling was truly wonderful.

In her previous life, to stay under the radar, Mu Qingli had started deliberately making herself ugly from the day she returned to the Mu family, hiding her true face behind a visage covered in freckles.

This life, she wouldn't.

This face would become her most powerful weapon!

A beauty is harmless.

Mu Qingli blinked gently, her long eyelashes trembling delicately, her eyes pure and innocent. She walked over and opened the door.

"Mom."

Her foster mother glanced at her, seemingly not noticing the redness around her eyes, and said emotionlessly, "Get ready quickly. The Mu Family will be sending someone for you soon."

The foster mother wasn't particularly good to her, but also not bad.

The foster mother was a villager, named Zhu Cuiping, uneducated and illiterate.

Perhaps having been frightened by suffering in the past, Zhu Cuiping always prioritized benefits, valuing money more than life itself. She spoke bluntly, never caring whether her words would cause heartache, only that she found them satisfying to say.

So, Mu Qingli had learned from a young age that she was different from other children.

She was a child who had been picked up.

And indeed, being picked up could not compare to being born to the family.

Mu Qingli, two years older than her sister Su Zhenzhu, often wore her sister's cast-off clothes when she was younger.

In ordinary families, it is the younger sister who wears the elder's hand-me-downs.

But for Mu Qingli, it was the other way around.

When she was little, every year on her sister's birthday, Zhu Cuiping would cook an egg for Su Zhenzhu, but she never got anything; she didn't even know when her own birthday was.

Although it was just an egg, it was very precious in rural areas at that time. Each time she saw her sister eating the egg, Mu Qingli would feel especially envious.

Back then, Mu Qingli was young and didn't understand much. One year, while her sister was eating the egg, she couldn't help but ask.

"Mom, why does sister get an egg, but I don't?"

Zhu Cuiping replied, "Does sister have a birthday and you don't?"

For the first time, Little Qingli grasped the concept of a birthday, looked at Zhu Cuiping with hope, and asked, "Mom, when is my birthday then?"

Zhu Cuiping bluntly said, "You are a foundling; you don't have a birthday!"

From then on, Mu Qingli never asked about her birthday again.

When she got a bit older,

Zhu Cuiping even complained in front of her that someone from a neighboring village had found a child the same time she did. That child's family was relatively wealthy. The biological parents had put a milk bottle, milk powder, a red envelope, and a string of firecrackers in the swaddle. There was a total of two hundred dollars in the red envelope.

In that era, two hundred dollars was a considerable sum.

But in Mu Qingli's swaddle, there was nothing at all.

Just a thin quilt.

More than once, Zhu Cuiping sighed, "I should have picked up that child first if I had known!"

When she was little, the comments that most often lingered in Mu Qingli's ears were:

"When we first found you, you were only three pounds, so tiny. It wasn't easy raising you to this size. When you grow up, you'd better not be an ungrateful wolf! You must take good care of me and your father!"

"Why are you so naughty! If I had known, I wouldn't have picked you up!"

"Hey! How dare you talk back! If it weren't for me picking you up, the grass on your grave would be meters high by now!"

"You are the elder sister, you should give in to your sister!"

"…"

Was her foster mother kind to her?

No.

Was her foster mother mean to her?

No.

As her foster mother said, if not for her, Mu Qingli would have long since died.

Even if her foster mother hadn't been kind, she was still much better than the Mu Family. At the very least, her foster mother had raised her until now.

Seeing Mu Qingli's distracted look, Zhu Cuiping frowned slightly and said in a somewhat displeased tone, "I'm talking to you! Did you hear, don't keep making a face like a dead person! Does it look good? Hurry up and get ready; we don't want to keep others waiting!"

Zhu Cuiping's unhappiness had its reasons.

A month ago, when the Mu Family came to take her back, Zhu Cuiping had proposed a condition.

She had raised Mu Qingli for 17 years, demanding a foster care fee of ten thousand dollars a year, plus thirty thousand dollars as a hardship fee, altogether, the Mu Family had to give two hundred thousand dollars to take Mu Qingli back.

Two hundred thousand was nothing for the Mu Family.

But for a rural family, two hundred thousand was a huge amount of money.

Zhu Cuiping was so thrilled with the fortune that fell from the sky that she couldn't sleep for several nights.

Now, with Mu Qingli making a face like a dead person, Zhu Cuiping worried the Mu Family might be displeased.

What if the Mu Family became unhappy and demanded their money back?

That was two hundred thousand dollars!

No, she couldn't allow the money that had entered her purse to be given back!

Two hundred thousand! It was enough for her to toil on the farm for a lifetime!

Moreover, the Mu Family was from a distinguished household in the city; in the future, she might need to rely on them for many things. It would be nice to get on good terms with the Mu Family through Mu Qingli.

To ingratiate herself with the Mu Family, Zhu Cuiping went as far as to change her own name to Mu Qingli.

Before, Mu Qingli had followed her foster family's surname.

Her surname was Su, and her name was Xiaoyu.

Xiaoyu from the word "encounter."

Because she was found by Zhu Cuiping.

Hearing Zhu Cuiping's slightly angry voice, Mu Qingli came to her senses and realized that today was the day the Mu Family was coming to get her.

"Mom," Mu Qingli started with a hoarse voice, "...Can I not go?"