Traveling Through Those Years Of Farming (Quick Transmigration) - Volume 4 Chapter 1

“Those brats must have done it on purpose! Otherwise, with how well-behaved Baobao is, how could she possibly run off to the deep pool to play! If Da-Niu’s wife and the others hadn’t gone to wash clothes by the pool and happened to find her, she would’ve drowned long ago. How am I supposed to explain this to her mother!”

In a daze, Baobao heard arguing beside her.

“The child hasn’t even woken up yet. You can’t be sure it was Lianqiao and the others who brought Baobao over there.”

The voice before belonged to a woman; this time it was a man speaking, his tone somewhat weak.

“People in the village saw it! Fu Dayan! I’m telling you, I’ve endured enough these years. Back then you told me to endure it—that Fu Shichun and Fu Yuexia were just children. As a stepmother, for the sake of reputation, I endured. But now even their children are running all over the place. Fine, let my son endure, but why should Baobao have to endure!”

The woman’s emotions were intense. If not for the unconscious child by her side, she would have been shouting instead of suppressing her voice.

“Have you forgotten how Baobao’s mother died back then? I seriously suspect that when my son fell into the water, that wasn’t an accident either. If they could do something like this once, why couldn’t they do it a second time?” The woman spoke with hatred. 

Baobao, unable to understand the cause and context, only vaguely gathered from that series of names that the speaker was a stepmother who had a son with her current husband, while Fu Shichun and Fu Yuexia were children left behind by his first wife.

As for herself—what relationship did her body’s original owner have with this woman?

The woman sounded as anxious as a birth mother, yet she clearly said the original mother had already died. So why was she being raised by this woman?

“Gesh!”

Seeing his wife grow increasingly unreasonable, Fu Dayan became angry. This accusation was too much—what father could admit his children were malicious by nature? And besides, none of this had any proof. 

In his eyes, while his eldest two didn’t like this stepmother and their younger half-brother very much, they were still blood kin. How could they possibly commit something like harming their own siblings?

“Yan’er.” 

Seeing his grief-stricken wife, Fu Dayan softened, using the intimate form of address they only used in the bedroom.

He liked this wife of his very much—more than he had ever liked his first wife—and she had even given him a late-life son. The entire village viewed him as capable. He knew in his heart he favored this wife and her child. Naturally, the children of his first marriage felt he was not fair, and that was why they were cold toward their stepmother and younger brother.

“Right now the most important thing is to keep Baobao alive. If the village doctor can’t do it, then we go to town—we go to the county. The doctors there are skilled enough to snatch people back from the hands of the King of Hell. We can definitely save her.” Fu Dayan gritted his teeth. 

Hiring a physician from a reputable apothecary would be expensive, and for farmers scraping by from their fields, that kind of fee could wipe out half a year’s harvest.

But the little girl on the bed had a special identity. His wife cherished this child who had no blood relation to them as if she were her own eyes. If anything happened to her, he truly believed his wife might bring the sky down.

“You still need to say it? I already sent someone to the county to fetch a doctor.” Madam Fu rolled her eyes at him.

Fu Dayan forced a bitter smile. How could he forget most of the family savings were kept by his wife? With how much she doted on Baobao, she would have sent for a doctor from the county the moment the village doctor said he couldn’t treat her.

Baobao faintly heard more voices, then her awareness sank deeply into her consciousness.

Original memories surged up. Whatever was spoken afterward, she no longer heard.

The original body was five years old. Her memories before age three were blurry. Ever since she became aware of things, she had been raised by the woman who spoke at her bedside—Ge Shiyan. She called her “Mother.” She called Ge Shiyan’s husband, Fu Dayan, “Father.”

The Fu family situation was extremely complicated. The current head, Fu Dayan, had been married twice.

His first wife, Madam Liu, fell ill after a difficult childbirth with her daughter. Although she survived, her health was ruined. Five years later, she still passed away.

At that time, their eldest child, Fu Shichun, was eight; the daughter Madam Liu had nearly died to bear was five.

A widower could not raise two children alone. And since Madam Liu died when he was not yet thirty, it was already considered loyal of him to keep a few years of mourning for her.

Fu Dayan was honest and hardworking. The family owned several mu of good farmland—respectable conditions for Dacao Village. While Madam Liu was ill, he had tended the fields by day and cared for her by night. Within a radius of ten villages, everyone knew he was a loyal, dependable man.

Thus, many widows wanted to marry him—seeing him as a reliable husband.

But Ge Shiyan’s case was different. She was not a widow. When she married him, she was a maiden. Under normal circumstances, unmarried girls did not marry widowers, especially when the widower’s conditions weren’t high enough to reasonably marry a maiden.

But Ge Shiyan’s life had taken a different path.

She had been engaged at sixteen, planning to marry, but before the wedding, her father died, and she had to observe three years of mourning. The groom agreed to wait.

But one harvest season, her mother accidentally cut her foot, developed a fever, and died. This extended her mourning another three years. The groom, now nearing thirty, could not wait anymore.

Resolute by nature, Ge Shiyan returned the engagement gifts, tied her hair in a matron’s knot, and took responsibility for raising her younger siblings. She worked herself like a draft animal, farming their own land and leasing additional fields from landlords. She supported her brothers’ marriages and her younger sister’s dowry.

By the time her younger brothers were settled and her sister could be looked after, Ge Shiyan was twenty-three—considered an “old maid” in the countryside. 

Her brothers genuinely worried their hardworking elder sister would have no support in old age.

So they began arranging her marriage—and chose Fu Dayan.

She had met him secretly once and found he looked proper and younger than his age. She was willing.

The Fu family, for their part, could not believe their luck. To marry a capable maiden like her was a great bargain.

But the person who objected was Ge Shiyan’s youngest sister, Ge Feiyan. She felt her elder sister deserved a better fate than marrying into a household with two stepchildren.

Unable to accept this marriage, Ge Feiyan secretly sold herself as a concubine to a wealthy landlord’s family, earning fifty taels of silver to serve as her sister’s dowry.

By the time the family learned of this, she was already sitting in the landlord’s sedan chair.

Ge Shiyan was heartbroken and angry, but seeing the money hidden in her dowry chest, she could only understand her sister’s love beneath the rash decision.

Yet she never touched that money.

After marrying into the Fu family, she did not try to win over the stepchildren. They were already old enough to understand and clearly rejected her. She also had neither the temperament nor the desire to fawn on someone else’s children. 

She focused instead on winning her husband’s heart.

But for years she failed to conceive. After thirty, even she gave up.

Just as the stepchildren were marrying and moving into their own lives, fate finally changed—she became pregnant.

The following year, she gave birth to a son, Fu Shinian. Her stepson’s wife also bore dragon-phoenix twins that same year—Fu Guangyuan and Fu Lianqiao.

Despite the auspicious twins, the late-life son remained the most cherished.

Since Baobao could remember, she had lived in the Fu household. Outsiders joked she was Fu Shinian’s child bride. Ge Shiyan seemed to accept this without protest, treating her as her future daughter-in-law—no, even more dearly than a daughter.

If not for Baobao being two years older than Fu Shinian, Baobao might have suspected some baby-swap drama. But an ordinary farming family had no reason for such nonsense.

Just as she tried to think it through, she felt the sting of needles.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw a blurry old face holding a long needle, piercing her acupoint.

“She’s awake! Baobao is awake!”

Before Baobao could see clearly, she was swept into a woman’s arms.