Transmigrating into a Book: First Awakening

In the humble corner of the wall, a woman lay.
Her eyes were tightly shut, a gash on her forehead bleeding thickly, the blood tracing a path from her eyebrow down to her chin. Her fingers, resting limply on the muddy ground, twitched faintly. As consciousness slowly returned, the pain from the wound pierced her brain.
Jiang Nian was excruciatingly jolted awake.
She opened her eyes wide, her messy hair obscuring her vision. The left side of her bangs was matted with blood, sticking to her eyelids. She could only squint one eye to make out the scene before her.
It was pitch black, and her vision was poor. She could only discern the outline of a courtyard from a faint, dim light. The ground was uneven and muddy, pitted with potholes. To the east stood a row of old, dated earth houses with wooden doors. Leaning against the wall near one door were shovels, hoes, and a single-wheeled cart. A dusty shirt and a white floral tank top, typically worn by old women, hung on a clothesline in the yard, exuding a strong sense of a bygone era.
Jiang Nian was momentarily stunned.
She had fallen asleep after finishing a book, so why had she woken up in this place?
Before she could ponder further, the voices of two people drifted from nearby.
"Dead?"
"Is she really dead?!"
The speakers were Li Niu and Liu Fu, two villagers. Li Niu stared at the blood-soaked woman, swallowing nervously. His companion, Liu Fu, nudged him. "If you don't believe it, go touch her and see if she's dead."
Li Niu looked at the motionless woman on the ground, especially her blood-covered face, and his calves trembled with fear. He mustered his courage, walked over, and stretched out a hand to check Jiang Nian's nose. As his hand approached, Jiang Nian quickly held her breath, hoping to avoid them discovering she wasn't dead and attempting to humiliate her further.
"Dead, dead, dead! She's really dead!"
Li Niu found no breath, panicked, and stumbled backward repeatedly, his face pale with fright. He looked at Liu Fu in terror. "If I had known this widow was so unyielding, willing to bash her head against a wall rather than let us touch her, I wouldn't have come even if you beat me to death. Now what? A life is lost. What do we do?"
"Then why are you still standing there like an idiot? Run!"
Liu Fu grabbed Li Niu and pulled him towards the wall, speaking as they ran. "Xu Cheng died two days ago. The Xu family is empty now, and no one knows it was us who climbed over the wall and caused Jiang Nian's death. As long as we run now, no one will know we were here. Even if Second Brother Lu returns from the army, he won't find us."
Li Niu belatedly came to his senses. "Right, right, right."
Jiang Nian listened to their conversation and finally understood what was wrong.
She had transmigrated into a book.
She had transmigrated into a period novel she had just finished reading two days ago. The male lead, Lu Yu, was a childhood friend and comrade of the original owner's husband, Xu Cheng. When the male lead was ten, his father died, and his mother sent him to the Xu family, saying she would pick him up ten years later. From then on, the male lead had always been fostered by the Xu family, treating Xu Cheng like a brother.
By coincidence, she had become Xu Cheng's wife, the male lead's cannon fodder sister-in-law. The original owner only appeared once at the beginning of the book, which had made Jiang Nian feel uncomfortable for a long time, not only because the original owner shared her name, Jiang Nian, but also because her fate saddened Jiang Nian.
To facilitate the male and female leads' encounter, the author deliberately wrote Xu Cheng to his death.
After Xu Cheng died, the original owner was left alone in the house. Li Niu and Liu Fu, two hooligans from the village, saw that the original owner was beautiful and delicate, and they harbored ill intentions. They conspired to climb over the wall that night to humiliate her. They assumed that as a helpless widow, she wouldn't dare to speak up even if they disgraced her.
However, they didn't expect the original owner to be so resolute. To avoid humiliation, she gritted her teeth and bashed her head against the wall, dying.
She now occupied the original owner's body, and the original owner's memories surged into her mind. The wound on her forehead and the intense memories overwhelmed Jiang Nian, causing her to faint from a headache. Drowsily, she heard Li Niu and Liu Fu cry "ouch" as they tumbled over the wall, sounding as if someone had hit them.
"Lu, Second Brother Lu? Why are you back?!"
"Weren't you at... Ouch, that hurts... At, at the army?"
Jiang Nian was stunned when she heard the name "Second Brother Lu" before realizing he was the male lead, Lu Yu, from the book.
A few years prior, the male lead had left home with Xu Cheng to join the army. Later, Xu Cheng had an accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his father brought him home to recuperate. Xu Cheng's father asked someone to arrange a marriage for Xu Cheng, hoping to find a wife who could take good care of his son.
The original owner's family was poor. Her father, Jiang, was crippled and couldn't do heavy work, her mother, Jiang, was in poor health, and her younger brother was lazy and gluttonous, so all the household chores fell on the original owner. When her younger brother, Jiang Guo, wanted to get married, the Jiang family had no money. Mother Jiang happened to hear that the Xu family needed a wife for their paralyzed eldest son. She calculated, then shamelessly approached the male lead's father, demanding three hundred yuan as a betrothal gift to marry off the original owner.
Xu Cheng was paralyzed from the waist down and had lost that ability. Moreover, his waist would ache terribly every evening, causing him to cry out loudly. Fearing he would disturb the original owner, he sent her to sleep in the male lead's room. The male lead had always been in the army, and his room was empty. It wasn't until two years ago, after Xu Cheng's father died, that the male lead returned from the army. After he and the original owner handled the old man's funeral, the male lead said to the original owner, "Sister-in-law, this family has been hard on you."
That was the first and last time the original owner saw the male lead.
According to the plot, the male lead was supposed to rush back on the fifth day after the original owner's death. Why had he returned tonight?
Could it be that her transmigration had altered the plot?
Jiang Nian's head throbbed as if it would explode. She pushed her hands against the ground, trying to pull her weak body up. From the corner of her eye, she saw a dark figure climb over the wall. It was completely dark now, and she couldn't see what the person looked like, only vaguely discerning the man's taut, sharp jawline in the dim night. As she struggled to lift her upper body, she suddenly lost strength and fell. The person quickly stepped forward and caught her shoulder.
His arm was firm and strong, his hand holding her shoulder with just the right amount of pressure.
"Sister-in-law, I'm sorry, I came late."
Jiang Nian, before fainting, only felt that this person was indeed the male lead; his voice was cold, deep, and extremely pleasant to listen to.
Jiang Nian felt this sleep was very long, and her back ached, as did the wound on her forehead. It hurt so much she dared not frown. A slight furrow of her brow would pull at the wound, and that sensation was too painful.
She opened her eyes, first seeing the main beam of the roof. Old-era roofs were not like the cardboard roofs of the new century; one could see the wooden structure. The walls were made of mud, mixed with dry grass, and some spots were patched with old newspapers, one of which bore the year 1970. This string of numbers burned Jiang Nian's eyes like a red-hot iron, forcing her to believe that she had indeed transmigrated into this era.
She was currently sleeping in the male lead's room. The male lead must have seen that the original owner's husband's room was neatly tidied, not looking like someone had slept there. In contrast, his own room had neatly spread bedding, and the original owner's washbasin and clothes were there, everywhere the scent of the original owner's life.
She thought, the male lead must have carried her in.
The male lead's room was also very simple: a hard wooden bed leaning against an old window, a small table and a round wooden stool by the headboard, and a plain wooden chest at the foot of the bed, inside which were a few of the original owner's everyday clothes and toiletries. Near the door was a washstand, and the washbasin with a red base and white floral pattern was the original owner's only dowry.
Jiang Nian truly felt wronged for the original owner.
Her birth mother, to get her younger brother married, didn't even bother to prepare a sturdy set of bedding or a few new clothes, only giving a ceramic basin. It was truly disgraceful.
Footsteps approached from outside. Jiang Nian propped herself up on the bed. She thought the male lead was coming and was preparing her words, but when she turned her head, she saw a middle-aged woman over forty years old enter. She wore earthy yellow clothes and baggy trousers, her knees stained with dirt, old cloth shoes, and her hair braided and hanging down her back—a typical rural woman's attire from the 1970s.
"Xu family daughter-in-law, you're finally awake."
Aunt Zhao carried a bowl of food over and sat on the edge of the bed, handing the bowl to Jiang Nian and glancing at the bandage on her head. "You really are something. Thieves broke into your house, and you didn't even cry out. Our houses are close; if you had cried out, I would have heard, and my husband and that stubborn boy would have rushed over. You wouldn't have had to suffer this head injury."
Aunt Zhao was a neighbor who had helped the original owner countless times since she married into the family.
Jiang Nian felt a surge of goodwill towards her and accepted the bowl. "I was too scared at the time; I couldn't make a sound."
Aunt Zhao said, "You're lucky to be alive. Lu Yu just happened to come home for the funeral and caught those two rascals, Li Niu and Liu Fu, red-handed. Lu Yu asked me this morning to look after you. He and the company commander took them to the county police station."
Aunt Zhao snorted again. "Those two brats are truly no good. They bullied you, a newly widowed woman, thinking they could steal the subsidy Lu Yu sent your family. They deserve to be in the police station; they should be properly reformed."
From Aunt Zhao's words, Jiang Nian gleaned a piece of information: Lu Yu had framed Li Niu and Liu Fu's failed attempt to assault a woman as a robbery, thus preserving the original owner's reputation.
A widow's life was full of gossip, especially in the 1970s. If others knew Li Niu and Liu Fu had climbed over the wall to humiliate the original owner, the villagers' collective spit could drown her.
Jiang Nian had only woken up in the afternoon, and her stomach was already rumbling with hunger.
Aunt Zhao brought pickled cucumbers and a cornmeal bun. The cornmeal bun was hard and difficult to swallow; she ate a bit but really couldn't eat any more.
In the rural 1970s, every family relied on working for the commune to earn work points. Work points were calculated annually; families with more laborers earned more work points, and at the end of the year, they received more food than others. The Jiang family, year-round, only had the original owner and Mother Jiang earning work points. The food distributed at the end of the year was pitifully scarce, and the whole family often went hungry. Aunt Zhao's family had Uncle Zhao and her son Zhao Gang as two laborers. Although they didn't earn as many work points as some other families by the end of the year, their family's food supply was guaranteed.
Aunt Zhao saw Jiang Nian eat a bit and then stop, frowning as she asked, "Why aren't you eating?"
Jiang Nian smiled. "My head hurts, and I feel nauseous. I can't really eat."
Aunt Zhao was startled by the smile on Jiang Nian's face. Indeed, this young daughter-in-law was fair and delicate, and when she smiled, she had two dimples, truly beautiful.
Jiang Nian noticed Aunt Zhao's surprise and lowered her head, pursing her lips.
Because her parents favored sons over daughters, the original owner had always been a laborer at home, developing a heavy personality from a young age, rarely smiling or speaking. After marrying into the Lu family, she also had very little interaction with the village neighbors. If not for Aunt Zhao's talkative nature, many would have thought the Xu family had married a mute daughter-in-law.
After Aunt Zhao left, Jiang Nian lay on the bed for a while longer, getting up only when it was completely dark. She put on her cloth shoes and leaned against the wall to walk out. Footsteps echoed from outside the house, not like Aunt Zhao's; the approaching person's steps were steady and powerful, reaching the door in a few strides.
The door frame was low, and the man, tall and slender, had to duck his head to enter.
He wore a green military uniform, just as described in the book, with a cold demeanor and eyebrows like majestic mountains. Seeing Jiang Nian leaning against the wall to walk, the man hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward to support her slender arm.
"Sister-in-law, where are you going? I'll help you."
Jiang Nian: ...
She wanted to go to the outhouse.