Chapter 1
Jing Sheng forced his eyes open. Exhaustion dragged at his limbs, heavy and absolute, as though an unspoken weight were crushing his chest. As a streamer, he was used to being tired; he spent his days tracking down ancient lore, foraging tips, and traditional skills to feed the younger generation's curiosity about the old ways. At his age, his son constantly nagged him to take a break, but Jing Sheng could never quite bring himself to stop. It was a funny thought—a young man lecturing his own father about health.
Jing Sheng wasn't weak by any standard, but the sudden craze among the youth for learning old-fashioned survival skills—identifying edible wild bushes, making traditional cheese, and the like—had pushed him to his limits. He had wanted to give them his absolute best, but pushing himself too hard had a price: he had ended up fainting right in the middle of a live stream.
"Sniffles... Mama, don't die!"
The wet, miserable sound of sobbing snapped Jing Sheng out of his thoughts. He blinked, blinking away the fog to find two malnourished children staring down at him. Did his son adopt homeless children?
He took in their appearance: clothes patched together with awkward stitches and full of ragged holes, framing hollow cheeks and wide, fearful eyes. A sharp pang of pity twisted in his chest.
"Mom! You're awake! Jianyu, go get some water!" the older boy ordered urgently.
The younger child nodded frantically and scrambled away. Jing Sheng’s brow furrowed. Mom?
It was only then that he truly began to look around his surroundings. This wasn't his home. His house might not have been a mansion, but it certainly wasn't this cramped, decaying shack. Where on earth was he? Had he been kidnapped? But... what about the children?
He tried to sit up, but a sharp, pulling pain radiated through his lower abdomen. He gasped, pressing a hand to his stomach—and froze.
Mom? Are you hurting? "I'll rub your tummy", a small voice offered timidly as a tiny, grime-smudged hand pressed gently against his midsection.
Jing Sheng stared down in sheer disbelief. Why was his stomach so large and rounded? Why was this strange child calling him Mom? He lifted his hand to push his hair back, and the breath caught in his throat. The hand coming into his field of vision was impossibly smooth, slender, and decades younger than his own.
What on earth is going on?
Before he could process it, the younger child rushed back into the room, handing him a crude, cracked bowl filled with water. Jing Sheng reached for it, his hands shaking. As he looked down into the rippling surface of the water, he caught his reflection—and dropped the bowl with a loud clatter, clutching his head as a violent wave of dizziness and a splitting headache crashed over him.
"Mom!" both children cried out in terror.
As he clutched his temples, a torrent of foreign memories surged into his mind. They burned like hot iron, agonizingly sharp as they forced their way into his consciousness, demanding to be organized.
This body belonged to another Jing Sheng, an ethereal beauty who had settled in Chen Village after his parents passed away. It was there that he had fallen in love with Chen Chuanli, a huntsman and laborer whose looks were ordinary compared to the wealthy suitors who had once vied for Jing Sheng’s hand. Fortunately for Jing Sheng, Chuanli’s heart mirrored his own. They married and moved into a quiet cottage on the outskirts of the village, building a peaceful life together.
Chuanli loved Jing Sheng to the moon and back, treating him and their growing family like royalty. Softened by this deep, unwavering affection, Jing Sheng had settled happily into domestic life.
Years passed in a blur of idyllic routine. First came their eldest son, Chen Jinhai, followed a few years later by their second, Chen Jianyu. Their lives felt like a fairytale: fishing in the streams, playing with the children in the sun, upgrading their cozy cottage, and sewing by the hearth. They weathered good times and bad hand-in-hand, believing nothing could ever tear them apart.
Then, the empire went to war.
A royal decree arrived demanding an able-bodied male from every household. Panic seized Jing Sheng. Chuanli was not only the sole able-bodied man in their home; he was their entire livelihood. Together, the couple fiercely refused, but the law was absolute, and dissent was met with force.
When the village elders—frightened of drawing the authorities' wrath—reported them, officials came directly to the cottage. They dragged Chuanli away by force. In the desperate struggle that followed, the guards struck Chuanli over the head, knocking him unconscious before dragging him off into the unknown.
That day, their world shattered. Driven half-mad by grief and shock, Jing Sheng struggled on alone, desperately trying to forage and fish using the skills his husband had taught him. But the hardships only compounded. Working to exhaustion one afternoon, Jing Sheng had collapsed, only to discover a terrifying new reality: before Chuanli was taken, a new life had taken root inside him.
A joyous miracle under normal circumstances, it was now a cruel burden. How could he feed a newborn when he could barely keep his two existing children alive?
As the war dragged on, food supplies dwindled across the land. Winter brought biting cold and frozen rivers where no fish could be caught. Yet, driven by fierce maternal instinct, Jing Sheng had pushed his growing body to the absolute limit. They barely scraped through the bitter months, all of them severely malnourished and underweight. Through it all, Jing Sheng clung to a single, unyielding belief: Chuanli would survive the war and return home. He had to hold on for their children's sake.
But human endurance has its limits. Worn down by endless grief, starvation, and grueling labor, the original Jing Sheng had slipped away in his sleep—leaving a modern soul to wake up in his place.
