Lin Yuchan tightly gripped the broken silver in her sleeve as she walked out of the church gates and plunged headfirst into nineteenth-century Guangzhou.

She silently calculated: it was now 1861. Puyi’s abdication would be in 1911. The Qing Dynasty still had fifty years left to live.

The length of a few paragraphs in history books, when magnified, became an ordinary person’s entire lifetime.

There was still hope. As long as she lived normally, she could outlast this dying behemoth.

The transmigration landing point was too tragic, so tragic that her mind went completely blank. She didn’t have any thoughts like other transmigration protagonists of punching natives, kicking barbarians, killing in all directions, and achieving great accomplishments.

However… what was the average lifespan of this era? It seemed to be… thirty-something?

And it seemed like there would be several major plagues in the late Qing Dynasty? Plus, countless peasant uprisings and foreign wars…

Lin Yuchan broke out in a cold sweat, and suddenly another thought jumped into her mind: this world wouldn’t be alternate history, would it? Then the little bit of modern history knowledge remaining in her mind would be completely useless.

Forget it, no need to overthink. She had escaped death and suffered such hardship; at the very least, she had to earn back her investment by staying alive.

A thought suddenly surfaced in her mind: go home!

Immediately followed by an address: “Behind Guandi Temple on Haibang Street outside Xiaodong Gate…”

Lin Yuchan was surprised herself. This must have been the original owner’s residence during her “lifetime.”

Although she couldn’t remember clearly who was in the family, or how she had left home before dying on the street.

She thought, since the original owner’s obsession was so strong, she would go home and take a look on her behalf.

Lin Yuchan cautiously observed her surroundings and saw a small stall not far away. Steamer baskets were piled like mountains, with a shirtless vendor busily working in the steam. His hands moved quickly with knife strokes, and white sections of rice rolls fell into bowls, then were drizzled with a few drops of brown soy sauce, fragrant and appealing.

After just two steps, Lin Yuchan felt something was wrong. The customers who had originally been surrounding the rice roll stall and eating heartily suddenly turned their heads in unison, their gazes focusing on her.

People sitting, standing, and carrying things on the roadside all looked at her with strange expressions.

It was a look that made one’s heart bitter—direct, cold, not particularly threatening, yet carrying obvious exclusion and hostility.

Lin Yuchan first panicked. Had she shown her inexperience? What about her didn’t fit this era?

Then she discovered that these people’s gazes all carried some… fear.

And disgust.

A small-footed old woman pointed at her, thinking she was speaking quietly as she called out: “That’s the one who took Western medicine!”

Westerners had come to Guangzhou long ago and opened charitable medical clinics, performing miraculous cures without charging money, winning quite a bit of popular support. People thought they were Western Bodhisattvas. Who would have expected that suddenly iron ships and cannons came blasting into the city? Only then did people suddenly realize that the “Bodhisattvas” were just the advance guard.

Angry civilians smashed the medical clinics and pharmacies, treating even those originally useful “Western medicines” as poison—who knew what curses the foreigners had put in them.

Several people quietly pointed at Lin Yuchan and echoed: “Carried in dead, walked out alive—a demon!”

“Maybe she can steal souls. Go, go, stay away from her.”

“Doesn’t bind her feet either, like a foreign woman, doesn’t look like a proper person.”

“Binding feet” was Cantonese for foot binding. Lingnan customs were conservative, but not all women had three-inch golden lotuses. The original body Lin Yuchan occupied had grown a pair of long, thin natural feet, which were laughed at by respectable people.

Lin Yuchan naturally didn’t mind; she felt this was the only thing worth celebrating since transmigrating.

She stepped forward, and people covered their noses and retreated.

The situation seemed unfavorable. She looked back at the church. The tall spire pierced through the surrounding low civilian houses, as if proclaiming some mysterious power.

She steeled herself and walked to the rice roll stall. The rice roll vendor glared at her fiercely, as if afraid she would take one step closer and contaminate his fresh rice rolls.

“Excuse me…” She tried to imitate the local accent, “How to get to Xiaodong Gate?”

The vendor was baffled and scolded: “Go away!”

Lin Yuchan continued asking: “Haibang Street outside Xiaodong Gate…”

“Xiaodong Gate…” The vendor, afraid she would pester him, helplessly realized he could run away from the monk but not the temple, so he could only point randomly: “Go straight along this alley, pass ‘Taiping Building’ and turn left! Go quickly, go quickly!”

Following vague memories, feeling her way like a blind person touching an elephant in Guangzhou City from 160 years ago, she found Haibang Street. This was a small alley reeking of rotten fish, with potholes full of stagnant water on the ground. Several sparrows gathered around the water puddles, picking out rotten grain husks to eat.

In the long-neglected earthen wall were embedded two crooked door panels. Lin Yuchan tentatively pushed open the door.

A cloud of smoke hit her face, wrapped in a strange smell. She couldn’t say what kind of smell it was—sweet, cloying, and when suddenly inhaled deeply, somewhat nauseating.

From the center of the white smoke extended a black pipe, with a withered hand at the end. A man lay motionless on a broken mat. Like Lin Yuchan, he was skeletal thin, with his pillow raised very high, his neck, waist, and legs forming three curves. His withered yellow queue coiled beside him like a dead snake.

The dead snake suddenly twitched. The man laboriously lifted his head, with trembling hands, and extended the pipe into the flame. The black residue in the pipe hissed. He took a big puff, and thick white smoke sprayed from his nostrils.

Lin Guangfu lay back comfortably on his pillow.

Although Lin Yuchan had never seen this personally, she had become accustomed to it from various “late Qing old photographs.” He was smoking opium!

This was the original owner’s biological father!

She quickly held her breath and backed toward the door.

Lin Guangfu heard the commotion and suddenly called out: “Eighth Sister, Eighth Sister, is that you? Am I dreaming?”

His voice sounded overjoyed, as if finding gold treasure in the middle of the night. He stopped smoking and struggled to turn over and get out of bed.

Lin Yuchan hesitated. She had read in history books that during the late Qing period, Britain, to reverse its trade deficit with China, frantically smuggled and dumped opium into China, causing addiction among the people that was difficult to break.

Her father might not have willingly fallen into degradation; perhaps he, too, was a victim.

Although he looked haggard, his features were still reasonably regular, even handsome. His hands didn’t have the calluses common among the lowest class people, so he had probably once been a respectable person.

Lin Yuchan had seen several opium dens along the way, with curtains hanging and dark interiors, but clearly with elaborate decorations and people specially serving tea and snacks. The smokers lay sprawled on beds, regardless of their status, pressing against each other, chatting loudly with hoarse voices about irrelevant topics, their laughter filled with dreamy pleasure.

But such opium dens charged fees. Lin Guangfu’s home was bare, lying alone on a broken mat, smoking, showing he had no money to go to such places. His smoking was only to fill that deadly addiction.

Lin Guangfu threw the opium pipe back on the bed and hugged Lin Yuchan’s shoulders with teary eyes: “Eighth Sister, I thought you were dead! Where have you been these past few days? It’s good that you’re back, it’s good that you’re back, wonderful, hahaha…”

His “high” hadn’t passed yet, so his speech was incoherent, and his grip on her shoulders was surprisingly strong. Lin Yuchan awkwardly dodged.

She was called “Eighth Sister,” so where were the seven older brothers and sisters?

She said dryly, “I didn’t die. I was rescued by someone…”

“Quick, quick, come with Father.” Lin Guangfu tremblingly pulled out a piece of paper from under the broken mat, treasuring it as he placed it in his bosom, then reached to pull her. “The people from the Qi mansion must be getting impatient! Heaven protect us, they’d better not lower the price… look how thin you’ve gotten…”

In that glimpse, Lin Yuchan saw a few small characters written on that paper: “Marriage proposal.”

There were several more lines below that she couldn’t see clearly.

Her heart filled with great suspicion as she asked: “Who are the people from the Qi mansion? What do you mean by lowering the price? Where do you want to take me?”

“To the Qi mansion! You money-losing burden!” Lin Guangfu suddenly became temperamental and roared, blue veins showing on his neck as he waved his hands and shouted, “Originally agreed on twenty taels of silver, twenty taels! Your father has hit the jackpot this time. Your third and sixth sisters only got seven or eight taels back then! Who knew you, this money-losing burden, would dare to play dead, making your father get scolded, saying I don’t keep my word! Twenty taels! Twenty taels of silver! Have you ever seen twenty taels of silver in several lifetimes! Come with me!”

Lin Yuchan felt her spine turn cold, then a surge of anger rose in her chest. The father before her suddenly seemed detestable.

“You want to sell me? After I died, you were the one who threw me in the mass grave? My older sisters were all sold by you, too?”

She had originally thought “she” had just been unlucky to get sick and collapse on her own. From Lin Guangfu’s tone, he was the one who threw her away?

He thought his daughter was dead, couldn’t bear to buy even a coffin, and directly threw her into the mass grave, and was still lamenting the loss of twenty taels of silver!

An addict’s thinking could no longer be understood by normal reasoning. Lin Yuchan didn’t waste words with him and turned to leave.

“I’m no longer your daughter. Don’t think about selling me. Goodbye.”

“Hah, you rebellious thing, did I raise you for over ten years for nothing?” Lin Guangfu blocked the doorway, his gaunt, deformed face muscles twisting. “What you ate and wore, which didn’t depend on me? How much money have you ever earned for the family? Other families’ children can sell themselves to save their fathers, you—why can’t you? Fine, fine, even if you’re unfilial, I’ll accept it, but as an older sister, shouldn’t you think about your younger brother? Your brother is the only heir of the Lin family, the treasure I waited so many years for. He’ll study and take the imperial exams to become a top scholar in the future, and he needs to get married! You heartless thing, will you just watch your brother starve to death? Come with me!”

Lin Yuchan was extremely surprised.

“Younger brother? I—I still have a younger brother?”

In this earthen house that leaked from all sides, besides Lin Guangfu and his opium pipe, there wasn’t even a mouse!

“How old is my brother? Where is he?”

“Little Ball…” Lin Guangfu suddenly froze, grabbed his opium pipe and took a hard puff, muttering: “Little Ball, ah, why hasn’t Little Ball come back yet? The day before yesterday, he was crying from hunger at home, so I sent him to the foreign temple to beg for porridge. He went out and never came back… he must have been caught and eaten by the foreigners! They say foreigners catch little children to dig out their hearts, scoop out their livers, cut off their tongues, slice off their ears, and gouge out their eyeballs to make foreign medicine…”

He suddenly looked at Lin Yuchan, his eyes full of hatred: “It’s all your fault! All because of pretending to be sick! If we had traded you for silver early, nothing would have happened! The Lin family line is broken! Wuu wuu wuu…”

“Your son is missing, and you’re still not going to look for him!”

Lin Yuchan shouted while rushing for the door. Lin Guangfu reached out to grab her. A huge force pulled her down to the ground.

“Come with me to the Qi mansion!”

As Lin Yuchan struggled, something white suddenly rolled out from her body with a clatter.

Lin Guangfu’s eyes suddenly brightened, licking his dry, cracked lips as he called out in a low voice: “Silver!”

He released Lin Yuchan and nimbly crawled on the ground to pick it up.

“Don’t touch my silver!”

Lin Yuchan roared and reached out to snatch it.

There was an old carrying pole by the bed. He frantically grabbed it and struck at Lin Yuchan. She rolled to dodge. With a crack, the pole broke the rice jar, and a few lonely old grains of rice jumped out.

Lin Guangfu threw down the pole and tried to grab it bare-handed. Lin Yuchan clutched the silver tightly to her chest.

At the beginning of her transmigration, she had imagined countless scenarios of meeting her “family.” She knew the original owner might be in poverty, might have complicated family relationships, and might not live easily.

But she never expected that in just five short minutes, she would be at odds with her biological father.

The two taels of silver the Western pastor had given her were now her entire fortune in this world.

Lin Guangfu was ultimately hollowed out by opium and was pushed off balance by Lin Yuchan’s forceful shove. She grabbed the silver and rushed out the door.