"One hundred jin of coarse grain. Take these two little girls and be on your way. They’ve been raised nice and pretty. Keep them for yourself later or sell them on, that’s your business!"

The voice was so sharp it sounded like a dull blade scraping across raw iron, stabbing straight into Evelyn Whitmore’s ears.

One hundred jin of coarse grain...

Little girls...

Boom—

It was like a muffled thunderclap crashed inside Evelyn’s head. The fog in her mind blew apart in an instant.

She forced her eyes open, and the first thing she saw was her mother-in-law Mabel Caldwell’s mean, greedy face. Mabel was gripping the arms of two skinny little girls, thin as dry stalks, and shoving them forward with a fawning smile toward a greasy-faced man whose shifty eyes kept darting all over the place.

Those two little girls were her daughters—Lily Whitmore and Iris Whitmore—the children she had nearly died bringing into the world.

"No—!"

The scream tore out of Evelyn’s throat, raw and broken.

Like a mad she-wolf, she lurched up from the icy earthen kang. Her whole body was so weak it felt ready to fall apart, but she didn’t care. She threw herself forward like she’d lost her mind and yanked her two trembling daughters into her arms, holding them tight.

"My children... Who dares lay a finger on my children!"

Everything from her last life came rushing back, one scene after another, like the cruelest nightmare.

It was this very afternoon.

This black-hearted old woman had done it today—while Evelyn burned with fever and drifted in and out of sense, she had sold her daughters to traffickers for one hundred jin of coarse grain.

When Evelyn woke and cried until she went blind with grief, Mabel and her brother-in-law Victor Whitmore had pinned her down hard, cursing her as a useless jinx, a hen that couldn’t lay eggs and still dared make trouble.

And after that, the famine came. Of the five children she had left, Ethan Whitmore was driven to hard labor until he collapsed and died from exhaustion. Jasper Whitmore and Sophie Whitmore were sold off to an opera troupe, and no one knew how much suffering they went through. Dorian Whitmore and Owen Whitmore tried to stand up for their older brother and sisters, only for Victor Whitmore to break their legs and toss them into a deep mountain ravine to be eaten by wild beasts...

As for Evelyn herself, after endless torment and regret, her life was finished off by a bowl of drugged porridge.

At the moment of death, she had sprawled on the freezing snow like a stray dog nobody wanted, while her soul seemed to hang in the air above, watching with her own eyes as one child after another met a miserable end... That pain had ripped her clean apart, like being burned alive in a blazing fire.

"My children... Mama’s precious hearts..." Evelyn clutched the frail little bodies in her arms as hard as she could. Tears burst out like floodwater, hot and endless, falling onto the children’s icy little faces.

She was back.

Somehow, carrying a chest full of hate and regret, she had come back to the moment right before everything went to ruin.

"You crazy woman! What the hell is wrong with you?" Mabel Caldwell got shoved so hard she nearly dropped to the ground on her backside. Her temper flared at once. She raised her hand and slapped straight at Evelyn Whitmore’s face. "I’m trading these two worthless girls for grain to keep this whole family alive, and you dare stand in my way? You’ve got some nerve now, huh?"

Evelyn Whitmore had both daughters locked tight in her arms. There was no room for her to dodge.

But this time, she didn’t shut her eyes the way she had in her last life.

She lifted her head. In those eyes that had always looked meek and obedient, there was now a blood-red blaze, bitter and savage, like something crawled up from hell itself.

"If you touch even one finger on them, I’ll fight you to the death."

Her voice was hoarse, but the vicious force in it made people’s hearts skip.

Mabel Caldwell’s hand actually stopped in midair, frozen there by that look.

This useless daughter-in-law, the one she could curse and beat any day she pleased, why did she seem like a different person today? Those eyes... just looking at them made her feel a chill in her gut.

"Hey, come on now, sister-in-law of the Whitmore family, is this deal happening or not?" The greasy buyer rubbed his hands, already annoyed. "Can’t even handle one woman? Are you selling these little girls or not? Give me a straight answer."

Mabel Caldwell snapped back to herself, and greed stomped flat the last bit of fear.