As Spring Festival travel season crept closer, the train was packed to the brim.
When the train stopped, a mother and daughter got on. The younger woman had a huge pregnant belly, and her light blue puffer jacket barely covered it, leaving a tight leather skirt visible underneath. Her makeup was thick, kind of overdone.
Her mother carried a small travel bag in one hand and dragged a suitcase nearly half her height with the other, inching forward with obvious effort.
Lily Ashford was sitting by the aisle, hugging a piece of bread and nibbling at it in tiny bites.
The train started moving again, and the pregnant woman stumbled. Half her body crashed onto Lily Ashford’s shoulder.
“Kids these days seriously have zero manners. Can’t you see a pregnant woman standing there? You don’t even know to give up your seat? What are they teaching in schools now?” the woman snapped. Her long, polished nails jabbed right into Lily Ashford’s face.
Those hands were yellowish and shriveled, like chicken claws, with ridges running across the nails.
Lily Ashford looked up at her. The woman’s forehead between the brows was dark, and the philtrum above her lip looked sunken. A death sign.
“What are you looking at? I’m talking about you! So rude!”
The middle-aged woman quickly tugged at her. “Yueyue, don’t start a fight. Mom’ll lay the suitcase down. You can sit on it and rest for a bit.”
“Are you blind or what? That suitcase is tiny. With a belly this big, how am I supposed to sit on that?”
An older man nearby stood up. “Take my seat.”
“Hmph.” The pregnant woman shot Lily Ashford a glare and dropped into the seat. “Kids these days aren’t even as decent as some old geezer.”
The old man’s face turned green. “Young lady, you can’t talk like that. This girl has low blood sugar. She passed out and the conductor carried her over here. She just woke up. It’s not that she wouldn’t give you the seat, she literally can’t stand.”
The pregnant woman sneered. “What are you to her, huh, defending her like this? You two got something going on?”
The old man was so mad he nearly keeled over. “You—you—this is absurd!”
“Sorry, so sorry. My daughter-in-law’s not feeling well, so her temper’s bad. She doesn’t mean any harm. Please don’t take it to heart,” the middle-aged woman apologized, all humble and flustered.
The pregnant woman ignored everyone, pulled out her phone, and started watching videos on speaker. In an instant, shrill cackling laughter filled the whole carriage.
From what the middle-aged woman said, the old man gradually learned that the pregnant woman was her daughter-in-law. Her son had been a border police officer. During an undercover mission, he exposed himself to save hostages, and in the end not even his body was recovered.
The daughter-in-law had it rough too. No parents, no family to rely on. She’d only been married a year, was almost due, and then her husband died in the line of duty.
This time, the middle-aged woman had come to Nanshi to handle her son’s death paperwork, and while she was at it, bring her daughter-in-law back to her hometown, Jinshi, so she could take care of her.
As she spoke, tears rolled down her face. “He was my only son. She’s carrying the only bloodline he left behind. For the sake of that child, I can deal with anything.”
The old man didn’t say anything more. The way he looked at the pregnant woman softened a lot.
This place sat on the southwestern border, right next to a neighboring country. The middle-aged woman hadn’t said it outright, but everyone could pretty much guess her son had most likely been a narcotics officer.
A passenger nearby chimed in, “I saw the news yesterday. There was an undercover anti-drug cop in Nanshi whose cover got blown. The traffickers buried him alive. He’d just gotten married too, and his wife was pregnant. Sounds exactly like your son. Man... that’s heartbreaking.”
The middle-aged woman’s eyes reddened. She bit her lip hard, forcing the tears back down.
Lily Ashford picked up the bread the pregnant woman had knocked to the floor and blew gently at the dust on it, looking pained.
She lifted her eyes to the middle-aged woman. Her tear hall was full, and the children’s palace was broad but short. She was fated to have only one son, and that son had been honest, filial, loyal to his country and his people.
But the pregnant woman beside her had wide, jutting cheekbones and sunken temples. Her marriage palace was dried out and dead. She had no husband. She kept money-for-body relationships with several men, all of them criminals.
Judging from her face, the baby in her belly was a boy. But this middle-aged woman had no fate with a grandson. She was meant to have twin granddaughters.
So there was no way these two were really mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
And on top of that, Lily Ashford could smell drugs. A nasty, rotten stink.
Lily Ashford had been asleep for a thousand years. She had only just awakened inside this body and finished digesting its memories.