"Rodney Ashford, the bitch is yours now. Hurry up and get it done. In another quarter hour, I’ll call all the neighbors in the courtyard inside. Once everybody sees it, raw rice will be cooked into a meal. By then, even if your parents want to object, it’ll be too late. Your engagement to her will be settled for good."

Crystal Langford stood there in a blue dress, white leather shoes on her feet, her eyes cold and full of spiteful calculation.

She cut a glance at the man beside her. His face was yellowish and greasy, covered in little bumps, with three big black moles stuck on it. His features were so ugly he looked like a toad in human skin.

The sight was too much. Crystal Langford quickly looked away.

Humph. This was the fine match she had carefully picked out for Serena Langford, that wretched girl.

Rodney Ashford’s father was a workshop director at the vacuum tube factory. His mother was a real piece of work, and above him were three fierce older sisters. Still, the family had money and lived well enough. For Serena Langford to get engaged to Rodney Ashford, she ought to be thanking heaven.

Yesterday, Crystal Langford had secretly signed Serena Langford up to be sent down to the countryside, to go tough it out in the villages and "contribute to national construction."

Anyway, Serena Langford had been dragged back from some poor mountain backwater in the first place. Planting fields and working the land was already what she knew best. Sending her down was perfect.

She had to leave in eight days, and the place Serena Langford was being sent to was far away.

Crystal Langford was afraid that once Serena Langford got out from under her nose, who knew what tricks she might still pull out in the countryside. So before she left, Crystal had to shove her straight into the mud and make sure she could never crawl back up for the rest of her life.

Otherwise, Serena Langford would still end up just like in that dream Crystal had seen—marrying a fine military officer, becoming a commander’s wife that everyone envied, and wearing one dazzling title after another over her head: top scorer in the college entrance exam, national model representative, the richest woman in Huaxia.

Since heaven had let her dream that prophetic dream, then every bit of good fortune meant for Serena Langford had to be snatched away. She absolutely could not walk the same losing road she had in that dream-life.

"Crystal, just watch me. That cheap slut dared upset you? I’ll make sure from now on she can only kneel and beg you. You can deal with her however you like," Rodney Ashford said, all eagerness and flattery.

As he watched Crystal Langford walk away, his eyes were filled with infatuation.

But the second he turned back, his face was packed with disgust. Serena Langford was not fit to compare with Crystal Langford—not even down to a single strand of hair. Crystal was the goddess he had been dreaming about day and night.

Rodney Ashford casually grabbed a towel from the pillow and tossed it over the face of the person unconscious on the bed.

Good thing his heart was full of Crystal Langford. Otherwise, there was no way he could even bring himself to do this.

"You should count yourself lucky. My first time, and I’m wasting it on a little bitch like you," Rodney Ashford said smugly, lifting a hand to undo Serena Langford’s buttons.

Right then, Serena Langford’s eyes flew open. Her whole body still seemed to carry the savage pain of being flung away by a car.

She ripped the cloth off her face in one sharp motion. And there it was in front of her—a hideous face, ugly beyond words, like a giant toad, inching toward her with naked revulsion written all over it.

Every pore on Serena Langford’s body seemed to scream at once. She didn’t even stop to think. She lifted her leg and drove a savage kick straight into the man’s crotch.

"Ah—!"

Rodney Ashford’s veins bulged from the pain. His whole face went white in a flash. Once he hit the floor, he curled up like a boiled shrimp, shaking all over.

"You bitch, how dare you kick me? Do you even know what my father does?"

Serena froze for a beat, her eyes sweeping across the room.

The whole place was thick with the feel of another era. A portrait of the Great Leader hung on the wall. On the wooden table sat a red thermos and an enamel mug with a chipped rim...

What was going on? Hadn’t she just been sent flying by a car?

Hold on. That toad-faced man on the floor. This room.

Serena’s gaze turned ice-cold in an instant. This was the very time, in her first life, before Crystal Langford had schemed her into going to the countryside, when Rodney Ashford had nearly forced himself on her—and she still hadn’t managed to escape being engaged to him.

She had actually been reborn.

Ha. The heavens really had opened their eyes.

This time, she would take back every single thing that should have been hers. Anyone who owed her, anyone who had ruined her, all of them could go crawl into hell and repent.

Serena flipped off the bed, snatched up the pillow towel, and stuffed it into the toad’s mouth. Her fists and feet came down on him in a storm.

Then she grabbed that greasy long hair of his, yanked his head up, and slammed it against the wall.

She controlled the force perfectly—just enough to make him hurt so badly he wished he were dead, but not enough to break the skin and leave obvious marks.

Back in her last life, before she was sent to the countryside, if she hadn’t woken up in time, Rodney Ashford really would have had his way with her.

But in the end, people still saw her and Rodney Ashford in the same room, clothes in disarray. She had been so muddled, so frightened out of her mind, that she hadn’t dared argue back. That was no different from admitting something had happened between them.

Her reputation was ruined clean through. If she refused to get engaged to Rodney Ashford, then she would have had to carry the name of a loose woman.

Two years later, when she came back from the countryside, Rodney Ashford had already been executed for beating a girl to death. Only then was that engagement finally called off.

After she "failed to get into college," she listened to Crystal Langford’s sweet-talking and married Derek Stanton, the childhood sweetheart she had known since returning to the capital at the age of ten.

But Derek Stanton’s heart had always been full of Crystal Langford. He had never once touched Serena. In the second year of their marriage, he got tangled up with Crystal Langford, who had lost her husband and was pregnant.

Using the excuse of caring for a fallen comrade’s widow and orphan, he brought Crystal Langford into their home. From her pregnancy to her confinement, Serena waited on her hand and foot, taking such careful care of her that Crystal stayed fresh and glowing, not looking at all like a woman who had just given birth.

While Derek Stanton and Crystal Langford were off living their sweet little life, she waited on them like some old housemaid.

Serena Langford still couldn’t figure out how she’d been that stupid back then. No matter how the Langfords, Derek Stanton, and Crystal Langford bullied her, mocked her, stepped on her dignity, she just swallowed it all and never said a word.

Then, at twenty-four, those two tricked her into going abroad. She died on the operating table with her heart and kidneys carved out, all because Crystal Langford claimed she’d developed heart disease after giving birth and her kidneys had gone bad too, and Derek Stanton believed every word.

But once she got overseas, her mind had suddenly cleared for a while. It was like she’d slipped free from whatever evil thing on Crystal Langford had been controlling her. In that brief stretch of clarity, she vaguely sensed Derek Stanton and Crystal were going to make a move on her.

So in secret, she got someone to bring her a bottle of pesticide. Every day she soaked vegetables and fruit in diluted poison, soaked the clothes she wore next to her skin, even the bowls and chopsticks she used to eat. She also dripped a little into soda, coffee, and red wine.

Then, when she was pushed into the operating room like a body without a soul, she saw with her own eyes that shameless pair and the bastard child they’d had together coughing up mouthful after mouthful of black blood. One look and it was obvious the poison had gone deep. They weren’t going to live much longer.

At the thought of that, Serena let go of Rodney Ashford, who was half dead already, and quickly hid the enamel mug Crystal Langford had just used to make her drink. There was still nearly half a mug left inside, drugged water and all.

Then she dug out some paper and a pen, plus a pair of not-so-sharp scissors, and slapped that toad-faced creep awake.

Her voice was icy. "Write the confession. Properly. When did you start having filthy ideas about me, what exactly did you do, how much drug did you use, and who told you to do it? Write every bit of it down clearly."

"And two years ago, you ruined another girl too. She had a bright future ahead of her, and because of you she ended up swallowing pills and killing herself. Her family got thrown into the cowshed too, all because your second uncle pulled strings. Write that down as well."

When she saw the hatred and shock in Rodney Ashford’s eyes, Serena snapped a thin wooden stick with a crisp crack.

She smiled in a way that made his scalp prickle. "These scissors may be dull, but they can still turn you into a eunuch."

"Mm! Mm—" Rodney Ashford’s eyes went round with terror, and he nodded so hard it looked like his neck might break.

"I’m taking the cloth out of your mouth. Don’t scream. If you do..." Serena said, and drove the scissors straight into the floor beside his crotch.

It missed by a hair. Just a tiny bit closer and little Rodney would’ve been finished for good. Rodney Ashford was so scared tears and snot ran together. Half his soul seemed to fly out of him on the spot, and he didn’t dare twitch again.

He wrote out the confession obediently. At the end, he dabbed some blood from the corner of his own mouth and pressed down a bloody fingerprint by his name.

Serena frowned. "Why didn’t you write that Crystal Langford was the one who put you up to this?"

"I did it myself. That’s all I can write. Don’t even think about anything else." Rodney Ashford looked like he was ready to risk it all.

In his heart, Crystal was pure and sweet, the best girl in all of the capital.

What a joke. In her last life, this toad had worshipped Crystal Langford like she was a fairy from heaven. Whatever Crystal Langford told him to do, he did.

That girl Rodney Ashford had accidentally beaten to death back then died over one stupid remark—that she looked a bit like Crystal Langford, studied better than Crystal too, and would surely make something of herself one day. Just for that, petty, small-hearted Crystal had hinted for Rodney Ashford to beat her to death.

Even when the sentence came down and he was marked for execution, Rodney Ashford still never gave Crystal Langford up.

No rush. Those animals—she would send them to hell one by one with her own hands.

Serena Langford carefully tucked away the confession letter. With these two sheets of paper in hand, she could trade for plenty of useful things, and she could also make the Ashford family suffer hard for this.

"Sis? Sis, how are you?" From outside the door came Crystal Langford’s "worried" voice, but there was a clear note of gloating in it.

"Oh no. My sister wasn’t feeling well just now, so she came into this room to lie down and rest. Then I saw Comrade Rodney Ashford go in too. They’ve both been in there this long already... nothing could’ve happened inside, could it?"

Crystal Langford had brought that whole crowd over on purpose. She wanted to catch them red-handed.

Serena Langford let out a cold laugh. Same trick as her last life.