"My goodness, it's like raising a walking disaster! Fine, she doesn’t want to go to the countryside, but how could she shove my sweet Aurora down the stairs? If anything happens to Aurora, I swear I won’t keep on living."
That shrill voice exploded right by Stella Avery’s ear, noisy enough to make her skull ring. Her eyelids felt like lead as she forced them open. A stabbing pain shot through her head, and when she reached up to touch it, her fingers brushed over a huge swollen lump.
What on earth? She clearly remembered standing on that iron bridge watching the commotion—how did she end up getting smacked out of nowhere?
Her vision, blurred by a haze of red, slowly sharpened. A calendar on the wall showed the year “1975,” and the room around her was bright and spacious, filled with old-school rosewood furniture. The whole place looked exactly like one of those small Western-style houses from the late seventies.
As a seasoned reader on the Tomato Fiction site, she caught on instantly—she had time-traveled.
No need to panic. First things first, dig through the original body’s memories!
Other people crossed over and either became the family darling or married some officer and lived happily ever after. Surely her luck wouldn’t be that bad.
A few seconds later, she froze. So it *was* that bad. They really dumped her right in the middle of a disaster!
She’d actually crossed into that ridiculous retro novel she’d just finished, becoming the villainous side character who shared her exact name—Stella Avery.
The Stella in the book had also been a pampered heiress, but her family forced her to go live in the countryside. Unwilling to accept it, she went all out—reported her entire family, sold off her own job assignment, tattled on her father in a letter, then took his position for herself.
And that wasn’t even the worst part. She emptied out every valuable thing in the house on her way out, leaving that scumbag father with nothing.
Up through that point, forget other readers—even Stella herself had felt wonderfully satisfied reading it.
But then the story did a complete one-eighty. The *real* protagonist made her entrance!
Aurora Avery, stuck in the countryside, helped villagers get rich and build roads. She became some sort of good-luck charm for miles around. Every time she took a walk in the hills, wild chickens and rabbits practically lined up to die for her. She could casually pick up rare herbs like ginseng and ganoderma as if they were cabbages. Anyone who so much as thought about harming her would be hit with cosmic-level bad luck.
The villagers adored her like brainless NPCs in a game. Eventually she married a high-ranking officer, her in-laws adored her, she popped out three kids in one go, and when the college entrance exam came back, she tested into Peking University and became the youngest top expert in her field.
Stella had been so annoyed she nearly combusted. It was the kind of frustration where you wanted to punch someone but couldn’t reach through the screen.
She’d given the novel a one-star review on the spot.
And even wrote an eight-hundred-word rant dragging it through the mud.
As if she didn’t know—clearly that heroine stole the side character’s family jade pendant. All those supplies and miracle recipes? Obviously pulled straight out of some secret space to buff her halo.
The poor supporting girl in that story got dragged into one mess after another just because she kept clashing with the heroine. In the end, one of the heroine’s admirers set her up, and she ended up becoming some old man’s breeding tool. She bled out alone in the wilderness, and by the time someone found her, even the bugs had eaten her clean.
Who writes stuff like that for normal people to read? That’s way too brutally realistic!
And her, Stella Avery—did she look like someone that cheap?
She was the only daughter of the richest man around. Her mom was a famous painter, her family assets were in the hundreds of billions. Money to her was just a row of numbers. She had luxury homes, villas, estates, penthouses scattered all over the world, so many she couldn’t even remember them all. Add to that her ability to read insanely fast and remember everything—she was practically the model kid every parent wished they had.
Of course, growing up with all that also meant she lived completely worry‑free.
That afternoon, she’d just come back from browsing a high‑end boutique when she happened to catch two guys under a bridge fighting over a woman.
People only live once—why not stop and enjoy a bit of drama?
She ran up onto the iron bridge, leaning over the railing as the two men swung at each other, the whole thing looking more like some clumsy dance routine.
The woman on the side kept yelling, "Stop fighting! Stop it already!"
Stella couldn’t hold back and burst out laughing. "With punches like that, you couldn’t even swat a mosquito! Hahaha…"
Who knew that watching drama could backfire? There were too many onlookers pushing and squeezing. The old iron bridge couldn’t take it. With a loud clang, the whole thing collapsed.
And just like that—young, alive, carefree—she somehow ended up time‑traveling.
No way!!!
This was bad—she’d just bought that global limited‑edition Phantom supercar! The plates weren’t even on yet! Which lucky idiot picked up her car keys now?
While her thoughts were spinning everywhere, a man in a Zhongshan suit stepped up, face dark as a storm cloud. Pointing right at her nose, he started yelling, "Raising you isn’t even as good as raising a dog! You’re dead set on tearing this family apart! You’re the older sister—why can’t you let your younger sister have her way? You brat, stop being so spoiled!"
Brat? He was calling her a brat? Oh, she was not letting that slide.
Stella Avery could put up with many things, but being wronged wasn’t one of them. When it came to being ruthless, she feared no one.
Fine then—time for this old man to learn exactly who he was talking to.
A flash of coldness crossed her eyes. She shot forward, grabbed Garrett Avery’s finger, and snapped it without hesitation.
The sharp crack split the air, clean and crisp, like a dry twig snapping underfoot.
Garrett Avery’s howl followed almost instantly. “Ah—my finger!” His voice bounced around the cramped room, raw with pain.
His index finger was bent at an angle fingers simply weren’t meant to bend. The sight of it drained the color from the other two faces.
Sylvia Aubert finally snapped out of her daze. Her expression twisted, and she screeched, “You ungrateful brat! You’ve gone completely wild! I ought to teach you a lesson on your mother’s behalf!”
Stella Avery let out a small, humorless laugh. “What are you yelling for? Who told you to make all that noise? Teach me? And who exactly do you think you are? Should I plant weeds over your grave ahead of time? My mom can come visit you tonight and talk it over.”
Her eyes narrowed, voice turning colder. “You shameless old hag—you were never fit for the spotlight.”
She’d read this story already, page by page. She knew every dirty detail.
The original Stella’s mother had been the cherished daughter of a wealthy capitalist family, sheltered and naïve, so coddled she thought marrying for love was a grand adventure. She escaped an arranged marriage and ran off with this so‑called self‑made hero.
Not long after the wedding, this “hero” was sneaking around with his childhood sweetheart, even got her pregnant. And instead of stopping there, he went straight for the kill—reported his own father‑in‑law during a politically dangerous time.
The entire family was dragged out and paraded through the streets, humiliated until they couldn’t take it anymore and ended their own lives. The scumbag, meanwhile, was rewarded for his “service” and promoted to director of the steel factory.
When Stella’s mother returned home one afternoon, she caught him in bed with another woman. The betrayal piled on top of everything else, and her heart just couldn’t take it. She faded away not long after, swallowed by grief.
Barely a month later, the scumbag put on his false sympathy—“the child has no one to care for her”—and marched Sylvia Aubert right through the front door.
On the surface she pretended to be a decent stepmother, but behind closed doors she beat the girl, starved her, locked her in dark storage rooms, and made her wear Aurora Avery’s cast‑offs.
Aurora was the apple of the family’s eye. The original Stella was treated worse than a mutt tied to the gate.
Eventually the girl got so hungry she snapped, grabbed a kitchen knife, and nearly chopped Aurora’s leg open.
Sylvia was scared senseless after that and started giving her whatever she wanted.
And once the original Stella realized fear worked, she kept pushing, harder each time. Anyone who annoyed her would wake up to the scrape of a blade sharpening beside their pillow. The whole house tiptoed around her, like they were worshipping a dangerous god.
Too bad for them—this Stella was sharper, colder, and far more ruthless.
Her gaze cut like steel as Sylvia lunged. Stella lifted her hand and slapped her across the face without even blinking.