I woke to the scratchy sensation of straw poking at my skin, stiff and uneven beneath my back. A damp rag lay over my forehead and eyes, the scent of mildew clinging to it faintly. The air around me was cold, not the sterile chill of a hospital room, but the kind that seeped into your bones, raw, unfiltered, the type of chill that greets you in a snowstorm.
Somewhere nearby, someone was crying.
Faint, hiccupping sobs—trying to be muffled, but not quite succeeding.
"Lan'er..." a voice whispered beside me, soft and worn thin with grief and worry.
My eyes cracked open against the heavy weight on my lids, only for a sharp pain to explode behind them. I gasped as a rush of foreign images slammed into my mind—flashes of memories not my own, overwhelming and disjointed. Faces, names, emotions—all pressing inward like a storm trying to force its way through a keyhole.
"Lan'er, are you alright? Lan'er!" the voice grew more frantic.
I forced my eyes open again, blinking past the blur of light and memory. A woman hovered beside the straw mat I lay on. Her dress was nothing more than patched-up rags, her face sunken and pale with exhaustion. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, yet the smile she gave me was impossibly gentle, trembling at the edges.
My mind offered a name. Mother. My new one.
"Water," I rasped, voice dry and foreign in my throat.
She gasped softly, relief blooming across her face like sunlight breaking through clouds. "Yes! Yes, I'll get it!" she exclaimed, nearly stumbling as she scrambled to her feet, pushing past a flimsy curtain to the next room.
I stared up at the dim, unfamiliar ceiling. The air felt heavier here—old, unclean, and real. No polished chrome. No antiseptic brightness. Just straw, tears, and a body that didn't quite feel like mine.
So... this was it. The new world. The second chance.
My chest rose slowly.
Great.
I rubbed my eyes, slow and unsure, still disoriented from the sensation of being pulled apart and stitched back together by something I couldn't see. Everything felt foreign, painful, tiresome. The weight of the air, the stiffness in my limbs, even the way my fingers trembled as they brushed against my cheek.
This wasn't my world anymore.
I had transferred—no, been thrown—into a different realm. A place of power, of ancient sects, of flying swords and spiritual beasts. The kind of world that, back on Earth, only existed in fiction.
And yet here I was.
Stuck in a broken body.
Qin Ruolan.
The name echoed in my mind like a bell struck underwater—muffled but unmistakable. It wasn't just a coincidence. The girl whose body I now inhabited bore the same name. But this wasn't me. Not really. She had lived, and she had died. A quiet, slow death brought on not by violence, but by the betrayal of her own body.
Born weak. Too fragile to walk. Too sick to run. She had spent her life staring at ceilings, clutching at thin patchwork blankets, and listening to her mother's sobs through the night. A child who never stood a chance.
And now... I was her.
A wave of nausea passed through me—not from illness, but from the sheer weight of it all. Of the memories, the suffering, the grief that still clung to these walls like dust.
I closed my eyes and let the silence settle over me. The straw rustled faintly beneath me, and somewhere beyond the curtain, I could still hear the clinking of a cup and hurried footsteps. The air was damp and cold.
This wasn't the second life I imagined.
No strength. No golden finger. Just a frail body and the ghost of someone else's pain.
Still... I was breathing. She wasn't.
This Ruolan had three older brothers. A capable father. And a gentle mother.
Qin Ruolan's world was small, quiet, and carved out of hardship. Her family lived in a modest courtyard tucked between overgrown fields and a winding, narrow path that led to the river.
For three generations, they had been farmers—humble people with calloused hands and sun-darkened skin, their lives woven into the rhythm of the earth. But her father, unlike his forefathers, had turned his gaze to the water.
A fisherman now, he rose before dawn and returned after sunset, carrying the scent of sea salt.
Her mother, Qin Chunhua, bore her name like a whisper—soft, but enduring. A woman whose voice rarely rose, whose hands never rested, and whose dedication was stitched into every corner of their downtrodden worn home.
If she were to describe her mother, she had the eyes of someone who had learned to endure disappointment without letting it harden her.
"Here, drink this," Chunhua said softly, returning with a wooden bowl, its surface darkened from years of use. Chipped, and it would've been unusable for people who has a bit of standard, but I knew it was the only cup that we have that is a bit decent looking.
She knelt beside me with care, as if I might shatter. I took the bowl in trembling hands and drank slowly. The water was lukewarm, tasting faintly of ash and clay, but it eased the dryness in my throat.
Chunhua watched me in silence, as if afraid that if she blinked, I might vanish. There was something heavy in her gaze—hope, fraying at the edges.
She believed her daughter had survived. That this was her Lan'er returned to her.
But I wasn't.
Not entirely.
I swallowed the last sip, then looked into her weary, waiting eyes.
And for the first time since waking in this world, I felt the unbearable weight of having taken someone else's place.
The family was poor. Painfully so.
They lived day to day, often on little more than a bowl of watery porridge or stale flatbread. Some days, there was nothing at all. Yet despite the fertile land they toiled and the ocean that fed them, their table remained bare more often than not.
It wasn't because they were lazy. Far from it.
Her father, Qin Bolin, was a skilled fisherman, capable, strong and quick-handed, with an eye sharp enough to spot the flicker of a silver tail beneath murky water.
If he wanted to, he could sell his catch and earn more than enough to feed the family for days. Her brothers, too, were strong, already old enough to help with trapping, gathering, and even hunting in the nearby forest.
But all of it—every coin, every scrap of extra food—was spent on her.
On the medicine.