Abandoned in a Year of Famine: After Divorcing, She Flees with Her Child

[Natural Disasters + Space + Raising Children + Rebirth and Revenge]

My name is Tian Xiaocao.

Everyone in Wangjia Village calls me an unchaste woman. I’m surrounded by rumors, and anyone can take a kick at me.

No one knows how bitter my life has been.

The Yong’an Dynasty is unstable and oppressive, and favors sons over daughters. During a famine when I was sixteen, my biological father sold me to an old man nearly sixty years old to be his concubine, for just three jin of millet.

Three jin of millet: that was my worth.

The old man was cruel, tormenting me every day and never treating me like a human being.

I escaped that man-eating prison with Tiezhu, a stable hand, and went with him, thinking I could start over and find somewhere safe to live.

Who could have known Wangjia Village would be even more frightening than the cage I’d escaped? The whole village looked down on me for my past, and Tiezhu’s parents constantly ostracized and tormented me!

Tiezhu’s father, Old Lu, saw me as a harbinger of disaster. He plunged a blade into my pregnant belly, and my unborn child and I both died.

My hatred remained to the very end. Then, all at once, I was reborn, and awakened a survival space of my own.

It held a spring of living water and rich black soil, perfect for storing food and growing crops.

A blizzard descended, an avalanche sealed off the village, and catastrophic disasters drew ever closer.

This time, I would no longer let others prey on me.

I rescued two orphaned waifs and took them in as my sons. I cultivated my space and stockpiled provisions.

Cruel in-laws, spiteful neighbors: everyone who had ever bullied me would answer for their old and new wrongs, one by one.

Amid the blizzards and chaos of a troubled world, all I wanted was to protect the children and survive together.