The first thing Dr. Li Wei registered was the all-consuming, gritty taste of dirt. It was packed in her mouth, thick and metallic. Her lungs burned, and her head throbbed with a pain that felt too deep, too foundational, to be just a headache.
I'm dead, she thought, the terrifying, absolute certainty of the kitchen explosion still ringing in the non-existence where her eardrums used to be. I fell, and I ate the floor.
She tried to push herself up, but her limbs were weak, tangled in coarse, unfamiliar fabric. The air was heavy with the smell of dry grass, sweat, and something acrid—cheap vinegar, perhaps. When she finally pried her eyes open, she was staring not at the ceiling of her sleek, modern apartment, but at a cluster of drooping, yellow wildflowers
This is not the afterlife. This is just… the countryside.
A wave of fragmented, frantic memories that were not hers crashed over her: The shame of her father's gambling debts. The icy, calculating look in her stepmother's eyes. The brutal, finality of the marriage contract signed with an inked thumbprint. The name Shen Xiu pulsed in her skull, the name of the girl who had collapsed here, trying to run from a forced marriage.
Li Wei, the renowned 21st-century culinary historian, was gone. She was now Shen Xiu, nineteen years old, and sold.
She struggled to a sitting position. Her body felt light, malnourished, and wrapped in a scratchy, red wedding robe. She was slumped against the trunk of a giant willow tree, not far from a winding, dusty road. The sun beat down, hot and unforgiving, on a landscape of rolling, green-brown hills dotted with terraced farms. This was ancient China, or a very convincing imitation. The Daxia Dynasty.
Fine, Li Wei thought, her modern pragmatism kicking in, overriding the shock. If I've been transmigrated, I'm not going to be a victim. I will not die of self-pity, and I certainly won't starve.
Just as she was calculating the nearest market town and her chances of bartering her expensive, useless jade hairpin, she heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of approaching footsteps.
A man rounded the bend of the road, leading a sturdy water buffalo by a frayed rope. He was tall, powerfully built, and dressed in simple, indigo-dyed cotton. His skin was the rich, deep brown of good earth, and he wore a large straw hat that shadowed most of his face. He carried a wooden farming hoe over his shoulder.
He stopped dead when he saw her, his broad shoulders tensing. He wasn't a brutish monster, just a man who looked bone-weary from labor.
"You woke up," he said, his voice a low rumble, surprisingly gentle. His eyes, when he finally looked at her, were steady and dark, holding a confusing mixture of relief and a profound awkwardness.
Li Wei—Shen Xiu stared back, evaluating him instantly. Strong hands. Clean clothes, if rough. No obvious sign of cruelty.
"Are you the one who bought me?" she asked, her voice surprisingly weak, not the strong, academic tone she was used to.
The man flinched as if struck. He dropped his gaze to the ground. "My name is Guo Fucheng," he said, his voice dropping even lower. "I did not buy you. I purchased a contract from your family. They said you needed a place, a home. I needed a wife." He lifted his head, a genuine look of pain on his face. "I am sorry for the circumstances. Truly."
He gestured vaguely toward a nearby path that led up a low hill. "We are nearly there. The home is humble, but it is clean. I will fetch you some water."
He stood waiting, offering no hand, forcing no movement. He was giving her a choice, a small, tiny sliver of dignity in a situation that had stripped her of everything. Li Wei, feeling the full weight of the Shen Xiu's despair and her own stubborn will, pushed to her feet.
She stumbled slightly, the elaborate red shoes feeling alien and unwieldy. Guo Fucheng started forward instinctively, then stopped, clearly battling the urge to touch her.
"I can walk," she said, her voice firmer this time.
As she followed the farmer, watching the quiet, strong line of his back, Li Wei realized the terrifying truth of her new life. She had landed in the middle of nowhere, with no money, no connections, and a stranger for a husband. But as the scent of the nearby farm fields fresh cut grass and damp earth filled her lungs, the culinary scholar in her made one last, bold decision.
I may not be able to change how I got here, she resolved, taking a deep, fortifying breath. But I know how to feed myself. I know how to make something beautiful from nothing. And I will not be anyone's silent possession.