Accidentally Marking The Vicious Female Lead After Transmigrating Into A Period Novel - Chapter 1

Li Yan shed her blood splattered work clothes and gloves. After rinsing her hands clean under the tap, she shouldered her canvas bag and rubbed her aching shoulders as she walked out.

Today was the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, and it was six o’clock in the morning.

She hadn’t closed her eyes for over thirty hours.

With the New Year approaching, the slaughterhouse was busy beyond belief. The workshop director had demanded that skilled hands like her work extra shifts, resulting in her pulling three shifts in a row.

Fortunately, the overtime benefits were decent otherwise, Li Yan would have thrown in the towel long ago.

Inside her canvas bag were two strips of meat one fatty, one lean, weighing at least a pound combined. Beside them sat a small packet of brown sugar. In this era of scarcity where everything required a coupon, the allure of these items was significant.

Looking at it this way, the New Year bonuses were bound to be good.

The exhaustion from Li Yan’s overtime vanished instantly, and her stride out of the workshop felt much lighter.

“Xiao Li, Xiao Li, wait a moment…” Just as she stepped out of the workshop door, someone called her from behind.

Li Yan turned to see Auntie Chang, who was in charge of cleaning.

Auntie Chang walked over quickly with her fist clenched. She reached into Li Yan’s bag, dropped something inside, and whispered her thanks: “Xiao Li, thank you so much. I don’t have much to give, so please don’t be offended.”

With the New Year near, everyone wanted to stock up on meat, even those working in the slaughterhouse. But for someone in the cleaning department like Auntie Chang, getting extra meat wasn’t easy. Normally she wouldn’t need much, but this year her daughter was bringing her son-in-law home, and Auntie Chang didn’t want her daughter to lose face.

After searching around, she had found Li Yan.

Although she had only been at the factory for two years, Li Yan was already a backbone of the pork workshop. Seeing that Auntie Chang’s request was justified, she had lent a hand.

Now, seeing Auntie Chang thanking her, Li Yan didn’t particularly care what the gift was. She chatted with the woman for a few moments before taking her leave.

At the slaughterhouse main gate, Uncle Huang from the security department had already changed shifts. Li Yan greeted him with a smile, only to run into Liu Gang, who was just arriving for work.

The smile on Li Yan’s face vanished. She narrowed her eyes and stared him down for a few seconds until Uncle Huang suddenly let out an “Oi!” from behind.

“Hey, Xiao Li! Something fell out of your bag!”

Li Yan looked down. A section of her scarf was dangling out of the canvas bag, swaying in the air.

She reached into the bag, thinking she might as well take the scarf out and wear it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man opposite her flinch at her movement.

Li Yan couldn’t help but scoff. She tied the scarf around her neck, thanked Uncle Huang, and walked away without a second glance.

The slaughterhouse was quite a distance from Xili Village. Walking back took at least half an hour, sometimes forty or fifty minutes if she went slowly.

Fortunately, after nearly two years on the job, Li Yan was accustomed to the trek. Besides, walking helped her body generate heat so she wouldn’t return home with freezing hands and feet.

The early winter morning sky was still a pale blue-grey. Li Yan quickly moved beyond the reach of the slaughterhouse floodlights, relying on the faint, shimmering dawn to barely make out the road ahead.

As she walked, she couldn’t help but sigh.

Back when she read “chronicle” novels (stories set in the 60s/70s), she only saw the uniform, simple struggle of people working hard through poverty. She hadn’t realized that “working hard” meant a “beautiful” day started at five or six in the morning.

Li Yan smiled, remembering her former roommate who often complained about being unable to truly “lay flat” and joked about how great it would be to be transmigrated into a book.

If you actually transmigrated, you wouldn’t be so happy, she thought.

The smile faded into a brief moment of trance.

Those days of staying up late to binge dramas and novels, only to sleep until noon the next day, truly felt like a previous lifetime.

Li Yan looked up, pushing down the swirling thoughts, and gazed at the few scattered stars remaining in the sky.

It’s fine. At least I can see the stars. In that other era, being able to see stars this bright would be something to envy.

However, there were fewer stars today. It looked like another overcast day, it might even snow.

Thinking this, Li Yan quickened her pace.

As she neared Xili Village, the sky had brightened considerably. A faint, magnificent color appeared fitfully in the eastern horizon, only to be quickly swallowed by thick clouds.

Simultaneously, wisps of kitchen smoke began to drift slowly from the village rooftops, weaving together like a translucent veil of mist over the hazy countryside.

Li Yan watched, her stomach giving a loud growl. She was suddenly very hungry.

Just as she was about to enter the village, a soft moan suddenly reached her ears. It wasn’t loud, but in the profound silence of the morning, it was exceptionally clear.

Li Yan froze. She listened intently, and once she was sure she hadn’t misheard, she moved toward the source of the sound.

Before she even got close, a faint fragrance hit her nose. it was like wild roses blooming in the mountains, but the scent seemed laced with the bitterness of snow, making it somewhat faint.

Li Yan felt a sudden, inexplicable palpitation. As if possessed, she pushed aside the dense overgrown grass.

The first thing she saw was a slender ankle.

A person was lying on their back in the grass, wearing a thin, light-blue outer garment and a pair of small lambskin shoes. The white sock on one foot was filthy, while the other foot was bare, revealing a small patch of porcelain white skin between the trouser leg and the shoe.

The contrast was so stark that Li Yan’s eyes were drawn there instinctively.

Only then did her gaze move upward.

When she saw the face, a flash of amazement crossed her eyes.

Even though the features were currently contorted in pain, it was easy to see that this girl was extraordinarily beautiful. She had a perfect skull shape, a flawless hairline, exquisite features, a smooth facial contour, and skin as fine as white porcelain.

She didn’t look like she belonged in a small mountain village like this.

The girl looked pained, biting her lip so hard that blood was starting to show. Li Yan stepped forward, about to speak, when a rich fragrance suddenly surged into her nostrils.

The scent was dominant and provocative, like wild roses breaking through a thick layer of snow. The floral scent, carrying the chill of ice, swirled around her. Li Yan’s legs suddenly went weak, and she collapsed uncontrollably to the ground.

Her head spun; for a moment, she forgot where she was.

In her daze, she seemed to see snowflakes fluttering down. The flakes fell coldly to the ground but didn’t melt into the dirt instead, they piled up bit by bit until they formed the shape of a blooming rose.

Li Yan stared unblinkingly. In an instant, the snow-carved rose transformed into a vivid, glowing red wild rose.

Li Yan was mesmerized.

She felt her blood boiling and screaming because of this sudden wild rose. Something inside her seemed to want to burst out, every limb and bone was restless.

Specifically, the back of her neck felt like it was being scorched by a fire, burning with an agonizing heat.

She was acting almost entirely on instinct.

Until a more intense scent filled the air. It started as the rich aroma of wine, then suddenly transformed into the smell of flames, as if someone had tossed a match into alcohol. It ignited with a crackle in an instant, leaving no room for escape.

The images before Li Yan’s eyes grew even more surreal.

A flame flickered across the snow, running forward as if searching for something. Suddenly, it stopped beside that solitary wild rose.

It leaped forward, attempting to wrap the other in blue flames.

Li Yan opened her mouth to stop it, but it was too late. She could only feel a sense of pity for the brilliant flower.

However, in the next second, an even more jaw-dropping scene occurred.

The flame gradually grew larger, circling and leaping around the wild rose, yet the latter remained completely unharmed.

She could even sense that the flame was tenderly inviting the rose to dance along with it.

Li Yan became intoxicated by their harmonious and ethereal dance. By the time she snapped back to reality, she saw the young girl, who had just been lying on the ground, glaring at her with fury.

The flush on the girl’s face had faded, yet a lingering trace of faint pink remained due to her indignation. Her almond-shaped eyes were brimming with mist, but she stubbornly blinked it back. She bit her lower lip, looking for all the world as if she had suffered some great grievance.

What felt even more familiar to Li Yan was the way the girl’s hands were deathly tight around her own collar, staring at her in total silence.

It was a perfect example of a scene where “silence speaks louder than words.”

Li Yan’s hands began waving back and forth like a rattle, shaking so fast they looked like spinning wheels of fire as she retreated at top speed, shouting her innocence.

“No, wait, it’s not what you think!!! I didn’t do anything! I just heard a noise and came over to check! Besides, I’m a woman too! I couldn’t possibly do anything to you, and I didn’t want to do anything to you anyway! You’ve definitely misunderstood! It’s a misunderstanding, really, a total misunderstanding…”

She was all too familiar with this scenario, it played out in TV dramas all the time.

But she swore to the heavens that she really hadn’t done a thing! Although she didn’t know why she had suddenly felt dizzy just now, nor why she had seen those strange visions as if she’d been poisoned by wild mushrooms, she truly hadn’t done anything!

Lord, she was truly being wronged!

Could she please stop looking at her with that kind of gaze?

“You” The girl across from her uttered only a single word before looking as if she were about to burst into tears, which seemed to only further confirm Li Yan’s “hooligan” behavior.

Li Yan couldn’t help but turn her head to look around.

Wait, there are no other witnesses here! There’s no reason for her to be acting for an audience!

She looked up at the girl again.

Her clothes were neat and tidy, she didn’t look like someone who had been molested.

But the grievance, anger, and embarrassment in the other girl’s expression didn’t seem fake either. Moreover, Li Yan remembered that before she had dizzied out, the state the girl was in when she first saw her was indeed a bit abnormal…

And now, the girl had clearly returned to normal…

And there were only the two of them here…

Li Yan felt even more panicked. Could someone please tell her what on earth was going on?!