When Jiang Sanlang climbed that lonely hill outside the village, he expected to gather herbs or maybe check his snares—not to find a newborn girl wrapped in a thin scrap of cloth, left to the mercy of wind and wild dogs. Something in the tiny bundle stirred his heart, and without thinking twice, he carried her home. His wife, who had spent years nursing the grief of barrenness, took one look at the child and cradled her as though fate had finally remembered them.
Then, as if the heavens wanted to confirm his decision, his wife discovered—astonishingly—that she was pregnant. Not with one child, but twins. The entire Jiang household, once weighed down by misfortune, suddenly felt as though a new sun had risen over them. They named the foundling girl Yingbao, little treasure, a name that somehow suited her from the very beginning.
And strangely enough, once she joined the family, things quietly began to change. The Jiangs’ crops sprouted faster, their livestock grew stronger, and business seemed to fall into their laps as naturally as breathing. The villagers joked that Yingbao must’ve been born under a star of blessing, though some whispered it with more envy than humor. Still, no one could deny that the child had an uncanny way of waving her small hand at a field and coaxing it to life. “Plant gold,” she once said in her babyish voice, “and plant Xue’er too.” The villagers laughed at first—until those fields produced yields like nothing they’d ever seen. Soon, the entire village thrived, bursting with the kind of prosperity that made travelers stop and stare.
Naturally, prosperity invites outsiders. And trouble. Years later, the family that had abandoned Yingbao suddenly appeared at the village entrance, puffed up with self-righteousness, demanding that “their” daughter be returned. The villagers’ expressions darkened instantly. How dare they show their faces after tossing her away like an unwanted rag? Even the mildest-tempered elders clenched their fists, ready to chase the shameless intruders back to wherever they came from. Yingbao had become part of the village—hers was a laughter everyone recognized, a warmth everyone cherished.
Then tragedy, cruel and abrupt, tore through them. Yingbao died. No disease, no warning—she simply slipped away, leaving the village stunned and grieving. But death wasn’t the end for her. She opened her eyes again somewhere else, in another life, armed with a revelation she never asked for: she had been nothing more than a “throwaway character” in someone else’s story. A tool, a stepping stone. Her joys and heartaches had existed only to push along a larger narrative.
This time, Yingbao refuses to live like that. She’ll steer clear of the so-called female protagonist and the supporting cast whose lives once overshadowed hers. Her purpose now is simple—carve out a future where her adoptive parents and siblings can live steadily and well, without outsiders meddling. And if she can help lift the whole village along the way, then she’ll do that too. After all, she’s rewritten fate before; she can certainly do it again.
