Volume One, Chapter One: Reborn in 1986!

Cold! Bone-chilling cold!

Xu Mo hugged himself tightly, his whole body trembling uncontrollably. His lips were cracked from the cold, and his face was covered with frostbite.

Lifting his heavy eyelids, Xu Mo stared at the disheveled woman sitting across the fire, clad in a plaid jacket. He was momentarily stunned, then his eyes widened in disbelief.

Where was this?

Quickly turning his head, Xu Mo scanned the surroundings.

An empty yellow clay house.

Had he been reborn?

Xu Mo would never forget the harsh winter of 1986, when heavy snow fell relentlessly for nearly two months, sealing off the mountains and exhausting all stored food supplies.

To save a bite to eat, his parents had arranged for him to marry a village woman who had been mentally unstable for over a year.

It wasn’t that his parents cared for him, but tradition dictated that only after marriage could the family property be divided.

As the woman was a sent-down youth supported by the village brigade, her food was provided by the team.

So when Old Xu went to speak with the village chief, the latter readily agreed and even gave Xu’s father eight jin of coarse grain as the bride’s dowry.

After marrying, Xu Mo was assigned a yellow clay room behind the main house, along with a single quilt and a box of matches.

“Terrible!”

Remembering the circumstances, Xu Mo’s face suddenly changed, and he cried out, instinctively lunging toward the woman wrapped tightly in the quilt opposite him.

Crash!

At the moment Xu Mo sprang forward, the beam of the yellow clay house suddenly broke. Rolling snow, like a torrent, swept in with broken tiles and shattered columns.

Xu Mo and the woman were instantly buried beneath the snow.

*Cough! Cough! Cough!*

Harsh coughing echoed as Xu Mo struggled to crawl out from the snow, pulling the tightly wrapped woman with him.

Panting, Xu Mo gently brushed the snow from her tangled hair.

Dragging her to the corner of the room, he searched through the snow for dry wood, tore open his jacket, and took out some wheat stalks to use as kindling, rekindling the fire once more.

The woman remained silent throughout.

Crackling flames grew stronger.

Wrapped together in the quilt, Xu Mo and the woman clung tightly to each other.

---

Squinting, Xu Mo stared into the fierce blaze, a cold light flickering in his eyes.

In the previous life, both he and the woman had been buried under the snow, struggling for a long time before finally emerging. The woman’s right arm was broken by the falling beam.

This time, because he had reacted immediately, her arm was spared.

The heavy snowfall was expected to continue for another month.

Feeling the warmth radiating from the woman beside him, Xu Mo clenched his fists tightly and silently vowed to protect her with all his might this time.

In his past life, Xu Mo had been timid and indecisive.

His survival wasn’t luck—it was because the woman, dragging her broken arm, had begged from house to house, relying on pitiful relief to persevere until spring.

Later, the villagers mocked Xu Mo for marrying a madwoman, and one who was disabled at that.

Unable to bear the ridicule, and arranged by his parents, Xu Mo joined the military.

His parents’ intention wasn’t for his future, but for the few yuan in subsidies.

Xu Mo excelled in the army, enduring hardship and hardship, becoming a volunteer soldier after three years, later joining the field battalion as a special operations soldier.

The more he saw the world outside, the more he felt indebted to the woman, sending his monthly allowance home for his parents to care for her.

After six years, Xu Mo finally managed to get leave.

To his despair, his parents took the allowance but never cared for the woman.

Villagers said she survived by picking wild vegetables and relying on village relief for three years before dying in the yellow clay house.

Furious, Xu Mo severed all ties with his family and remained in the army for fourteen years.

Unexpectedly, after just one sleep, he found himself back in 1986.

Xu Mo raised his frostbitten right hand, gently stroking the woman’s greasy long hair.

“Since we’re married, you’re my wife. This lifetime, I will do everything possible to give you happiness.”

The woman still kept her head down, seemingly unable to understand his words.

Carefully slipping out from under the quilt, Xu Mo looked at her head barely visible above it.

“You stay here at home. I’ll go get some food.”

No reply.

Xu Mo raised his collar, hiding half his face, and strode out of the yellow clay house.

Now, every household was short of food, and borrowing was out of the question.

Hunting in the mountains was the only option.

Hunting required skill, but Xu Mo was confident he wouldn’t return empty-handed.

As a special operations soldier in the field battalion, Xu Mo excelled at survival under any conditions.

Recalling faint memories, he stepped into the front yard, glimpsed the firelight flickering in the main house, then quickly entered the kitchen.

He picked up a firewood knife resting in the corner, tucked it at his waist, and grabbed a handful of chopsticks, stuffing them into his pocket.

---

The tools available were still too few.

Xu Mo remembered that a few households in the village hid hunting rifles.

But with just words, he doubted he could borrow one.

The mountains behind Shangye Village stretched hundreds of miles, home to all sorts of wild game.

The elders often spoke of seeing tigers fighting black bears—truth or myth, no one knew.

This was a dangerous time to enter the mountains.

The snow reached nearly to Xu Mo’s knees as he trudged deeper into the forest.

Once inside, he didn’t rush to track prey but took out his knife and found a hemp tree, stripping the bark to reveal the fibers inside.

The hemp fibers could be woven into strong ropes.

Sharpening the knife wouldn’t delay gathering wood.

Without firearms, setting traps was the most effective hunting method.

Taking a chopstick from his pocket, Xu Mo sharpened it to a point with the knife.

After more than half an hour, beneath an old locust tree, Xu Mo dug a large pit, embedding sharp chopsticks at the bottom.

Nearby, he set hemp rope nooses.

He cut more branches to cover the pit with, sprinkling dry leaves and snow on top to conceal it.

A very rudimentary trap.

Though simple, the fact such traps had endured through the ages proved their effectiveness.

Xu Mo found two sharpened tree branches nearby, then approached the concealed pit, pricking his finger on one.

Drops of bright red blood fell onto the dry leaves.

In the endless snow, with humans starving, animals were likewise desperate.

In the wild, carnivores’ sense of smell was extremely keen, able to detect blood from miles away.

Having finished, Xu Mo climbed the locust tree with both hands and feet, settling into a branch over three meters high.

Snowflakes drifted down, covering him within minutes, blending him into the vast white wilderness.

Fourteen years of field combat had forged Xu Mo’s will into steel.

Yet this body was too weak, shivering uncontrollably from the cold.