Returning to My Past Life with the Soldier King and His Space

Shen Zhiyao lived a life defined by quiet sacrifice and unfulfilled longing. A volunteer who had spent her youth caring for disaster victims, she carried a facial scar from a landslide she survived thanks to Commander Lu, a soldier who had shielded her from a falling tree trunk before being crippled and exiled. Haunted by nightmares of his tragic fate and her own cowardice in never thanking him, she died alone at fifty, having donated her wealth but never finding closure. Her death triggered a rebirth. Blood from a cut finger activated a Traversal System within her mother’s jade bracelet, offering her a chance to return to the past—specifically to the 1970s, the era of Commander Lu’s suffering. The system’s assistant, a talking creature named Bai Bai, explained that Shen Zhiyao would inhabit the body of a nineteen-year-old girl with the same name, who had just drowned after being forced into the “Down to the Countryside” movement by her greedy relatives.

Armed with two months of preparation time in a parallel space where one month equaled one day outside, Shen Zhiyao liquidated her entire empire. She sold her company for five billion yuan, her villas, cars, and amusement park, amassing enough capital to stockpile resources on a massive scale. She traveled across China and abroad, filling over twenty warehouses in her space with rice, grains, oils, vegetables, meats, seafood, and prepared foods. She stocked clothing, furniture, appliances, seeds, and vintage items from the 1970s. Recognizing the dangers of her mission, she also purchased military-grade weapons, vehicles, helicopters, and medical supplies from international intermediaries, spending nearly six billion yuan in total. Her goal was not just survival, but the power to change the destinies of those she cared about.

Upon arriving in 1975, Shen Zhiyao found herself in the body of the drowned girl. Her immediate conflict was with her uncle, Shen Congguo, and his wife, Li Guizhi, who had seized her parents’ house and job, and secretly registered her for the countryside to force her out. When they returned home, Shen Zhiyao confronted them with cold efficiency. She exposed their schemes, physically subdued them when they threatened her, and called the police. She reported her uncle for stealing steel from his factory, ensuring his arrest. She then sold her house and job to neighbors and strangers, collected the cash, and registered her aunt and cousin for the countryside as well, turning their own malicious plans against them. With her past life’s debts settled and her assets secured, she prepared to leave for Sichuan province.

On the train to her new life, Shen Zhiyao encountered Lin Yesheng, a manipulative man planning to use her cousin Niu Xiaohua, and publicly dismantled their attempts to claim familial ties. Upon arrival at Hongqi Brigade in a remote village, she navigated the harsh realities of rural life with the resources of a modern tycoon. She rented a private room from the village chief, bribed him with cigarettes for information, and hired locals to furnish her dilapidated earthen house. It was there that she first met Lu Sicheng, now a regiment commander undercover in the village to catch spies. Their initial encounter was tense; he insulted her appearance, and she retorted with sharp wit, refusing to be intimidated. Despite her initial resolve to keep her distance and simply repay him, the system revealed that Lu Sicheng was the same man from her dreams, and their paths were destined to cross again. Shen Zhiyao began her new life with a vast hidden inventory, ready to face the political and social challenges of the era while secretly altering the tragic fate that had befallen her hero in her previous existence.