Transmigrated to the 1970s to Become a Military Wife

Xu Di, a forty-four-year-old woman suffering from late-stage breast cancer, lies dying in a Beijing hospital in August 2024. Her life had been defined by a regrettable choice made in her youth: rejecting a soldier from her village in favor of Li Kai, a civil servant who proved to be an emotionally absent and useless husband. For decades, Xu Di endured a lonely marriage, raising her son Li Haoyu alone while managing the household and her deteriorating health. As her heart finally gave out, her last thought was a bitter wish that she had chosen the soldier, longing for a life where her husband’s absence would have been a mercy rather than a constant source of frustration.

Simultaneously, in the Celestial Realm, the Lotus Fairy observes her subordinate, the Lotus Jade Maiden, completing her mortal tribulation. The Jade Maiden had been punished to descend to Earth after breaking a glass lamp, spending seventeen years in the body of a teenage girl named Xu Di. Just as the mortal Xu Di’s heart stops, the Jade Maiden, unwilling to leave her loving adoptive family behind, intervenes to save the girl’s life. This act creates a spiritual vacancy, allowing the soul of the forty-four-year-old Xu Di from 2024 to inhabit the seventeen-year-old body in 1970. The Jade Maiden’s consciousness retreats, leaving only a faint connection that will fade in three days.

Xu Di awakens in a hospital ward in 1970, initially confused by the sudden shift in time and reality. She quickly realizes she has traveled back to the era of the planned economy, specifically August 1970 in Beijing. The original owner of the body, also named Xu Di, had drowned while saving a young boy named Liang Ankang from a lake. Xu Di’s new family is a loving, working-class household at the Red Star Machinery Factory. Her father is a skilled fitter, her mother a canteen cook, and she has a supportive older brother, sister-in-law, and younger brother. Unlike her previous life, this family offers genuine warmth and care, with no favoritism toward sons over daughters.

As she recovers, Xu Di discovers she has retained a supernatural advantage from her past life as the Lotus Jade Maiden: a spatial dimension located in the sole of her foot. This space contains fertile black soil and possesses preservation capabilities, though it lacks advanced features like spirit springs or automated systems. Recognizing the potential utility of this space in an era of scarcity, Xu Di begins to experiment with it. She visits her grandparents in the countryside to collect various vegetable and grain seeds, smuggling them into her space to begin cultivation. She also discovers that time flows differently within the space, allowing her to work for extended periods while only minutes pass in the real world.

The narrative shifts to Xu Di’s strategic planning for her new life. Having experienced the hardships of rural labor and the limitations of a loveless marriage, she resolves to secure her independence. She aims to obtain a stable urban job to avoid being sent to the countryside as an educated youth, a fate that befell her older sister. Xu Di also reflects on the family of the boy she saved, the Liang family, who express deep gratitude and offer to repay her kindness. Her mother encourages maintaining this connection, hoping it might provide future employment opportunities for Xu Di.

Xu Di returns to school, navigating the social dynamics of 1970s China with the wisdom of a middle-aged woman. She befriends her deskmate, Yang Dani, and subtly warns her against the romanticized notion of going to the countryside, having witnessed the harsh realities of rural life in her previous timeline. Xu Di dedicates herself to studying, understanding that the restoration of the college entrance exam may eventually occur, offering a path to higher education and a better future. She balances her academic responsibilities with her secret cultivation in the spatial dimension, planting seeds that grow in the fertile black soil.

Throughout these early chapters, Xu Di grapples with the emotional weight of her second chance. She mourns the loss of her son from her previous life but finds solace in the loving family she now has. Her primary conflict is internal: overcoming the trauma of her past regrets and learning to live authentically without harboring resentment. She resolves to build a life of wealth and leisure, potentially choosing a partner who is often away, mirroring the soldier she once rejected but now idealizes. The story establishes her determination to use her future knowledge and supernatural space to secure a comfortable existence, avoiding the pitfalls that defined her previous years.