Lu Heng was startled.

It was the first time he had ever seen the spoiled, willful young lady show such vulnerability.

Noticing the curious looks from passersby, he originally intended to push her away and scold her for acting somewhat inappropriately in public.

But then he realized her entire body was trembling.

His movements paused.

Beneath Lu Heng’s gentle gaze hid a trace of cold sharpness, yet in the end he merely sighed helplessly and resigned himself to half-carrying, half-holding Chu Qing into the car.

He and Chu Qing had been engaged since childhood through an arranged family betrothal.

He was eight years older than her.

When he was nine years old, the elders had informed him that he already had a fiancée—a delicate, beautiful little girl who looked like a doll.

At first he hadn’t taken it seriously.

Later, however, her parents passed away, and her grandmother brought her into the Lu family home.

That was the first time he met his little fiancée.

A ten-year-old crybaby doll.

At the time, eighteen-year-old Lu Heng had thought for the first time that the engagement felt absurd.

After failing to resist the arrangement, he simply left home and enlisted in the army, becoming a proud soldier.

As he grew older, his mother’s death made him even less willing to return home.

Later, the Lu family was falsely accused and implicated in political troubles. His grandfather and father were both taken away for investigation.

Although nothing disastrous ultimately happened, the family’s vitality was badly damaged, forcing them to keep a low profile afterward.

After weathering those storms, Lu Heng gradually came to understand that as a son of the Lu family, he could never simply abandon everything for himself alone.

He had responsibilities to shoulder.

So after five years away, he returned home.

Only to discover that his grandmother had spoiled the little girl even further—she had become delicate, temperamental, and somewhat domineering.

Yet she also had an exceptionally sweet tongue and knew exactly how to coax people.

Even his scheming stepmother and stepsister avoided provoking her easily.

Once she cried, someone else was guaranteed to suffer.

For some reason, after learning he was her fiancé, she started clinging to him constantly.

After receiving the fourth complaint call from her school, Lu Heng knew his peaceful days were over.

Time passed quickly while he continuously cleaned up one mess after another for her.

The little girl eventually grew up.

By then, he was powerful enough that nobody could truly control him anymore, yet in the end he still fulfilled the elders’ wishes—

He married her.

And spoiled her.

Chu Qing had been raised too delicately to endure hardship.

This time was the first occasion in two years of marriage that she had voluntarily requested to follow him to the military base.

Normally, with her personality, she would never have willingly left bustling Shanghai to come to a place like this.

Holding the steering wheel, Lu Heng glanced at Chu Qing, who had remained silent ever since earlier.

“Did you cause trouble again?” he asked.

Chu Qing froze before finally realizing from his expression that he had misunderstood.

“Of course not!” she protested angrily. “So in your eyes, I’m just someone who’s always causing problems?”

“I just missed you! I was worried you’d be lonely here, so I came to keep you company!”

Lu Heng looked suspicious.

“You’re sure? Following the army around isn’t child’s play. If you regret it later, I’m not going to indulge you.”

“I know,” Chu Qing promised seriously. “I absolutely won’t regret it.”

His expression softened slightly, returning to his usual gentle demeanor.

Seeing the exhaustion between her brows, he pulled the car over to the roadside, took off his jacket, and draped it over her.

“There’s still another hour before we arrive. Sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Truthfully, Lu Heng was happy she had come.

Though he knew nobody in the Lu family would dare mistreat her with her personality, he still worried there might be fools blind enough to bully her.

Now that she was under his watch, no matter how much trouble she caused, at least he could protect her.

That reassured him.

Breathing in the faint scent of tobacco lingering on his jacket, Chu Qing softly answered, “Okay,” and leaned back against the seat to rest.

She truly was exhausted.

Ever since waking up reborn and deciding to follow him here, she had barely rested during the journey.

The entire trip had been spent recalling memories of her previous life.

In her past life, she had not come to accompany the army at this point in time.

Only a year later, in order to fulfill Grandma Lu’s wish of holding a great-grandchild, had she finally agreed to come.

Coincidentally, she and that village woman had arrived at the military family compound around the same time.

One was a pampered young lady from a major city.

The other was a crude village girl from the countryside.

The men they married were both highly promising military officers considered rising stars in the army.

From the very beginning, people constantly compared the two women.

And after comparing them, nearly everyone pitied Deputy Regiment Commander Shen.

Young and talented, he had supposedly missed out on his perfect match—the celebrated beauty of the performance troupe—and been forced into marrying a village woman who had schemed against him.

Everyone despised the village girl’s shamelessness.

She had drugged him and forced the marriage, preventing Deputy Regiment Commander Shen from ending up with the woman he truly loved.

In her previous life, Chu Qing had also felt sorry for him.

Such a fine man ruined by a pig snatching him away.

But as time passed, the village girl changed.

She stopped being someone others found irritating.

Instead, words like beautiful, intelligent, and helpful gradually became associated with the woman Chu Qing once looked down upon.

Now that her mind was clear after being reborn, everything felt wrong.

At the beginning, that village girl had clearly been overweight, ugly, and rough-skinned.

So how had she later become slim, gorgeous, and glowing with vitality?

And how could a village woman who had only attended school for a single year suddenly become so eloquent and knowledgeable—far more educated than Chu Qing herself, who had completed high school?

Not only did the woman open restaurants and run businesses, she also helped the police capture human traffickers and received honors for it.

She even possessed surprisingly advanced medical skills.

It was as though she had become an entirely different person.

How could a country bumpkin possibly know all those things?

Yet everyone around her acted as though none of it was strange.

So Chu Qing secretly hinted her suspicions to women who admired Deputy Regiment Commander Shen.

Sure enough, the village woman was quickly taken away for investigation.

And yet the woman simply explained casually that she had learned everything from an old village doctor and intellectuals who had been sent down to the countryside.

Everyone accepted the explanation naturally.

Even Lu Heng warned Chu Qing not to target the woman anymore.

But why?

Weren’t all those changes suspicious at all?

What she found even harder to accept was how all the military wives who once looked down on the village woman alongside her gradually changed sides.

They went from flattering and admiring Chu Qing to currying favor with that village woman instead.

Later, Chu Qing accidentally discovered that Lu Heng had once liked someone.

And that woman had become close friends with the village girl.

Jealousy and resentment drove her nearly insane.

She opposed them at every turn.

When the village woman became known for healing people, Chu Qing spent money investing in hospitals instead.

Her parents had been patriotic capitalists and martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the country, so she could openly spend her inherited wealth however she pleased.

When the village woman designed beautiful clothing and built factories to create jobs for military wives, Chu Qing immediately followed suit and opened a food factory herself, also hiring military spouses and disabled veterans.

Her only goal was to prevent that village woman from stealing the spotlight.

In the end, the village woman she had once despised became both wealthy and famous, cherished deeply by her husband, eventually becoming a commander’s wife admired by everyone.

In old age, a television drama inspired by the village woman’s life was even produced, turning her into a symbol of female perseverance admired nationwide.

Meanwhile, Chu Qing—who had spent half her life competing against her—ended up with a distant husband and an unloving son.

Especially after Lu Heng suddenly died at forty-nine, she became utterly disheartened and left the country not long afterward.

At the brink of death, looking back over her life, she realized she could no longer even remember the village woman’s face.

Her only regret was that she had never truly cared for Lu Heng.

If she hadn’t constantly fought with him…

Would he still have lived a healthy life?

And then, when she opened her eyes again—

She had returned to age twenty-two.

Having lived through one lifetime already, she no longer wanted to compete for anything.

Nor did she care anymore who truly occupied Lu Heng’s heart.

In this life, she only wanted to care for him properly.

Even if his feelings for her were merely familial affection, he was still the man who had protected her for an entire lifetime.

She wanted to repay him.

That was the debt she owed him.

The doctor had once said that if Lu Heng’s illness had been discovered and treated earlier, he never would have died.

So in this lifetime, she wanted only one thing:

For him to live a long, healthy life.