The sickness came quietly at first a low fever that clung to Yi Rong. She didn't tell Ruolan right away. After all, spring weather was fickle in the mountains and she had been out late the night before, wandering the woods longer than she should've.
By the third morning her hands trembled as she helped Ruolan in the kitchen, her forehead burned and the muscles along her spine ached with each movement still she said nothing.
Only when she collapsed by courtyard's edge her body folding like paper,Ruolan saw her collapseing.
Ruolan cried out, brushing the hair from her daughter's sweat-soaked face. Zeyu carried her inside with panic written across his face,the neighbors came after hearing Ruolan screaming they came over the low fence, offering boiled ginger water and prayers.
But none of it worked.
The fever didn't break that night nor for the next few days.
Yi Rong drifted in and out of a restless sleep, her breaths shallow, her body burning and shivering. The sounds of the room blurred into each other Ruolan's murmuring and Zeyu's footsteps the hiss of water boiling somewhere in the corner.
And then, the memories began to return.
Not as dreams but as flashes and like some kind of dam got burst and memories started to flood in her head.
A white hallway. Fluorescent lights. The echo of hurried footsteps. A surgical mask. Gloves soaked in red. Cold metal beneath her fingers. Sharp, desperate voices calling out vitals. Her own voice calm clinical giving orders. Scalpel. Clamp. Hold pressure.
Then another memory: a cold morgue drawer. Her own name typed neatly on the tag.
Yi Rong jolted upright with a gasp, drenched in sweat her eyes wide with confusion.
She's not just the village girl; she's also the person she used to be.
In that moment everything came flooding back: her name in her past life, her years in medicine and the strange silence of her death.
She remembered it all.
By the seventh day her fever broke.
Ruolan nearly sighed with relief,"Heavens heard me," she whispered pressing a cool hand to Yi Rong's cheeks, "You're burning up no longer my girl, you'll be fine."
Yi Rong nodded weakly but her mind was far from the small room.
She wasn't just fine. She was awake.
And this world this quiet village nestled between forest and field was not the one she had left behind.
Now she knew why certain herbs had drawn her attention. Why she had instinctively wrapped her wrist after her fall in a pattern too precise for a child. Why her hands, though small and soft moved with unconscious precision when she crushed herbs or folded cloth.
She had been a doctor. No something more. A surgeon, a researcher, once respected and feared in equal measure. Her death had been swift and strange, but she didn't expect to get transmigrate into this world in this small girl body.
Yet here she was.
A week later when she was well enough to walk, she made her way down to Old Wen's hut near the edge of the village. People said he had once studied medicine in a city, long ago, before retreating to the hills with only his books and his pipe for company.
Old Wen was hunched and quiet, with eyes that saw too much and a limp that made his walking manner uneven. Most of the children avoided him but Yi Rong knocked on his door without hesitation.
He squinted at her, taking in her thin frame and pale face.
"You're the one who nearly died last week," he said bluntly.
"I heard you know about herbs," she replied, her voice steady.
"I know a bit."
"I want to learn."
He chuckled, "You? A little thing like you?"
"I won't be little forever," she said then added, "Please."
He studied her for a moment then stepped aside,"Don't expect me to explain things twice."
Old Wen became her excuse.
To the villagers, Yi Rong was a curious girl who had taken a sudden interest in medicine after her brush with death. It made sense near-death experiences changed people.
So no one questioned it when she began visiting Old Wen regularly. No one looked too closely when she started drying herbs in the sun or when she mumbled measurements to herself by the stream.
But behind closed doors, she studied with the intensity of someone reclaiming what was already hers.
Old Wen would mutter about red root and chrysanthemum tea, and Yi Rong would nod along while silently comparing his knowledge to her own.
Some of his methods were outdated others were brilliant in their simplicity.
But it didn't matter he offered her the perfect cover.
When she made herbal ointments that worked better than expected, she credited Old Wen. When she helped stop a toddler's cough with a brew of mulberry and honey, people praised the old man's guidance.
She smiled, bowed politely, and remained quiet.
The truth was her burden to carry.
Ruolan noticed the change in her daughter the sharper focus, the longer walks, the quiet way she studied others when they spoke but she said nothing, Zeyu watched his wife with worried expression and look at their daughter with proud look.
At night, she sat near the window with her knees pulled to her chest, watching the moon rise over the hills. In those moments, the weight of two lives pressed down on her shoulders.
In her past life, she had chased progress, control, recognition. It had ended in tragedy.
Here, she would move slower.
She would use her knowledge, not for status, but for safety.
For family.
One step at a time.
And though her true identity remained a secret, she began quietly to change the course of her new life.
Not with grand gestures.
But with boiled roots. With timely advice. With herbs traded for eggs and favors returned in silence.
And that, she knew, was how you built something that lasted.