ITBBS Chapter 3

Shen Yao woke up with a splitting headache, feeling utterly exhausted and her body limp. Her head buzzed incessantly as a wave of unfamiliar memories flooded her mind.

The girl in the memories shared her name, Shen Yao, and was fifteen years old this year and currently a senior in the No. 1 Middle School in the county town. This girl lived in a poor era where supplies were scarce, where going out required a letter of introduction, and where buying anything needed tickets. Many people were starving in this impoverished time.

The setting was China in the late 1950s.

As Shen Yao processed the original owner’s memories, she was stunned and couldn’t believe that she had traveled to an unfamiliar parallel time and space.

This world was not the era she knew. The leaders and other things were different, but the direction of things was not far off from her own time.

The village where the original owner lived was originally called Shenjia Village, but it had been renamed Huaihe Production Team. The village had around two hundred households. The surname Shen was the most common surname in the village, and more than half of the villagers have the surname Shen, so the villagers in the village were relatively united.

Located in the south, the Shenjia Village was surrounded by mountains and crisscrossed by rivers. Villagers often went up the mountains to gather wild vegetables and fruits to store and occasionally fished in the rivers. Moreover, the land was relatively fertile, so the village fared quite well even during hard times.

The original owner’s family was also very simple. Her father used to work in a steel factory in the county, while her mother lived in the village with the original owner. Mother Shen was hardworking and capable. She managed to earn a decent income from their crops every year. Combined with Father Shen’s monthly salary of dozens of yuan, their family lived comfortably.

But a month ago, tragedy struck when Father Shen died while trying to save someone at the factory. The factory compensated the family with some money and a job position. Unable to cope with the loss, Mother Shen soon took her own life.

The depressed original owner managed her parents’ affairs with the help of the team leader but fell into a haze, eventually succumbing to illness from her overwhelming grief. She barely held on for two days before passing away last night, and then Shen Yao took her place.

Thinking about the original owner, Shen Yao sighed lightly. The girl could be said to have been spoiled and pampered by her parents since she was a child, which shaped her into a quiet and cautious person rather than a brat.

However, the original owner had been diligent in her studies and did not disappoint her parents’ expectations. Additionally, she loved studying since she was a child. She had even skipped several grades from elementary school to high school, nearing high school graduation at just fifteen years old.

“Thankfully, I’m an orphan, otherwise I might easily slip up in front of her family.” After all, her personality was completely different from the original owner.

Now, Shen Yao had accepted her time travel situation. There was no going back.

Since she was here, she might as well make the best of it!

Suddenly remembering her space, which had a soul contract with her, she thought that it had also followed her through time. She rolled up the original owner’s left sleeve and saw a phoenix birthmark three inches above her wrist. As soon as her fingers touched the mark, Shen Yao found herself in the space.

A sweet and childlike voice echoed at this time, “Master, you’re here.”

A beautiful little phoenix then landed on Shen Yao’s shoulder.

“Xiao Ling, you’re awake.”

Shen Yao was a bit surprised. The little one fell asleep two months ago. It was a pleasant surprise to see her awake now.

“Master, I woke up when you experienced the plane crash. As soon as I regained consciousness, a force brought me to this world.”

“Xiao Ling, are you saying we were brought here by some force?”

Shen Yao was puzzled. She thought she was meant to travel back several decades. Little did she know that she had traveled in an unfamiliar parallel time and space. Could it be because of the opportunity?

“Yes, Master, and my suppressed memories have also returned since coming to this time,” Xiao Ling explained and escaped from Shen Yao’s clutches and stayed in the air. If she didn’t run away, her feathers would be in danger.

“So what exactly is this opportunity?”

Shen Yao had a questioning look on her face. Since she made the contract with the space at sixteen years old, the little phoenix had mentioned that to fully activate the space, a specific opportunity was needed for complete fusion. However, the so-called opportunity had never appeared in the twelve years.

Why was it different this time?

“Master, I will transmit the specifics to your mind right now.”

…

It turned out the space linked to the jade pendants was called the Dragon-Phoenix Space. The space existed in the dragon and phoenix pendants, which were held by a man and a woman. They are a pair of immortal cultivators who loved each other ten thousand years ago. Before ascending to the heavens, they created the space to ensure their “destined fate” would continue. They used the dragon and phoenix as the space guardian beasts and a drop of blood from the dragon and phoenix. They jointly refined a pair of dragon and phoenix jade pendants, also known as the “marriage jade pendant”.

During the refining process, they infused their heart’s blood into the pendants and set a specific opportunity. Then they left the two pendants, hoping that the two spirit beasts would take the jade pendants to find the destined person in the world and ignite the fate between the two.

Moreover, only those who bore the dragon and phoenix birthmarks could activate the pendants. If one of the pair contracted the pendant and opened the space, the fate within the “Dragon-Phoenix Pendants” would begin to take effect. From then on, the two people were destined to have only one destined lover in their lives.

Since it was a destined marriage, even if separated by thousands of miles or different time periods, the jade pendant would bring the two together and allow them to meet.

Once the bearers of the Dragon-Phoenix Pendants encountered each other and developed feelings, they would each drop their blood into the jade pendants to confirm the other as their destined person. After forming the destined marriage, the spaces within both pendants would merge, thereby unlocking a complete little world in the space.

Furthermore, once the bond was established, their fates would become tightly intertwined, and they would share life and death, love each other, and live a happy life.

On the contrary, if no feelings developed and the destined marriage was missed, they would never have another marriage and would live the rest of their lives alone, with their open spaces only representing a small fragment of the complete space.

After absorbing the information about the jade pendant space, Shen Yao’s thoughts became complicated.

It turned out everything was already destined!

Whether it was her opening the jade pendant at sixteen, the nightmare warning from two months ago, or this time travel, all her doubts found answers in this moment.

Shen Yao quickly collected her emotions and decided not to dwell on them further.

If her marriage was meant to happen in this time and space, then finding a like-minded lover could actually be a good thing.