The frigid air burned Lin Haiqiu’s lungs, each rasping breath a desperate plea for more oxygen. Her worn canvas shoes slid across the packed snow while brittle pine needles tore at her threadbare jacket. Behind her, the heavy thud of Jiang Weidong’s boots was relentless, closing in through the deepening twilight of the Wushan forest. “Haiqiu! Stop running, you miserable wench!” Weidong’s voice, thick with avarice and entitlement, sliced through the pine-scented air. “Just give us the last of that millet! You think you can hide food when everyone else is starving? The brigade will hang you for this!” Her legs ached, protesting with every frantic stride. Her stomach had knotted into a hollow cramp days ago, though her thoughts stayed pinned to the two hollow-cheeked toddlers shivering in the drafty cabin. Her twins. She wouldn't let them starve. Not again. A memory, sharp and vivid, pierced through the haze of exhaustion: a sterile lab, the hum of machinery, the complex calculations of stress points and load bearing. She was an engineer. Lin Haiqiu, a modern woman, now trapped in this emaciated body, chased by a brute in a forgotten era. Suddenly, her foot snagged on a gnarled root hidden beneath a thin layer of snow. She stumbled, falling hard onto one knee, the impact jarring her teeth. A searing pain shot up her leg. Weidong was upon her in an instant. His shadow loomed, immense and menacing, before his calloused hand clamped down on her shoulder, sharp nails digging into her flesh. “Got you now, little squirrel!” he snarled, his breath hot and fetid against her ear. “Where’s the grain? And that jade trinket you wear? Give it to me!” The original Haiqiu might have whimpered, collapsed, surrendered. But this Haiqiu, the one with schematics etched into her mind, saw an opportunity. She didn’t struggle to pull away. Instead, she twisted her body, not against his grip, but *with* it, using his forward momentum. Her left hand, small but surprisingly strong, shot out, grabbing his wrist. Her right arm locked around his elbow, pulling it inward, leveraging it against her hip bone. Weidong grunted, surprised by her sudden, odd movement. “What in the—?” A sickening crack echoed through the silent forest. It wasn't the sound of a branch breaking, but bone. Weidong’s scream was ripped from his throat, raw and animalistic, as his forearm twisted at an unnatural angle. He staggered back, cradling his mangled limb, his face contorted in a mask of shock and agony. “You… you broke my arm, you witch!” he shrieked, tears of pain glistening in his eyes. He stumbled again, slipping on the snow, his blood already blooming crimson against the pristine white. “I’ll tell the whole commune! I’ll tell them you attacked me!” Lin Haiqiu didn’t respond. Her own hand throbbed, scraped raw from the struggle. A thin line of blood welled from a deep cut on her palm, a shard of ice perhaps, or a jagged stone. The warm, metallic scent filled her nostrils. A single crimson droplet escaped, falling onto the small, dark jade pendant nestled against her chest, which the original Haiqiu had worn since childhood. The world dissolved. The freezing pines, Weidong’s screams, the biting wind—all vanished in a flash of blinding emerald light. A soft hum vibrated through her, then silence. She stood, not on frozen earth, but on a rich, dark loam, remarkably warm and fertile. The air was sweet, thick with the scent of loam and growing things, utterly devoid of the famine’s stench. Above, a sky of perpetual twilight shimmered with soft, shifting auroras. A creature emerged from behind a towering stalk of what looked like oversized corn. It was a hare, but unlike any she had ever seen. Its fur was the color of fresh blood, and its eyes glowed with an ancient, knowing light. It moved with an ethereal grace, its form seeming to flicker at the edges. Chixue. The name resonated in her mind, a quiet whisper from the pendant. The spectral hare tilted its head, its long ears twitching. It nudged a small pool of shimmering, clear water near her feet. “Welcome, guardian,” a soft, mental voice echoed, not quite a sound, but a feeling. “Your wounds… tend to them.” Lin Haiqiu knelt, steadying her breath against the unnatural warmth. A living, breathing space, isolated from the starving world. Her pragmatic mind, however, immediately seized on the implications. She knelt by the pool, dipping her bleeding hand into the water. The wound closed instantly, the pain fading as if it had never been. The water was not just healing; it was restorative. She looked around with cold, measuring appraisal. Vast plots stretched into the gentle, glowing distance, laid out in faultless geometric rows. And beyond them, a structure like a colossal, ancient library, radiating a faint, scholarly light. “Infinite yield,” the hare’s thought-voice drifted. “A refuge. A genesis.” Her twins. Her starving, emaciated twins. The thought hit her with the force of a physical blow. They wouldn’t go hungry. Not ever again. This space… this was the answer. This was salvation, and the ultimate weapon. Her gaze fixed on a neatly arranged pile of seeds near the edge of the cultivated fields – plump, vibrant, unlike the sparse, withered grains she’d seen. She picked up a handful. The promise of life, dense and potent, pulsed within them. She found a small, empty patch of soil, already tilled, waiting. With practiced movements, she began to sow, her mind already racing with plans, with calculations, with blueprints for a future free from hunger and tyranny. Her determination was absolute, a cold, hard ember burning in her chest. She would cultivate this space, hoard its wealth, and then, she would remake her world. She would feed her children. And anyone who dared to stand in her way, anyone who threatened her or her family, would face a ruthlessness born of desperation and the sharp, unyielding logic of a transmigrated engineer. A splintering crash sliced through the quiet air—the distinctive crack of aged pine giving way under iron. It came from the real world. From her cabin.

Blood in the Snow