“Mom, what’s wrong? Are you still not feeling well?”

In the dim room, Bai Dongqing stood by the bed with her head lowered, timid and meek. Even her voice was very, very soft, like she was afraid speaking too loudly would make Jiang Qianyu unhappy. But she still asked, because she was worried about Jiang Qianyu’s health.

Jiang Qianyu looked at her, then casually set the cup aside and beckoned to her.

Sure enough, the moment she saw that gesture, Bai Dongqing’s eyes flickered away. She took two small steps forward to the bedside, and when she saw Jiang Qianyu raise a hand, she even shut her eyes in fear.

But the slap she imagined never came.

Instead, she felt a warm embrace.

Bai Dongqing froze a little. She hadn’t expected this at all. When she opened her eyes, she saw Jiang Qianyu leaning sideways and hugging her. That had never happened before.

Caught between surprise and worry, she couldn’t even tell what she was feeling.

She started thinking back, wondering if she’d done something lately to make Mom unhappy again.

But if Mom was really unhappy, would she hug her like this?

Then again, even when Mom was happy, she’d never hugged her like this either.

Bai Dongqing thought of the most terrifying possibility.

She hurriedly tried to break free from the embrace. Her trembling voice carried a faint sob.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t make that kind of mistake again. Please, please don’t send me back. I’ll be good, I’ll listen...”

Jiang Qianyu truly hadn’t expected that her relationship with her daughter could be this bad. She couldn’t imagine what kind of relationship it took for a daughter to be this terrified when her own mother hugged her.

She let go, then gently patted her head, trying to make her voice sound softer.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I... Mom will never send you back again. Don’t be scared. I just thought about a lot of things while I was sleeping.”

Jiang Qianyu didn’t dare say too much. She knew that in Dongqing’s current state, if she said even one extra thing that didn’t fit her usual “character,” even if it was gentle, Dongqing wouldn’t sleep all night.

When a bad person suddenly turns good one day and starts saying nice things to you, anyone would overthink it.

Forcing herself up, Jiang Qianyu got out of bed and slowly moved her legs onto the cold wheelchair. Behind her, Bai Dongqing hurriedly brought over a coat.

Jiang Qianyu wrapped herself up, then casually pulled the hair tie off her wrist. In a few quick motions, she tied her long black hair into a ponytail. The movement was smooth, pure muscle memory.

“Bring me my phone.”

She pushed the wheelchair forward with both hands as she spoke, stopping in front of the large full-length mirror in the room.

She stared at the glamorous black-haired woman in the wheelchair reflected in the mirror, and her brows slowly drew together.

Maybe it was because this body had been well cared for. Or maybe it was the Witch constitution. Either way, in this life, she looked only twenty-four or twenty-five. Very, very young. She didn’t look like the mother of a nine-year-old at all.

Logically, if the child was already nine, then she should be around thirty by now.

But judging by her face alone, even saying twenty-four or twenty-five felt a little too old.

The key was that this face could only be described as seductive.

Jiang Qianyu had never imagined that one day the word seductive would apply to her. But other than that, she really couldn’t think of a better word.

Honestly, with society advancing this far, the world wasn’t lacking in handsome men and beautiful women. Makeup, plastic surgery, even if you were lazy or overeating, there was always a tech buff for that—filters.

But some things couldn’t be changed by technology.

Like aura.

Aura was something mysterious and hard to define. Everyone probably understood it differently.

But at this very moment, Jiang Qianyu was one hundred percent sure that her current self had a serious problem in that department.

A face that could already be called seductive without makeup or surgery was only partly because of her looks. A big part of it came from the boost of that aura.

And in her eyes, that aura didn’t come from grace or refinement at all.

It felt more like one of a Hunter’s methods. Something meant to help her kill prey more efficiently.

It reminded her of a manga she’d once read. In it, there was a beautiful female ghost who used her fragile air and seductive looks to lure men in, then devoured them as prey. Some men even sank so deeply into it that they willingly let themselves be killed.

A look like a thousand-year Witch taking human form, paired with that seductive aura, was obviously better than being disgusting and ugly. At the very least, it massively increased the success rate.

One made prey freeze on the spot the moment they saw you.

The other made them turn and run.

So considering her identity as a Witch, this appearance actually did seem normal.

Some instinct deep in the body was affirming that thought too. It was the same logic as when she saw the black threads inside her body and instinctively knew they were souls.

Using beauty to seek out Hunters, then absorbing their souls during intimacy, was normal Witch behavior.

For some reason, though, there wasn’t a single soul in her body that belonged to anyone else.

In other words, the body’s original owner had never used her looks to “hunt.”

Which raised a question.

If this body was still untouched, then where exactly had the daughter come from?

“Mom, here’s your phone. It’s fully charged already.”

At that moment, Bai Dongqing pushed open the door and walked in with a smartphone in hand.

Taking the phone, Jiang Qianyu checked the time.

She had actually been reborn six years later.

Those six whole years, in her memory, felt like they’d passed in barely six hours.

The phone unlocked with a fingerprint. That was good news.

If she wanted to understand what this body had gone through and what kind of relationships she had, most of her questions could probably be answered through the phone.

Or maybe the original owner had a habit of keeping a diary.

She opened the phone and tapped into the messaging app.

The first thing she saw was the contact pinned at the top of the chat list.

The profile picture was a magical girl warrior, and the note was...

Wife.

Jiang Qianyu almost thought she was seeing things. After opening the person’s profile, she found that the name field said Yunzhi. Which meant that “Wife” really had been the label “she” set herself.

Even now, Jiang Qianyu was still trying to fool herself. Maybe it was just a joke. Back when she was in school, if she helped her roommates buy food, they’d even call her Dad.

But then she opened her own profile.

When she saw the pinned marriage certificate and wedding ring in her posts, her whole mind went blank.

There were two names on the marriage certificate.

One was Jiang Qianyu.

The other was Lu Yunzhi.

No wonder she was still untouched.

Jiang Qianyu knew this country had long legalized same-sex marriage. She just never thought it would happen to her.

And just when she thought things were already miserable enough, she carefully went through the chat history with her wife.

That was when she sharply noticed something wrong.

In a conversation from one week ago, “she” had asked her to come back and spend time with her and their daughter. The other side had refused, saying she was too busy with work.

Lu Yunzhi’s exact words were:

‘Nightwatcher Headquarters assigned me a huge job. If I pull it off, I’ll be a Class A Hunter from now on. Hahaha, hahaha.’

A bolt from the blue couldn’t have hit harder.

Life really was full of wild ups and downs.

The good news: you were reborn. Sure, you were a wheelchair-bound Witch, but your daughter was still Bai Dongqing, and you even got a rich, beautiful wife for free.

The bad news: your wife was a Witch Hunter, and for now, she still didn’t know your identity or your daughter’s...

“What kind of hell-start is this...”

Jiang Qianyu slumped back in the wheelchair and stared up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle.