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The Misplaced Young Miss: The Journey Across Time

Monsoon_Mangoes
7
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Synopsis
Zhang Yue was a lost cause. The textbook good-for-nothing young miss, the black sheep of a powerful family. A broke yet proud heiress who refused to ride on her family name. She wanted to carve her own path. Instead, she lost everything - her career, her dreams… even her family. But she wasn’t the kind to give up. She worked hard. She prayed harder. “Just give me one chance to go back and fix everything,” she begged the heavens. Well… the heavens listened. Sort of. Thanks to a tiny misunderstanding with her family deity, Zhang Yue finds herself hurled across timelines, right into the arms of a sword-wielding stranger, in an era ruled by magic and mayhem. No powers. No cheat codes. No chosen-one prophecy. Just a 21st-century woman stuck in a cultivation world where everyone else can blow up mountains. You’d think she’d embrace her fate, awaken her inner mage, and rise to glory. Wrong girl. Zhang Yue has one goal: Go back. Even if the deity she prayed to doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Even if the only person who wants to help her… might just be the man who was destined to betray her.
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Chapter 1 - The good for nothing young miss

"Who the hell cares if I die?

 Who the hell cares if I live? 

So, I will just go around and mess up your life, just like how you messed with mine. "

The lyrics stabbed through the stillness like a blade. The sacred air inside the Zhang family's ancestral hall trembled.

Heads turned, eyes wide and horror and anticipation rippled across the crowd. A song played from somewhere. Not a sacred chant or an old hymn, but a shrill, stubborn anthem with lyrics that questioned life itself. It didn't belong there.

It's the ancestral remembrance day that comes once in an year, and the only time the entire Zhang family that's spread over the country gather together to greet their ancestors and seek blessings. 

But who the hell left their cell phone on loud when the prayer ceremony was about to reach the main ritual? 

The chant of the priest faltered. Even the smoke from the incense seemed to pause mid-spiral.

"Who the freaking hell…!!!"

It rang again.

The incense curled in the air like it was trying to escape the tension in the ancestral hall. Everyone was dressed in shades of grief and tradition. Their lips were supposed to murmur blessings to long-dead ancestors who probably didn't care. But instead all of them asked the same question.

"Who?"

There, framed in the doorway like a curse from the past, stood Zhang Yue.

She fumbled with her phone, the song still blaring as if mocking every silent tradition in the room. Her long hair and pure white ceremonial robe danced with her frantic movement. Her red sling bag jangled with every shift of her hand. She was poking at her phone like it had betrayed her, muttering under her breath.

 "Stupid phone. You had one job."

She muttered, finally silencing the device before shoving it deep into her bag.

But the silence had already cracked open.

She looked up and realized the entire hall had turned into a Renaissance painting of collective horror. She smiled.

"Hi." she said, as if she'd just walked into a bookstore and not an important ritual. "Don't mind me."

The whispers began like wind through dry leaves.

"Isn' that Zhang Yue?"

"The Zhang Yue?" Whoever took her name, looked at her with an immense amount of shock and horror.

Then the ringtone went off again.

"Who the freaking hell…"

"Get out." The command came cold and sharp. Zhang Liao's voice sliced across the hall like thunder across a silent night.

Zhang Yue didn't flinch. She stood rooted, jaw tight, eyes blazing.

She raised an eyebrow. "What, no welcome drink?"

"Out." Elder Zhang Liao, the current patriarch of the Zhang family looked at the young woman with an evident scowl on his face. 

"Sure, but after I greet my parents. That's the whole point, isn't it? Ancestors, blessings, forgiveness and whatnot?" Her tone was light, but her feet were firm.

The maids rushed to her like they were trained in hostage negotiations. Zhang Yue didn't resist, but she definitely didn't cooperate.

"Hands off the merchandise," she quipped. "I moisturize daily."

Even after protesting aloud, the maids didn't stop and they somehow took her to the garden outside the prayer hall. Since they were already aware about their young miss's character they didn't even care to listen to her pleas to let her go. 

The hall was chaotic, ancestral spirits probably filing complaints in the afterlife.

That was when Zhang Yan stepped into the garden. No one had seen him walk in.

"Let her go," He said, his authoritative voice was no less than an order.

The maids froze. Zhang Yue didn't. She winked at him.

 "Took you long enough, Third Young Master."

And just like that, she stood there,owning the silence she had broken. A one-woman revolution in a family that ran on fear and formality.

"Third young master!" one of the maids whispered, startled. Zhang Yan ,Zhang Liao's youngest son,strode into the scene like a misplaced peace offering. He was in his mid thirties and looked too handsome to be called as an "uncle" of a well-grown but not so well behaved woman like Zhang Yue.

"I'll keep an eye on her," He said, brushing past the maids, his eyes settling on the girl who had finally stopped thrashing like a cat caught in the rain. With a glance between them, the maids bowed and disappeared, relieved to be out of the mess.

"I told you to come two days ago," Zhang Yan began, already rubbing his temple like he had a pre-scheduled headache for moments like this.

Zhang Yue barely blinked. "What can I do if I missed my alarm?"

"You missed it for two straight days?"

"No, I just didn't want to come early and be interrogated like a serial killer at a family barbecue."

He sighed and sat on one of the patio chairs, intending to strike a conversation with her. "How did you even get here? I heard that several flights got cancelled because of the rain."

Zhang Yue broke into laughter before grabbing a chair next to him. "Do I look like someone who can afford a flight? I hitchhiked."

"From Xi City?" His voice pitched, exasperation creeping in. Even though she is his cousin's daughter, Zhang Yan shared a close relationship with his niece. It won't be a lie to say that he was the only person who would tolerate Zhang Yue's antics in the entire family. But how can he feel at peace when she travelled hundreds of miles in some random stranger's vehicle, that too when an unexpected torrential rain hit the country?

"Why waste money when delivery vans from Xi City are practically headed this way anyway?" She grinned, as if riding cargo trucks across provinces was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"Yue, you're impossible. If it is about money. I told you,take my card." Zhang Yan knew very well- that his niece was maybe the poorest member in the entire family tree. Not because she lacked skills to earn a dime, but because of her stubbornness to touch the assets left by her parents or ride on the coat tails of her surname. 

"Sorry. I'm not accepting sugar daddy applications right now." Zhang Yue shrugged her shoulders.

"Hey!" Zhang Yan shot her a mock glare, playfully punching her arm. "Who wants to be your sugar daddy anyway?"

"I don't know, the way you keep throwing your card and offers at me, I might start suspecting things," Zhang Yue smirked.

"I told you, just come to my office. Do whatever job you like. Or don't even work,just sit there if you want. Why can't you do that?"

"The job I like is washing plates in your company cafeteria. Is that okay for you?" she raised an eyebrow, arms crossed with zero hesitation.

Zhang Yan sighed dramatically. "I mean, I'm okay with it. But what if my employees find out that the director's niece is scrubbing food trays in the kitchen? What if our petty relatives catch wind of it and go full gossip mode?"

"What if Grandpa finds out that the 'good-for-nothing Zhang Yue' is doing something scandalous enough to ruin the family's last name?" she added with exaggerated flair. "No thanks. I'll stay in X City with my tiny little café and my dignity intact."

"Sweetheart, you're still,"

"I told you, I've stopped taking favors from people I know."

"But I'm your uncle," Zhang Yan said, softer now.

"Exactly. So, stay out of my wallet. And don't you dare pay my debts again."

Zhang Yan folded his arms, shifting his weight like he was anchoring himself for a storm. "Why? What happened?"

"I closed it," she said, arms crossed, voice firm.

"You closed the café?" he asked, incredulous.

"It went under," she said, casually, like she was talking about last night's weather.

A long pause stretched between them.

"Yue…"

"Don't. It was supposed to go under," she cut in, her voice sharper now, like a blade wrapped in velvet. "Why would anyone eat weird twisted buns when they've got safe, boring pastries with cream on top?"

He watched her. She didn't meet his eyes. Her fingers fiddled with a loose thread on her sling bag.

"Did something else happen?" He was genuinely concerned. He knew how much Zhang Yue cherished her little cafe.

"Don't start again. I already spoke to Ruhan and he gave a referral to somewhere nice. I have an interview the day after tomorrow."

Zhang Yan blinked. "Interview? Where?"

"Ever heard of Four clovers?"

"You got an offer from there?" His eyes lit up, hopeful. "As a chef?"

She smirked. "A chef? Please. Clovers wouldn't let someone like me near their knives. I'm going to be a server."

"A server? In a five-star cafeteria?"

"Technically, in their employee dining hall. You know, where they feed the tired, underpaid masses with watered-down soup and sad rice."

"Are you crazy?" Zhang Yan was visibly disturbed.

"I'd go crazy if I don't get the job," she said, brushing past him toward the direction of the ancestral altar. "Now, if you'll excuse me,I came all the way here on the back of a turnip truck. I at least deserve to greet my parents."

He grabbed her arm gently. "Wait."

She turned to him, not annoyed, not amused,just waiting.

The girl was just 24 years old, but the things that she had to go through these years were too much- things none of the rich heirs of Zhang family could even imagine. Loss of her family, her career, her future.

"You're stronger than all of them combined. But you don't have to fight every battle alone."

Her lips curved into a smile, a strange one, part bitter, part fond.

"I might be a loser, uncle. But I'm still Zhang, born in the family of great warriors and mages. I will fight every battle and create one if it is called for."