✨ Transmigrated Genius Bride in the 1970s Countryside ✨

🌸 Chapter 26. The Mocked Bride

The next morning dawned with a pale mist clinging to the village paths. Chickens clucked noisily, children ran barefoot through the dirt, and women’s voices carried as they gossiped by the well.

But that morning, the whispers weren’t about crops or weather.

They were about her.

“Did you hear? That lazy Lin girl is to be married.”

“Married? To whom? No one in their right mind would take her.”

“Ha! To *him*. The strange one. Cold, cursed, not right in the head.”

“A perfect match! The useless girl and the dangerous man—heaven surely pairs fools together.”

Laughter rippled like daggers through the air.

Xiaoyun, carrying a bucket of water, felt every mocking word. Once, the sound of such ridicule would have hollowed her chest, made her hide her face. But now, she only tightened her grip on the bucket handle.

*So this is it. The marriage comes sooner than I thought.*

She had heard rumors of the man before—quiet, aloof, feared. Some called him cursed, others said he was violent. Yet something inside her whispered that their fates were tangled for a reason.

Still, she could not ignore the sting of the villagers’ scorn.

At home, Madam Lin nearly dropped her ladle when the messenger left. “Marriage? But Yun’er—so sudden, so strange!”

Her brothers stared wide-eyed, as though their sister had been sentenced rather than blessed.

“Jiejie, they say he’s… dangerous,” Lin Yan whispered, clinging to Xiaoyun’s sleeve.

“Dangerous to those who don’t know him,” Xiaoyun replied calmly, though her own heart drummed like a restless bird. “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

Madam Lin sat heavily on the bench, covering her mouth with trembling fingers. “The villagers will laugh at you. They already are. They’ll say you’re the mocked bride of the cursed man.”

Xiaoyun set the bucket down, straightening her back. “Let them laugh. I’d rather be mocked for living my own life than pitied for bowing to theirs.”

Her words silenced the room.

The day of the arrangement spread like wildfire. Everywhere Xiaoyun went, eyes followed her. At the market, women smirked behind their hands.

“Look at her—walking as if she’s proud. Doesn’t she know she’s marrying a monster?”

“Pride or stupidity, I can’t tell the difference.”

Xiaoyun ignored them, her chin raised. Inside, her anger burned, but she refused to show weakness.

For in her past life, weakness had been her undoing.

This life, she would meet every insult with composure sharper than any blade.

That evening, she stood alone beneath the fading light, gazing at the sky. The air smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke. Her thoughts swirled with doubt, but also determination.

*A mocked bride, they say. So let them mock. Marriage is not a cage if I hold the key.*

From the shadows, a figure stepped into the light.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Eyes like tempered steel that seemed to pierce through silence itself. The very man villagers whispered about—her betrothed.

His gaze swept over her, steady, unreadable. “You’re not afraid.”

Xiaoyun met his eyes, her own calm and unyielding. “Why should I be?”

For a long moment, they stood, two souls judged by the world yet unbending before it.

The corner of his mouth curved, not in warmth but in something that resembled respect. “Good.”

And in that fleeting moment, beneath the weight of ridicule and expectation, Xiaoyun realized—this marriage, mocked or not, was the beginning of a story no villager’s laughter could control.

✨ End of Chapter 26: The Mocked Bride