Welcome, everyone, and thank you for reading my work. This novel is adapted from true events that happened to people around me. The protagonist is Yao Xi. At twenty-seven, she defied her family's fierce opposition and resolutely married a widower fourteen years her senior. If he had been an ordinary man, that might have been understandable, but he also had seven underage children. His eldest daughter was eighteen and in her final year of high school, about to take the college entrance exam. His youngest son was only six and in his final year of kindergarten. With a whole class's worth of little troublemakers like these, even their own mother might have struggled to handle them when they acted up. Yao Xi was a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried young woman, and she would be walking into the home as their stepmother. Did she have three heads and six arms, or some extraordinary ability that would let her manage a whole class of children? So when she told her mother what she intended to do, her mother fought tooth and nail to stop her. She even refused to eat or drink, trying to force Yao Xi to back down by starving herself. But Yao Xi was as firm as if she'd taken a dose of certainty. No matter how her mother objected, she wouldn't budge. Her mother even called on every relative and friend she could think of to try to talk her out of it. In the end, Yao Xi still did exactly as she pleased. No matter what her mother did, her mind was made up: she would marry Qin Dongliang and no one else. Seeing how stubborn her mother was, she locked herself in her room and refused to eat or drink. After four days, her mother couldn't bear it any longer. Afraid her own insistence might put her daughter in danger, she finally gave in. And so Yao Xi married the man she had chosen and became the stepmother of seven children. Years later, after enduring every hardship, she raised all eight children to adulthood, including the daughter she had with Qin Dongliang.
