Reborn as the Old Matriarch of a Duke's Household, I'll Take Out a Few People First

Lin Shu was a 30-year-old insurance sales champion, crushed to death by cutthroat competition. When she opened her eyes, she had become Su Wanying, the old matriarch of the Duke of Anguo’s household in the Great Shun Dynasty. It was hell mode from the start: her husband, the duke, had just died; her eldest son, who sacrificed himself to save the emperor, was barely in his grave; and her four remaining sons were a “charlatan” obsessed with alchemy, a “romantic” who had bedded his way through a hundred flowers, a “hothead” whose official career had stalled, and a spoiled “scion” who had no useful skills. Every daughter-in-law had an ulterior motive, and the grandchildren were an unsalvageable mess.

Faced with this disastrous hand, Lin Shu, who carried the Virtuous Wife and Loving Mother Merit System, threw caution to the wind. Traditional household-intrigue virtues like “enduring in silence” and “putting the family first”? To hell with them! Her principle was simple: anyone who made her retirement miserable would have their whole family’s life made miserable in return. With the emperor’s status as her adopted son serving as a get-out-of-jail-free card, and a vast private fortune left behind by her predecessor, Lin Shu used an iron fist to clean up the duke’s chaotic household. She tore apart scheming daughters-in-law, kicked rotten relatives to the curb, whipped her useless sons back onto the right path, and raised her grandsons and granddaughters to be accomplished.

While every noble family in the capital waited to laugh at the Duke of Anguo’s household, they discovered that its old matriarch refused to play by the rules. She was a master at putting people in their place, throwing money around, and petitioning the emperor. And the young emperor, lofty and inscrutable as he was, not only listened to his “adoptive mother” in everything, but often stepped in personally to back her up. Lin Shu switched seamlessly between playing the pig to eat the tiger and going berserk on everyone around her. In the end, she not only avenged her eldest son but also transformed a family on the brink of ruin into a new powerhouse with influence over the entire court. As for herself, she finally achieved her ultimate dream: drinking tea, enjoying the opera, and retiring in peace.