Chu Wenli, a top student in both the sciences and humanities in the modern era, opens his eyes to find himself as a poor man’s version of “Chen Shimei.”
His ramshackle home leaks, his rice jar is empty, and his former self owes gambling debts and abused the woman he was supposed to marry. The mess is beyond belief.
A few days before the exam, he tossed the divination blocks eighteen times in a row, and the Chu clan hailed him as a god of the imperial examinations.
With his “New Interpretation of the Eight-Legged Essay,” Chu Wenli takes first place in the county-level qualifying exam. He revitalizes wasteland with a “mulberry-dyke fishpond system,” and sails through the examinations with ease.
But he never expected his betrothed to be reborn!
In her previous life, she was betrayed and her family destroyed. In this life, she has locked away her romantic heart. With a “Suzhou embroidery pattern” he casually mentioned, she opens an embroidery shop. Following his idea of “chain management,” she acquires taverns across three counties and becomes a businesswoman in her own right.
The pair, whose previous lives ended in tragedy, secretly become partners in making money and consolidating power.
He needs wealth to pave his way through the examinations, while she uses his ideas to expand her business. She needs power to protect her enterprises, so he rises through the ranks, becoming the top scholar and gaining influence at court.
When Chu Wenli rides through the streets in triumph, Qin Caicai is upstairs checking the books. She hears someone mention “the poor scholar who was divorced by the owner of a great tavern in the capital back then,” and looks up to see that he is now the top scholar, powerful enough to dominate the court, while she has become a woman of immense wealth thanks to him.
That letter of divorce turned out to be the beginning of a powerful partnership...
