Story of Minglan: Only After Marriage Did I Learn How Deep the Household's Waters Run

[The story will follow a peaceful course at the Sheng household in the early chapters] Shu Lan was born into the world of The Story of Minglan, along with two other transmigrators. The years they spent at the Sheng household were peaceful and comfortable. Thanks to the butterfly effect, transmigrated Minglan didn’t lose her mother or younger brother, Molan wasn’t led astray by Lin Yiniang, and Rulan was taught to be perceptive and sensible by the Old Madam. One of their fellow transmigrators, Yulan, could be a little unhinged now and then, but the girls really did have a wonderful life at the Sheng household. They studied from dawn to dusk, painted flowers, managed the household, and watched the seasons change in the courtyard. Life in a wealthy family was so gentle and pleasant. Then an imperial decree of betrothal came down, and Shu Lan felt like the sky had fallen. What kind of nightmare family was this?! She and her friends had once joked that the marquis’s manor must be full of impostors. Little did she know she’d end up becoming one of them someday. After bidding farewell to her family at the Shengs’, she was carried out through their red-lacquered gates in a bridal sedan, full of trepidation as she joined the marquis’s household. You can’t understand her in-laws’ sprawling estate by thinking like a normal person. Her mother-in-law cares only for Buddha and refuses to get involved. Her father-in-law is deeply devoted to his late wife and likes collecting figurines; the entire rear courtyard is filled with substitutes for his deceased first wife. Her eldest brother-in-law is an ancient-world version of a domineering CEO: controlling and obsessive, he and his wife act out a daily drama of “You don’t love me, so I’ll force you to.” Her second brother-in-law is as aloof as a chrysanthemum, indifferent to worldly affairs, and spends all day figuring out how to become an immortal. Her sister-in-law is a hopeless romantic, forever threatening to kill herself because she wants to run away with a stablehand. And then there are a bunch of younger half-siblings, every one of them eccentric and refined, as if they’d wandered out of novels as ridiculous protagonists. Faced with this family, Shu Lan faints over and over. Fortunately, her husband may be a bit of a dullard, but at least he’s normal. …