Lin, the fourth-born daughter of a concubine in the Hangzhou Imperial Silk Bureau household, lost her mother when she was young and suffered the coldness of her stepmother and the schemes of the concubines, struggling to survive amid the family’s conflicts. She has no transmigrator’s all-seeing perspective and no portable space; all she can rely on is her grandmother’s meager protection. She learns to hide her talents, keep a low profile, and bide her time.
At first, all she wants is to survive in this household where people devour one another, so she plays the fool and acts clueless. Whether facing her legitimate elder sister’s hostility or her father’s indifference, she simply endures it. As she grows older, Lin becomes caught up in the family’s marriage alliances and has no choice but to fight back. Using the family’s complicated web of relationships and people’s weaknesses, she quietly deals with her stepmother’s faction, which tried to “sell” her to a wastrel.
After marrying into the Marquis of Pingyuan’s household in the capital, she faces even more complicated rivalries among the brothers’ wives, conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and the turbulent political struggles that spill over into the inner household. She joins forces with her husband, who seems like a wastrel but is actually deep and shrewd. Lin uses her practical wisdom to set the household in order and purge its traitors. In the end, she wins her husband’s respect and love, earns the honor of being named a lady of the court, and transforms herself from a vine dependent on others into a tree that can shelter them from the storm.
