From the start, Cheng Yunshu is cast as the wicked stepmother of a marquis's household, caught abusing a child.
She snatches the whip away: “I'll save this child.”
She has barely brought her stepson’s fever down when she discovers that in three months the whole family will be exiled, and in a year the land will be parched for thousands of miles.
Being a stepmother is hard? She pulls out her apocalypse survival System, complete with a hundred-square-meter storage space and a spiritual spring.
Her sister-in-law tries to poison her? She gives as good as she gets, having the woman confined to the ancestral hall.
Her husband is cold and distant? No matter, even a marriage in name only can make them teammates.
On the eve of the family's downfall, she takes her three stepchildren and a space full of supplies and leaves the city in the dead of night.
On the road into exile, she clears land and farms, stockpiles grain and makes medicine, and trains wolves to stand guard at night.
Her stepson goes from hating her to taking an arrow for her. “Mother, I was wrong before. I didn't know any better.”
Her husband goes from wary and calculating to letting down his guard. “Cheng Yunshu, I love you.”
Famine, war, plague, and a struggle for the throne...
While others wait to die, she builds a stronghold.
Three years later, the new emperor ascends the throne and begs her to return to the palace as empress.
Cheng Yunshu shakes her head. “No thanks. I'm going to keep building things with the children.”
A very good book, worth recommending