Lin Zhixia transmigrates into the 1980s, becoming a village girl sold off to be a substitute bride.
On her wedding day, the guests are all waiting to laugh at the “fortune-teller.” She makes a quick calculation in front of everyone and says, “This battalion commander has an exceptionally auspicious fate. He'll earn merit in three months and be promoted to regiment commander within five years.” Three months later, every word comes true.
No one knows that she isn't calculating his fate, but her own: “I must leave this place within three years.” Her plan is to cure the famously bad-tempered, one-legged officer, save enough money, and leave for good.
But the man keeps a ledger: “Day 37: She burned her hand and got a blister.” “Day 45: She stayed up reading medical books until midnight.” She pretends not to notice, but that night, in a fragmented vision of the future, she sees the two of them with their hair turned white for the first time.
She looks up overseas rehabilitation cases for him, and he shields her from an investigation by the political department. Her “daydreams” foresee an emergency and save a senior officer, while he uses the army's relaxation exercises to help with her insomnia. Auntie Zhou from the compound cares for her like a daughter, yet conceals the truth about her birth mother being abducted. The educated Su Wanqing teaches her how to dress and speak, but uses her divinations to secure her own position. Clever Xiaobao helps promote her fortune-telling, while investigating the true cause of his father's death.
When Lin Zhixia finally calculates the day he will fully recover, the day she ought to leave, she realizes she can't bear to go. The man who burns his ledger and says, “We'll never settle the account at this rate”; the child who calls her “Mom” and grows up choosing silence; Auntie Zhou, who makes her dumplings on the eve of reporting her own son: the people of this era matter more to her than any fate she's ever calculated.
For the last time, she casts the divination for the tree in the courtyard. The vision is blank, but she smiles.
“I got it wrong,” she tells him. “It's not that I must leave in three years, it's that in three years
