[Era setting + rugged man + both leads are each other's first and only + intense push and pull]
Zhang Xiaoman is known in the village as a scheming woman.
Her mother ran off and her father died. Her uncle's family took over their home, leaving her and her younger brother struggling to get by.
So she found herself a match.
Li Jincai was good at studying, but in poor health. Life was hard for him and his widowed mother, so Zhang Xiaoman went to help them of her own accord. Penny by penny, she worked hard to support him through technical college, and he became a middle school teacher.
The villagers all said she had a knack for spotting a good man.
But then he got together with the principal's daughter behind her back.
In the bitter cold, over a piece of pork, she and her brother were thrown out of the house by her uncle's family.
Fortunately, she gained a space. Vegetables watered with the pool water inside grew at astonishing speed.
In the dead of winter, she grew tomatoes, chili peppers, luffa, winter melon, green beans, cucumbers, and more. When she took them to the black market, they were snapped up.
Just when everyone thought she and her brother would starve or freeze to death on the mountain,
the snow melted with the arrival of spring, and she came back, her pockets bulging with cash.
When she was struggling, Pei Ye, the village's biggest troublemaker, kept showing up where she lived.
One day it was a rabbit, the next a chicken. He nearly carried off everything in her house.
Xiaoman: “I'll never trust a man again in this life.”
Pei Ye blocked her at the cave entrance, breathing hard. His scorching hands wrapped around her as he said, “Then what am I supposed to do? You're the only one I want in this life.”
Pei Ye: “I'll build our fortune from the ground up, and I'll earn my wife through my own efforts.” His motto: “Love your own self.”
