The Wicked 1980s Wife Opens a Street Stall, and the Cold-Faced Officer Falls for Her

Lin Wantang transmigrates into a book.

While others become the family’s darling, she becomes the most hated, troublesome military wife in an 1980s military-marriage novel.

Her mother-in-law keeps her at arm’s length, her second sister-in-law watches her closely, the educated youths avoid her, and the original heroine, Meng Qiuya, looks at her like a pawn destined to rot.

The first thing Lin Wantang does when she wakes up is neither clear her name nor play the victim.

In front of the Lu family, she settles the accounts. She admits to taking the eggs, but won’t accept the false accusations they’re throwing at her.

She knows a bad reputation isn’t erased by crying. It takes meals, accounts, and actions, one step at a time, to turn things around.

So she fires up the stove, sets up a stall, tracks her costs, and negotiates meal contracts, turning the cabbage and potatoes no one at home wants into snacks that draw a line of customers in town.

Liu Yumei expected her to lose money, but soon she was collecting the payments faster than anyone. Zhao Guilan was once afraid Lin Wantang would take the household register and run away, but later she personally handed it to her so she could sign the meal-service contract.

Meng Qiuya knows how the book is supposed to go, too. She isn’t stupid, and she doesn’t rush to show her hand.

She gives away eggs, makes connections with the canteen, and uses other people to take credit, trying at every turn to climb on Lin Wantang’s reputation.

But Lin Wantang refuses to flip the table.

She lets her opponent hold on to that good-person image, then lays out the price of the eggs, the ingredients for the trial meals, and the canteen’s inspection results, piece by piece, for everyone to see.