Groveling to win her back, then reduced to ashes and scattered + heroine shines on her own + infrastructure-building fanatic.
After accidentally activating trade with another world, Su Nian transmigrated to ancient times and saved a prince who was about to starve to death in the Cold Palace.
She made a fortune trading goods between the two worlds.
She also found a new calling: making sure the people of this ancient world had enough to eat.
The down-and-out prince, trampled underfoot by others, hated seeing the people suffer just as much as she did.
She cured his illness and helped him become crown prince. After seven years fighting side by side, they went from partners to husband and wife.
She thought they would always have only each other, until his beloved first love returned from an enemy kingdom.
“I’m going to take her as a secondary consort and give her a child. A Nian, she won’t threaten your position.”
He thought having another woman bear a child for the infertile crown princess was a generous favor.
He never knew that he was the one who couldn’t have children.
This man seemed to have forgotten that without her, he was nothing.
Now she was going to take it all back.
Cut production, limit supply, lock down technology: she halted all the research she had been doing for his country.
She stopped developing papermaking, improving concrete formulas, breeding high-yield crops, and supplying medicine.
After he finally swallowed his pride over these decisions and restored things to how they had been, Su Nian sent him a divorce agreement.
He thought she was fighting for status. He told her not to do something she would regret.
He clearly had no idea what he had lost.
He had lost the destiny of his Great Liang empire.
And Su Nian learned a lesson from all this.
Investing in a man brings nothing but trouble; building a career takes no shortcuts.
She would develop her own power, and carve out a place for herself even in an era of rigid class divisions where it was exceptionally hard for a woman to stand on her own.
