Xu Zhi Tao was reborn, and when she opened her eyes, there was a key in her pocket.
She turned it, and a dingy little space appeared: a few bags of salt, a bolt of blue cloth, and a box of fever medicine.
In her previous life, her own mother had drugged her with a bowl of brown sugar water and married her off to the Wang family.
This time? She poured the brown sugar water down the drain.
She looked down at her hands: eighteen years old, without a single callus. On the table beside her sat a bowl of brown sugar water. She picked it up and sniffed it. In her previous life, one sip had been enough to make her pass out.
She poured it out.
In her pocket was a rusty key, the only thing she had brought back with her. It opened a dingy little space: a few bags of salt, a bolt of blue cloth, and a box of fever medicine.
In this life, she would break off the engagement, earn money, get her grandfather treated, and live in a way she had never dared to dream of in her previous life.
Her mother tried to force her into marriage? She used the bride price to break off the engagement, without keeping a single cent. Her younger sister tried to steal her money? She slapped her and said, “Earn your own tuition.” The villagers gossiped? She stood outside the supply and marketing cooperative and said, “I earn money with my skills, not through connections.”
From boiling her first batch of soap to making “Tao’s Household Products Factory” a famous provincial brand, Xu Zhi Tao spent ten years on the journey.
Ten years later, standing on the awards platform beneath a blaze of camera flashes, she thought of the flickering light in the hospital corridor from her previous life.
She didn’t cry. She smiled and said, “My name is Xu Zhi Tao. Ten years ago, I was just a country girl being forced into marriage. I still am.”
But this time, she calls the shots.
