The day she transmigrated into a tragic novel as a doomed supporting character, the news of her fiancé’s death spread through the village.
Li Qingyuan knew the original story by heart:
The fake heiress who had taken her place would try to eliminate her for good.
She would lure Li Qingyuan to Qingzhou to retrieve the body, then send assassins to kill her on a mountain road.
And her sixteen-year-old brother-in-law, Gu Yanzhi,
would survive by sheer luck, only to be groomed by the fake heiress into a weapon at court and eventually sentenced to death.
To escape this deadly fate, she pretended to faint in front of everyone to avoid the trip, then firmly stopped the boy from rushing into danger:
“I was engaged to your brother. From now on, I call the shots in the Gu family.”
No one knew where her confidence came from.
The three-story building she had lived in had transmigrated with her.
Its drawers full of gold and silver jewelry were her first means of staying alive in desperate circumstances.
But she had no intention of living off her savings.
With her rudimentary knowledge of traditional medicine and a little chemistry, she improved bamboo charcoal and worked out the right blends of mugwort and mint.
She made mosquito-repellent charcoal sachets and moisture-proof herbal pouches that every household needed, then brought the village women into the business.
Every copper coin they saved went toward Gu Yanzhi’s tuition at the academy and his travel expenses for the examinations.
She would raise a pillar of support at court with her own hands, someone who could protect her and secure her peace for life.
The fake heiress’s spies came snooping time and again, and rumors closed in from every direction, but she held them all back with one line of defense after another.
She calculated every scheme, evaded every attempt on her life, and proceeded cautiously, never making a mistake.
There was only one thing she failed to account for: the human heart.
The boy she had pulled out of the mire at sixteen and sent back to the academy
had long since ground the bond between sister-in-law and brother-in-law to dust, amid years of looking up to her and relying on her.
He spent half his life studying by a cold window before rising to the pinnacle of power.
He gave every ounce of strength and devotion he had, from beginning to end, to protect her alone.
