[No romance, business, period setting, strong heroine]
Shen Yuewei worked herself to the bone for half her life, building everything from scratch, until she finally died of exhaustion.
As she closed her eyes, her greatest regret wasn't the hardship she'd endured, but the helplessness she'd been swept into by fate at the age of eighteen.
She opened her eyes and found herself back in 1988.
She was still the eighteen-year-old country girl whose family was about to force her into marriage.
Her family was so poor they could barely feed themselves. Her parents planned to marry her off to a notorious wife-beating thug in the village, using her bride price to save for her younger brother's wedding.
Outsiders said the Shen parents were cruel, but Shen Yuewei knew the truth.
Her mother had never been a bad person.
She'd simply been trapped by the conventions of her time and worn down by life, losing her backbone. Cowardly and ignorant her whole life, she could only follow the old family ways.
On the day she left, her mother secretly slipped her five yuan she'd saved for a long time, behind her father's back.
“Yuewei, your mom is useless... Things are just too hard at home. You should... you should put up with it for the rest of your life.”
In her previous life, softhearted Shen Yuewei watched her mother cry and ultimately nodded, accepting her fate.
One disastrous marriage ruined her entire life.
Given another chance, she looked at her tearful mother and said:
“Mom, I won't put up with this in this life. My life is mine to decide.”
Years later, standing at the pinnacle of the global economy, someone asked her:
“What have you sought in this life?”
Shen Qingyan gazed down over the vast land beneath her:
“I seek neither a good match nor a peaceful life.
I only want to seize the pulse of the times, change the fates of countless women, and build a clear sky for business.”
