I Married the Wrong Man in a ’70s Novel, So I Farm and Face-Slap the Heroine

[Book Transmigration] + [Rural Life in the 1970s] + [Face-Slapping the Female Lead] + [Snatching Up Her Benefactors] + [Stoic, Devoted Heroine’s Love Interest]

The first thing Jiang Luxi hears when she opens her eyes is a suona playing. She’s transmigrated into a novel set in the 1970s, as the cannon-fodder cousin who “voluntarily gives the female lead her engagement and eventually starves to death in the hills.” The original heroine, Jiang Yunyun, is a master of fake sweetness. She steals Luxi’s fiancé, the military officer Gu Yanzhou, and marries into his army family compound, where she rides a winning streak to success. Meanwhile, the Jiang family marries Luxi off to Shen Jianshan, the poorest farmhand in the brigade, a taciturn country bumpkin who spends his days working the fields and barely says more than ten words.

According to the original plot, Luxi should now cry, make a scene, try to hang herself, then be condemned by the entire village and end up in misery. Jiang Luxi runs through the plot in her head and gives a cold laugh. That military officer is a scumbag who’s guaranteed to cheat later, so Jiang Yunyun can have him. The real treasure is the farmhand right in front of her: a bit of background in the original novel mentions that the barren slope behind Shen Jianshan’s home hides the richest humus in the entire mountain region. She turns the soil, makes compost, raises seedlings, and sells dried vegetables, medicinal herbs, and pickled goods. While the heroine waits for the officer to get promoted and a raise, Luxi quietly makes money hand over fist in the countryside. Brigade commendations, the front page of the county paper, and praise from the commune secretary: she gets them all. The “benefactors” who were supposed to help the heroine in the original novel? She snatches every last one of them first.

Shen Jianshan stands behind her with a hoe over his shoulder, watching his wife appear in the paper again. After struggling to get the words out, he finally says, “I’ll stew a chicken tonight. Make sure you eat plenty.”