Li Yuzhen lived to the age of fifty-six, certain she'd never wronged anyone in the Shen family.
Her husband died young from an injury at work, leaving her to run a mending stall in the family compound and raise five children. She gave the job opening to her third child, covered her fourth child's gambling debts, scrimped and saved to put her fifth child through college, and endured her mother-in-law's constant torment. Back then, she had forced her eldest to divorce, thinking she was saving her daughter from a living hell. Little did she know her eldest would resent her for the rest of her life.
At long last, the old house was demolished and she received two million yuan. She kept none of it, splitting every last cent among her children, hoping only to enjoy a peaceful old age.
But during a blizzard on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, her eldest, third, and fourth children drank and played finger-guessing games in the main house. Her second child had been out of contact for years, and her fifth was far away in the south. Unable to bear the cold in the side room, she went to knock on their door. Her fourth child deliberately turned the television up to full volume, drowning out her knocking. She staggered back, fell on the snowy steps, and never got up again. Only as she died did she see the truth: she'd raised a nest of ungrateful leeches.
Reborn in the twelfth lunar month of 1987, on the morning her husband had an accident on the road, she knows he can still be saved, her second child is still around, and there's still time to set things right.
Li Yuzhen swears that in this life she won't be a self-sacrificing good woman. She'll save her husband, sell the job opening, and cut ties with her family. The point is, nobody gets to suck her dry.
Once life starts getting better, she realizes that when she stops indulging those troublesome children, she ends up getting rich without even trying.
