In her previous life, Ye Qiutang was hounded so relentlessly about getting married that her scalp went numb. After transmigrating, she was ten years younger, but people were still hounding her to marry.
A poor farmer's daughter, she was unloved by both parents, and her marriage prospects were a sorry lot. Every match was either a fool or an old bachelor.
Ye Qiutang was at her wit's end.
Then she noticed the down-on-his-luck illegitimate son her cousin's family looked down on. His father had lost out in the official world and returned to the countryside with his whole family. No one paid them any attention.
Ye Qiutang used a little cunning and successfully married into the family.
Everyone hoped her marriage would bring their family up in the world.
The day after the wedding, her mother-in-law insisted on splitting up the family, and they were turned out of the house to live in a decrepit old home.
On the third day, her father-in-law kicked the bucket. Her husband had to observe three years of mourning, leaving Ye Qiutang to live as a widow in all but name.
Wonderful. Besides "poor," she had now earned the labels "bad luck" and "a jinx on her family."
An illiterate farm girl who brought bad luck, and an abandoned illegitimate son who couldn't do a lick of work or tell the five grains apart: their little household looked doomed.
But Ye Qiutang didn't think so.
She looked at their supposedly decrepit old home. Its brick house was far better than those crumbling thatched huts, and she thought they had plenty to look forward to.
Then she looked at her useless husband, the abandoned son. In the morning, he went hunting in the mountains. At noon, he planted rice in the fields. At night, he sat quietly by lamplight and copied books.
Ye Qiutang: Ah, so the overachiever was right beside me all along.
Theme: Work hard for a better life.
