The down-on-his-luck man who suddenly gains a golden finger and turns his life around; the cheating movie star who accuses others first; the young man who returned to the city and never came back; the rural scholar who won a commandery princess's heart; the little emperor who kills the horse once it has carried him over the mill; the ruthless rich son-in-law turned CEO...
In all kinds of stories, married male leads of different personalities often have an unattainable white moonlight, or a later red rose they fall for. And what about the plain, aging wife at home?
According to these men, she was always a scheming, malicious woman who had bullied them with her power, taken advantage of their vulnerability, and used every trick in the book to marry into the family.
So once they had achieved success, their "aging wives," who were no longer useful to them, became obstacles to their pursuit of true love.
Kicking them aside would count as "having a conscience." More often, the men would splash one basin of filth after another over their original wives, determined to ruin their reputations and make everyone curse them.
That way, the male leads could hold their latest true loves in their arms, calmly watch flowers bloom and fade, and smile as clouds drifted across the sky.
And it was often not only these husbands, who turned on their wives without mercy, who brought their original wives to such tragic ends. Their fathers, variously honest and simple, easily swayed, poor judges of character, or greedy for wealth and status, also helped push them toward disaster...
But what if these fathers-in-law, who had once helped bring about the original wives' tragic fates, suddenly rose to power?
With fathers who could turn the clouds with one hand and the rain with the other, and who spoiled their daughters without limit, how long could those scumbag men keep strutting around?
Theme: A critique of infidelity and treating marriage as a game.
