[Dream of the Red Chamber] My Mother Is Still Alive

Synopsis: If my mom were still alive, she'd be in charge of running the household, managing the finances, building a social network, and crushing the competition. I'd be in charge of eating, drinking, writing stories, and ranking the Twelve Beauties of Jinling. Also known as: The Years I Spent Editing for the Twelve Beauties of Jinling in Dream of the Red Chamber ** A car accident sent online novelist Zhen Yingying and her mother, Ms. Bai Yurao, CFO of a Fortune Global 500 company, transmigrating into the world of Dream of the Red Chamber. They became little Yingchun and her doomed-to-die-young concubine mother, Aunt Bai. As soon as Jia She’s principal wife passed away, Aunt Bai immediately talked Jia She into signing an alliance with her and was elevated to principal wife. Moreover, Lady Bai received guidance in a dream from Heaven herself, and could sort out the household’s tangled accounts in no time. Little Yingchun: “The Jia family is doomed sooner or later. When the nest is destroyed, no egg remains unbroken. We won’t live long either, because none of the Jia men are any good.” Lady Bai: “If you ask me, they aren’t useless enough. The Jia family backs the Retired Emperor. There’s a consort in the palace, a famously upright gentleman outside it, and a lucky child born with a jade in his mouth at home. They’ve all gotten under the emperor’s skin. How could that end well?” Not long afterward, the upright gentleman Jia Zheng broke his leg in an accident and had no choice but to resign from office and recuperate at home. Then a fashion for wearing jade pendants around one’s neck quietly took off in the capital. The jade merchants said that the jade on Jia Baoyu’s neck had been bought from them by someone acting on Lady Wang’s behalf... Lady Wang was just about to use the family’s official passes to pull strings and have the merchants arrested, when news broke that she had been lending money at exorbitant interest outside the home. From then on, the Jia family’s second branch was utterly disgraced. That wasn’t all. Ms. Bai also started finance classes for the noblewomen of the capital, teaching them about equity restructuring. After several training sessions, the housekeepers and mistresses of half the capital had become her students and close friends. Yingchun returned to her old occupation and began writing popular fiction again. She left romance behind and focused on detective mysteries. The Psychology of Criminals, The Major Crimes Unit, A Forensic Examiner’s Daily Files, 108 Perfect Crimes, and more: she came up with every case at the drop of a hat. She also led the young women of the Red Chamber in choosing pen names, forming writing clubs, launching periodicals, and publishing magazines. To everyone’s surprise, the magazine became a sensation throughout the capital, and the remarkable women who contributed to it found their matches thanks to its pages... Years later, the stern minister of the Court of Judicial Review pinned Yingchun against the bedpost and murmured, “My lady, are you going to abandon your readers again? Hmm?” ** Reader’s Guide 1. The female lead is Yingchun. There is a secondary couple (Daiyu), and they get a fair amount of focus. 2. Some ensemble cast elements. 3. The author thinks the second branch, Baochai, and Xiangyun all have some flaws in their character. They aren’t exactly vilified, but the author dislikes them, so you could call it “mildly critical.” Theme: Hobbies don’t just make you more confident, they can help you find a partner when it matters