The Courtyard's Substitute Bride: A Young Widow in the 1970s

Xi Qiruo, a delicate, frail regular at the hospital who could barely walk three steps without coughing twice, becomes Xi Qiruo, an orphan in a period novel, strong as an ox and raised to be tough.

The good news: She's still alive.

The bad news: She now has to either get married or go to the countryside.

Her parents are both dead, her family's house has been occupied, and someone else has taken over her household registration. Her paternal uncle wears a kindly face but has a cruel heart, while her grandmother is mean to everyone. They're trying to marry her off to a fool so she can be his lifelong caretaker.

By chance, she comes across a bizarre wedding. Halfway through the ceremony, the bride jilts the groom right there. The groom calmly turns around and gets ready to go back to work, leaving Xi Qiruo wide-eyed with amazement.

Who could have guessed that one moment she was watching the commotion, and the next she was dragged in as a substitute bride, marrying a "middle-aged man" ten years older than her? She moves from a cramped apartment block into a crowded courtyard house.

Older men are great, older men are wonderful. The older man's monthly salary is 150 yuan, and he's too busy with work to spend it. Three people in the family have four rooms to sleep in, with the extra room used as a study.

The courtyard is big, the courtyard is spacious, and the courtyard is full of excitement.

The runaway bride lives right across the hall. Every day she fights her mother-in-law, then her sister-in-law. After doing the laundry, she goes to wash the dishes, constantly running around after her good-for-nothing husband.

To the left, a widow is obsessed with romance, has three pregnancies and seven children like the Calabash Brothers, and would rather let everyone else suffer than herself.

To the right, a widower is a handsome old white-haired man, with generations of experience passed down, leaving everyone amazed.

Xi Qiruo finishes one juicy bit of gossip and moves on to the next. By the time she's done, the gossip turns out to be about her. It turns out she's transmigrated into a period novel.

Blurb 2

Xi Qiruo sells herself for a meal, only to discover that she's just a minor cannon-fodder character who dies early in a period novel. Along with the older man, she becomes part of a cannon-fodder couple. And the main character of the book?

It's the runaway bride across the hall.

In her previous life, Lin Yanni became a young widow not long after marrying into the Fu family. Later, unable to resist temptation, she stole all the Fu family's savings and ran off with her lover. Unfortunately, she trusted the wrong man, and her life ended in misery.

Reborn, she plans to change her fate. She won't marry into the Fu family again. Instead, she'll marry the hooligan across the hall from the Fu family, who had secretly loved her all along and would later become a successful businessman.

And so Lin Yanni begins a life of fighting heaven and earth, battling one awful person after another from start to finish.

As for Xi Qiruo and the older man in the original story, they are simply a pair of unlucky souls who appear in her memories.

One gives her a house, the other gives her money. They provide Lin Yanni and her husband with a place to live after they're driven out of their home, and give them the capital to start a business, helping them rise to success.

Xi Qiruo: How thrilling.

Theme: Treasure the happiness you have