The Neighbor’s Childhood Bride Makes It on Her Own

Jiang Xinxia was reborn as the daughter of a humble carpenter. With only her and her younger brother left in the cold rain and wind, they had no roof over their heads or place to call home, and people were hunting them down. How could things get any worse? What was she supposed to do? A tree dies if it stays put, but people can survive by moving. Whatever lay ahead, she’d just have to run toward it! But the moment she arrived in the capital, she found out that the grandson of an “old friend” needed a bride to bring him good luck, and her birth date was apparently a perfect match. This… Fine. At least she’d have a roof over her head. Jiang Xinxia decided to accept her “new identity” for the time being. Wasn’t the capital supposed to be dazzling and prosperous? Why was everything so shabby? There were nothing but low mud huts, crude tools, and food that was impossible to swallow… Just as Jiang Xinxia was congratulating herself on being trained in architecture and renovation, and thus able to repair houses and build streets, her fiancé, brought back to life by her “good luck,” wailed that he was determined to break free from his family’s generations-long life as craftsmen and pursue the bright road of the imperial examinations. Fine. You take the broad road, and I’ll take my… craftsman’s path. Starting with a handful of mud and a single brick, she built thatched huts and repaired homes. From three-post and five-purlin structures to courtyard houses and palaces, wherever she was needed, she stepped in. One-dou-three-sheng, one-dou-two-sheng, interlocking hemp-leaf joints; hard-gable, hip-and-gable, and four-slope roofs; the trickier the better, complete with five ridges and six beasts, immortals riding beasts… Before she knew it, she had earned a government position and become a civil servant in the Ministry of Works. Meanwhile, what did that former little husband, who was still on the imperial examination path, make of the ten years he’d worked so hard? Yu Changling was consumed with regret. If only he’d known, he never would have let that stinking man next door steal his wife. Someone: Are you sure you’d dare steal her? No matter how bad the surroundings or how hard life gets, don’t blame heaven or others. Keep striving and build a better life. That’s Jiang Xinxia’s life motto.