The Matriarch Returns from Decades in the Future, and the Whole Household Goes Mad

[Reborn for revenge + household intrigue + no forgiveness + a battle of wits between two old foxes] Song Jinyao, the family matriarch, died a humiliating death in her previous life. When she was forty, her husband faked his death and started a little family with his first love. Told that a widowed mother could never manage the household alone, she gave in to her sons’ urging and divided the family fortune. She spent her entire life devoting herself to her sons. At sixty, she learned the truth about her husband’s fake death and discovered that her sons had been accomplices. Furious, she fell ill and became mentally impaired. After her last bit of value had been wrung out of her, those ungrateful wretches drove her from the manor, and she froze to death in the snow.

Reborn in the ancestral hall, she finds herself at the very moment her husband has faked his death and her sons are pressuring her to split the family fortune. Song Jinyao sneers. Her dear eldest son, Mother’s back!

This time, everything will be different! Her faithless husband faked his death? Fine. Then he can stop breathing for good. Her second son resents her for refusing to let his brothel sweetheart into the family? Fine, she’ll find a new match for his wife. He said it would be great if his father’s mistress were his real mother? Fine, she’ll grant his wish and drive him out to sleep on the streets. Her third son masterminded the whole plot? Good. Let’s see how his mother makes him suffer the consequences. Her fourth son is a fence-sitter? No problem. This time, Mother doesn’t want you. Fall whichever way you please!

She throws the lot of them out. No matter how desperately they beg, she will never forgive them. Then she returns to the capital with her daughter, stepson, and intellectually disabled youngest son. She becomes an imperial merchant, earns a noble title, and reopens the Song family’s wrongful conviction case. She believes she can win glory for herself even without her husband or those ungrateful sons.

The capital is rife with intrigue, and dynasties rise and fall. Just as Song Jinyao is in the thick of her revenge, she never expected to encounter an old fox with a mind full of schemes. And somehow, she just can’t shake him off.