The Understudy Strikes Back: I Strike It Rich During the Famine

Fang Xia opened her eyes and found herself as the original wife, Song Fang, a doomed side character in an old-fashioned farming novel. A living hell from the start: her wicked mother-in-law, Madam Song Xu, dumped her and her three children in a ramshackle hut on a barren mountain, leaving them only half a sack of moldy grain husks. Her scholar husband, Song Wenyan, had gone to the capital to sit the exams a year ago and hadn’t sent so much as a letter. Worse still, Fang Xia knew that within a year, one disaster after another would sweep across the entire Great Yu Dynasty. Just as Fang Xia was despairing, she unexpectedly activated the “666” Conversion Shop System! With the System at her fingertips, Fang Xia planned every penny carefully: buying new bowls and tools, stocking up on coarse flour, and snapping up discounted salt. The money in the System could really turn into copper coins in her palm. She and her three children foraged for wild greens and picked wild fruit. Life was hard, but with the System on her side, she had hope. Raising three well-behaved kids was hard enough. Winter was approaching, her wicked mother-in-law was watching her like a hawk… and her sister-in-law Madam Wang’s cousin had long been eyeing Fang Xia’s “refined and scholarly” husband. Fang Xia sneered. Whether he was alive or dead was none of her concern! She could build a life for herself. Still… if that bargain-basement husband really did come back… he’d better behave, or else! With the System at her fingertips, she could teach him how to be a decent person all over again. Fang Xia had a clear goal: to keep herself and her three children alive through the famine, and to live well while doing it. As for that bargain-basement husband, he could come back or not, as he pleased. But if he did return… the family could use a “bookkeeper” and “full-time dad” anyway. And those fluttering beauties? One showed up, one got dealt with! With the System on her side, why should she fear a scheming green tea? As the first tempting curl of cooking smoke rose from the ramshackle hut on the barren mountain, Fang Xia knew her food-hoarding plans and survival stronghold were only just getting started…