Su Wan, a kind-hearted modern office worker, unexpectedly transmigrates into a book and becomes the wicked stepmother everyone reviles in a war-torn Republican-era setting. The original owner was vain, cruel, and bloodthirsty, and treated her late husband’s four young sons terribly. She forced them to wash clothes in the dead of winter, made them kneel hungry as punishment, and beat and berated them at the slightest provocation. Her reputation was so vile that the entire city knew of it. In the end, amid the chaos of war, she died a gruesome death while the children she had tormented watched, their hearts utterly hardened against her. Her body was never found.
When Su Wan arrives, she inherits this wretched mess. Before her are four scrawny little boys, their eyes numb and wary. The oldest is no more than ten, and the youngest just three. Each is covered in old wounds and fears her like a demon.
The times are turbulent, warlords are at each other’s throats, and the family has fallen on hard times. The neighbors curse her, relatives make things difficult, and rumors cling to her every step. Everyone bets she can’t change her nature, waiting to see her keep tormenting the children and expecting them to die young.
But Su Wan, raised in an age of peace, cannot bear to see children suffer. She turns over a new leaf, sheds her vicious temper, and keeps her tenderness hidden. She scrimps and saves to feed the children, stays up all night caring for them when they fall ill, and shields them from every act of cruelty and every slur. She does everything she can to give the four battered children a small roof over their heads amid the storm-tossed Republic.
From wary distance and disbelief, they slowly come to depend on her, cautiously at first, until their affection becomes unwavering. At last, in the depths of despair, the four neglected and suffering boys find the one light they can hold on to.
War rages across the land, and the times show no mercy. Everyone suffers, but she alone gives them warmth. In this life, she turns from evil to good and, as their stepmother, keeps the four boys safe year after year. Amid the ruins of the Republic, she raises them to a future filled with the purest warmth and sincerity.
