Feng Mian, a wealthy modern businesswoman, wakes up in the body of an eighteen-year-old orphan girl in 1970s rural China after a series of strange events involving a mysterious phone that connects to an underworld shopping app. The original Feng Mian had been abandoned by her father, Yu Zhou, and raised by her maternal grandparents until her mother died. After her grandfather broke his leg, the family's dynamics shifted, and she was eventually forced to live alone in a dilapidated thatched cottage. Upon arriving in this new reality, Feng Mian discovers she can order modern goods through the app and transport them to her current location. She immediately improves her living conditions, buying warm bedding, a stove, and food, while also liquidating her modern assets to fund her new life.
Her primary conflict begins when her scumbag father, Yu Zhou, contacts her through the village telephone, claiming he wants to reconnect and raise her. Feng Mian dismisses him, recognizing his motives are likely financial. Simultaneously, her maternal aunt, Zhao Hui, and cousin, Feng Xiaomei, attempt to steal her arranged engagement to a wealthy but dim-witted local youth, intending for the cousin to take her place. Feng Mian outsmarts them by agreeing to cancel the engagement in exchange for fifty yuan, a sum that leaves her family embarrassed but secures her financial independence.
To protect herself from village harassment by an old bachelor named Feng Gang and to secure a companion for her lonely life, Feng Mian agrees to a marriage proposal arranged by a local matchmaker. The candidate is Gu Yuelin, a twenty-three-year-old man raised by a cruel stepmother who treats him as a servant. Gu Yuelin, a high school graduate and former soldier, is seeking to escape his abusive home by becoming a live-in son-in-law. Feng Mian recognizes his intelligence and potential, proposing a business-like partnership: she provides him with a home and the necessary bride price items, and in return, he offers his labor and companionship without emotional expectations. Gu Yuelin accepts, and the two begin to navigate their new life together, with Feng Mian planning to use her modern knowledge and the underworld app to build a prosperous future in the coming years of economic reform.
