Okay so I need to talk about Su Jinxiu because this woman is absolutely unhinged and I cannot stop thinking about her. Let me start with this line: "My daughter... You always said Mom Wanqing was a hundred times better than me. Then let your wonderful mother pay back all these debts for you." CHILLS. Actual chills. This is a mother who has been completely erased from her own life—her husband stole her company, her home, her identity—and instead of crumbling, she becomes something far more terrifying. She doesn't just take her money back. She weaponizes her children's own laziness and privilege against them. Zhao Shiyu never changed her PIN in thirty-two years. Zhao Zixuan didn't even have a computer password. And Su Jinxiu? She knows every single one because she helped them set them up. That's the most devastating detail in the entire passage. This woman raised them, and now she's using every intimate detail of their lives as tools for revenge. What breaks my heart is that there's no real family left here. Zhao Shiyu called Liu Wanqing "Mom Wanqing" like it was nothing. Zhao Zixuan lives in a pigsty and never calls home. Su Jinxiu is completely alone, standing in her old kitchen cooking her ex-husband's favorite meals one last time, and the reader is supposed to root for her anyway. Which is wild because she IS the protagonist, but god help me I felt a pang of something for those kids too, even as she drained their accounts. The emotional complexity here is insane.
