Summary

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Song Yanyan is a young girl from a poor farming family in a village at the foot of Mount Qi. After falling and remaining unconscious for three days, she awakens with the memories of a previous life, having lived through the tragic death of her entire family in a past dream. In that vision, her family was slaughtered by hidden guards after they took in a girl named Luo Jinyu, who was revealed to be the true daughter of a noble Princess. Luo Jinyu, having been switched at birth, used her time with the Song family to fabricate stories of abuse, leading to her family's execution upon her return to nobility. Determined to prevent this catastrophe, Song Yanyan resolves to protect her family from the disaster that Luo Jinyu represents.

Shortly after Song Yanyan wakes, her mother brings home the unconscious Luo Jinyu, who claims to have escaped human traffickers. Song Yanyan, unable to move initially, watches in horror as her mother shows compassion for the girl. Realizing the danger, Song Yanyan fabricates a story about a dream in which a white-bearded Daoist warned that Luo Jinyu has a fate too grand for their poor household to bear. When Luo Jinyu confirms her surname is Luo, Song Yanyan’s mother believes the prophecy and decides to send the girl away to avoid bringing ruin upon them. Luo Jinyu, disguised as a humble servant, is escorted to the county town by Song Yanyan’s eldest brother, where she is taken in by the wife of a county registrar, effectively removing her from the Song family’s immediate vicinity.

With Luo Jinyu gone, Song Yanyan turns her attention to preventing other tragedies foreseen in her dream. She discovers that her eldest sister-in-law, Qi Lian, is nearly two months pregnant, a pregnancy that in the previous timeline ended in miscarriage due to a cursed talisman. Song Yanyan ensures Qi Lian receives proper medical care and avoids the sorceress who would have sold the harmful talisman. Simultaneously, she intervenes in her second brother’s romantic entanglement with a girl named Cuihong, exposing the disrespect shown by the Zhai family and helping him realize the imbalance in the relationship. These actions stabilize the family’s immediate future and secure the well-being of her siblings.

Seeking to improve the family’s financial situation, Song Yanyan ventures into the mountains to gather firewood. There, she encounters Li Qiyi, a young man injured and unconscious, who is the son of a high-ranking official. Unlike Luo Jinyu, who would have saved him for romantic gain, Song Yanyan treats him pragmatically. She bandages his wound, provides food, and explicitly asks for silver in return for her help. Li Qiyi, impressed by her directness and honesty, gives her a significant amount of silver. Song Yanyan returns home with the wealth, which her mother uses to plan a small business venture for the spring, providing the family with a new source of income.

Later, Song Yanyan and her mother encounter Luo Jinyu in the county town market. Luo Jinyu, now living comfortably as the registrar’s goddaughter, attempts to reconnect with the Song family, using the dream narrative to enhance her own mystique. Song Yanyan plays along politely but internally hopes that Luo Jinyu remains firmly attached to her new, wealthy patrons. The encounter reinforces Song Yanyan’s resolve to keep Luo Jinyu at a distance. As the story progresses, Song Yanyan continues to navigate her new reality, using her foresight to secure her family’s safety and prosperity while avoiding the fate that befell them in her previous life.

Novel Items

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Money
Money spent on Song Yanyan's medicine over three days. It was all the family had saved up over the years, causing Qi Lian to complain about their financial situation.
Pills
A type of medicine available in Mermaid Village's ancestral hall, exchangeable for contribution points. Used for treating illnesses.
Items
Two copper hairpins bought by Tian Denghua at the market. She could not bear to wear them herself and gave one to Song Yanyan and the other to Luo Jinyu, showing the family's kindness despite their poverty.
Item
A bowl of porridge with a poached egg that Ling Yu brought to Ye Wuyou after she woke from her nap. She had not eaten much all day.
Talisman
A magical talisman sold by a sorceress on South Mountain. When burned to ashes and mixed with water, it was drunk by Qi Lian in the dream timeline to help her conceive. However, after drinking it, Qi Lian suffered severe abdominal pain and lost her nearly two-month pregnancy after being tripped by escaped chickens.
Item
A heavy straw raincoat fetched by Qi Lian for Luo Jinyu to wear against the cold when being escorted to the county town the next day.
Latest Release
DateGroupRelease
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c10
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c9
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c8
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c7
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c6
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c5
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c4
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c3
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c2
2026-08-11shanghai fantasy c1

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Popular reviews

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Let's talk about stakes, because this text understands them better than most novels I've read. Song Yanyan isn't saving the world. She's not preventing a war or uncovering a conspiracy. She's a poor girl in a poor family who finds a rich guy in the mountains and negotiates for silver. And yet—the tension is real. Why? Because the author makes us understand exactly what that silver means. Her sister-in-law is pregnant. Her third brother needs tuition. They nearly spent everything on medicine for Song Yanyan last time. The fields need tending in spring. Every detail the author drops about their poverty compounds the stakes until that single piece of broken silver feels like a lifeline. The conflict isn't external danger—it's the constant, grinding pressure of scarcity. And Song Yanyan's decision to ask for money directly, to not play the noble sacrifice game, is itself an act of courage. She could have been shy. She could have accepted vague promises. Instead she says: give me silver. And when Li Qiyi offers it all, she deliberately takes less. That's not greed—that's strategy. She's building a relationship, not extracting a one-time payment. The market scene where she counts her coins one by one? That's the payoff of the entire conflict arc. Two hundred and thirty-seven coins. Her name for herself: Little Song, the Rich Lady. The stakes were always this small, and that's what makes them matter.
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The setting in this novel is so vividly rendered I feel like I could step into it. Let me just list some of the images that stuck with me: 'The yellow mud on the walls still exposed straw, and even the table was missing a corner.' This one sentence tells us everything about the Song family's poverty. We don't need a paragraph explaining their financial situation—we see it in the walls and the table. That's masterful showing, not telling. The snow is a recurring atmospheric element. It starts with 'the snow outside has almost stopped,' and then Tian Denghua is 'trudging away, her steps uneven in the snow.' The snow creates isolation, danger, a sense that the world is holding its breath. When Song Yueping gets stuck in the snow for three days, it's not just a plot device—it's the environment itself becoming an obstacle, a force that tests the characters. Zhaoyou Village at the foot of Qi Mountain. The county town. Shuiwang Gully. South Mountain with its sorceress. Doctor Ding's small courtyard. These locations feel real because they're grounded in specific, sensory detail. The hunter with the limp walking out of the doctor's courtyard. The woodshed where Song Yueping slept. The hidden mountain hollow where Song Yanyan and Luo Jinyu would later encounter the injured young man. And that fur-collared coat on Song Yanyan—'gray and fluffy, looking incredibly warm. It made the young girl Song Yanyan appear even more charming.' This detail matters because it shows the contrast between Yanyan's outward appearance (a delicate, well-dressed little girl) and her inner reality (a strategist with trauma and secrets). The worldbuilding serves the character work here, and that's when you know an author really knows what they're doing.
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Okay so let me just say this upfront: the way this plot unfolds is genuinely clever. Song Yanyan pretends Luo Jinyu is some noble lady with a 'fate-pattern of great wealth and honor' to the whole family, but then immediately tells her mother the TRUTH—that Luo Jinyu is a jinx who will bring ruin. The double-dealing is fascinating because it shows Yanyan is already playing a long game. She's not just reacting; she's manipulating the situation from both sides. The plot structure here is built on dramatic irony—we know Yanyan has 'dream life' memories, so every decision she makes is layered with hidden meaning. When she stops Qi Lian from going to the sorceress, when she insists on checking Qi Lian's pulse at the doctor's, when she notices the hunter with the limp and starts thinking about that mountain hollow encounter... the plot is threading multiple subplots together like a loom. The Zhai Cuihong subplot with Song Yueping is also getting set up nicely, and I'm curious how that intersects with the main conflict. But here's my real question: how long can Yanyan keep up this act of being the innocent little girl while secretly orchestrating everything? The tension comes from watching her walk that tightrope. And I'm also wondering about Luo Jinyu—she's clearly not as dumb as she seems. She 'swallowed back the words' about staying at the Song house, she noticed their poverty immediately. What's her endgame? The plot feels like it's building toward a collision between these two girls, and I can't wait to see how it plays out.
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Let's talk about what's actually at stake here, because on the surface this looks like a cozy family drama but underneath it's a survival story. Song Yanyan has remembered a future where her entire family was massacred. She knows about the hidden guards sent by the Princess. She watched her second brother die holding a courtyard gate. She saw her sister-in-law's first pregnancy end in a pool of blood from talisman ash and a fall. And she's actively trying to prevent all of it by making small changes—sending Luo Jinyu away, intercepting the rescue of Li Qiyi, steering her family away from disaster. But here's the thing that keeps me up at night: every time she changes something, the timeline shifts. Li Qiyi wakes up earlier because of the fire. That's a butterfly effect she can't fully control. What if saving him instead of Luo Jinyu changes something else entirely? What if the assistant's wife taking Luo Jinyu in isn't the safe outcome she thinks it is? The jailer being thrown into prison around New Year's—that detail from her dream is still unresolved, and now Luo Jinyu is connected to that household in a completely different way. The stakes are personal and immediate. Song Yueping's life is on the line in her memories, and right now he's making the same foolish choices that led to his death. Song Yanyan can't just tell him to stop—he won't listen. She has to work around him, using Qi Lian as a mirror to make him see how little the Zhai family values him. That's clever, but it's also desperate. And Li Qiyi—this injured young man, son of a high-ranking official—is someone she's pulling into her family's orbit who has zero reason to trust her. She bandaged his leg with temporary strips and wild herbs. He's conscious now, in pain, and looking at her with questions she can't fully answer. The tension here isn't just about whether she can save him—it's about what happens when he starts asking who she is and why she was in the mountains alone.
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Eggs keep showing up in this section and I think they're doing more work than the author probably intends. First there's the boiled eggs Tian Denghua boils for Qi Lian—nourishment, protection, the mother's instinct to preserve life. Then the egg custard, silky and precious, offered with sesame oil and scallions like a ritual of care. And then Song Yanyan peeling her own boiled egg while Qi Lian asks about the baby's gender, and Song Yanyan's hand pauses because she remembers the pool of blood from her dream—the pregnancy that ended in death. The egg becomes a symbol of both new life and lost life, and Song Yanyan is literally holding both possibilities in her hands at the same time. Fire is the other big one. Song Yanyan builds a fire this time—something she didn't do in her original dream. The fire changes everything: it warms the injured man, it makes him wake up earlier, it alters the entire timeline. Fire as agency. Fire as the tool of someone who refuses to accept the script fate wrote for them. And then there's the woodshed. Song Yueping sleeping in the cold woodshed while the girl he loves complains about the stove not being repaired. It's a symbol of how unreciprocated devotion looks from the outside—cold, uncomfortable, invisible. Qi Lian's outrage at the idea of her own husband being treated that way shows how perspective changes when you're not the one drowning in infatuation. The woodshed is also where the family's hidden tensions live—everyone pretends it's fine because they haven't been officially engaged, but the physical reality of a young man sleeping in freezing conditions while his beloved doesn't care speaks louder than any conversation. The mountain hollow itself feels symbolic too. It's hidden, secluded, a place outside the normal social order where fate can be intercepted. Song Yanyan goes there deliberately, with preparation and purpose, unlike her dream self who stumbled into it by accident chasing a rabbit with Luo Jinyu. She's not a passenger in her own story anymore.
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The dialogue in this opening is sharp and each character has a distinct voice, which is impressive for a first chapter. Qi Lian's lines immediately paint her as practical and slightly sharp-tongued—'We can't just watch Little Sister stay unconscious like this and do nothing! And don't you dare say this in front of Mother'—you can hear her exact tone, that mix of frustration and fear. She's not a villain, she's just a sister-in-law worried about money and survival, which makes her more human. But Luo Jinyu's dialogue is where the author really shows her skill. Every word she speaks is calculated performance. 'Kind Auntie, thank you for saving me'—the kowtowing, the trembling voice, the fabricated story about escaping human traffickers. And then the masterstroke: 'I couldn't help but think of my own mother… Unfortunately, she passed away from illness.' This is weaponized vulnerability. She's not just lying—she's reading the room in real-time and deploying exactly the right emotional trigger. The fact that Tian Denghua almost says 'poor child' shows how effective it is. Song Yanyan's internal monologue is hilarious and relatable though. Her thoughts like 'This wretched girl doesn't have a single word of truth in her mouth!' and 'Ha! She talks a good game now, but if my mother really believes her, she'll just be waiting to be liquidated later!' give us this wonderful modern voice cutting through the historical setting. The contrast between her internal snark and her external weakness (she can barely speak) creates constant tension. Tian Denghua's dialogue is warm and earthy—'I told you to be steady and careful, but you wouldn't listen!'—she sounds like a real mother, scolding out of love and fear. The author never lets any character sound like a plot device.
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