Okay, let's talk about what's actually at risk here because I think the author is setting something up that's going to hit hard. On the surface, the conflict seems simple: Yu Banxia vs. Xu Xiucai and his mother. She rejects him, they get mad, they plot revenge. Classic. But the stakes are way more layered than that. First, there's the immediate threat — Xu Xiucai literally says 'I'll make your life a living hell!' and his mother agrees. These people are not going to let this go. They've been using Yu Banxia for two years and she just cut them off. Their pride is wounded, their wallet is empty, and they're desperate. The marriage contract scheme is their weapon. If they get her to agree to a verbal contract, they can extract money from her family and then abandon her. But here's what makes me actually worried — Yu Banxia knows they're scheming. She sneezed and immediately thought 'It must be that mother and son pair up to no good.' So she's not walking into this blind. The question is whether her awareness is enough. She's preparing a wheelchair to use as leverage against Master Qian's family, but that's only ONE front. What if Xu Xiucai attacks her from another angle? What if he spreads rumors? What if he goes after her family instead? The stakes aren't just about Yu Banxia anymore. They're about her whole household — her sister, her nephew Fusheng, her aunt and uncle. Fusheng's dream of going to school, of passing the imperial exams at twelve — that's all connected to Yu Banxia's success. If she fails, the whole family stays trapped. And there's this underlying tension about her past life. We know she was foolish before. We know she threatened suicide to make her sister become a concubine. The fact that she's changed doesn't mean the old patterns can't resurface, especially under pressure. The Master Qian situation is still hanging over her head. She told her sister she'd resolve it 'as soon as possible,' but we haven't seen that resolution yet. That's a ticking clock. Every chapter that passes without her dealing with it, the stakes get higher. And then there's the physical danger element. This is a rural setting in what seems like a historical period. A disgraced scholar with connections to the examination system could cause real problems for a peasant family. 'If Xu Xiucai ever passes the imperial exams in the future, the Yu family might be in trouble.' That line from the villagers isn't just background chatter — it's a genuine threat assessment. The author is building tension on multiple fronts simultaneously, and the fact that Yu Banxia is calmly sketching wheelchair designs while all of this is happening makes me think she's planning something big. She's not panicking. She's preparing. And that's scarier for the antagonists than any reaction she could have had.