Shu Qingyao spent her final days battling late-stage breast cancer, regretting that she had met her husband, Xie Hezhang, too late in life. Their relationship had begun as a contract marriage after she discovered she was pregnant with triplets following a brief encounter, but it had blossomed into a deep, loving partnership over five years. Xie Hezhang, who had secretly admired her since he was twenty-five, devoted himself entirely to her and their children. After Shu Qingyao died, Xie Hezhang was unable to cope with the loss. He visited her grave daily, eventually drinking himself to death in front of her tombstone while wearing the jade pendant she had left him. As his tears and blood mixed with the pendant, Shu Qingyao’s soul was transported back in time to 1976, when she was eighteen years old.
Upon waking, Shu Qingyao found herself in her childhood home, greeted by her living mother and her brother, Shu Chi, who had just returned from the army. Realizing she had been given a second chance, she resolved to avoid her first husband, Jiang Xun, and his treacherous best friend, Ruan Wenhui, who had betrayed her in her previous life. Determined to find Xie Hezhang earlier and prevent the tragedies that had plagued his youth, Shu Qingyao volunteered to go down to the countryside as an educated youth. She traveled to Helian Village, where she learned that Xie Hezhang was a seventeen-year-old orphan living with his abusive aunt and mentally impaired younger sister, Xie Xiaoqian. Unlike the gentle man she remembered, the young Xie Hezhang was fierce, guarded, and ostracized by the village due to his family’s landlord background.
Shu Qingyao immediately began her efforts to reconnect with him. She offered him food and gifts, but he remained cold and distant, assuming she was another city girl interested in him for superficial reasons. Meanwhile, she discovered that the jade pendant allowed her to bring items from her future dreams into the present, as evidenced when she accidentally manifested a bag of apples from a supermarket dream. She used these resources to improve her living conditions and help those around her, including treating the other educated youths to meat buns after taking sick leave due to exhaustion from farm work.
Her path crossed with Xie Hezhang’s family when she visited Secretary Wang to apply for a teaching position. There, she witnessed Xie Helan abusing Xie Xiaoqian. Xie Hezhang intervened violently to protect his sister, revealing the deep trauma and hostility he harbored toward his relatives. Shu Qingyao realized that in her previous life, Xie Xiaoqian had died after jumping into a well to escape being sold into a marriage with a fool, an event that had driven Xie Hezhang to commit a crime and serve time in labor camp. Armed with this knowledge, Shu Qingyao was determined to alter their fate. She secured a job as a music teacher at the local elementary school, giving her a stable position and more time to approach Xie Hezhang. Despite his initial rejection and suspicion, she persisted, hoping to heal his wounds and build the family she had lost, while simultaneously thwarting the schemes of Ruan Wenhui and Jiang Xun who were also present in the village.
