The General’s Love: Embracing You Through Time

Si Cheng is a thirty-two-year-old screenwriter who has spent years rebuilding her life after a painful divorce from her childhood love, Zong Xuze. Just as she decides to marry him, a car accident kills her. She awakens in the body of her thirteen-year-old self on Teacher’s Day in 2003, the day her family’s financial and emotional collapse began. In her previous life, her father’s gambling addiction and her mother’s volatile temper destroyed their marriage, leading to years of abuse directed at Si Cheng. Determined to alter her fate, she races home to prevent the incident that will cost her family their house-buying funds.

Si Cheng arrives at her father’s gambling den and fabricates a crisis, claiming her grandfather has fainted. This ruse successfully drags her father away from the gambling table just before a police raid confiscates the thirty thousand yuan he intended to use for a down payment on a house. In her original timeline, this loss triggered her mother’s relentless resentment, which she vented on Si Cheng through physical abuse and emotional manipulation. By preventing the confiscation, Si Cheng stabilizes the family’s immediate financial situation, though the underlying tensions between her parents remain.

With the family now celebrating the purchase of a four-story self-built house, Si Cheng uses her adult knowledge and skills to improve their livelihood. She introduces new dishes, such as Dong’an chicken and beer duck, to her parents’ night snack stall. These innovations attract a surge of customers, significantly increasing their daily revenue. Her father, pleased with her contributions, gives her money to buy a Walkman for English study and new clothes for herself and her younger brother, Si An. This marks a temporary shift in family dynamics, as her parents’ attention turns to business success rather than conflict.

Si Cheng returns to junior high school with a clear plan: excel academically, improve her English, and build a financial safety net through her writing. She leverages her experience as a screenwriter to submit short stories to magazines, creating anonymous accounts to protect her earnings from her mother. She studies rigorously, using her adult maturity to navigate the crowded, underfunded school environment. Her English teacher notices her dramatic improvement and praises her in class, boosting her confidence and status among peers.

Despite these changes, Si Cheng remains acutely aware of her mother’s psychological fragility. Her mother continues to complain about her own family and the burdens of raising children, projecting her dissatisfaction onto Si Cheng. Si Cheng understands that while she has prevented the initial financial disaster, her mother’s temperament and her father’s gambling tendencies are deep-seated issues. She resolves to become financially independent and academically successful so she can eventually escape the toxic family environment that defined her childhood.

Si Cheng balances her studies with her writing career, submitting stories and reading market trends during her limited free time. She carefully manages her small income, saving money in a bank passbook that her parents do not know about. Her relationship with her brother Si An improves as she guides him away from video games and toward his studies. The story follows her efforts to maintain this fragile peace while preparing for a future where she is no longer a victim of her family’s dysfunction.