Transmigrated as a Farmer's Daughter Starting with a Kitchen Knife to Straighten Out the Whole Family

Wen Ye, a twenty-three-year-old commercial tycoon’s daughter from the twenty-first century, dies after choking on water and transmigrates into the body of a thirteen-year-old village girl in the Great Qi dynasty. She awakens in a dilapidated thatched hut, realizing she has entered a melodramatic novel titled The Scheming Young Master’s Absolute Pampering of the Pretty Maid. In this story, her family belongs to the third branch of the Wen clan, destined to serve as cannon fodder to facilitate the romance between the novel’s heroine, Wen Liyue, and the male lead. The original plot dictates that Wen Ye’s elder cousin, Wen Lan, will be sold to a sixty-year-old wealthy man as his eighteenth concubine, leading to a series of tragedies that ultimately result in the death of Wen Ye’s entire family. Upon waking, Wen Ye finds her grandmother, Old Madam Wen, actively negotiating the sale of Wen Lan to secure twenty taels of silver, which is intended to fund the education of the eldest branch’s son, Wen Chengwen.

Refusing to accept her fate as a disposable background character, Wen Ye violently intervenes. She physically assaults Steward Liu from the Liu household and threatens Old Madam Wen with a hatchet, forcing the cancellation of the betrothal. Her aggressive behavior shocks her timid mother, Madam Lin, and her gentle father, Wen Laosan, as well as her kind-hearted sister, Wen Lan. Wen Ye reveals her awareness of the novel’s plot, recognizing Wen Liyue as the heroine whose presence signals the beginning of the original story’s events. By disrupting the marriage arrangement, Wen Ye inadvertently causes the dismissal of the second branch’s family from their employment at the Liu household, severing the connection between the heroine and the male lead’s family. This action destabilizes the original narrative, causing Wen Liyue to feel a strange sense of loss as her destined role is thwarted.

The conflict escalates as the extended family demands compensation for the injuries Wen Ye inflicted. Wen Ye leverages the fact that the family remains undivided, arguing that all assets belong to the matriarch and thus should be used to pay for the damages. She threatens to expose the family’s scheme to sell a niece for tuition fees to the authorities, which would ruin the scholarly prospects of Wen Chengwen and Wen Chengwu. Faced with this blackmail and the villagers’ disapproval, the family is forced to negotiate. Wen Ye demands a formal separation of the household, seeking independence from the oppressive clan structure that has exploited the third branch for sixteen years.

After a period of tension, Old Madam Wen agrees to the split, albeit with conditions that leave the third branch with minimal resources: one mu of poor farmland and no share of the family’s silver or property. The separation is scheduled for ten days later, pending the return of the eldest grandsons to sign the documents. During this waiting period, Wen Ye takes charge of her family’s livelihood. She identifies an opportunity in embroidery, introducing modern cartoon designs to differentiate their products from the traditional patterns sold by the local workshop. Simultaneously, she secures temporary housing in abandoned huts belonging to a neighbor, Aunt Guihua, providing her family with a safe space away from the main household’s hostility. The chapter concludes with the third branch preparing to establish their independence, while the rest of the family plots to undermine the agreement before the official separation is finalized.