Wicked Mother’s Rebirth: The Rough Man of the Seventies Wants to Kill Me

Gu Wenshu, a successful supermarket general manager from the twenty-first century, dies in a plane crash and transmigrates into the body of a woman with the same name in the resource-scarce China of the 1970s. The original host was a despised figure known for being gluttonous, lazy, and vicious. She had a deceased husband, Li Xiuran, who was a soldier, and two young children, Sanbao and Xiaoni. Upon waking, Gu Wenshu is being beaten by her mother-in-law, Granny Li, and her sister-in-law, Chen Hongzhen. Flooded with the original owner's memories, she learns that the women had planned to sell her and the children to a remote village. However, the original owner had secretly sold the children first to prevent this, only to be discovered and beaten to death. Gu Wenshu, driven by an overwhelming maternal instinct that feels both inherited and her own, fights back against her abusers. She uses a carrying pole to strike Granny Li and Chen Hongzhen, drawing the attention of the villagers. She accuses the women of selling the children, shifting the blame effectively while the crowd sympathizes with her apparent desperation.

Just as the situation escalates, Li Xiuran returns home alive. He had survived a secret mission injury and had been missing for months. He arrives carrying his two children, whom he had rescued from human traffickers. Li Xiuran reveals that he witnessed his wife selling the children, believing her to be heartless. His initial reaction is one of murderous intent toward Gu Wenshu, whom he perceives as a threat to his children's safety. However, seeing the children's attachment to her and her gentle behavior toward them, he restrains his anger. He confronts his mother and sister-in-law, exposing their role in arranging the trafficking through Chen Hongzhen's relatives. The traffickers have been arrested by the Public Security Bureau. Li Xiuran announces his intention to divorce Gu Wenshu and take custody of the children, but she refuses, arguing that the children need their mother and that she will not leave them.

The conflict shifts to a family division. Li Xiuran, discharged from the army due to his injuries, demands to split the household to protect his family from the greed of his parents and siblings. Granny Li refuses to give up control and offers only five yuan for the separation. Gu Wenshu counters by revealing the family's hidden assets. She produces a box containing over five hundred yuan in cash and a savings passbook with two thousand five hundred yuan, funds that Granny Li had embezzled from Li Xiuran's military pension and allowances sent over ten years. Gu Wenshu also exposes that Granny Li had received a thousand-yuan pension for Li Xiuran's injury and was hiding it. Under pressure from the village elders, particularly Seventh Uncle, Granny Li is forced to hand over the passbook. The family division is finalized, with Gu Wenshu and Li Xiuran receiving fifteen hundred yuan and the room they currently occupy, which Old Mr. Li must buy for one hundred yuan to prevent its demolition.

After the division, tensions remain high. Granny Li attempts to starve the new household by locking the food cupboards, but Gu Wenshu slaughters the family's egg-laying hens to feed her children. She threatens Granny Li with a knife when the older woman tries to steal the chicken soup, asserting her dominance and ensuring her family eats. Li Xiuran, observing Gu Wenshu's transformation from a timid victim to a fierce protector, begins to reconsider his view of her. He has found a blue-brick house in the nearby town of Cunwei for them to move into. The story concludes with Gu Wenshu securing her and her children's independence from the predatory Li family, while Li Xiuran starts to see her not as the cruel woman he thought he knew, but as a capable partner willing to fight for their survival.