Qin Hui Yin wakes up inside a novel—and in the body of a doomed side character.
Her mother is the village’s famous beauty: a pretty widow on her second marriage, and already preparing for a third. The second wedding gives Qin Hui Yin a stepbrother fated to become the story’s villain. The third wedding is even worse—because the male lead becomes her stepbrother too, along with a cannon-fodder stepsister and stepbrother destined to die young.
And Qin Hui Yin’s mother? Cannon fodder herself, cheerfully bouncing around in front of the two boys every day, completely unaware they’ve already imagined a hundred different ways for her to die. Qin Hui Yin only wants one thing: to live. So she makes a decision—she’ll cling to the male lead, and she’ll cling to the villain as well. Work both angles, and surely she can latch onto a real powerhouse.
Except both the “future hero” and the “future villain” are commoner-born, stubborn, and impossibly hard to raise. Keeping them alive, fed, and on track nearly costs Qin Hui Yin her own life.
Years later, she’s pulled off the impossible: the villain and the male lead are healthy, well-fed, and thriving, and the step-siblings who were supposed to die young are still alive. Mission accomplished. Fortune secured. As the richest woman in the realm, Qin Hui Yin is ready to bow out, hide her achievements, and find herself a handsome ancient guy to marry into her family—then live at the very top.
Only… every matchmaker in the capital has shut their doors.
Fine. She’ll throw money at it. She’ll throw money at it until it opens.
But in the middle of the night, someone slips into her room, loosens his robe, and asks softly, “Isn’t it enough that I’m the one marrying in?”