The wicked mother-in-law will not be redeemed; she only torments her scummy children.

At the age of forty, she was already a grandmother, embodying the roles of both a wicked stepmother and a wicked mother-in-law. Naturally, the children raised by such "rotten bamboo" were nothing more than "bad shoots." The only slight consolation was that, as a widow, she no longer had to serve an old man. She lacked the typical "golden fingers" found in transmigration novels; she had no system and no noble lineage. She didn't even have the chance to turn her life around through marriage—as a widow with a whole brood of baggage, who could she possibly marry? She could only rely on herself and the nest of "rotten bamboo" in her home. She had to revitalize the family reputation and straighten out her children's character. She had to treat her stepson, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter with kindness; thwart her youngest son's plan to sell his daughter to a wealthy family to fund his studies, forcing him to rely on his own hard work instead; use a stick to beat her second son out of his laziness and turn him into the pillar of the family; and cure her youngest daughter of her sloth, greed, and obsession with romance. She would reclaim wasteland for farming, using modern scientific knowledge to grow crops and turn saline-alkali soil into fertile farmland, leading her entire family toward prosperity. She would enter business starting from street stalls—selling steamed buns, pastries, and braised dishes, as well as raising pigs and bees—expanding her family's commercial empire bit by bit.