Episode Summary
After being kicked out by her greedy brother-in-law, Chu Shaohua is pushed to her limits. She systematically dismantles her family's attempts to control her, culminating in a brilliant scheme to turn the tables on a matchmaker. Using her sharp business mind, she leverages a small amount of money into a massive enterprise, cornering the entire regional market for the herb Aster and setting herself up for a major victory against those who wronged her.
Spoiler Alert
Wild Ambition Bloom Episode 9: A Masterclass in Revenge
This episode was all about Chu Shaohua proving she is not someone to mess with. After being thrown out of her home, she starts laying the groundwork for her comeback, and it is brilliant to watch.
Kicked Out and Starting Over
So, the episode kicks off on a pretty grim note. Shaohua's husband and father-in-law are dead. They died trying to save people from the plague, which is heroic. But her brother-in-law, Chen Ershun, is anything but.He immediately seizes the family pharmacy and all their money.Then he kicks Shaohua, her daughter, his own wife Song Ping, and his mother Mrs. Chen out of the house. He sends them packing back to their old hometown of Qizhou.
Life in Qizhou is rough. Shaohua’s own sister-in-law, Caifeng, tells her to just give up and marry some rich old guy. Shaohua flat-out refuses. She has a little money her late husband left her, and she plans to stand on her own two feet.
Making things worse is her mother-in-law, Mrs. Chen. Ershun gave her a stack of cash before they left, but she pretends to be broke. She feeds herself and Shaohua's daughter the good food while making Shaohua and Song Ping eat coarse grains. Song Ping, who isn't used to this life, complains to Shaohua and accidentally reveals that Mrs. Chen is hiding money.
A Glimmer of a Plan
Shaohua tries to borrow money from Mrs. Chen to start her own pharmacy. Mrs. Chen doesn't just say no; she forbids Shaohua from even leaving the house. It’s a dead end.
Later, Shaohua passes a pharmacy called Chichun Tang. This place was her family's ancestral business before her brother was tricked into selling it to pay off debts. Inside, she sees a man named Yi Dajin bullying herb farmers. He's trying to force down the price of Aster, a medicinal root. The farmers are desperate because a big harvest means the major pharmacies are all working together to lowball them.
Shaohua steps in. She asks Yi Dajin to give the farmers a fair price. He gets nasty, insults her, and physically throws her out of the shop. Right then, Shaohua vows she will get Chichun Tang back. You can see the fire in her eyes.
Turning the Tables on a Bad Idea
Just when you think things can't get more insulting, Caifeng sets up a marriage meeting for Shaohua. The guy is a Mr. Zeng, and he's thirty years older than her. Shaohua agrees to meet him, which seems odd at first.
Here’s where it gets good. Mr. Zeng offers a bride price of fifty silver dollars. Shaohua tells him a fortune teller said she’s cursed and all her husbands die. Then she pivots. She says her "cousin" is available and would only cost him twenty silver dollars. Mr. Zeng, loving the bargain, agrees immediately. Shaohua tells him to keep it a secret from the matchmaker.
On the day of the meeting, Caifeng has cooked a huge feast and is all dressed up. Mr. Zeng arrives and assumes she is the cousin Shaohua promised him. He gets handsy, and Caifeng finally realizes she’s been played. She storms off to confront Shaohua, who gives her a hard slap and warns her to never try something like that again. It’s a brutal, satisfying moment.
Cornering the Market
After seeing the fight, Mrs. Chen realizes Shaohua will never remarry. She still refuses to lend her any money, though. So, Shaohua takes matters into her own hands. She pawns the jewelry her husband gave her, getting twenty-five silver dollars.
She goes straight to the desperate herb farmers and starts buying their Aster for a fair price. But she doesn't stop there.
This is her genius move.
- She buys a thousand pounds of Aster.
- She takes the bill of lading to a bank and gets a loan of 150 dollars against her inventory.
- She uses that loan to put a deposit on four thousand more pounds of Aster.
- She takes the new bill of lading to another bank and gets a loan for 500 dollars.
- She uses that to order fifteen thousand more pounds.
She keeps repeating this process, leveraging each purchase to finance the next one.
The Final Showdown
Eventually, the local bank owners figure it out while playing mahjong. They realize this one woman has been taking out loans all over town for the same product. They show up together to confront her as she's trying to secure her biggest loan yet.
They demand their money back. Shaohua doesn't even flinch. She points out that she did nothing illegal. If they break their loan contracts, they will owe her a penalty fee. Besides, she's already given all the money to the farmers. She confidently tells them the price of Aster is about to skyrocket.
Her confidence works. The bankers, realizing she's right, convince the last bank manager to give her the loan. With it, Shaohua buys up every last pound of Aster in the region—over 170,000 pounds of it.
The episode ends as the Qizhou medicine market opens. There is no Aster for sale anywhere. Yi Dajin, the man who threw her out of her ancestral pharmacy, comes to her begging to buy. He offers a low price. She refuses. He is forced to offer a much higher price, and the episode cuts with Shaohua holding all the cards.
