An Old Salted Fish

Lin Xiaohui is done playing by everyone else's rules. Past her prime, still single, and burned out from dead-end jobs in finance, offices, and rural temp work, she takes a low-paid teaching gig in her sleepy hometown. But when she aces the civil service exam, something shifts—she enters full-on 'confrontation mode.' Why should she bend over backward for a system that never rewarded her hustle? Everyone's living their first life, after all. Now she's determined to be the ultimate salted fish: lazy, unbothered, and living on her own terms—with dreams and goals that matter only to her.