Destined

Liu Yuru spends years hoping to marry the scholarly Ye Shi'an but is instead forced into marriage with wealthy Yangzhou playboy Gu Jiusi after an escalating social misunderstanding. Gu Jiusi is also unwilling to marry her and initially assumes she is interested in the Gu family's wealth.

Liu Yuru likewise expects that marriage to a respectable man can secure her future but unexpectedly becomes the wife of notorious playboy Gu Jiusi. Gu Jiusi believes she deliberately maneuvered herself into the wealthy Gu family and initially rejects the marriage.

After realizing how precarious her marriage leaves her position, Liu Yuru abandons her carefully maintained image of perfect gentility. She takes a blade to Chunfeng Tower, forces her way into Gu Jiusi's room and insists that he return home and begin taking responsibility for his life.

Liu Yuru similarly goes armed to the brothel after Gu Jiusi's continued avoidance of their marriage and forcibly retrieves him, marking a major shift in how she deals with both her husband and her own circumstances.

Early in the marriage, Gu Jiusi tells Liu Yuru that she can manage money, learn to support herself and eventually separate from him if either of them finds someone they genuinely love. His unconventional proposal shocks her because he treats financial independence as a possible route out of dependence on marriage.

Gu Jiusi likewise initially proposes ending the unwanted marriage and gives Liu Yuru room to develop her own abilities, while Liu Yuru increasingly realizes that relying entirely on marriage or a husband cannot provide secure control over her life.

After marrying into the Gu family, Liu Yuru learns commerce and gradually develops into an exceptionally successful merchant. Her economic ability eventually expands far beyond household management, and the novel's official synopsis describes her rise from a sheltered merchant's daughter to a woman of immense commercial influence.

Liu Yuru studies business under her mother-in-law Jiang Rou, learns to manage the Gu family's affairs, establishes her own commercial ventures and later organizes trade and public-welfare activity on a much broader scale.

Gu Jiusi begins as a genuinely irresponsible wealthy young man known for gambling, fighting and avoiding serious study. Marriage, loss and the worsening political situation force him to change. He eventually develops into a capable official and rises to the highest levels of government.

Gu Jiusi begins as Yangzhou's notorious rich playboy. Liu Yuru pressures him to stop wasting his life and study, while later family catastrophe and exposure to refugees deepen his sense of responsibility. He starts government service at a low level and eventually becomes a senior official and left chancellor.

The marriage begins with disappointment, misunderstanding and discussion of eventual separation. Through repeated acts of trust and mutual protection, Liu Yuru and Gu Jiusi become emotionally committed spouses whose personal, commercial and political lives remain closely connected.

The drama likewise develops the couple from hostile newlyweds into affectionate partners. They support one another through business, study, flight from Yangzhou, public service and political danger, eventually functioning as a coordinated partnership rather than an accidental marriage.

The Gu family's wealth and position collapse when regional political disorder reaches Yangzhou. The family becomes a target during Wang Shanquan's rise, forcing Liu Yuru and Gu Jiusi out of the protected world in which their marriage began.

Wang Shanquan seizes control of Yangzhou and turns violently on leading families, including the Gus. Gu properties are attacked and burned, relatives and friends are killed, and Liu Yuru and Gu Jiusi are forced to flee toward Youzhou.

After the Gu family disaster, Liu Yuru, Gu Jiusi and surviving members of their circle escape Yangzhou and seek a new beginning in Youzhou. The move changes the geographic, economic and political center of the novel.

After surviving Wang Shanquan's assault, Liu Yuru and Gu Jiusi escape the devastated Yangzhou region and eventually reach Youzhou, where the Gu family must rebuild without its former position and wealth.

After the protagonists' world expands beyond their own household, Gu Jiusi and Liu Yuru use the resources available to them for the survival and stability of a wider community. Their willingness to sacrifice wealth after the family catastrophe is an important stage in the novel's movement from personal survival toward public responsibility.

In Youzhou, the Gu family relinquishes its remaining fortune to help purchase grain and strengthen the region during crisis. The decision marks a break from Gu Jiusi's earlier life of inherited luxury and places the family's resources in service of collective survival.

Gu Jiusi's later prominence is earned through a long public career rather than inherited directly from his family's wealth. His trajectory eventually carries him from the displaced Gu heir into major administrative and political responsibility.

After reaching Youzhou, Gu Jiusi obtains a low-ranking yamen position and works through local cases and administration before becoming a county magistrate and later moving into central government, fiscal administration and eventually the chancellorship.

The novel begins inside merchant and marriage politics in Yangzhou but expands into regional war, regime change, government finance, river control, succession conflict and the rebuilding of a fractured state.

The drama likewise moves from Liu Yuru and Gu Jiusi's marriage and merchant household into Wang Shanquan's rebellion, Youzhou administration, warfare, state finances, the Yellow River, Fan Xuan and Fan Yu's reigns, and the struggle over Dongdu.

After Fan Yu agrees to abdicate, Gu Jiusi leads officials outside Dongdu and confronts Zhou Gaolang's approaching army. Gu Jiusi, Zhou Ye and Ye Shi'an persuade Zhou Gaolang to dismount, disarm and enter the capital peacefully rather than allow another destructive battle. Zhou Gaolang becomes ruler and later leaves the next generation of government to Zhou Ye and Gu Jiusi.

After Luo Zishang's coup is defeated and Fan Yu relinquishes the throne, Gu Jiusi leads officials outside Dongdu carrying the succession documents. He convinces Zhou Gaolang to enter peacefully rather than sack the capital. Zhou Gaolang assumes power and later makes Zhou Ye his successor while Gu Jiusi and Ye Shi'an become senior ministers.