when MC and ML went back to the village and saw how old 2nd brother-in-law has become, it made me really hate his wife for being so selfish, he was a really good guy

Eldest son, he is the smartest one but followed his father's path and enter to the military school. He is very much like his father.

Second son, he is also smart and enter the politic. He is the most gentle and handsome one.

Third son, he is smart talking and have flower mouth. He's the closest one with FL and become a businessman.

Youngest daughter, she is late born. There's not much descriptions about her. She is the princess of the family. ML doted on her very much so in the end FL throw her out into the army in feared that her daughter became a spoiled woman and developed a bad personality.

[I don't think the ML had even 50 sentences across the whole 700 something chapters. He was like a 2D role with almost no contribution. Another thing I don't grasp is why is the author talking about the boys can just roll but girls are precious? I feel they could be equally talked or could have kept the general ideology of that period.

from the start she keeps saying how she won't marry in the capital. But when WY pursue her she didn't say no outright. Why is she acting as if she is being forced to date him? If she doesn't want to say no I don't like you or tell LQH how I don't want to interact with him but instead she keeps moaning in front of him about how they cannot date because of the difference in their status that means you want to, you are just playing hard to get. Plus the author keeps praising her to the sky as if she became successful on her own she didn't she relied on LQH and she is nothing special. I feel the only reason WY is interested in her is that she is the cheap knockoff version of LQH

What I classify as the "second half" is after the MC, ML, and their family move to the capitol. There's definitely less focus on the relationships and more focus on making money and setting up businesses, but I didn't mind that in the beginning.

Then, the cousins started coming over. This cousin, that cousin, new godsons, cousins of the godson, neighbors, etc. I'm not sure how many other characters there were in the end because I lost track but I would say there were almost 10, and every single one came over to the capitol and the novel went over their relationships and marriages. The MC and the ML (and their 3 kids) went from the main focus of the novel to just a few in a cast of dozens. They basically became background characters, especially the ML, who became something of a one-note character towards the end.

Of course, with such a big cast, it's hard to go into detail about anything, so even if the novel dragged on to 700 chapters, things became more summarized towards the second half. I couldn't even tell some the cousins apart because their names and personalities were so similar, the only thing different was when they came over and who they got married to. I think maybe the author or the translator had the same difficulties, because there were definitely more than a few name mix-ups, some of which were caught and fixed by the translator and some that weren't.

Collecting gold and jade in the first half when those items were still forbidden. The MC took a lot of risk (for the era) to obtain gold and such from the black market and other sources (random people, like wtf??) at a time when these things were strictly forbidden and could get her reported. She did this with the thought that when the economy opened up, she could sell these things to make a fortune.

However, none of that ever really came in handy in the future, she and the ML made plenty of money via businesses and land purchases without having to sell those or the rare stamps that she collected. So there was absolutely no point to her taking such s*upid risks to gather the gold. In hindsight it was a waste of time both in and out of the novel.

• The ML's mom. This mother-in-law is understandably worried about MC's spending habits in the beginning, because she's used to the original owner of the body that didn't give a sh*t about the kids and let them starve while spending money on herself. But after it's made clear that the MC is different and spends money on her husband and kids, the mother-in-law decides she won't nag about this anymore. Except she does. Again. And again. And again. Even long after the families are separate, when it's been over 15 years and the MC hasn't gone broke yet, this mother-in-law constantly nags and frets about the MC's spending. Like, shut up about it, please!
• The ML and his daughter-fetish. Like, okay, in the beginning he has three sons and no daughter, so he would like a daughter. After some time, he finds out that this would be impossible for the MC and resigns himself to this. But he still wants a daughter. Then they get in their thirties and he realizes pregnancy would be too hard on the MC at this age and decides life is okay with no daughter. But then he wants a daughter. It was super annoying, because the topic would die down for 100 chapters and then come back again, like a boomerang.
• The antagonist characters, the majority of which are women, by the way. Scheming, selfish, and sexually active women (i.e. rat shit, according to the upstanding characters in the novel). It takes forever to get rid of one because no one in this family ever bothers to communicate with other members of the family to warn them about unsavory people. Then they come back chapters later for no reason except to extend the chapter count. One of them even gets reborn like in the last stretch of the novel and gets memories from the original novel's timeline, but there's really no point in that because it changes nothing for the MC, ML, or even that character herself.
  
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I think some of them turned into prostit**es which I found jarring ig the author thinks being a s*x worker is demeaning

"Wife, I'm coming. It's dark underneath, I'll accompany you, do not be afraid"