"Zhou Nian, a homeroom teacher at a private school, was jolted awake at three in the morning by over a hundred frantic calls from a student's mother, Zhang Lan. The woman had a suffocating grip on her daughter, Li Zixin—she'd installed a surveillance camera in the classroom to monitor the girl in real time, made her time every bathroom break with a stopwatch, and even demanded remote photo verification every time the girl had her period. Li Zixin had been reduced to a marionette, every move choreographed by her mother's timetable, every breath measured as if it were being audited.
When Zhou Nian tried to protect this girl who had been bent to the breaking point, she incurred Zhang Lan's wrath. Zhang Lan, colluding with her husband Li Zhi—a chauffeur masquerading as a tycoon—used their fabricated status to pressure the school into firing Zhou Nian. Pushed past her limit, Zhou Nian laid her cards on the table: she herself was the real tycoon's wife. Power and influence could flatten a lie, she found, but the
