From the Start, Exiled to Liaodong, I Made Old Zhu Green with Envy

Chen Jiu'an transmigrates to the Ming Dynasty and becomes Zhu Bai, the twelfth prince, whom Zhu Yuanzhang kicked off to the borderlands to “experience life.”

From the start, he has nothing but a battered cooking pot and a rusty saber. Before him lie bitter cold temperatures of minus thirty degrees and a group of gaunt, starving garrison veterans who can do nothing but chew tree bark.

Everyone at court is betting that the pampered prince will come crying back to Jinling to beg for food within three months.

But when heavy snow seals off the mountains and all life falls still, a mouthwatering aroma drifts from Zhu Bai's tent!

Turning waste into treasure: bitter, hard-to-swallow acorn flour? In his hands, it becomes springy, silky “immortal acorn tofu”!

Wilderness hunter: wild boars and black bears no one dares provoke? To him, they're all walking protein!

Hardcore infrastructure: nothing but muddy roads and tattered tents? Build heated kang beds and greenhouses, then raise concrete fortresses!

While the other frontier princes are still fretting over supplies, Zhu Bai's Liaodong garrison already enjoys “meat at every meal and fine grain every day”!

He's even built the Ming Dynasty's first military ration factory!

The fabled “Liaodong Red Sausage” bursts with juice at the first bite, its aroma carrying for miles;

The “Great Ming Luncheon Meat” packed in tin cans becomes the soldiers' lifesaving secret weapon as they sweep across the northern steppes;

And “Marching Instant Noodles,” ready after a soak in hot water, satisfy the homesick appetites of countless border guards!

Three years later, Zhu Yuanzhang tours the northern frontier, ready to see whether his good-for-nothing son has wasted away from hunger.

But the moment Old Zhu crosses into Liaodong, he loses his composure:

“I sent you here to suffer on the frontier, and you're having barbecue three times a day?!”