After Binding to a Mountain Goods System, I Made a Small Village Prosper

(Farming + foraging in the mountains + gourmet System + mystery boxes of mountain produce + family squabbles + food entrepreneurship + slow-burn sweet romance + satisfying comeback + rural revitalization)

At twenty-three, Jiang Xiaoman has just been fired from a city restaurant. Her father is in debt, her grandmother favors the other children, and all the family has left is a drafty stove and three mu of barren hillside.

Everyone says she has a hard life, will never find a husband, and can't support her family.

But while picking mushrooms in the mountains, she unexpectedly gets bound to the “Mountain Delicacies Mystery Box System.”

Other people rely on luck in the mountains. She relies on hints.

Other people sell mountain produce by the pound. She turns it into dishes served by the table.

Wild scallions, toon shoots, matsutake, river shrimp, walnuts, winter bamboo shoots, honey, kudzu root powder: she turns them all into signature dishes.

From earning twenty a day, to two hundred, then two thousand.

From a humble stall in a rundown courtyard, to a canteen at the foot of the mountain, then to “Man Shan Bistro,” an online sensation.

Meanwhile, Lu Yanzhou, the famously cold and aloof veteran, comes by every day to chop wood, fix her stove, and bring her fish. Then he asks her with a straight face:

“Jiang Xiaoman, do you need a man who can work, keep accounts, and doesn't waste money?”

Jiang Xiaoman smiles over her pot of mushroom soup:

“I do, but you'll have to get in line. My place is too busy.”