One day, Shen Tang transmigrates into the body of the unluckiest farm girl in Qingshui Village, in the Great Liang dynasty.
Her father has broken his leg and lies unconscious. Her mother is timid, and her younger siblings are starving. Her biased grandmother takes the chance to force the second branch of the family to split off. The eldest branch grabs the grain, fields, and decent house, leaving them only a leaky thatched hut, half a sack of moldy brown rice, and an iron pot with a chipped rim.
The whole village is waiting to laugh at them.
But no one knows that in her previous life, Shen Tang was the owner of a small restaurant chain who knew all about calculating costs, perfecting braising sauces, and making snacks.
While everyone else thinks pig offal is filthy, smelly, and worthless, she cleans it, removes the odor, and simmers it with spices over a low flame. The aroma from her first batch of braised food wafts halfway across the village. The next day, she takes her broken pot to the town to set up a stall. A small bowl costs one copper coin, and for three coins you can add rice. Dockworkers and farmers in town for market day line up to buy it.
From pig offal to braised tofu, from brown rice to hot noodle soup, from a tiny stall to Shen’s Snack Shop, she feeds her whole family with her braised dishes and makes everyone who looked down on her green with envy.
Greedy relatives try to steal her recipes, a restaurant owner tries to squeeze her out of business, and clan elders use filial piety to force her to hand over her workshop. Shen Tang is determined to show them all that a farm girl can support a family, and a woman can be her own boss.
What she never expected was that the quiet man she happened to save wasn’t an ordinary refugee.
He has lost his memory and is badly injured, yet he can read account books, understands weapons, and knows how to protect her family. He also listens only to her. It’s not until people from the prince’s manor come looking for him that she learns Zhou Yan, who carried water, chopped wood, guarded her stall, and watched over the door, is actually the Great Liang prince who was framed and disappeared.
Shen Tang smiles faintly. “I saved Zhou Yan, not a prince. And the prosperity I want has never depended on anyone else.”
