A Goose’s Daily Feasts

[Ensemble cast + System + subverting expectations + healing + farming + feel-good power fantasy]

Five-year-old Song Da'e has only one hobby: eating.

She lies in the filthy ditch at the village entrance, scooping up tadpoles to eat as “black sesame tangyuan,” and activates a merit system. The System’s original intention is to get her to do good deeds and earn merit, but in Da'e’s eyes, “doing good” is more or less the same as “getting candy.”

So...

Help a lonely old soldier drive off wild boars? Sure! Reward: four eggs.

Share food with hungry friends? Sure! Reward: six fruit candies.

System: [Host, put down that tadpole! It’s a baby frog!]

Da'e tosses the tadpole aside and reaches her muddy chubby hand toward the little monk’s shiny head on the System’s screen. “Then will you give me something to eat?”

System: [...Reward: one White Rabbit Creamy Candy. Host, please stop trying to eat the System.]

From then on, Da'e and her sidekick Niba rule Liu Family Village in the 1980s. Her lazy father is “forced” to become the king of scrap, Aunt Cui the widow starts a sewing workshop, her second aunt is caught stealing grain, and Li Dazui’s precious Jinbao is brought completely to heel. The System is horrified to discover that this little girl has turned “boundless merit” into “the whole village’s favorite.”

Doing good doesn’t always have to be all gloom and hardship.

Sometimes, all it takes is a piece of candy.

Da'e savors the White Rabbit Creamy Candy she bought with merit. Its milky sweetness mixes with the smell of mud, and she narrows her eyes in delight.