After I Set Up a Soup Stall, the Prison Clerk Started Visiting Every Day

[Farming, running a small shop, uncovering the truth]

Su Wanha's grandmother left her two things: a small courtyard and a handwritten recipe book.

Her aunt pressured her to marry, hoping to seize the courtyard. Su Wanha tossed the property deeds down in front of everyone and drove her out. Then she set up a stall at the mouth of the lane. Bamboo shoot and tofu soup, smoked plum drink, chestnut chicken soup, and warming radish and beef bone broth: five coins a bowl, selling only hot soup the neighbors could afford.

But the moment she put out those bowls of soup, trouble followed. Someone moved in across the street to keep an eye on her. Fusheng Restaurant sent its accountant to buy her recipes. Someone at the local government office even filed a complaint claiming her well water was contaminated. Gu Yan, a clerk in the office's criminal division, came to buy soup every day, too.

Gu Yan said, “Before Chen the peddler died, he drank soup exactly like this.”

A family recipe book for soup brought a ten-year-old case to light. Everyone had their eyes on her recipes.

Why had her grandmother suddenly taken her out of the city in the middle of the night all those years ago? And why had she never dared return, right up until her death? What secret lay behind it all?