Jiang Yangtao was a first-rate baker in her previous life. When she woke up, she had become a cast-off farmer's wife, divorced by her husband. Her mud-brick house leaked on every side, she had not a single coin to her name, and the villagers were waiting to see her starve. She wiped her face and built her first oven out of mud bricks and an earthen stove, baking a pastry the whole town had never seen before: egg tarts.
Even more astonishing, she discovered she could talk to every kind of animal. The old hen became her intelligence adviser, the cat on the wall her dedicated informant, and even the mice helped her gather information. When her ex-husband came to extort money, the mice exposed the gambling debts he'd hidden. When a competitor stole her recipe, she handed over a “secret recipe” that left them baking a whole oven of coal briquettes. Jiang's pastries grew bigger and better, from the town market to famous restaurants and then to a shop in the capital, where she face-slapped everyone who had laughed at her along the way.
Then a young merchant named Shen appeared, stopping by to buy egg tarts every day. He kept buying them, and then he just wouldn't leave. Only later did she learn that the county magistrate's wife was his aunt, and that his father had businesses in the capital.
Everyone thought Young Master Shen had fallen in love with Jiang Yangtao at first sight.
Only the cat on the wall and Jiang Yangtao herself saw through it: He'd fallen in love with the egg tarts at first sight, and happened to take a liking to the woman who made them.
(Wishing all readers a happy time reading!)
