[Historical romance + Farming and food + Spirit pearl golden finger + Blessed child + Coastal foraging in a waterside town + Reversal from desperate straits + Not saintly]
Jiang Suisui is the real daughter recently brought back to the Anyang Marquis household.
Before she has even settled in, the fake daughter knocks her unconscious, ties her up, and sinks her into the Grand Canal with a slab of bluestone.
The instant she sinks beneath the water, memories from her previous life as a master of state banquets surge back, and the merfolk spirit pearl inside her awakens with a roar.
Not only can she breathe freely underwater, she can also condense life-giving spirit liquid!
Swimming back along the river to her dilapidated family home, she is heartbroken to discover that her only beloved nephew, two-year-old Jiang Luxi, is being held down in a slop bucket by his wicked aunt and is barely alive.
Jiang Suisui smiles.
Her smile is soft and cold.
She kicks the wicked aunt away, and after the spirit liquid enters his body, the sickly, mute blessed child loses his fever that very night. The next day, he opens his amber eyes and calls out in a babyish voice, "Aunt... Auntie."
From then on, a pair of aunt and nephew relying on each other make their home in the waterside town.
By day, Jiang Suisui dives for the finest river delicacies. At night, she refines spirit liquid to strengthen the blessed child's bones and muscles.
Golden-thread silverfish, brocade sturgeon, jade-green crab roe pastries, lotus-leaf pearl porridge...
One dish after another takes her from a rundown tavern in town to the private banquets of a retired chief minister.
The marquis household in the capital expects her to starve to death in the countryside.
Instead, the words "Food God of the Waterside" spread along both banks of the Grand Canal.
The fake daughter panics and sends people to cut off her food supply.
But she doesn't know that the cold-faced man who comes to squat by Jiang Suisui's stove every evening, waiting for a meal, is Ninth Imperial Uncle Pei Yanzhou, who commands every army in the realm.
And the blessed child she has raised to be chubby and rosy-cheeked, with two little rice-grain teeth showing whenever he smiles...
His bloodline is that of the last surviving branch of the former imperial family.
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