The Merchant's Wife: Sugar, Salt, Tea, Cloth, and Sundries

When Jiang Wan opened her eyes again, it was already the third day since her "husband" had been seized for forced labor.

A sick father-in-law, a blind mother-in-law, a timid younger sister-in-law, and a staggering debt of thirty taels.

The creditor came to collect, threatening to take the shop as payment for the debt in half a month.

With no way out, she slung a basket over her back and started peddling goods from village to village...

A hopeless situation? Not necessarily.

Since she was here, she would turn this mess upside down!

She bought brown sugar and red dates, traded them for eggs and dried mushrooms;

She rendered cheap pork fat into crisp, fragrant cracklings...

If it could be bought or sold, she wouldn't let it slip by.

When the half-month deadline arrived, thirty taels of bright silver smacked down on the table.

The creditor tried to cozy up to her?

Jiang Wan glanced over coolly. "I don't do partnerships. I only sell miscellaneous goods."

Medicinal herbs, mountain produce, cured meats, fruit wine...

Her wealth grew like a snowball rolling downhill.

She listened to the boatmen's chants, admired the scenery of the southwest, and tasted ba xia gong, a forerunner of hot pot...

Just as life was starting to flourish, trouble came from her parents' family.

Her blind mother-in-law was the first to grab a broom and refuse to put up with it;

A local gentryman came harassing them?

Her timid sister-in-law picked up a rope and headed straight to the magistrate's office to stage a fall and make a scene...

Who says women belong only by the stove?

She would shoulder her peddler's pole and make her way across the land, carving out a place for herself!

When her storehouses were full of gold and silver, officials and merchants joined forces to obstruct her.

Faced with the combined weight of fame, fortune, and money, she burned her boats and offered a thousand dan of grain to put the dispute to rest!

The most amusing part was that "husband" who came back from being conscripted.

He thought the sky had fallen on his family. Covered in wounds, he hurried home, eager to take charge and support the household!

But then he found that:

His father didn't dote on him, his mother didn't care for him, and the whole family recognized only his wife, not their own son.

She never asked when he would return, and he never spoke of the past.

Two mountains, one family, and the rest of their lives to make up for lost time.

No matter how fierce the storms outside, she held fast to the peddler's scale in her hand.

When she looked back, he had silently shouldered the load and fallen in behind her...

[Content Warnings]

1. One-on-one romance, both leads are each other's only partners, happy ending.

2. The setting is loosely inspired by the Northern Song dynasty, but it is fictional, with original worldbuilding.

3. The golden finger will not be exposed, and the story will gradually eliminate dependence on it.

4. Don't spread rumors! I haven't even decided whether they'll have a boy or a girl, or whether they'll have children at all! Seriously, don't make things up!!!

Blurb for the upcoming novel Lingnan Food Journal:

[Archived 2026/8/9] Cui Linlang, an orphan raised by her entire clan, had played the obedient girl for fifteen years.

And then...

The Cui family fell.

At the very end of the exile list, a line of tiny, crooked writing was squeezed in:

Distant relatives of the Cui clan are to be dealt with as well.

A disaster straight out of nowhere!

She rolled up her bundle, grabbed a cleaver, and strode off to join the exiles.

Just after they left the capital, a man joined their group.

They said he was the grandson of Doctor He An, and that he too was being sent to Lingnan to suffer.

His wrists were as white as peeled sugarcane, and his skin looked so soft you could squeeze water from it. He was the spitting image of a pretty young actor stepping off a theater stage.

Cui Linlang's eyes stuck to him and wouldn't budge.

That night, a field frog hopped onto his bedding. Quick as a flash, she scooped it up with both hands and caught the big frog alive!

Shen Huaijin spoke to them for the first time. "How scandalous!"

The next day, Cui Linlang dug up a huge taro and was about to roast it to go with the grilled frog when he gently stopped her.

"That's elephant ear. It's poisonous."

Her hands shook, and the taro rolled into the mud. She marveled, "Educated people really are different. You even know every kind of plant."

Along the exile route, she led the young and old of her clan through the mountains to forage for wild greens, pick August plums, dig up ambarella fruit, and gather five-finger fig roots...

Somehow, they managed to survive, stumbling along one day at a time!

Of course, the greatest credit went to Shen Huaijin, their personal doctor.

To show her gratitude, she roasted a nest of bamboo caterpillars and cheerfully brought them to him. "Doctor Shen, try one and see if it's poisonous."

He chewed with his eyes closed, then opened them and asked, "...Are there any more?"

She grinned. "Sure! Trade me some mugwort ointment for them! A mountain leech crawled up my leg..."

As he applied the medicine, he held her ankle, his cool breath sweeping over her skin.

Her smile stretched from ear to ear. "Take your time. I'm in no hurry."

The tips of his ears turned scarlet, but he didn't take his hand away.

Lingnan was damp, hot, and plagued by miasma, but Cui Linlang could smell money in the air.

She led her clan in reclaiming the land: planting cassava on the slopes, raising frogs in the lowlands, growing wood ear mushrooms on rotting logs, and trapping mountain stream snails beneath the rocks...

At first, they traded dried goods for salt. Later, traveling merchants came all the way out to find them, trading half a string of cash for a basket of dried wood ear mushrooms.

Three years later, the Cui family opened a food stall.

Sour pickled fruit, guilinggao jelly, cassava balls, sweet drinks...

The clan members filled out, and silver ingots began to pile up in their pockets.

When the imperial decree rehabilitating the family arrived, everyone held their purses full of clinking silver and muttered:

"The capital is too scary. Maybe we shouldn't go back?"

Cui Linlang stood on the hill and turned to ask him, "Are you going back?"

He shook his head. "If I leave, you'll probably poison yourself again. That pot of cassava soup last time, if I'd arrived a moment later, you'd have been dead..."

The air was full of the earthy fragrance of cassava leaves. She smiled, her eyes curving into crescent moons.

Good. They wouldn't go back.

Here they had fields and land, sweet cassava soup, and him.

Theme: Hard work brings prosperity.