Exiled to Lingnan, I Opened a Restaurant [Gourmet Food]

[A sweet-faced, ruthless career-driven female lead x a proud young nobleman fallen on hard times]

Food blogger Xu Ning transmigrated to an unfamiliar dynasty. She enjoyed sixteen good years there, but then her family accidentally angered the emperor. All the men in the family were executed, while the only women left were exiled to Lingnan.

To keep her family afloat, she decided to return to her old line of work. She started by selling breakfast from a street stall, then rented a house in town and opened a restaurant. For breakfast, she sold sweet potato soup, milk tea, and other drinks, along with crystal shrimp dumplings, shumai, red rice shrimp rolls, sticky rice chicken, seafood noodles, and more...

In summer, the sun beat down fiercely over Lingnan, so in the afternoons she served refreshing fruit drinks and desserts to beat the heat, including pineapple ice, Qingbuliang, salted lychee drink, and ice jelly. The restaurant also offered seasonal snacks from time to time.

The food was delicious and affordable, so after the restaurant had been open for a while, it had built up quite a following of regulars.

To stop others from coveting her family, she forcibly married a man she found while gathering firewood on the mountain, using him to guard the house.

Huo Xiangli held a high position and had always been close to his elder brother, the Crown Prince. In public, he seemed frail and sickly, but behind closed doors, he was making plans for his brother.

He went to the area near Lingnan to investigate an old case, but was ambushed and badly wounded. A female bandit forcibly brought him home and made him her live-in husband.

He hated the female bandit for drugging him with a powerful aphrodisiac and making him endure the humiliation.

At night, tears of humiliation silently slid from the corners of his eyes. But the female bandit leaned close and whispered, "Husband, don't be afraid. I'll find a way to heal your wounds."

How could he... How could he not fall in love with her?

Later, he willingly became her live-in husband.

[Reading Guide]

① Both leads are each other's only partners, and it's a one-on-one romance. For the sake of the plot, the romance and career storylines develop in parallel early on. Later, after the male lead's secret identity is exposed and the female lead decisively takes her family and flees, the career storyline becomes more prominent. If that's not your cup of tea, please skip this book.

② Set in a fictional world, with original worldbuilding. Please don't nitpick historical accuracy. The focus is on food, business, and everyday life, with a little political maneuvering, mostly later on and not too much.

Theme: Strive to live well