Sweet Soup in Lingnan

Cui Linlang was an orphan raised by her entire clan. Before she could use the Cui family’s influence to pursue her ambitions...

The Cui family collapsed.

At the bottom of the exile list was a line of tiny writing:

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

What a completely undeserved disaster!

She packed up her belongings as an “unofficial member” of the family, grabbed a cleaver, and marched off with the exiled throng.

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

Supposedly he was the grandson of Physician An, and was headed to Lingnan to suffer alongside them.

His wrists were as white as peeled sugarcane, his skin so tender it looked like you could pinch water from it. He was just like a pretty young actor straight off the stage.

Linlang couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.

At night, a croaker jumped onto his bedding. She snatched it up with both hands and caught herself a giant frog!

For the first time, Shen Huaijin’s voice changed, and his face turned red. “How shameless!”

On the road into exile, the whole clan, young and old, worked together, combing the mountains for wild greens, picking August plums, digging up wampee, and gathering five-finger fig...

Somehow, they managed to scrape by!

Of course, the biggest contributor was Shen Huaijin, their doctor on hand.

To show her gratitude, she roasted some bamboo worms and happily brought them to him. “Physician Shen, see if they’re poisonous?”

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

She grinned. “Sure! I’ll trade them for mugwort balm! Leeches are crawling up my legs, help...”

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

Her grin stretched from ear to ear. “Take your time. I’m not in a hurry.”

The tips of his ears flushed red, but he didn’t withdraw his hand.

They settled down and reclaimed the land: sweet potatoes on the slopes, longan and lychee weighing down the branches, wood ears growing on rotting logs, and more sugarcane than rice in the fields...

At first, they traded dried goods for salt. Later, traveling merchants came specifically to buy from them, trading half a string of coins for a basket of dried wood ears.

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

Sour pickled fruit, fried turtle jelly, sweet potato balls, and sweet soups...

The clan members had filled out, and silver ingots were piling up in their pockets.

The day the imperial decree arrived, she stood on the hillside and turned to ask him, “Are you going back?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m staying by your side.”

The air was full of the bitter fragrance of cassava leaves, and she smiled until her eyes curved into crescents.

It was good they weren’t going back.

Here, there was farmland, sweet cassava soup, and him.

PS:

1. The exile route is the usual one: leave the Central Plains, cross the Dayu Mountains, pass through Meiguan, and enter Lingnan.

2. This story leans toward realism. They set out in mid-autumn, when the Central Plains had already begun running short of resources, so they can only gather supplies after crossing the mountains and entering Lingnan.

3. There are no supernatural events. Everything is the body’s self-protection in response to extreme conditions.

4. The heroine doesn’t understand love at first, but gets pretty twisted later.

Coming soon

[In progress...]

Food delivery rider Tang Mingtang was delivering a late-night order when the elevator plunged, dropping her into a natural-disaster game instance.

“You have a new delivery order!”

: Player “Yinchuan” requests one medical kit delivered to the second floor of the ruins in Zone C of Wanhua Base. Delivery fee: 20 points. Time limit: 30 minutes.

She looked down at herself: a yellow kangaroo uniform, a medical kit that had suddenly appeared at her feet. Then she looked up at the roaring horde of zombies in the distance.

She fell silent...

Even after landing in the apocalypse, she still had to deliver takeout?

Her phone screen lit up again: [29 minutes until the order is late.]

She stared at the words, swore, and took off running!

: From now on, I’m not taking any orders more than three kilometers away!

Later, she discovered she was the only food delivery rider in the entire game instance...

While everyone else fought like mad over supplies, she pulled out her phone to check the order. “Who ordered braised chicken? It’s on the rooftop of Ruins Building Three. I’ll get docked if it’s late!”

She traveled between the different players’ bases, delivering water, food, and ammunition, and racked up points faster than combat-focused players.

A wealthy big sister tipped her generously, the top player on the points leaderboard was her regular customer, and Uncle Liu, one of the players struggling to survive, loved joining “group delivery” orders...

After each game instance, players left ratings. She consistently averaged 4.9 stars, and the comments were full of “Delivered on time,” “Packaging intact,” and “You saved my life”...

Theme: Hard work leads to prosperity