I Love You Like Life Itself (Food)

[This story is complete] [New story now underway: "Starting as a School Story's Head Teacher [Quick Transmigration]". Please add it to your collection~ Please also add the upcoming stories "She Reincarnated a Thousand Times" and "The 1990s Beloved Family's Little Chef" to your collection~]

"Scheming, gentlemanly scoundrel of a chief manager x soft, sweet little chef with maxed-out skills"

[Blurb] In bustling Jingcheng, every family has a shop. Business flourishes and restaurants spring up everywhere. There are more than twenty shops on the east and west streets alone.

When A Tao first arrives in the northern capital, Jingcheng, she is so curious she can hardly move her feet.

She's especially taken with the tall, handsome chief manager of the Yuanqi Inn.

You say no one is cooking at your inn and business has plummeted? No problem. For a woman who once served as the imperial chef at the southern kingdom's state banquet, that's nothing at all.

Ever since she took over the kitchen, the inn's business has improved day by day.

Green plum wine, cherry pork. Pickled bamboo shoots with fresh pork, bass lung soup. Shrimp with Biluochun tea, eel in sizzling oil.

Add a serving of soup dumplings and chilled millet cake, and every diner will tell you how delicious it is.

She focuses on cooking at the stove, never suspecting that this inn is no ordinary place, or that the chief manager, who seems like a good man, is hiding a tremendous secret.

One night, she brings him a late-night snack and accidentally sees his true face.

The chief manager turns into a big bad wolf. Her spatula hits the floor, and he pins her against the wall while she trembles in fear.

*

Yan Sui thought he'd signed a deal that could only make him money. Little did he know that one day the little chef would pack up and abandon him in the middle of the night, then run away!

He chases her all the way to Jiangnan, only to discover that she is a pampered princess of the southern kingdom, with a family fortune of ten thousand taels of gold, delicacies served on jade platters, and Prince Ning, the most powerful man at court, as her father.

And when did his plump, greedy little chef turn into a slender, graceful beauty?

Her three royal brothers stand in her way, glaring at him with suspicion.

"You're the brat who made our sister so lovesick she couldn't eat, and got her this skinny?"

Yan Sui: I'm sorry. I'll make sure she eats enough to put the weight back on!

*

Reader's Guide:

1. Food and romance, the martial world and the imperial court. No villainous female supporting characters. The heroine is soft and sweet, the hero is scheming. One couple, both sexually inexperienced, sweet romance.

2. Set in an imagined era, in the same world as "You Are My Dearest." Some dishes in the story may be made up by the author, so please don't fact-check them.

3. The heroine is beautiful after losing weight, and not ugly when she's heavier. She's soft but not weak. The hero already likes her when she's still heavier.

4. The hero is not a good person. The hero is not a good person. The hero is not a good person.

5. The cover was drawn by the author, who has limited skill. Please just take a look and bear with it~

*

Next story: "She Reincarnated a Thousand Times". Please add it to your collection~ It's the story of Yan Sui and Lu Changye's master.

[Blurb] She is a peerless war god whose name will go down in history, and a notorious beauty blamed for bringing ruin to men. She is a refined, talented scholar, and a great thief who rules the martial world.

She has reincarnated a thousand times.

Why practice martial arts? Her inner energy has been at its peak for thousands of years.

Why fight for power in the palace? She can win an emperor's heart without doing a thing.

The secrets behind every strange case in the martial world are no match for her sharp eyes. She can remember every detail of a suspect's family going back eighteen generations, so solving a case takes no effort at all.

Xuan Yuan Wuyi dons a brand-new secret identity, commands a private fortune large enough to rival a nation, and is surrounded by countless handsome men. With slender fingers, she plucks a flower, smiles, and rides freely across the world.

But could she be seeing things? Otherwise, why would she see her old nemesis from thousands of years ago?

He stands tall in a green robe. His handsome face is unchanged, and he still looks just as unbearable as she remembers.

"Wuyi,"

he says, his eyes burning as he walks steadily toward her.

"Have you been happy without me by your side?"

*

Three thousand years ago, amid the collapse of heaven and earth, he saved a girl from the mortal world.

She was the weapon he forged with his own hands, and the softest object of compassion in his heart.

Watching the woman's carefree, willful figure, he smiles in resignation and walks toward her.

So be it. He can accompany her on the road to the afterlife.

(Old enemies, master and disciple, one strong couple, both sexually inexperienced)

Upcoming story: "The 1990s Beloved Family's Little Chef". Please add it to your collection~

[Blurb] In the 1990s, Jiang Ailing learns in a dream that she is living inside an era novel, and not just one, but several.

The world she lives in has been riddled with time travelers.

Her irresponsible husband returns reborn, kneels before her and their child in tears, and turns over a new leaf. He goes on to build a huge business empire and become the richest man in the country.

Her mother-in-law is a powerful cultivator who transmigrated here, a fortune-teller whose words come true. A mean person who was ranting outside their house just yesterday gets a good dose of karma after her mother-in-law performs a ritual.

Her ten-year-old daughter clasps her hand tightly and says that in this life she'll be a good daughter and make sure her mother has no regrets.

The three-and-a-half-year-old boy has a wise glint in his eyes. Before New Year's, he casually points out a newly issued stock. By the time the new year arrives, its value has skyrocketed, leaving everyone dumbfounded.

Jiang, the perennial background character, Ailing: Great! You guys keep it up! I'll lie flat.

So while her mother-in-law goes out and matches wits with all sorts of awful people, she leisurely simmers a pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall at home.

While her husband makes a thriving business for himself, she cooks in her daughter's school cafeteria, directing a hundred or so kitchen staff. She says the kids need proper nutrition and should eat more meat, so there's steamed rice with braised pork, garlic spareribs, sweet and sour pork... Her delicious dishes make even the picky children grow strong and healthy.

By the time her daughter gets into a top school and her son skips a grade, she is already making pastries at a state-run restaurant. Her Chinese pastries look so lifelike that even their texture is indistinguishable from real apples.

As state-owned businesses go private, chefs leave one after another, and a long-established state-run restaurant teeters on the brink of decline. Jiang Ailing, who inherited her father's culinary skills, helps the restaurant through its difficulties and restores it to its former glory with her thoughtful, carefully prepared dishes.

An old man born at the end of the Qing dynasty travels a thousand miles just to eat the lamb she makes with dipping sauce.

Her family watches Jiang Ailing slice young ginger so thinly it looks like strands of silk, and can't help exclaiming, "We never knew she was this talented!"

She fills everyone's bowl with rice, blinks her big eyes, rests her chin in her hands, and smiles:

Eat your fill so you can get to work. I'm counting on you to carry me!

*

Recommended completed stories by the author~ "You Are My Dearest" and "I Stole the Male Lead's Golden Finger"

Theme: Eat well. There's nothing wrong with being a little plump!