The Little Empress Chef

My upcoming novel, I Fed the Imperial Exam Novel's Male Lead, is now open for advance reservations. Visit my author page to add it to your favorites. The blurb is below. Lian Luoluo transmigrates to the end of the Zhao Dynasty and becomes the legitimate daughter with the same name, whose birth mother died young, whose father is dead, and whose stepmother is cruel. Just as she's about to be married off to an old geezer, she runs away! She runs into bandits along the way and escapes into a cave, where she discovers a fellow traveler: an injured man. Lian Luoluo saves him. "You're carrying so many books. Are you on your way to the capital to take the imperial exam?" The man clutches the bag full of secret reports and letters. "...Something like that. What about you?" Lian Luoluo clenches her fist. "I'm going to open the best restaurant around. When you pass the exams and come home, make sure you come celebrate with a meal!" Six months later, the Zhao Dynasty falls. Disguised as a man, Lian Luoluo has earned enough money to open a restaurant, but she's suddenly kidnapped and forced to work as a cook in an army camp. Thanks to her skills, she quickly rises to become the kitchen manager! Her subordinates and the soldiers get into a fight over the food. When Lian Luoluo is summoned, she sees the person who called for her and nearly pops her eyes out. "Why is it you? Were you kidnapped to work as a clerk, too?" The man gives a signal to the subordinate who wants to report the military situation. "...Something like that! Come with me!" Then people hear that the kitchen manager is summoned by the general almost every day and comes back with red eyes. They sigh over their bowls. "The boss really is too harsh! The kitchen manager has such a hard time being scolded and beaten every day just so we can have enough to eat." In reality, inside the main tent, someone gazes at Lian Luoluo's swollen lips and asks in a husky voice, "Honey-glazed chicken wings today?" Lian Luoluo's eyes are red and her breathing is unsteady. "You two-faced lecher!" Later, when the Da Rong Dynasty unifies the realm, the first thing the man does after ascending the throne is marry the empress. When the people who fought alongside him see the empress walk toward them, they stare in shock. "Isn't that the kitchen manager?" My lighthearted food novel, I Fed the Imperial Exam Novel's Male Lead, is open for advance reservations. Visit my author page to find it. If you like it, please add it to your favorites! Blurb: Xu Tao comes from a family of imperial chefs going back a century. She transmigrates into an imperial-exam novel and becomes a destitute imperial chef working odd jobs at a restaurant. After she's framed, she's driven out of the restaurant that used to belong to her family. In the original story, she travels from place to place working as a kitchen helper and saving up money for a lawsuit. Many years later, she finally meets the male lead, a newly appointed top scholar sent away to serve as a county magistrate. He helps her reclaim the restaurant, but by then she is already sick all over and collapses before it can reopen. Rather than wait for the original novel's male lead, wherever he might be, she grits her teeth and pawns the only keepsake her parents left behind. She decides to rely on herself, starting by carrying a shoulder pole and selling cold noodles and dandan noodles as she makes her way through the streets. Once she's saved enough money, she sets up a stall. While she's running the stall, a scholar in clothes washed pale comes by often. He always orders two liang of plain dry noodles, then drinks a bowl of complimentary noodle broth. She serves braised pork rice, chicken and rice braised in sauce, pork trotter rice, and more in rotation, and business at her stall gets better and better. After the scholar once faints at the stall from hunger, Xu Tao quietly starts giving him extra noodles, with more sesame seeds and scallions. Six months later, she rents a shop. The day her restaurant opens is also the day the results of the palace exam are announced. As everyone comes to congratulate her, the newly crowned top scholar sends a gift. She's puzzled, until he arrives wearing his top scholar's robes. It turns out he's the male lead! The top scholar becomes a regular, but he no longer just eats two liang of noodles and leaves. He stays until closing time every time. She thought getting the restaurant back would take a lot of effort, but someone had already remembered a few casual words she said at her stall during the Lantern Festival. He volunteered to work under the prefect, investigated the matter in secret, uncovered the charges, and had the restaurant shut down. Then he brought her the news that it was about to be auctioned. On the day the restaurant opens, regulars walk in and are astonished. "Huh? Why is the newly appointed Vice Minister of Revenue working behind the counter as the bookkeeper?" The story of how I accidentally fed a destitute scholar who turned out to be the male lead of an imperial exam novel. Announcement: The editor has informed me that this novel will be released as a paid title on February 7. There will be three chapters on release day. Thank you for your support! Please note: 1. Personal attacks are not welcome. If you don't like it, thanks for stopping by, and let's each go our own way. If you want to argue, you're right. 2. Protecting wild animals and plants is everyone's responsibility. Any necessary wilderness scenes in this story take place in a parallel world and involve harmless species. They are only there for the plot, so don't imitate them! 3. 1v1, both have only been with each other, lighthearted food story. Blurb screenshotted on 2019.11.12. Do not borrow ideas. Theme: Promote Chinese cuisine. In life, one must be independent and self-reliant.