Pitfalls Everywhere on the Road to Immortality

(New novel, Shendu Grand Restaurant, is looking for advance readers. Blurb below.)

Luo Shuiqing transmigrated into a cultivation novel as the villainous female side character. Her aptitude was mediocre and her luck was terrible. She got chased by sea beasts, spat at by strange birds, betrayed by friends, and tormented by powerful experts. As if that weren't enough, even her sect schemed against her, using her dantian to nourish her exceptionally gifted senior sister. It left her dantian shattered, and she nearly died and lost her path to immortality...

The road to immortality is full of pitfalls. Even surviving nine near-death experiences won't get you far!

Luo Shuiqing might not be good at anything else, but she loves staying alive. If her luck is bad, she'll just keep her head down and grow in secret. The sea beasts chase her? She runs. A friend digs a pit for her? She fills it in, then plants her friend in it for good measure. A powerful expert torments her? Well... what else can she do if she can't beat them?

Luo Shuiqing kept out of the powerful expert's way, quietly pulled out a little notebook, and secretly filled it with plans for staying alive. She meant to stick to them, but fate was a wild horse with its reins cut loose, dragging her all over the place. Somehow, she still managed to survive to the end and get everything she wanted!

Luo Shuiqing became a hilarious legend in the cultivation world. When people chased after her to confirm the ridiculous stories about her antics, she said with perfect confidence, "Hey, I did what I had to do to stay alive. Being afraid to die is nothing to be ashamed of!"

After she finished, she turned around. "You over there, powerful expert. You've been watching me make a fool of myself long enough. Aren't you leaving?"

The powerful expert replied, "I want to follow along and see how the story continues."

Passerby A: "Cultivation burns through spirit stones. How about you, fellow cultivator?"

Passerby B: "Cultivation burns through spirit herbs for me. How about you?"

Luo Shuiqing: "I'm a little different from you two. I burn through lives..."

Blurb for the upcoming Shendu Grand Restaurant:

Xia Mufan transmigrates to Shendu, the capital of the Wu Zhou dynasty. Her parents have both died, her uncle-by-marriage has seized the family property, and she has even been sold into servitude. After she buys her freedom, she sets up a stall selling tofu pudding in the South Market, only for her uncle-by-marriage to keep hounding her.

Xia Mufan: "I only act meek. I've got plenty of strength and tricks up my sleeve."

After spending all her savings, she rents a rundown shop in Chengfu Ward, close to Henan Prefecture on one side and the Court of Judicial Review on the other. She also keeps a vicious dog for protection.

She hangs a grand sign over the shabby shop: "Shendu Grand Restaurant." The place opens without a hitch. She sweats away in the kitchen while customers line up outside. Mulberry and Chinese yam braised pig's trotters, shredded chicken tofu pudding, fried lotus root sandwiches...

Once she'd saved some money, she hired someone to help out and watch the shop. But then she ran into her former owners, who were being sold off: a scrawny younger brother and a consumptive older sister. Xia Mufan clutched her empty purse and consoled herself: How could this not count as a former slave finally singing the song of freedom?

Her new dishes sell like hotcakes, and money pours in from every direction. When some rich young scions who can't get into the shop try to steal her dog to eat, Xia Mufan chases after them with a cleaver.

Henan Prefecture: "You owe thirteen strings in compensation. Do you accept?"

She makes a fortune over the holiday, but then someone comes asking to borrow money...

Luckily, the palace sends her a reward. Xia Mufan scans the banner and looks around for more. "Is there anything else?"

Palace attendant: "It was personally inscribed by His Majesty!"

In the end, Henan Prefecture and the Court of Judicial Review both borrow her dog, and it winds up with half a government post.

Xia Mufan guards the splendid banner bestowed by the emperor and her rundown shop, then looks up and sighs. "Why is it so hard to save money?"

Yan Xingjian lives by the maxim, "Act like a good person, and the better you act, the higher you'll rise in office." At a young age, he earns a glowing reputation for being "fair, impartial, and a true gentleman," and smoothly becomes the Court of Judicial Review's Vice Minister. But someone catches him killing a man and fabricating testimony in the middle of the night. He tries to silence the witness: "Would you rather be a witness or physical evidence?"

The other person replies, "I'd rather be an innocent commoner sleepwalking in the middle of the night."

To protect his reputation, Vice Minister Yan keeps an eye on the other person and discovers she's just a cook: meek and kind, and when people gossip about her to her face, all she does is blink back tears and chop vegetables. Even when officials from the Market Office come demanding a bribe, all the cook can do is timidly ask through her tears, "Vice Minister Yan takes thirty percent. How much do you want?"

Yan Xingjian gets stabbed in the back with accusing fingers at the government office. In the middle of the night, he sits up in bed, furious, grabs a knife, and heads out. "Thirty percent, is it? So you can put on an act, can you?"

A fake little cook who pretends to be gentle and kind, and a Vice Minister who pretends to be a paragon of integrity, each expose the other's white-lotus act.

The virtuous and radiant Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review X the meek, kind, timid little cook (nope)

A scheming, ruthless, sharp-tongued, hypocritical guy X a money-loving, cunning, wild, hypocritical woman??

A few notes:

1. The Wu Zhou setting is semi-fictional, with lots and lots and lots of invented details.

2. There is a romance, but the story mainly focuses on running a business and everyday life, with more emphasis on the career side.

3. Both the male and female leads have their moments of being quite cautious (or quite doglike).

4. There is a large cast, and the main and supporting characters each have their own strengths and weaknesses. No one is perfect.

This novel will go VIP this Wednesday, Double 11. (I have no idea why I picked that date either.) There will be three chapters on the day it goes VIP. If you haven't read it yet, hurry up, ladies! If you have, you don't need to buy it again.

Content warnings: Third-person narration. The female lead is an independent cultivator (and poor), with a lively personality and a constant run of bad luck. Surviving is hard. She strikes fast in a fight and admits defeat even faster. She goes it alone (spirit beasts don't count)!

Also known as Nine Near-Death Experiences and No Progress, Cultivating by Burning Through Lives, and Why Not Ride the Wind?

Theme: Relying on yourself is better than relying on others!