After Fleeing to the Grasslands

The latest updates to A Country Girl's Rebirth and Rise to Prosperity are out. It's another story about ordinary people. Mi Niang is sweet-looking, but her life is full of sorrow. A great flood destroyed her hometown and left her with nothing. Swept along with the other refugees, she fled in a daze to the lands beyond the pass. She thought she would spend the rest of her life as a lonely ghost, dead in a foreign land. No one to care for her, no one to cherish her. If she fell ill and died, she'd be wrapped in a straw mat and thrown to the wolves. Then a taciturn young herdsman appeared. He helped her nurse a sick lamb back to health and drove off the local ruffians. Under the setting sun, she suddenly noticed how tall and sturdy the quiet boy was. His face, covered in bruises, stirred her weary heart back to life. Male Lead's Perspective: Ba Hu hates trouble. To escape his tangled family relationships, he struck out on his own before coming of age, taking his servants and livestock with him. He is even more cautious about starting a family. One day, while tending his flock, he came across an ox cart carrying refugees. A quiet young woman walking a dog caught his eye. The woman was wooden-faced, the dog wary. His heart skipped a beat. Heaven be praised, he had finally met someone like himself. But Ba Hu never imagined he could have read them so wrong. The dog loved meddling in other people's business, and the woman was anything but quiet. Still, that mistaken impression turned out to be the greatest stroke of luck in his life. A cozy story about the everyday lives of ordinary people, in a style similar to The Pig Farmer's Widow and Life in the Mountains of a Fugitive Slave. No aristocrats or overnight riches. Coming soon: The Fishing Girl's Tale of Making a Fortune by the Sea. Please add it to your library! "Hai Zhu, your mother is entrusting Dong Zhu and Feng Ping to you. Your Uncle Yu will only let me take one child with me." As soon as Shen Hai Zhu regained consciousness, she heard these words. Confused and dazed, she nodded. Only after the woman left with the child did she realize she'd been entrusted with two orphans. Her father had died, and her mother had remarried, leaving her with two younger siblings to support. That was the situation Shen Hai Zhu found herself in when she arrived in this world. Fine. She'd borrowed the original owner's body to stay alive, so raising her younger siblings was only right. They lived by the sea, and she had a miraculous pearl from another world that let her breathe underwater. She could provide for two children. After repairing the fishing boat Shen's father had left behind, Hai Zhu took the helm and headed out to fish. While everyone else cast nets and hauled in fish, she simply jumped into the sea and scooped them up with a net bag. Lobsters, swimming crabs, mud crabs, flower crabs, king crabs, Dungeness crabs... She was going to make the most of autumn and taste them all. She made soup with scallops and clams, cooked shrimp balls, stir-fried crab meat with rice, made congee, steamed crabs, pickled crabs, crab casseroles, and crab with orange sauce... Hai Zhu couldn't get enough, while her younger siblings looked miserable. "Big Sis, are we having these hard-shelled things again?" Dong Zhu had had enough. She'd been eating them for eight years and was sick of them. Again? Hai Zhu could hear the disgust in her sister's voice. Was she seriously bragging? In the era she'd come from, the fish and shrimp had all mutated. She'd drooled over the videos she'd managed to save, but could only endure the cravings. "One more meal, then. Tomorrow I'll keep a few sea fish instead of selling them." She'd already decided what to cook today. She wouldn't be happy if she didn't get to eat it. During fishing season, she dived for seafood. During the closed season, she ran a little restaurant, making delicious food for her neighbors. Hai Zhu's life raising the kids was wonderful. Coming soon: A Country Girl's Rebirth and Rise to Prosperity. If you like it, please add it to your library. Yang Liu spent five years as a water ghost in the pond at the foot of the mountain west of her village. She knew exactly when the turtles at the bottom laid their eggs, better than the mother turtles themselves. And she knew the summer bather just as well: the tiny black mole on his chin, the blue birthmark on his lower back, the pale scar on his shin. She might even know him better than his own mother. - After dying once, Yang Liu had been deeply hurt by her family. After her death, they made a fortune, but the only person who ever burned paper money for her each year was the owner of the pond, who was losing money on it. If she'd seen him naked, she had to take responsibility for him. She married him, and the pond at the foot of the mountain became hers. She would raise fish, while her wastrel husband could stand up for her, patrol at night, catch thieves, and more... They'd raise fish and grow lotus roots in the pond, raise pigs, chickens, and ducks on the mountain, enclose the mountain and pond, and then raise two chubby children. [Note: The female lead is the only one who has ever been a water ghost. No other ghosts will appear.] Theme: After the darkest hour comes the dawn