A Reborn Country Girl's Road to Prosperity

Exclusively published on Jinjiang Literature City. Reposting or selling this work without permission is prohibited. My new novel, The Fisher Girl's Tale of Making a Fortune at Sea, is now underway. Yang Liu spent five years as a water ghost in the irrigation pond at the foot of the mountain west of her village. She knew better than a female turtle when the turtles at the bottom of the pond laid their eggs. Just like the man who went swimming there that summer: the tiny black mole on his chin, the blue birthmark on his lower back, the pale scar on his shin. She might have known their shapes even better than his own mother did. * After dying once, Yang Liu had been hurt by her family. After her death, they made a pile of silver, but the only person who burned paper offerings for her every year was the owner of the pond, the man who had lost money because of her. If you saw a man's body, you had to take responsibility for him, right? Marry him, and the pond at the foot of the mountain would be hers. She would raise fish, and her feckless husband could be her backbone, patrol at night, catch thieves... She would raise fish and grow lotus roots in the pond, raise pigs, chickens, and ducks on the mountain, claim the mountain and pond for herself, and then raise a chubby baby. [Note 1] Only the female lead has ever been a water ghost in this story. No other ghosts will appear. [Note 2] The ghostly state appears only in Chapter One. Everyone is human in the rest of the story, a regular historical romance. My next novel will be The Fisher Girl's Tale of Making a Fortune at Sea. "Haizhu, Mother is leaving Dongzhu and Fengping in your care. Your Uncle Yu will only take one child with me." As soon as Shen Haizhu became conscious, she heard these words. She could not make sense of the situation and nodded in a daze. Only after the woman took the child and left did she realize that she had been entrusted with two orphans. Her father was dead, her mother was remarrying, and she was left with two younger siblings who would be a burden to any new family. That was the situation of the body Shen Haizhu had arrived in. Fine. She had borrowed the original owner's body to stay alive, so raising her younger siblings was only right. The place was on the coast, and she had a spirit pearl from another world that let her breathe underwater. She could manage to feed two children. After repairing the fishing boat her father had left behind, Haizhu took the helm and headed out to fish. While others cast nets and hauled in fish, she jumped straight into the sea and scooped them up with a hand net. Lobsters, swimming crabs, green crabs, flower crabs, king crabs, dungeness crabs... She was determined to taste every kind before autumn ended. She made soup with scallops and clams, boiled shrimp balls, fried rice with crab meat, cooked congee, steamed crabs, drunken crabs, crab roe casserole, crab with orange sauce... Haizhu could not get enough, while her two younger siblings looked miserable. "Sister, are we eating those hard shells again today?" Dongzhu had had enough. She had been eating them for eight years and was sick of them. Again? Haizhu heard the disdain in her sister's voice. Was this really not just a humblebrag? In the era she came from, the fish and shrimp in the sea had all mutated. She could only drool over the videos that had survived and suffer in silence. "Just one more meal. Tomorrow I'll set aside a few sea fish instead of selling them." She had already decided how to prepare today's catch. She would be unhappy if she did not get to eat it. During fishing season, she dove beneath the sea to catch seafood. During the closed season, she ran a small restaurant and made delicious food for the neighbors. In her spare time, she went into the sea to clean barnacles off sea turtles, and rescued dolphins, seals, and manta rays that orcas tossed around like balls... Haizhu's seaside life was blissful. Completed historical romances: After Fleeing Famine to the Grasslands The Pig Farmer's Widow A Fugitive's Life in the Mountains The Princess and the Grasslands Theme: Everything in the past becomes a prologue.