The author's column also has an ongoing historical escape-and-famine story, The Veterinarian's Escape and Farming Life in Ancient Times. Feel free to bookmark it.
Blurb
Shen Yao, an agricultural student, transmigrates into the most miserable occupation in ancient times: tenant farmer.
From the start, it's hell mode.
Her father is a hunter who fell and broke his leg on the mountain.
Her mother is a weaver, but a troubled heart has left her painfully thin.
The family survives entirely by farming rented land.
Unable to pay the land tax, they would be forced into labor service, so the original Shen Yao found a convict to marry into the family in her place and serve instead.
Before graduating, Shen Yao finds herself employed. She uses what she has learned to improve the tenant farmers' lot.
She clears wasteland and plants beans, improves the soil and changes the crops, and forms a family team to make money.
She raises silkworms and spins silk, adapting to local conditions and helping elderly people in impoverished villages find ways to survive again.
She makes paper and ink, stands up to the powerful, and funds the children of poor families so they can study for the imperial examinations.
She has no golden finger, but she saves her money one coin at a time.
She buys wasteland by the plot, and the harvest from her fields grows year after year.
Just as she watches one impoverished village after another become prosperous,
as the thatched cottages in the village are replaced by rows of large houses with blue brick walls and tiled roofs,
and at last she can lounge in the courtyard, cooling off and eating watermelon...
Someone climbs onto her cool bed at night and wraps his arms around her waist, pressing cheek to cheek. "A Yao, didn't you say that cattle die from overwork, but land can't be ruined by plowing?"
Yang Jizong demonstrates with his actions that he can do it. He can!
Shen Yao listens to the cool bed creak beneath her and weeps.
She never should have divorced him just to save face, then talked behind his back and called him a silver-plated spear: pretty to look at, useless in practice!
His heavy love every night is more exhausting than farming.
1. A fictional dynasty, very fictional.
2. A cozy farming story about a united family.
3. There is a male lead. Marriage before love, with feelings growing over time.
...Blurb for the upcoming story The Firewood Girl Just Wants to Save Up and Run Away...
After Xu Suihe died of illness, she unexpectedly transmigrated into the body of a merchant's daughter.
To repay his enormous gambling debts, her father sold his wife and daughter as servants to the Pei family.
On the night they entered the household, the original owner's mother couldn't bear the humiliation and jumped into a well with the newly arrived Xu Suihe in her arms.
If the eldest Pei son hadn't gotten up in the middle of the night looking for food, she would have died all over again.
Xu Suihe looks at the smiling-but-treacherous mistress of the household and Pei Zhou, who is just as desperate for food as she is, and grits her teeth.
She'll take the job as a kitchen maid with room, board, and wages for now.
While others covet the household's power and wealth and urge her to climb into someone's bed, she only thinks about getting away as soon as possible.
After saving enough money to buy her freedom and repay Pei Zhou for saving her life, she leaves the household.
Xu Suihe pushes a handcart, sets up a charcoal stove and a wok on the street, and starts selling food. Her little business makes her so much money that her hands cramp from counting it at night.
So she opens a small eatery beside the academy north of the city, serving several hardworking scholars every day. Just as she's worrying over which one to choose as her husband, the eldest Pei son, who was rumored to have died in battle, suddenly appears.
Little scene:
One day, someone comes to her door, claiming to be a relative.
Xu Suihe flips through her ledger without looking up. "Throw them out!"
"Don't hit me, don't hit me! I'm your father!"
Pei Zhou, who has taken a worker's job, stands in front of the counter. "Madam Xu, I've come to seek a marriage today too."
Xu Suihe stares, dumbstruck, at the chests tied with red silk behind him. "What marriage?"
"Ours." Pei Zhou turns to look at the scholars she supports. "Don't I deserve to repay you for saving my life by offering myself to you?"
"You said we were even!"
"But back then, when you helped me with..."
Xu Suihe rises onto her toes to cover his mouth. Ugh, he's taller and stronger now. She can't cover it at all, and instead ends up in his arms.
Reader's Guide
1. Both leads are each other's first, one-on-one romance.
2. Fictional setting. All ingredients are included for the sake of the story, so don't overthink them.
3. A money-loving miser x a broad-shouldered carnivore.
4. Blurb written on 2025/11/6 and screenshotted.
Theme: The formerly oppressed sing their song of triumph.
The male protagonist and his sister committed a crime and were exiled to serve in the military. Why did the female protagonist recruit him as a wife? The two brothers and sisters were exempted from military service and no longer had to dig channels. There was no mention of giving money to redeem the person.
I searched online and found that you only need to open a road guide when you leave the county or county. You don't need to open a road guide when going to the county or town.
Can you still raise silkworms in autumn? Are there still green mulberry leaves and mulberries?
The heroine is too weak. Not decisive enough either. The male protagonist's sister keeps testing whether the female protagonist is the original heroine, and she keeps getting into trouble. But the heroine has always been very nice to her and doesn't care. It feels frustrating to watch
Is this what compulsory education teaches? Aren't the extra legs two extra legs for every rabbit? 😂
The writing is very good, but this question is too simple for the heroine, a college student. A primary school student can calculate it verbally 😂 The ancients should be similar.
The heroine actually died like this, but no one knows
"How could Huang Xing and Miao let her pay alone? The three sisters-in-law pushed it back and forth in front of the shop, and finally each paid his own share." This is a big bug for the author~ We can't say these are sisters-in-law, right? Two are sisters and one is sister-in-law.
This couple is really interesting. They are as poor as dogs and they still want to have another child.
"Huang Yao" gave the author a big worm~ Shen Yao