The Gossiping Tavern

My next novel, Each with Their Own Schemes, is now underway. The blurb is at the very bottom. Feel free to add it to your collection!

A sickly mother, a young sister, and a family without a single coin to its name.

Meng Xizhou racked her brains to sell wine and earn travel money, taking her family from Qinzhou City to Lingchuan County, and eventually to Bianjing.

Thanks to her brewing skills, she became one of the best among the roaming street vendors, and a real ace at earning money to support her family.

In the end, she opened a wine shop, and business boomed.

Lotus-leaf wine, fragrant pickled fish. Fine lamb wine and osmanthus brew.

The latest gossip from one household to the next.

Drink fine wine, savor good food, and let the gossip go down with it.

With a shop of her own, she spent her days brewing wine and doing business, listening to the neighbors share their secret stories and gossip. Life was full of flavor.

There was Li Er from the eastern household, abusing his power to seize his brother's property; the pretty widow from the western household, who had lured a handsome man into her home; the female shopkeeper south of town, who was caught cheating and abandoned; and the young master of the Gao family north of town, who planned to kill his wife and become another Chen Shimei.

What no one knew was that Meng Xizhou, so intent on enjoying everyone else's scandals, had a romantic tale of her own. She had once solemnly promised a certain young lord that she would bear him a child.

But that was all in the past.

Meng Xizhou sat with one leg crossed over the other, eating iced milk curds, completely unconcerned.

She never expected that the young lord who should have died on the battlefield would reappear as a Grand Academician of the Longtu Pavilion and come looking for her.

Lu Yin: You owe me a child.

Meng Xizhou's eyes nearly popped out of her head. What kind of thing is that to say?!

Lu Yin: I have some free time these days. Shall we have one?

Meng Xizhou: I'll have to politely decline.

Lu Yin: ...

Reader's Guide:

1. When the heroine said she would have a child in the blurb, circumstances forced her to say it. She did not actually have one.

2. The war at the beginning is the backdrop to the story and does not feature later on. The focus is on everyday life among ordinary people, not court politics.

3. Set in an alternate Song dynasty, with some author-created details. Please don't scrutinize the history.

Below is the blurb for Each with Their Own Schemes. Feel free to add it to your collection!

[Brainy, Pleasure-Seeking, Lazy Little Salted Fish] x [Scheming, Black-Bellied, Aloof Perfectionist]

Life at the nunnery was meager. To pay for her master's treatment, the young nun Baoxian took money from an old woman. In exchange, she had to brand the young man next door as a lecher.

When she risked her safety to lure the young man, she spotted another resident of the courtyard: a man who looked refined and peerless, yet was wicked to the core.

Baoxian had a sudden idea. She made the young man drink a bowl of medicine, then dragged him into that lord's room.

She herself ran off, leaving others to cry about declining morals and disgracing propriety. She was simply doing justice on Heaven's behalf!

Only after Baoxian became Princess Fujia did she learn that the lord was the third young master of the Ming family, Ming Zhao: the Grand Tutor of the current dynasty, who commanded the emperor's six guards and had slaughtered thirty thousand people in Hejian.

Whoever he was didn't matter to Baoxian. From then on, she could simply avoid him.

The hateful Third Master Ming was far too vindictive. He seized every last bit of wealth she had worked so hard to amass.

Baoxian could endure many things, but not this!

-

At the royal autumn hunt.

Jiang Baoxian made a fuss about going to Qiongyu Island to give Ming Zhao a hard time.

When Ming Zhao heard, he smiled darkly.

He set up layers of defenses across the island and made a grand show of force, all to ensure Jiang Baoxian could never leave, trapping her in his hands with nowhere to run and no one to call for help.

He waited calmly for Baoxian to walk into his trap.

But instead, Baoxian turned back halfway and began racking her brains over how to get her hands on more money.

Later, Baoxian broke her promises again and again.

Ming Zhao went from taking it all in stride to being tormented to the point of utter anguish by the feelings he kept hidden.

After much reflection, Ming Zhao suddenly understood: Baoxian had dropped out of the sky and picked fights with him time and again. It seemed like she was provoking him, but really, she was deliberately making him care about her so he would think only of her and no one else.

Ming Zhao finally reached his conclusion: she was deeply in love with him.

Until one day, he heard Baoxian say with his own ears that she didn't like him at all...

Theme: A happy life is built through hard work.