The Widow Cuts Ties and Moves into a Cowshed, While Her In-Laws Eat Grass and She Feasts on Meat

[Food + Raising Kids + Everyday Family Life + Devoted Couple, Sweet Romance] Clear-headed heroine vs. cold-faced, warm-hearted, loyal hero

Su Maihe dropped dead on the day her restaurant opened.

When she opened her eyes again, she had become a young stepmother, and a widow to boot.

Her parents-in-law wanted to sell her off under the pretense of finding her a new husband. Was she supposed to put up with that? She promptly demanded to split from the family and cut ties, only for the authorities to force a man on her as well.

"I already have a man!"

"Your man is dead."

"I'll remain faithful to him!"

"The court won't let you. The court needs you to bear children. Disobey, and you'll be executed."

Looking at her penniless household, three scrawny stepchildren, and the paralyzed man sent to her with the task of having children, Su Maihe rolled up her sleeves and returned to her old trade, setting up a stall at the canal wharf to sell lunch boxes.

"Su's Lunch Boxes! Ten coins each, meat and vegetables, generous portions that'll fill you up!"

At first, only the wharf workers came to eat. Before long, people from the entire county were lining up.

Some people, jealous of her success, gathered to make trouble. Her former husband, whose grave had long since grown three feet of grass, even returned with his wife to force Su Maihe to become his concubine. Then the paralyzed man at home, unable to walk, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. With a willow branch in hand, he drove off all the troublemakers.

Su Maihe stared in disbelief. What happened to being disabled and too weak to fight back?

*

Shen Hanxi was a famed young general. After being framed by his enemies, he lost a battle, injured both legs, and was humiliated when his enemies sent him to a widow to sire a child.

He thought his life was over, and curled up in the darkness to wait for death.

Until he met a woman who asked him, "I'm a widow, and I still live more like a person than you do. Aren't you ashamed to be even more spineless, General?"