Li Yao, a top-tier assassin who retired to live a quiet pastoral life, wakes up transmigrated into the body of a thirty-one-year-old widow in an ancient era. The original owner, known as the "Ghost's Nightmare" of He-Wan Village, was a shrewish, foolish woman who alienated everyone around her, drained her own household's resources to support her maiden family, and died after being shoved by a man whose engagement to her second son she refused to annul. Li Yao inherits five children—four sons and one daughter-in-law—all starving in dilapidated straw huts with no food for three days.
Her first act is to repel the Ding family, who have arrived with twenty or thirty people to force an annulment of the betrothal between her second son Wang Er and Ding Xiaoyan. Using her assassin skills, she disables Ding Laoer with a precise pressure-point strike and threatens the rest with a broom, forcing them to retreat. She then turns the household around, cooking a proper meal with their last reserves of rice and eggs, teaching her daughter-in-law He Xiaoya to cook, and establishing new family dynamics where her children are treated with care rather than neglected.
Facing starvation, Li Yao ventures into the nearby Ten Thousand Mountains. She discovers a hidden valley accessible only by descending a hundred-meter cliff, rich in medicinal herbs and game. She hunts pheasants and rabbits, trades with a local hunter named Liu, and sells premium herbs at the market for starting capital. Recognizing that the local cuisine is bland and uninnovative, she decides to start a food business. She purchases cheap pork offal and bones, creates a master stock braising liquid using wild spices she foraged, and begins selling braised delicacies at Baichuan Market.
The braised dishes are an immediate sensation. Li Yao uses marketing tactics like free tastings and discounts to draw customers, selling out within hours. The family earns over three hundred wen on the first day, a fortune that transforms their prospects. They reinvest in supplies, buy a new cart, and expand operations. Li Yao also establishes strict boundaries with her exploitative maiden family, throwing out her brother Li Fu when he demands food, and refusing to send money to her mother's household.
As the business grows, tensions arise. Wang Er, who had been forced to accompany his uncle Li Xian to lessons only to be humiliated and beaten, encounters Li Xian at the market. Li Xian attempts to assert dominance, but Wang Er finally fights back, striking his uncle and ending years of abuse. Li Yao supports her son's defiance, teaching him that no one is inherently superior and that he must resist oppression. An elderly regular customer, impressed by the food and the family's integrity, becomes a steady patron, paying in advance for daily meals.
Jealousy from village residents leads to conflict when Zhu Yougui, a local layabout Li Yao had beaten for harassing her, blocks Dazhuang from drawing water at the communal well. The village head rules that well water should be shared equally, but Li Yao refuses, declaring she will dig her own well. Despite skepticism from villagers who claim the area has no groundwater, she and her sons begin digging. The work is arduous; Dazhuang injures his foot but recovers with Li Yao's herbal poultice. Granny Wang, Li Yao's mother-in-law, unexpectedly defends her daughter-in-law against village criticism and sends her husband to help with the well digging, signaling a shift in family dynamics. Li Yao's determination to secure water and continue her business sets the stage for further expansion and confrontation with those who would see her fail.
