Chapter Summaries

Zhou Wanwan held court at the mountain stronghold and explained why she planned to travel to the Northern Desert for its resources. She dismissed the ministers’ concerns, made arrangements for the stronghold, and prepared to leave that night as her elder brothers arrived.

• Old Madam Zhou, Qian Huihui, and Zhou Mei discovered that their gold and jade belongings had disappeared.
• Zhou Wanwan presided over a court attended by more than two hundred officials in the Hall of Diligent Governance.
• Zhao Muyuan warned Zhou Wanwan that the Northern Desert was dangerous and proposed taking a hundred thousand soldiers, but she refused and planned to rely on her trees.
• Zhou Wanwan dozed through the ministers’ reports, then reviewed the grand tutor’s summary and decided what to plant on two estates.
• Zhou Wanwan said she would leave for the Northern Desert that night and asked Zhao Muyuan to guard the stronghold as Xiao Dezi announced that her elder brothers had arrived.

Zhou Wanwan prepared for a trip to the Northern Desert and caught Zhou Family Village children releasing the wolves in her zoo, where they were badly bitten. The villagers confronted her over the injuries, and Zhou Wanwan challenged them for letting the wolves out.

• Zhou Qingyan asked Zhou Wanwan to let him and the others join her trip to the Northern Desert, and she agreed.
• Zhou Wanwan gathered food for the journey and learned the tree people's energy could keep vegetables fresh for months.
• Zhou Wanwan followed children from Zhou Family Village into her zoo, where they released wolves thinking they were dogs and fled after the animals attacked.
• Zhou Wanwan later saw that the wolves had seriously bitten several children, though she had told the wolves to go easy on them.
• Old Madam Zhou and the villagers confronted Zhou Wanwan over the children's injuries, and she asked why they had let the wolves out.

Zhou Wanwan sent the Zhou Family Village group back home after they tried to learn about Black Wind Stronghold, and Old Scholar Tree carried her family to the Northern Desert. There, Zhou Wanwan saw Northern Desert people whipping Han captives and pulling them across the desert.

• Zhou Wanwan sold Qian Huihui medicine for twenty taels of gold, then used incense to put the group to sleep and had trees carry them back to Zhou Family Village.
• Old Madam Zhou told Cheng Xiao that the stronghold was wealthy but claimed she had no idea how the group had reached it or returned.
• Zhou Qingyan and Zhou Qingchen noticed that Old Scholar Tree had become faster than a carriage.
• Zhou Wanwan woke to find that Old Scholar Tree had carried the family to the Northern Desert, where she saw Northern Desert people whipping Han captives.

Zhou Wanwan and her companions discovered the Northern Desert capital and a mine where thousands of Han people were enslaved. After a captive attacked an overseer, Zhou Wanwan intervened and told the prisoners that Pei Yong served under her, but they doubted her and feared returning to Great Xia.

• Zhou Wanwan followed Northern Desert people to their hidden capital, where cacti revealed that Han captives were forced to build it.
• Zhou Wanwan learned that the Northern Desert planned to send captives to a gold mine and followed them there at night.
• Zhou Wanwan saw thousands of Han prisoners being abused and forced to work, while overseers mocked a former general and claimed Pei Yong had fled.
• The former general stabbed an overseer with a sharp chopstick, and Old Scholar Tree made the arriving Northern Desert soldiers fall before they could attack him.
• Zhou Wanwan asked the prisoners if they were Han people and said Pei Yong was her subordinate, but they doubted her and explained why returning to Great Xia seemed hopeless.

Zhou Wanwan recruited thousands of saxaul trees and other desert trees to haul ore from a Northern Desert gold mine, then followed her map to excavate Noble Consort Ning’s smaller mine. She left with the gold and hundreds of carts, while the Northern Desert Kingdom searched for the carts taken from its city.

• The general asked Zhou Wanwan to take in more than a thousand soldiers and homeless civilians, and she told them to wait while she inspected the mine.
• Zhou Wanwan fed Northern Desert soldiers to the saxaul trees, which summoned more trees and dug up the ore; the trees also brought hundreds of carts from the Northern Desert city.
• Zhou Wanwan and Gu Sinian realized the first mine belonged to the Northern Desert Kingdom, and Zhou Wanwan sent more than three hundred trees back toward Great Xia Kingdom with the ore and energy-charged jade.
• Zhou Wanwan followed her map to Noble Consort Ning’s smaller gold mine and had it emptied, while returning trees brought back carts from Ning’s estate and reported that she was raising warhorses.
• The Northern Desert Kingdom discovered that hundreds of carts had disappeared, and its king ordered an investigation.

Zhou Wanwan and her brothers visited Peerless City, where she discovered that food was expensive and local service was hostile. She decided the city could be a good place to start a restaurant and sought out a property broker.

• The Northern Desert Kingdom's investigators lost the carriage tracks, and Hulu Cangya reported that the gold mine had been emptied and its overseers and guards killed.
• The king blamed the Great Xia Kingdom and ordered an attack on it.
• Zhou Wanwan and her brothers tried camel meat soup, then left a restaurant after its waiter charged them one tael for tea and snacks.
• Zhou Wanwan proposed opening a restaurant in Peerless City, saying she had a way to overcome its lack of water.
• Zhou Wanwan approached a local property broker, who doubted that a girl could be serious about buying property.

Zhou Wanwan bought a five-story restaurant and inspected two estates to find land for growing vegetables. She favored the cheaper estate after learning its sandy soil suited her seeds, but discovered that five families there stole from the estate just as an old woman pleaded with her to buy the workers.

• Zhou Wanwan paid five thousand taels for the restaurant after the broker explained that its former owner had failed because vegetables were scarce.
• Zhou Wanwan asked the broker to show her estates, and he warned her that much of the local farmland was sandy and poor for growing vegetables.
• At the first estate, Zhou Wanwan learned from the crops that the sandy soil suited cabbages, carrots, and other plants, despite the workers’ unsuitable planting choices.
• The broker offered the estate for twelve hundred taels and said its workers’ deeds of sale were available.
• Zhou Wanwan learned from the vegetables and a jujube tree that five families stole from the estate, then an old woman begged her to buy the workers.

Zhou Wanwan bought the estate and its servants, including five families who had bullied the others and mistreated the trees. She offered the trees a chance to move and retaliate, then learned the five families were former bandits who intended to take control of the estate.

• Zhou Wanwan refused to buy the servitude deeds for the five families, but bought them after the old woman threatened to disrupt her estate.
• The estate's trees complained to Zhou Wanwan about how the five families had stripped their leaves, broken their branches, and damaged them over the years.
• Zhou Wanwan offered to restore the trees' energy so they could watch the families and make them work, and the little scholar tree eagerly agreed.
• The twelve honest families worried that the five families would continue to bully them, while the five families boasted that Zhou Wanwan could leave the estate's farming to them.
• The old woman revealed that the five families had once been mountain bandits and threatened to take the estate's produce and force Zhou Wanwan to become the bandit chief's wife.

Zhou Wanwan drove the Broken Back Mountain bandits off their attempt to seize her estate and left the trees to keep them working the land. She arranged for the estate’s households to plant crops for her restaurant, then set off with the property broker to inspect another estate.

• Zhou Wanwan told the bandits who had taken over her estate that she was from Black Wind Stronghold, but they laughed and revealed they were from Broken Back Mountain and had the county magistrate in their pocket.
• Zhou Wanwan left with the property broker and her brothers, telling the bandits to farm the land for her.
• Little Locust Tree, Old Elm Tree, and Old Willow Tree restrained and whipped the bandits until the old woman ordered everyone to work.
• Zhou Wanwan left the trees thirty pieces of jade and gave the other households seeds to cultivate the estate’s fields.
• Zhou Wanwan asked the property broker to take her to the next estate, and he nervously led her to the carriage.

Zhou Wanwan bought a vast estate in Peerless City for 2,200 taels and discovered that rodents, horse bandits, and their local accomplices had ruined its medicinal herb crops. After dismissing the accomplices and hiring more than 120 skilled herb growers, she headed toward the horse bandits’ lair as they plotted to rob her.

• Zhou Wanwan inspected the estate and learned from the medicinal herbs that wild animals and mountain robbers had repeatedly destroyed or stolen the crops.
• Zhou Wanwan signed lifetime contracts with more than 120 skilled herb growers and took over the estate.
• Zhou Wanwan rejected the local workers who had secretly helped the horse bandits steal herbs, and they left the estate.
• Zhou Wanwan told Old Scholar Tree that they would visit the horse bandits’ territory, while the dismissed workers reported her purchase to their boss.
• The horse bandit learned that Zhou Wanwan was a five-year-old who had paid 2,200 taels and ordered his men to kill her guards and take her belongings.

Zhou Wanwan defeated a bandit stronghold, rescued its captives, and uncovered the bandits’ stolen treasure. After learning that Yuelai Inn was swindling and trapping people, she sent the trees to deal with it, and the entire inn was carried away.

• Lingbao scattered powder over the mounted bandits, and Zhou Wanwan found them incapacitated in their den.
• Zhou Wanwan exposed and removed the women who had become the bandits’ accomplices, then offered the remaining captives work at her estate.
• A peach tree revealed that the bandits had hidden treasure, and a fig tree led Zhou Wanwan and Old Scholar Tree to the chest beneath a camphor tree.
• Old Scholar Tree knocked the camphor tree aside and uncovered stolen valuables and land deeds, then Zhou Wanwan took the women back to her estate.
• Old Scholar Tree told Zhou Wanwan that Yuelai Inn was swindling customers and forcing debtors to sell their children, so Zhou Wanwan ordered it dealt with.
• The next morning, people said Yuelai Inn had been cleaned out, and one person clarified that the whole inn had been carried away.

Zhou Wanwan opened a successful, low-cost restaurant in Peerless City after the Yuelai Inn mysteriously vanished. When the Yuelai Inn’s shopkeeper arrived with armed men to claim her restaurant and threaten her, Pei Yong confronted him, and Zhou Wanwan learned that Pei Yong’s younger sister was the city lord’s wife.

• The Yuelai Inn’s shopkeeper found the entire inn gone and blamed his guards, while Zhou Wanwan hired renowned chefs and opened her restaurant using borrowed vegetables.
• Customers praised the food and low prices, filling the restaurant’s private rooms and dining hall on its first day.
• The Yuelai Inn’s shopkeeper stormed in with more than fifty men, claimed Zhou Wanwan’s restaurant, and invoked his ties to the city lord.
• Zhou Wanwan revealed an Earth Ranking waist token and reassured the chefs that she would secure more vegetables.
• Pei Yong arrived and traded insults with the shopkeeper, declaring that his younger sister was the city lord’s wife.
• Zhou Wanwan learned that Madam Pei was kind but neglected by the city lord and questioned whether he favored his concubine over his wife.

Zhou Wanwan learned that Pei Shuang was gravely ill and brought near death by years of mistreatment, then began planning a difficult treatment to save her. The chapter left Pei Shuang in Zhou Wanwan’s care as she gathered herbs and considered how to restore her depleted body.

• Zhou Wanwan heard the chef describe Madam Pei and her daughters’ hardship, while the shopkeeper taunted Pei Yong about Pei Shuang’s illness and threatened to replace her with his daughter.
• Pei Yong rushed to the city lord’s residence, and Zhou Wanwan’s vines swept away the men who tried to smash A Gallant’s Journey.
• Zhou Wanwan recruited Su Huai'an to manage A Gallant’s Journey and reopened the restaurant with storytellers and musicians.
• Pei Yong brought Pei Shuang and her three daughters to Zhou Wanwan, pleading with her to save his sister.
• Zhou Wanwan examined Pei Shuang and diagnosed severe damage to her heart meridian, depleted qi and blood, and a body worn down by years of bitterness and abuse.
• Zhou Wanwan asked the Old Scholar Tree for his medicinal herbs and planned a treatment to replenish Pei Shuang’s qi and blood, strengthen her spleen, open her meridians, and nourish her heart.

Zhou Wanwan revived Pei Shuang and learned how her husband and mother-in-law had taken her dowry and mistreated her. After Pei Shuang said she wanted a divorce, Zhou Wanwan promised to help her and decided to investigate the city lord's manor.

• Zhou Wanwan used herbs and energy to revive Pei Shuang, then heard how Pei Shuang's mother-in-law took her dowry and her husband let his favored concubine abuse her.
• Zhou Wanwan asked whether Pei Shuang wanted a divorce, and Pei Shuang said she wanted to leave with her daughters.
• Pei Yong told Zhou Wanwan that Chu Liufeng had refused to let him take Pei Shuang from the manor and had claimed she would remain there even in death.
• Pei Yong described the enormous dowry the Pei family had given Pei Shuang, while her daughters said they only hoped to escape the manor safely.
• Zhou Wanwan went to the treehouse and asked Uncle Scholar Tree to accompany her to inspect the city lord's manor.

Zhou Wanwan entered the wealthy city lord’s residence with Old Scholar Tree and learned that the city lord was away meeting Su Qingqing, his courtesan-queen old flame. After freeing two gossip-loving trees to walk, she followed them toward the residence’s storeroom, where guards began searching for intruders.

• Zhou Wanwan and her companions watched a couple’s performance from a quiet path, and Zhou Qingyan warned her to protect her reputation.
• Zhou Wanwan said she wanted a husband who would marry into her family and listen to her, but she was content to stay unmarried if she found no one she liked.
• At the city lord’s gate, a holly tree told Zhou Wanwan that the city lord was away visiting Su Qingqing, while a golden osmanthus boasted of the residence’s immense wealth.
• Zhou Wanwan asked the trees where the storeroom was, and she gave the holly and golden osmanthus energy so they could walk freely.
• The holly led Zhou Wanwan’s group to the heavily guarded storeroom, and the guards searched nearby after someone called out, though they saw nothing unusual.

Zhou Wanwan and the trees raided the city lord’s manor, taking its treasures and turning the manor’s trees into an energized force. Dwarf Holly joined Zhou Wanwan’s group and grew taller by consuming wicked people as the trees began hunting the manor’s worst offenders.

• Holly revealed the affair between a guard and Concubine Ruan, then led Zhou Wanwan and the trees to the manor’s treasure storeroom.
• Old Scholar Tree packed and carried away the tribute treasures while Holly asked Zhou Wanwan to take him in, offering to help empty the manor.
• Holly persuaded the manor’s trees to join them, and Zhou Wanwan replenished their energy as they prepared to uproot the city lord’s manor and move it to Black Wind Stronghold.
• Old Scholar Tree and Holly consumed the incapacitated guards, and Holly grew several meters taller after eating them.
• Holly swallowed the steward who had mistreated Madam Pei, while the trees searched the manor and ate wicked people under Zhou Wanwan’s warning to spare the good.

Zhou Wanwan urged Pei Shuang to leave her abusive husband and reclaim her dowry, and Pei Shuang decided to seek a divorce. When Chu Liufeng came to take her back, Pei Shuang confronted him publicly and exposed how his household had mistreated her and taken her dowry.

• Zhou Wanwan asked Pei Shuang why she had endured her husband's abuse and advised her to seek a divorce, reclaim her dowry, and sue if necessary.
• Pei Shuang worried that a divorce would harm her three daughters' prospects, but her daughters supported her, and she resolved to expose the city lord's household.
• Chu Liufeng arrived and ordered Pei Shuang to return home, while Pei Yong demanded that he sign the divorce agreement.
• Chu Liufeng insulted Pei Shuang and threatened to repudiate her without anything, but Pei Shuang warned that she would report him if he withheld her dowry.
• Pei Shuang accused Chu Liufeng's household of starving and mistreating her while taking her dowry, and onlookers began questioning the city lord's wealth and reputation.

Pei Shuang demanded a divorce from Chu Liufeng and the return of her dowry, while he dismissed her claims and insisted she would come back. When they reached the city lord’s manor, they found it reduced to ruins, but Chu Liufeng still tried to delay the divorce as Pei Shuang stood firm.

• Pei Shuang told Chu Liufeng she wanted a divorce and her dowry back, and Zhou Wanwan rallied the townspeople to witness the agreement.
• Chu Liufeng wrote a divorce agreement and led the crowd to the city lord’s manor, where they found the buildings gone and his parents trapped in a pit.
• Chu Liufeng’s parents and Concubine Ruan blamed Pei Shuang and tried to make her serve them, but she demanded the divorce and her dowry that day.
• Chu Liufeng offered Pei Shuang nearby estates in place of her dowry, and Old Madam Chu objected and insulted her for not bearing a son.
• Zhou Wanwan mocked Old Madam Chu’s demand for a son by offering her a sow.

After divorcing Chu Liufeng, Pei Shuang gave Zhou Wanwan the estate deeds and asked her to take in her and her children. Zhou Wanwan then went to Broken Back Mountain with Old Scholar Tree to search for the former stronghold chief’s treasure, and the desert poplars challenged them when they found the grove where it was hidden.

• Chu Liufeng transferred the estates to Pei Shuang, who left him after trading angry words with him and Old Madam Chu.
• Father Ruan arrived to report that robbers had emptied his restaurant and household valuables, while Chu Liufeng discovered the city lord's manor had also been stripped bare.
• Pei Shuang gave Zhou Wanwan the estate deeds and asked her to take in her and her three children; Zhou Wanwan advised her to rest and build a life of her own.
• Zhou Wanwan went to Broken Back Mountain with Old Scholar Tree, where the plants revealed that the former stronghold chief had hidden treasure nearby.
• A forget-me-not guided Zhou Wanwan and Old Scholar Tree to a grove of desert poplars, and the oldest tree demanded to know whether they had come to steal the treasure.

Zhou Wanwan recovered the horse bandit's valuable maps and records, then had Old Scholar Tree beat the rival shopkeeper and take his silver. When Peerless City’s lord Chu Liufeng confronted them, Zhou Wanwan exposed his recent affairs.

• The old desert poplar revealed where the treasure was hidden, and Zhou Wanwan persuaded him and the little desert poplar to join them.
• Zhou Wanwan uncovered maps of buried gold, mineral deposits, trade secrets, and other treasures among the horse bandit's sheepskin scrolls.
• The rival shopkeeper threatened Zhou Wanwan's restaurant, so Old Scholar Tree dragged him into the woods and beat him unconscious.
• Old Scholar Tree took ten taels of silver and ten silver notes from the shopkeeper, while Zhou Wanwan decided to let him live.
• Chu Liufeng confronted Zhou Wanwan in the woods, and she mocked him by revealing his recent dates with the top courtesan and Concubine Ruan.