Everyone's already saying it, they adopted kids. Out of nowhere. Shortly after getting together. Wtf..?

BUT THAT ISN'T THE MAIN REASON I DROPPED IT.

I dropped it, because the story didn't follow it's original path anymore. It completely betrayed its freaking title! Lin Shuyi finally gets his restaurant and I was so excited! Finally, the first step to becoming a chef! But he stops there. At the first step, he stops.

This 19-year old with his new boyfriend-turned (immediately) -fiance, decides to adopt kids, abandons his ambitions altogether, rushes to train his newly-hired novice chef so he can leave his restaurant to him while he raises his kids. Even the grandpa in the beginning is just thrown away to another family.

Given this novel's emphasis on family bonds, it's not out of place for the MC to take interest in adopting kids. One of the things that he reflected about his past life is that he never got to experience what it's like to have a family since his relationship with the teacher who raised him wasn't really like a father-to-child relationship and kept strictly as teacher-student relationship. In this life, the MC's relationship with the ML was firmly established in spite of how quick it was and by this point, the MC had fully realized what he truly wanted in his life: his own family.

My discontent with the adoption thing was how unrealistically easy they integrated into the family. First of all, the two kids (Xiao Yu and Tao Tao) were just too perfect. They never caused any problems and were always well behaved and smiling. No crying. No child tantrum. No conflicts. No arguments. Nothing. Raising kids (adopted or not) cannot be this easy can it? Does the author actually know what it's like to raise kids?

Second, they adjusted to their new family too easily. This is too weird considering that the kids were taken home on the same day that they met. Is it realistic for total strangers to become family this quickly?

The elder kid (Xiao Yu) carried emotional scars from his previous adopted family and it shows as he talks to the MC with a smiling yet sad expression. Yet after taking the kids home, Xiao Yu shows no signs of his past scars. The sad expression and heavy weight in his voice he carried at the orphanage disappeared instantly with the MC's assurance. Is it possible for the emotional scars of a child to heal within a single day? Is it possible for a child to trust the words of a stranger this easily?

Another thing I hated was how the Old Man Yang's house became forgotten considering all the sentimental value that it carried during the arc with his daughter-in-law trying to sell it. The house was pretty much abandoned with the Old Man Yang moving in Xiao Wan's family. Old Man Yang moved out. The house was never mentioned again. No talks about how the house would be taken care of. No talks about keeping the house safe and clean. Nothing.

The biggest headache was that the MC actually gave up his profession as a chef and went into real estate. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Real estate? Seriously? Didn't the MC learn from his past mistakes of losing himself to his ambitions. Did the MC say he only wanted to focus this life on doing what he loves which was cooking?

After transmigration: MC wakes knowing absolutely nothing about the original owner of the body he transmigrated into. Old Man Yang takes him in and gives him a job at his restaurant, XiQin Restaurant. MC has his first encounter with the ML at ch. 5 when they walk into each other at a bayberry garden. The ML starts sticking to the MC (to his dismay) after the MC finds him beaten up and lying in Old Man Yang's vegetable garden. Together, the trio runs the XiQin Restaurant and the three becomes very close to the point that Old Man Yang regards the two, the MC in particular, as his grandsons. Things are peaceful and pretty much pure slice-of-life until the first arc.

Arc 1: Old Man Yang's daughter-in-law plotted to take and sell Old Man Yang's cherished house to start a beauty salon. This arc ends when his grandson's gambling debts tears the family apart and the ML uses his connections to save Old Man Yang who willingly gives himself up to resolve the debt. The grandson goes to prison, the daughter-in-law ends up in a mental hospital due to stress over the debt and the loss of her family, and the son divorces the daughter-in-law and moves on with his life.

Arc2: Old Man Yang gives the XiQin Restaurant to the MC. The MC renovates the restaurant and personally does all the architectural and interior designing.

Arc3: Old Master Shen (ML's grandfather) contacts the ML and urges him to introduce the MC to the family. ML brings MC to his home city. The old master of the Shen household (ML's grandfather) unexpectedly shows up at where they're staying and has a talk with each of them separately. Old Master Shen (ML's grandfather) leaves with a good impression of the MC and his attitude peaks the interests of ML's parents who become eager to meet the MC.

Arc4: With the approval from Old Master Shen to their relationship, the MC and ML returns home and spills the beans to Old Man Yang, whom MC considers as his family while finding out that Old Man Yang got together with Xiao Wan's widowed grandmother. Everyone involves accepts the new circumstances very easily and happily.

Arc5: ML brings the MC to the Shen household and they have dinner with the entire family. The entire family have long since accepted their relationship so the dinner goes really well. The entire family accompanies the couple to a press conference where the ML confirms the rumors about his homosexuality and formally announces his relationship with MC. The press conference ends peacefully with everyone having positive impression of the couple. So with this arc, the couple has gained the acceptance of ML's family and the general public.

Arc6 (Ch. 70-75) : The Shen family formally meets Old Man Yang and the entire family gets along very well.

MC is all about food Ch. 25: The only difference was, all of Xiao Wan's bags contained things to play with, while all of Lin ShuYi's bags contained things to eat.

This quote from Xiao Wan's grandmother summed up Old Man Yang's character perfectly: That old man, he's always been too kind-hearted. Now if he had my temper, then even heaven would be in an uproar.

while her own personality on the other hand: Xiao Wan's grandmother might have a knife for a tongue, but she was actually soft at heart. Her only flaw was that she liked to gossip too much, but she was a good person. This was clear in the way she treated and took care of Old Man Yang.

And Old Man's relation with MC and ML: Seeing that Lin ShuYi and Shen Fu were cooking in the kitchen, no one was surprised anymore. From their point of view, these two kids were like old man Yang's real grandsons. No, they were more charming than his real grandson.

• This arc officially started when Old Man Yang was invited to stay with his son's family in the city they live in. After years of no contact, Old Man Yang happily did so, but abruptly returned two days earlier with a downcast mood. Everyone notices that Old Man Yang doesn't want to talk about what happened and so no one asks any questions.
  However, very soon, Old Man Yang's son and grandson showed up at his restaurant and we find out what caused Old Man Yang's early return.... his daughter-in-law had an ulterior motive for inviting Old Man Yang: to extort money from Old Man Yang so that she can open up a beauty salon.

  With a deceiving smile, she offered to bring Old Man Yang to live with them in the city. This makes Old Man Yang feel touched, but all happy feelings goes away when she continues and brings up the underlying condition... Old Man Yang must sell his house and use it to open a beauty salon.

To add context to the arc, here's the background of each family member

This quote is a perfect example of the hypocrisy in the daughter-in-laws words and how dysfunction the family is:

MC and ML adopt a set of siblings who are perfect, obedient, sensible, model, 2D children. It's the same as reading about someone who adopts a puppy who is picked up off the street but it's already sensible, doesnt cry, doesnt wet the floor, is already potty trained, knows how to sit stay laydown rollover and bring the remote over from the table. yeah.

And on top of this, MC opens up a restaurant where he ends up never really cooking in? He inherits the restaurant from the grandpa, then he completely rebuilds on top of the old shop and makes it an appointment only type of restaurant, which I have no complaints about. the complaint is that he barely ever steps foot into the kitchen except to increase "flex" points I guess. In fact, he rarely ever cooks towards the end of the novel. He passes off his dream of opening a restaurant to an unwilling (?) employee after training him then runs off to his perfect family..... He opens up a bunch of other restaurants which are absolutely booming in business, and MC never has to ever go back to check how things are going or do any menu planning or etc, anything that entails to running a food service business I just OTL.....

To be more specific, when the Grandpa's family came into the picture.

other than working in the tiny restaurant

Well, he just mysteriously appeared by the main character and never left.

MC just had to whistle a bit to tame a horse he's only seen once. Guess he's a horse whisperer.

Let's not forget about how they just visited a shelter and picked out some kids like they were adopting a dog...

Also, they closed down their restaurant whenever they wanted, every few days, right after it opened and nobody seemed to mind. What a reliablebusinessplan, amazing.

MC first talked about this one dude from his old timeline that made ML pretty jealous. ML kept wondering "who was that guy" but he was never mentioned in the end. Author introduced him in the story like he's a big part of the novel but bro just dipped. Justice for that character lolol *lights a candle

OG MC's family: author also introduced the picture as like some sort of mystery but was never solved in the end. Who are those guys? Why bother even putting that in author? To add some "spice" on the MC cause he bland as hell??????

The Yang family is no joke. At least the grandpa isn't an a$$hole like the grandson and wife.

For them to be rich as f*uck, they're super cool. Even grandpa eventually chills and accepts the relationship

I think it's because the MC had a pretty bland personality. Other than being OP and being able to do just about anything, I didn't find him that interesting. The few times he showed interesting traits were too far and few, like the time he shutdown the gay-hating fake reporter at the press conference when he and the ML came out. Other than those rare moments, the ML was far more interesting.

Are you telling me you went from rebirth, being the adopted grandson of a old man you've never met replacing the grandpa's own family, to owning your own restaurant, to being in a fully committed relationship, to meeting the parents, to talking about adopting kids in half a year?! Holy Sh*t! Now that's gold finger!! I admit I like my MC's to be overpowered, but this went waaaaaaaaay too fast.

he put so much thought into the restaurant just to almost immediately let it go. Maybe the author inserted the kids way to early resulting in the lack of development but this is one of the contributions to my dissatisfaction