The great hall of the Perplexing Spice Sect felt like a living thing.
Lanterns hung in concentric rings around a carved jade dais. Incense curled in perfect spirals. Elder portraits watched from lacquered frames, their painted eyes seeming to follow every movement. The air hummed with the low murmurs of disciples; news spread faster here than a boiling broth.
Yan Chen stood near the kitchen door and tried very hard to breathe normally.
A Heavenly Utensil in his pocket felt like a pebble; the golden spoon within thrummed faintly against his thigh. Every step toward the dais sounded too loud. Every whisper fractured his concentration. He had been chosen—no, noticed—by the Mountain Core; elders whispered about ancient rites; Bai Yun had smiled; Qi Hu had glowered. The whole sect, it seemed, had folded its attention into a single point: him.
Elder Chen Jin had summoned him.
They were due in the Sect Hall to present to the Sect Elders and, no less horrifying: the Grandmaster himself. Yan had only the vaguest idea of what would happen, but the way the elders' robes whispered across the marble made it clear—this was not a casual tasting.
He slid into place as the outer doors opened with a measured creak. A gust of wind carried the scent of his lotus broth like a secret. Heads turned. A few apprentices tried discreetly to sniff the air. Yan tried not to swell with pride; humble ambitions tasted better than arrogance, his grandmother had always said, and his grandmother was sadly not here to remind him now.
Elder Chen Jin waited at the dais, his face a carved mountain. Beside him were three other elders: the tall, severe Master Liu with the hawk nose; soft-spoken Master Wu who preferred fermented tofu and quiet proverbs; and, at the far side, an elder with a long white braid who the apprentices simply called Old Taste. Even the Grandmaster arrived sooner than Yan expected—a slim figure in robes the color of river stone, a man whose eyes could cut salt.
"Young Yan Chen," Chen Jin intoned as Yan bowed. "You have stirred resonance with the Mountain Core. This hall will determine the nature of that resonance." He motioned to the rows of benches. "Explain yourself."
Yan's throat felt like sand. The words he wanted—simple, honest—were lodged behind a locked door of shock. He opened his mouth and out came, "I followed the cookbook's guidance. I—" He stopped. The cookbook in his bag seemed to heat like a kettle.
The Grandmaster's lips twitched, not unkindly. "Cookbook?" he repeated. "Bring it forward."
Yan hesitated. In a room where fortunes could be made and ruined by a single stir, revealing a mysterious book felt like handing a stranger a key to your house. But the spoon in his pocket pulsed, gentle as a heartbeat, and Yan understood: hiding it would invite suspicion worse than revelation.
He set the ancient tome on the polished floor between his knees. It opened like breath. The golden letters along the spine glowed for a panicked second, then receded into a steady ember.
Master Liu leaned forward and read the book's leather-bound cover. "The Heavenly Cookbook," he said slowly, as if tasting a rare spice. "This text was last known to exist in the kitchens of the Ascendant Pavilion. How did you come by it?"
"It was given at the sect gate," Yan answered carefully. "A stranger—an old man—slid it into my bag and whispered, 'Guard it well.' I thought it was an old relic… I didn't realize—"
"You were chosen," Old Taste finished in his dry voice. "The Core sometimes points at the unexpected." He reached out, touching the book's cover, and a faint tremor passed through his fingers. "This isn't ordinary leather."
Master Wu nodded. "The cookbook is a relic of the Culinary Deities—if it truly is the original. If so, your resonance could be more than happenstance."
Qi Hu, who had been lounging in the back with his eyes everywhere, let the delighted shadow of sarcasm cross his face. "So our kitchen prodigy is a divine chef now? Please. If a pot bubbles, we can't let him set the whole sect on fire."
Murmurs rose like wind over water. The Grandmaster held up a hand and silenced them.
"Yan Chen," he said, voice soft and grave, "Spirit Infusion is a dangerous threshold. It links the cultivator's intent directly to the Core's attention. That has consequences." He folded his hands. "The sect must determine whether your resonance is a gift to be cultivated or a contagion to be excised."
Yan Chen's stomach contracted. "Excised?"
The Grandmaster's eyes twinkled. "A blunt word. It might require discipline. Or it may grant you a path. The choice belongs to the sect—as custodian of the Mountain Core."
Chen Jin's voice, like a whetstone on a blade, filled the hall. "We will not decide without testing. A feast is coming—the Jade Petal Feast. It is tradition and trial. We have not held a proper feast in decades due to turmoil in the outer provinces. Now we will. Your appearance makes the timing apt."
The hall shifted as if the dais had grown teeth.
"What is the Jade Petal Feast?" Yan asked before he could stop himself.
Master Wu smiled, eyes distant. "A banquet where disciples showcase their spirit, skill, and harmony. Dishes are offered to the Mountain Core. Its acceptance grants honor, station, and—if the Core deems a dish worthy—boons to the maker."
A low murmur burned through the crowd. Boons. Influence. Opportunity. Yan's pulse accelerated. If he had before dreamed of stepping beyond being a kitchen slave, now he smelled more than broth—he smelled a path.
Elder Chen Jin continued, "We will hold the Jade Petal Feast in thirty days. All who wish to take the official Inner Kitchen examination must submit a dish infused with Spirit Essence. Range of material is limited to what the sect can loan: the base lotus, lotus oil, spice racks, and the sect's supply. For a trial such as this, special permission is required." He fixed Yan with a steady stare. "Yan Chen—because your dish already stirred the Core—you will be granted special dispensation to participate."
Silent gasps. Qi Hu's face went pale, a shade found only in unripe persimmons. The whispers turned prickly. The Inner Kitchen exam was the gateway to apprenticeships, to entrenched status. To compete was perilous—and for someone newly risen, audacious.
"However," Chen Jin added, voice sharp as a cleaver, "with privilege comes responsibility. You will undergo a preliminary trial tomorrow. Succeed, and we will allow you formal entry to the Feast. Fail—" He paused. The room held its breath. "—and your connection will be sealed for the foreseeable future."
That was worse than immediate exile; it was a slow, grinding closure of opportunity. Yan felt the walls narrower around his ribs.
He bowed. "I accept."
A hundred eyes burned into his back like the heat of a thousand stoves.
---
The rest of the day became a blur of orders and whispers. Yan returned to the inner kitchen with a mind full of purpose; every chop, every stir, felt like training for a battle not with swords but with spices. He could taste the aim of his life now as a faint current in his mouth: to practice until his hands could conjure the Core's smile on command.
Chen Jin assigned him to a mentor for intensive training: a thin, surprisingly spry man named Master Gao, a former prodigy turned patient teacher. Master Gao's specialty was "taste mapping"—understanding how memory, emotion, and element blended into Spirit Essence.
"You're to be trained," Gao announced, arranging rows of small glass vials like an apothecary's army. "Tomorrow's trial will test not only your skill but your spirit's steadiness. If you cannot balance the five basic tastes and channel Spirit Essence smoothly, the Core will not accept your offering. Are you ready to be pried apart and reassembled, little cook?"
Yan swallowed and nodded. "Yes, Master Gao."
Gao's eyes glimmered. "Good. First lesson—Flavor Realms must be understood like breath: sensed, not thought. You must cultivate the taste thread." He handed Yan a fine silver spoon with a notched handle. The spoon hummed faintly at Yan's touch.
"Place this on your tongue. Close your eyes. Don't taste with your mouth. Taste with your head." Gao instructed.
Yan felt like a fool, but he obeyed.
The spoon grew cold, then warm, then at last matched the heat of his mouth. Shapes formed in his vision—impressions of salt, bitter, sweet, sour, and umami—not as flavors but as textured threads. He had to pluck them with the mind, not the tongue. It was terrifying in its intimacy.
"Your spirit," Gao murmured, "is like a vat. When you pour Essence in, it must not splash and spill. Play with the threads until they sing."
Training consumed Yan like fire consumes dry kindling. He chopped, he boiled, he inhaled the secret histories of lotus root, he learned that the subtle softness of steamed fish could soothe a meridian scratched by a thorn, that bitter tea could sharpen perception like a whetstone.
Between practice, he and Bai Yun crossed paths often. Their exchanges were short and edged in the easy banter of two people measured the same way—both testing. She was always precise; her hands moved like a breeze through leaves. She teased him sometimes, scored him on the placement of his knives, and yet she occasionally caught herself smiling when his broth released memories—of city street noodles, of rain on license plates—things that no cultivation manual taught.
"You waste spice when you temper too quickly," she chided once, adjusting his wrist with the gentlest pressure.
He balked, "You talk as if you've seen everything in a pot."
She arched an eyebrow. "Seen enough. Besides, you have unusual habits. Your dishes… they hold a trace of the old world. It's rare."
It was the first time anyone had said that in a way that sounded like praise rather than a threat. Yan felt his chest settle a little.
Meanwhile, Qi Hu's schemes did not sleep. The young chef muttered with his cronies in shadowed larders; they rifled through ingredient lists and poisoned wellsprings, trying to find a weakness to exploit. If Yan failed, Qi Hu would be first to stand before the Grandmaster with a sanctimonious speech demanding punishment. Yan felt the prickly hum of enmity like red pepper beneath the skin.
Still, despite sabotage and threats, training advanced. Yan learned the principle of memory infusion: to link a fragment of emotion or memory to an ingredient so it would carry not just Spirit Essence but intent. When he infused lotus with the memory of his grandmother's slow simmering stew back on Earth, it sang to him like an old friend. When Bai Yun tasted a small spoon of that practice broth, her pupils dilated. For a heartbeat she seemed younger—less the poised sect prodigy and more a girl who had once sat under a tree and ate sweet rice.
"You hold onto memory like a child clings to candy," she observed softly. "Don't let it own you."
"I don't want to let it go," Yan said, surprising himself.
Outside of training, rumors became plans. The Jade Petal Feast drew nearer, and with it, a new edict from the elders: the sect would loan each candidate a single special ingredient from the sect's Vault of Preserves for the Feast. These weren't ordinary items. They were rare—dried phoenix fruit dust, lunar sea salt, dew peppers plucked at midnight. Only those whom the elders trusted could touch them.
The Vault was in the Inner Mountain, sealed by runes older than the Outer Provinces. Elder Chen Jin's eyes flicked to Yan when the announcement was made. "Because of your Core resonance," he said at Yan's side, "you may request one vault item for the Feast. But I warn you, the Vault knows the seeker. If the seeker's motives are impure, the Vault remains closed."
Yan's heart beat a new rhythm. An item from the Vault—one ingredient—could swing a dish from acceptable to heavenly. It could be the difference between anonymity and legend. It could also draw eyes from the Core like a moth to flame.
"Choose wisely," Gao told him that night as he scrubbed a pan until it shone. "Your spirit must be true. The Vault rejects vanity. It favors harmony."
Yan listened. He thought of the golden spoon's hum in his pocket. It seemed to pull toward something. That night, under the leaking stars and a roof like a palm, he dreamed of a single image: a leaf of jade so thin it shimmered like a thought, etched with a lotus and a phoenix. When he woke, his mouth tasted of salt and something like promise.
His goal crystallized.
Win the preliminary trial. Gain entry to the Feast. Request a Vault ingredient. Craft a dish that pleases the Core.
Simple, in words. Terrible, in the teeth of reality.
But even as Yan framed the goal, the spoon in his pocket buzzed like an impatient child. He drew it out and watched as it tilted toward the east—toward the Inner Mountain with the Vault.
A cold realization swept him: the spoon was not merely a token. It might be a pointer.
If the spoon can find the Vault's secret… could it also lead to danger?
He had work to do, and there was not a second to waste.