Celestial Food Stall: I Set Up a Food Stall in Heaven

The Bull Demon King's hand, which was holding the wine cup, froze in mid-air.

Princess Iron Fan didn't look at him, and continued to ask, "Anything else?"

I took something out of my sleeve and gently placed it next to the rough porcelain plate.

On the stone table, the broken jade hairpin with twin lotus blossoms lay scattered, its head shattered and its body covered in cracks. The four tiny characters "May we live as long as you" on the end of the hairpin gleamed faintly in the firelight.

"And this too."

Princess Iron Fan looked down at the broken hairpin and said, "I've held onto this hairpin for three hundred years. It's broken beyond repair, but I still can't bear to throw it away."

She raised her head and looked at the Bull Demon King opposite her. Her voice was calm and steady, like a bowl of water that had been sitting for too long and had gone cold.

"Holding this in my hand, I remember what you looked like back then. Grinding it into powder and putting it into the sauce is so that you can taste it yourself and see what that guy surnamed Niu tasted like three hundred years ago."

The Bull Demon King's gaze was fixed on the broken hairpin. He didn't speak, and even his breathing became soft.

He recognized those four characters; he had carved them.

On the day the carving was done, Iron Fan had not yet left the palace, and he was not yet the mighty Great Sage Equaling Heaven, but just a poor ox spirit who had just taken a job from the Dragon King of the West Sea.

He stole a piece of cold jade from the Bull Demon King's father, hid in a cave and carved it for three days, ruining dozens of pieces of material, before finally carving out this hairpin.

When Iron Fan received it, she scolded him, saying that the phrase "to live as long as you" was unlucky.

The immortal said that sharing the same lifespan was tantamount to cursing someone to die young. He scratched his head and asked, "Shall we change it?" She said, "No, it's already so ugly. If we carve another one, it'll be even uglier."

He couldn't remember when he had taken the hairpin off her head.

It was probably after he acquired the Moyun Cave and took the Jade-Faced Fox as his concubine.

One day she took off the hairpin, and he didn't notice. He assumed she didn't like it anymore, was disgusted by it, and had thrown it away.

He never imagined that she had held onto this hairpin for three hundred years.

Iron Fan picked up the knife and cut the steak on the plate in half.

She pushed one half in front of him and kept the other half for herself.

Then she picked up the wooden fork, speared a small piece from her half, and put it in her mouth.

She chewed very slowly, and as she chewed, tears started falling again.

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This time, the tears of resentment were not scalding hot, but cool, sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto the hem of her crimson skirt, leaving a small, dark stain.

The Bull Demon King watched her finish that bite, watched her put down her chopsticks, and then looked down at the half-eaten steak in front of him.

The sauce was still bubbling, and the aroma of caramelized flowers filled my nostrils, a sweetness that was almost bittersweet.

He picked up the wooden fork, speared a piece, and put it in his mouth.

The first bite was of meat. Crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, rich in fat, roasted to perfection.

With his second bite, he tasted the sauce. The sauce tasted strange; it wasn't salty, nor sweet, but a flavor he had never tasted before.

It's as if someone burned a pile of peach blossoms in a peach grove, then extinguished them with rainwater, and then collected the ashes and rainwater together in a jar and sealed it for hundreds of years.

The taste slid from the tip of the tongue to the back of the tongue, then went down the throat, and suddenly stopped halfway down.

He coughed.

It wasn't that he choked. It was that taste that suddenly turned into a thorn, stuck in his throat, neither going up nor down.

He coughed again; the thorn was still there.

He put down the wooden fork, picked up his wine glass, and took a sip of wine, hoping to flush the thorn away.

The wine goes down, but the thorn remains.

The thorn was stuck there.

Like Princess Iron Fan's cries as she was torn to shreds by the wind on the Flaming Mountain, like the shallow pit on the pebbles at her feet, pierced by her tears, like the three hundred years she has waited since her wedding night.

She was his legal wife, yet he abandoned her.

It wasn't intentional at first. He just stayed in Moyun Cave for a few more days, and then a few more days, and then a few more days.

The Flaming Mountains are too far away, and it's too much trouble to go there.

Later, a jade-faced fox appeared in Moyun Cave. She was gentle and considerate, never argued with him, and never fanned him with a fan.

Later, he didn't want to go anymore.

Later he told himself that Iron Fan didn't need him.

She's so strong; she can protect the Flaming Mountain all by herself, raise her children all by herself, and live a good life all by herself.

Later, he even felt that not seeing her was the right thing to do; if they met, they would argue and fight, so it was better not to see her at all. He used this logic to convince himself for hundreds of years.

But after that bite of sauce, that logic suddenly fell apart.

The thorn in her throat told him: she couldn't possibly survive on her own. She was just not dead.

He forked another piece, put it in his mouth, and chewed it even slower than before.

There were no tears in his large, round eyes, but his eye sockets were red. He refused to let a single tear fall.

So he forked one piece after another, chewing and swallowing, as if as long as he kept eating, he wouldn't get stuck in his throat by that thorn.

Princess Iron Fan on the other side has stopped crying.

She sat quietly, watching him eat, her expression not one of forgiveness, emotion, or relief, but something more simple.

She was waiting. She had waited for three hundred years, not to hear an apology from him.

They wanted to see him swallow it down. To see him swallow back what he had thrown away back then, bite by bite.

The Bull Demon King finished the last piece of steak on his plate.

He put down the wooden fork, braced his hands on the edge of the stone table, lowered his head, and took several deep breaths over the empty rough porcelain plate.

His breath was heavy, as if he had just finished a fight.

The wind in the peach grove suddenly stopped, the branches of the wild peach trees ceased swaying, and even the charcoal fire quieted down.

He slammed his fist on the stone table, causing the plates and dishes to jump up and make a loud noise. A thin crack appeared on the stone table, passing under the broken hairpin and splitting the four characters "与卿同寿" (meaning "to live as long as you").

Then he spoke.

His voice was so low and hoarse that it didn't seem to come from his chest, but rather from under the stone table or from the soil at the base of the peach grove.

"Iron Fan".

Princess Iron Fan did not respond.

"I'm not going to spout any nonsense like begging you to give me another chance."

He looked up, his eyes red, but no tears fell.

"I know I'm worthless. It's only natural that you hate me."

He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing as if he were swallowing the toughest fiber from the last piece of beef.

"But I want you to know one thing—today's meal was the worst thing I've ever eaten in my life. Not because it was poorly made. It's because every bite felt like I was being chewed up."

He stood up and took a step back from the stone table.

He did something he had never done before in his life in front of Princess Iron Fan.

He lowered his bull's head, which was harder than the stone lion at the South Heavenly Gate.

It's not cupping hands or clasping fists, it's bowing one's head.

An incompetent husband bows his head to his wife whom he abandoned in the Flaming Mountains for three hundred years.

Not in public, not in front of the three realms, but in this wild peach grove where only a single crooked old peach tree bears witness.

Iron Fan stared at his lowered head for a long time.

Then she stood up, walked around the stone table, and stood in front of him. She raised her hand.

The Bull Demon King instinctively tensed his shoulders and back, thinking she was going to slap him.

She didn't slap him.

She gently placed her hand, calloused from three hundred years of rest and the touch of the banana leaf fan, on the back of his drooping head. She pressed it once, then released it.

"We're finished eating." She turned to look at me, her tone softer than before. "Chef Chang, you can clear the table now."

I put out the charcoal fire.

The Bull Demon King was still standing there, head down, motionless.

Princess Iron Fan had already turned and walked out of the peach grove. She wasn't walking fast, but every step she took was firm.

Just like when she arrived, and just like when she left Tianjie three days ago. Only this time, she no longer held the broken hairpin in her hand.

The broken hairpin still lay on the stone table, quietly beside the plate. I poured it, along with the half-bowl of leftover sauce, into the charcoal fire.

The jade did not crack when it came into contact with fire; instead, it caused the flames to leap upwards.

It gradually melted in the fire, mixing with the remaining sauce, turning into a very faint sweet and caramel aroma, which was then dispersed completely by the wind blowing through the forest.

I picked up the bottom of the sauce bowl, tilted my head back, and poured the remaining, cooled sauce into my mouth before turning around to clean the stove.

With eyes accustomed to the aura of spiritual materials, he discreetly and carefully savored a completely new aura that he had never tasted before.

Tears of resentment, jade to resolve hatred, combined with the scorching heat of the Flaming Mountain and the charcoal aroma of wild peach wood from the Thunder Mountain. The time is right.