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

Princess Longji opened her eyes. There were two bowls on the table; the top one was empty, and the bottom one was half full.

She looked down at her fingers; her knuckles were still white. But the pent-up blood that had been stuck in her throat for a thousand years had somehow dissipated.

She neither vomited nor swallowed it. It simply dissipated. Like ice melting in water, nothing changed, yet everything changed.

I stood behind the stove, wiping my hands with a rag. I glanced at her but didn't ask anything.

He draped the rag over the edge of the stove, picked up the half-bowl of leftover soup, and casually poured it into the swill bucket next to him.

After emptying the bowl, I turned it upside down on the cutting board, bottom facing up. The movements were swift and efficient, as if to say, "Some things are useless to keep, so just throw them away."

Longji stared at the overturned empty bowl and suddenly spoke.

"Back in the mortal realm, he would always turn his bowl upside down on the table after eating. I said, 'What kind of talk is that?' He said he learned it from the blacksmith next door. Later, I got into the habit of turning my bowl upside down after eating. After returning to Heaven, it took me a long time to break this habit."

Her tone was indifferent. She was talking about a habit that had nothing to do with her. I didn't reply, but simply picked up the upside-down bowl, turned it face up, and placed it back in front of her.

Longji stared at the empty bowl, remained silent for a moment, then raised her eyes. The bloodshot in her eyes had faded, replaced by an indescribable clarity. It wasn't liberation; liberation would be too simplistic. She seemed to have finally acknowledged something that had weighed on her for a thousand years.

She paused for a moment. Then I heard her voice again, lower and flatter than before, like a sentence that had been sealed for a thousand years finally finding its way out.

"The moment he knelt down, I thought my life would end there."

She looked up.

"Actually, no. I never broke it. I just got a slight bend. The bend healed so well that I can't even see the scar myself."

Chairman Xing arrived at this moment. His landing posture was flamboyant, his ethereal aura as ethereal as a layer of gold powder applied to a surface. Before he even stood firmly, his voice arrived first.

"Ah Luan, I've been looking for you for so long, and you've been hiding here."

He strode to the stall, his gaze sweeping over me, then over the stove and cutting board, before settling on Princess Longji. He smiled, a rehearsed, ingratiating smile.

  

"A thousand years have passed, yet our past affection remains. If I hadn't voluntarily severed my mortal past and cooperated with the Heavenly Court's arrangements, you wouldn't have been able to successfully transcend your tribulation and escape, would you?"

Longji didn't look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on the empty bowl on the table.

Chairman Xing stopped laughing, took another half step forward, lowered his voice, and his tone became sincere: "Now that you hold the position of the Red Phoenix Star, in charge of marriages across the three realms, if we rekindle our old bond and use your power to rise to the top, it would be quite an interesting tale among immortals. What do you say?"

I listened from the side and added a piece of firewood to the stove.

Longji remained silent. But the aura of the Red Phoenix Star surrounding her began to flicker. The bowls and chopsticks on the stall trembled slightly, making a soft, clattering sound.

Chairman Xing was completely oblivious. His voice gradually shifted from ingratiating to assertive: "I know you still harbor resentment about what happened back then. But any ordinary person from humble beginnings would not give up the opportunity to ascend to heaven. My current divine position is something I earned through my own abilities! Your constant avoidance of resentment is nothing more than your inability to let go of your past obsessions."

He paused, glanced at the broken rope fragments floating in mid-air, and a smile appeared on his lips.

"How can the love and affections of a group of mortals be compared with the great path and future of immortals?" His voice had taken on a cold hue. "Anyway, if I'm not happy, then nobody else can be either."

The firewood in the stove crackled. Longji finally raised his eyes.

She stared at Chairman Xing for a long time. So long that the sinister smile on Chairman Xing's lips began to falter, so long that he subconsciously took a small step back.

"Are you done talking?" Her voice was flat.

Chairman Xing did not respond.

"Every time you come, you disrupt my celestial path." Longji's voice remained calm, as if he were talking about something unrelated to himself. "Every red thread that is broken by my celestial power represents a destroyed destiny in the human world. I know you don't care. You have never cared about anyone's destiny."

She stood up.

"I'm not going to hide anymore. Don't you want my power? Don't you want to use my auspicious star to rise to the top? Don't you think what happened back then was just 'mutual benefit'?"

She took a step forward. Chairman Xing took half a step back.

"Then I'll see today." Her voice finally showed a slight fluctuation, like a muffled sound coming from the deepest part of the ice. "What color is this fairy heart that you exchanged for your old love?"

She raised her hand. The power of the Red Phoenix Star gathered in her palm, not violently, but slowly and heavily, like gently lifting a mountain covered in snow for a thousand years.

"Princess, please wait."

The voice came down from mid-air; it wasn't a rebuke, but a reminder.

When Zhong Kui landed, he didn't bring any ghostly soldiers or stir up any ghostly winds. He only brought a pen and a notebook. With a black face and a red robe, he stood in the middle of the street, his righteous aura pressing down heavily, but not on Long Ji. He bowed slightly to Long Ji, his tone not rebuking, but advising.

"The princess harbors resentment and bitterness, a grudge that has festered for a thousand years, a fact known throughout the Three Realms. However, you, as a Star Lord, are in charge of the Heavenly Dao and the fate of love. To use private punishment to judge crimes is incompatible with your celestial position and with your true nature."

Long Ji's hand froze in mid-air, not retracting. Zhong Kui turned to Chairman Xing. His gaze turned cold, the judge's pen hovering at his fingertips, its tip gleaming with a faint crimson light.

"Chairman Xing."

Chairman Xing's legs went weak for a moment, but he held on. He stiffened his neck, his lips moved, and he began to organize the arguments he had been using for thousands of years.

"The general trend is the general trend, and choices are choices." Zhong Kui didn't give him a chance to speak. His voice wasn't loud, but every word was like an iron nail piercing wood. "The Heavenly Court never forced you to betray, never tempted you to make a deal, and never promised you the slightest benefit. It was you, a mere mortal, who, upon hearing the news, sought opportunism, actively sold your favor, actively sought an official position, and actively exchanged your celestial rank."

Chairman Xing's face turned pale.

"You have possessed an immortal body for a thousand years, yet you show not a trace of remorse. Instead, you use your past affections as a weapon to repeatedly wound the Star Lord, disturb the power of the stars, and disrupt human relationships." Zhong Kui's judge's pen stopped in mid-air, the crimson light at its tip growing brighter and brighter. "Those without a heart are unworthy to be immortals."

The celestial aura surrounding Chairman Xing began to tremble violently. He looked down at his hands, where celestial energy was leaking out from between his fingers, like sand slipping through a tattered bag.

He opened his mouth, but this time he didn't utter the words "I did nothing wrong." He made a very short, choked sound in his throat, and then he collapsed.

"Strip him of his divine title. Dissipate his immortal power. Remove him from the celestial register." Zhong Kui wrote each stroke on the Book of Life and Death. "Take him back to the underworld and sentence him to eternal reincarnation as an animal. Life after life, he will be a beast, devoid of emotion and true feeling."

Ghostly soldiers appeared and restrained the already limp Chairman Xing. As he was dragged away, the divine light around him dissipated. His robes lost their luster, and his face resembled that of a mortal whose body had been hollowed out.

As he passed Longji, he suddenly looked up at her. For a fleeting moment, his lips moved, as if he wanted to say something. The way he opened his mouth was exactly the same as when he asked by the stove a thousand years ago, "Would you like the porridge a little thicker tonight?"

But in the end, he said nothing. His fingers grasped at the air for a moment, then released. The title "Lord Jianbo of Hebei," which he had obtained with all his sincerity—four characters, a name, an empty title—shattered into dust with the sound of the ghostly soldiers' chains.

The last thing he held onto for a thousand years wasn't her. It was this name.

Longji slowly lowered his hand. The star power in his palm dissipated silently.

The celestial street was quiet. The tattered remnants of broken ropes had ceased sometime earlier, and the sky was clear, even the clouds seemed thinner.

Princess Longji sat down again at the stall. She looked down at the empty bowl on the table; the porcelain bowl hadn't been moved at all during her actions.

She picked up the bowl, turned it upside down, and placed it face down on the table. Then she turned it back up, right side up. She stared at the bowl for a moment. Right side up, it was empty. Bottom up, it was also empty. No matter how the bowl was placed, it was empty. But a bowl can hold things. She had never thought of this before. She used to think that an empty bowl meant leftovers, that it was gone, that someone had eaten it all and didn't want it anymore. Now she realized that an empty bowl meant it hadn't been filled yet.

"I command the myriad lovebirds of the mortal world. I guide all the infatuated men and women across the land, and resolve all the entanglements and obsessions of love in this world."

Her voice was very soft, so soft that it was unclear whether she was speaking to herself or to the wisp of white mist that had not yet dissipated in front of the stall.

"It turns out that the hardest thing to overcome has always been myself."

She paused. Then her voice rang out again, lower and flatter than before, as if a sentence sealed for a thousand years had finally found its outlet. But this sentence was different from the previous one.

"But these thousand years have finally passed."

She stood up. The blue phoenix flapped its wings and landed beside her.

"Thank you," she said to me. Not to the stall owner of the "Anti-Ancient Cuisine," but to the person who brought her two bowls of soup.

Then the Azure Phoenix carried her away through the sky. The Crimson Phoenix Star shone brightly again in the sky, quiet and calm, as if it had never been chaotic before.

I looked away and picked up the empty bowl on the table to examine it. It was face up, bottom up; I checked it thoroughly. Then I put the bowl into the hidden compartment under the cutting board, stacking it with the other bowls. That bowl was on top, face up. Turning the cutting board over, I saw the fire in the stove was still burning brightly, and the water in the pot was just beginning to bubble.

The wind blew from the street corner, making the banner of "Anti-Ancient Cuisine" in front of the stall flutter.

I squatted down and added another piece of charcoal to the stove.

Waiting for the next customer.