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

The area around Nantianmen Gate is busier with people than it was a while ago.

Saying it's "prosperous" isn't quite accurate. The immortals still didn't dare to approach easily, but the disdain in their eyes had faded considerably when they stopped at a distance.

Occasionally, a bold wandering immortal would come over, stare at the rows of chipped, rough porcelain bowls on the cutting board for a long time, and ask, "Is this the dish that turns the Dragon King into a mudfish?" I would nod, and he would click his tongue twice and leave.

They neither ordered food nor sat down, acting as if they were visiting a historical site.

I'm not in a hurry. My business doesn't rely on a constant stream of customers.

After the matter in the Dragon Palace was settled, the base of the turtle jelly was used up completely on the day of the public trial. Nezha even packed up the last layer scraped off the bottom of the bowl and took it back for Baxia to try, so that the cowardly dragon prince could also look in the mirror.

I was happy to have some peace and quiet, but upon rummaging through the ingredients, I discovered that several common bitter herbs were almost gone. Although these herbs weren't valuable, they were the base for making the paste; without even one of them, it wouldn't be complete.

You can buy ready-made herbs at the pharmacies on the main street, but their quality is far inferior to those you gather yourself. The herbs that have been processed have lost their proper heat and their spiritual energy has been fragmented. The resulting paste is only good for fooling the mouth, not the heart.

One of them, Flameheart Grass, only thrives in the fiery aura surrounding Flaming Mountain.

I did the math; it would only take half a day round trip, and wouldn't interfere with my evening stall opening. So I took off my apron and draped it over the edge of the stove, said goodbye to Old Zhang, who sold fairy fruits next door, and rode the clouds westward.

I've been to the Flaming Mountains once before. Last time I just passed through quickly, but this time I came alone and realized that the desolation of this place is not just the desolation of barren land.

The mountains are red, the rocks are crimson, and the folds of the mountains are embedded with embers that burn year-round. From a distance, they look like a giant beast that has been gutted, its internal organs still burning.

The heatwave pushed outwards from the mountain, and you could feel the dryness seeping into your sleeves and collar from a distance, like someone splashing boiling water on your skin without actually burning you, just making you uncomfortable.

Flameheart Grass is easy to find. This thing grows in the crevices of rocks at the foot of mountains. The tips of the grass are dark red, as if it has been burned by a forest fire but not completely dead, while its roots go very deep.

I crouched by the crevice in the rock, gathering a wisp of immortal energy at my fingertips to protect my palm, and probed downwards along the grass stem. As I pulled it up by the roots, I could feel a faint burning sensation emanating from them—the aura of fire, alive.

I picked a small bundle and was about to get up when I suddenly heard something carried on the wind.

It wasn't the sound of fire. The wind in the Flaming Mountains is muffled, like a red-hot iron pot covered by a cotton quilt, but this sound was sharp, thin, and intermittent, like something being torn into strips of cloth by the wind.

I followed the sound around a huge rock blackened by a wildfire, and before me lay a wide, open platform on the mountainside. A woman sat on the edge of the platform, her back to me, facing the direction of Jilei Mountain.

Jilei Mountain is located in the southeast. Looking out from here, through the sea of ​​clouds, you can only vaguely see the outline of Moyun Cave on the mountaintop, with its carved beams and painted rafters, shimmering with light and color, which seems to be a completely different world from the scorched earth below.

She remained motionless, like a stone left behind on the mountainside.

The wind blew her skirt, the hem of which was frayed from the rocks. The plain fairy dress was covered with charcoal ash that had been there for who knows how many years, which could not be washed off and had seeped into her skin.

A jade hairpin on her head was tilted, the head of which was broken in half, the broken edge polished to a shine.

It was the repeated rubbing of fingers, year after year, that ground the jade into powder.

She was crying.

It wasn't wailing or sobbing; it was the kind of crying that comes from years of having cried, a voice hoarse from the burning resentment, a cry that makes no sound.

  

Her shoulders trembled, and tears slid down her cheeks, landing on the stones at her feet and forming a small puddle.

The tears were scalding hot, and when they fell on the stones, they still emitted faint steam. They were dispersed by the mountain wind, but new tears would immediately follow.

I stood behind the rock without moving.

I recognized those tears. They weren't ordinary tears.

The aura of the departing fire was shrouded in resentment, and within that resentment lay the bitterness of being abandoned for hundreds of years. This aura was so intense that even from several meters away, one could feel a scorching heat emanating from the ground.

I subconsciously squeezed the Flameheart Grass tucked at my waist. The fiery aura of the grass roots was nothing compared to the flames in her tears, like the flames on a stove compared to a steel furnace.

A thought flashed through my mind: those tears were spiritual materials, top-grade ones, the kind of top-grade spiritual materials that are hard to come by.

But this thought only occupied half of his mind; the other half was focused on the broken hairpin.

The jade hairpin was a betrothal gift given by the Bull Demon King. Anyone of any age in the Three Realms, whether immortal or demon, knows that the Bull Demon King used a hairpin made of thousand-year-old cold jade from the East Sea when he married Princess Iron Fan. The hairpin head was carved with twin lotus flowers.

Now the hairpin head is broken, leaving only half of the hairpin body, which she has held in her hand for hundreds of years, polishing it until it shines, until only a stub remains.

She gripped the broken hairpin in her palm, tightening her grip until her knuckles turned white and the broken edge dug into her hand.

I guess she always squeezes it for a while every time she comes here, as if squeezing it to pieces would change something.

But the hairpin was already broken beyond repair; if she squeezed it again, it would only cause the broken ends to cut her palm again.

I emerged from behind the rocks. My footsteps were neither deliberately soft nor deliberately loud.

She didn't turn around, but her shoulders stiffened slightly. She knew someone was there, but she didn't care, or rather, she didn't care enough to even think turning around was superfluous.

I didn't walk to her side; I stopped about two zhang behind her. I put the Flameheart Grass on the ground, took out my water pouch from my robes, took a sip, and then spoke, my tone as flat as if I were saying that today's cooking was a bit overdone.

"Don't hold onto that broken hairpin. Even if you break it, it won't come back."

She turned around abruptly. Her face was more haggard than I had imagined; her exquisite makeup was smudged with tears, and the fine lines at the corners of her eyes were deep furrows etched by resentment.

His eyes were red-rimmed, and the tip of his nose was also unusually red.

But what I noticed most was her eyes.

Those eyes were filled with anger, the anger of being caught in a disheveled state, like a wounded mother leopard eyeing the strangers approaching her den.

"Who are you?" she asked in a hoarse, wary voice.

"The cook who sets up a stall at the foot of the South Heavenly Gate," I said, shaking the water pouch in my hand, "came to collect Flameheart Grass. Did I disturb you?"

She didn't answer, turning her head back to look in the direction of Mount Jilei. After a while, she said something, almost to herself: "Do you know what it feels like to look at a mountain through a sea of ​​clouds for hundreds of years?"

I didn't reply.

She added, "Do you know that the peach grove outside his cave blooms every spring? From here, it's a sea of ​​pink, like a fiery sunset."

"I used to think that they were planted for me. He planted peach trees outside Moyun Cave, and I watched them from Flaming Mountain, which was also for me to see. Later I found out that it was that vixen who liked peach blossoms."

Her voice was flat, as if she were talking about someone else. But when she said the word "peach blossom," tears started falling again.

This time it wasn't silent; it was accompanied by a very low sob, one that had been suppressed for far too long.

I looked at the small puddle of tears that had accumulated at her feet, squatted down, put the water pouch on the ground, and took out a small white jade bottle from my bosom.

She didn't notice.

I held the bottle and gently touched the edge of the pool of tears with the mouth of the bottle to the stone at her feet. The movement was slow, not like stealing, but more like retrieving a precious medicinal ingredient.

Her tears flowed down the grooves in the stone and into the mouth of the bottle, drop by drop. The bottle gradually warmed up, and the fiery aura emanating from it seeped into her palm through the jade bottle.

"What are you doing?"

She suddenly spoke, her voice turning cold.

It is a question.

A woman who has been abandoned for hundreds of years is as sensitive to any form of "being used" as a bow that has been stretched for too long, ready to shoot an arrow at the slightest touch.

She stared at the white jade bottle in my hand, the furrow at the corner of her eye, etched by resentment, twitching slightly.

"To obtain spiritual materials."

I didn't even look up, and my hands didn't stop moving.

The bottle mouth remained firmly against the edge of the stone trough, and her tears continued to stream down her face. I continued to catch them, my tone as calm as if I were discussing tonight's menu with her.

"Your tears."

She was taken aback. She probably didn't expect anyone to talk about "stealing tears" so confidently.

Then she laughed, a cold laugh that seemed to say, "I've been crying here for three hundred years, and instead of comforting me, you're using my tears as spiritual material."

The laughter was soft, but there was no self-deprecation in it, only sarcasm. She wasn't being sarcastic towards me, but towards herself.

She cried for three hundred years, and was finally caught crying. The person who saw her crying didn't care why she was crying, but whether her tears could be used in cooking.

Her shoulders shook with laughter, and tears streamed down her face even more profusely, yet she said, "You're using my tears as spiritual material?"

"Hmm." I screwed on the bottle cap, stood up, and held the white jade bottle up to my eyes. The bottle was stained slightly red with tears, like it was half-filled with molten iron.

I tucked it into my sleeve before looking at her. Her eyes were still wary, but the anger had faded, replaced by a sense of uncertainty.

It's because she didn't understand what I was saying.

"Madam, tears, once they fall on a stone and dry in the sun, are gone. But if you make them into a sauce, you can make those who need to swallow their tears swallow them."

She didn't understand. But she sensed a hidden meaning in my words. "What did you say?"

I looked at her. Her eyes were still wary, but the anger had faded, replaced by a kind of uncertainty.

"There's a cook with a stall near the South Heavenly Gate," I said, "who makes a dish made with tears. Madam, you can go whenever you want."

Without waiting for her reply, I turned around, picked up the Flameheart Grass, and rode away on a cloud.

Looking back from a distance, she was still sitting on that rock, but her posture had changed. She was no longer sitting stiffly, but looking down at the puddle of tears I had emptied at her feet. Her fingers were tracing the edge of the rock, like someone who had found a door but didn't know whether to push it open.

I squeezed the bottle of warm tears in my sleeve, and a rough idea of ​​a dish was already forming in my mind.

Suddenly, the panel in my mind, which had been dormant for many days, flashed. Among the six directions, the character "left" lit up faintly, its gray-white surface entwined with black threads, like an underburnt charcoal core in a stove.

To the left lies the demon realm. Princess Iron Fan's resentment stems from the demon realm.

The panel went dark, and before I could think further, my mind returned to the bottle of tears in front of me.

These tears can't be made directly. The resentment is too strong; it will dissipate when baked by high temperatures.

We need something to anchor it. Ideally, it should be related to her resentment and also to the Bull Demon King, so that this aura can be locked in the sauce, never dissipating, so that one bite will strike straight to the heart.

That broken hairpin. The jade hairpin was a gift from the Bull Demon King, and it still retained the Bull Demon King's original intentions and demonic power.

Grind it into powder and mix it into tears of resentment; that will become a fuse.

Grind one person's feelings into powder, mix it with another person's tears, boil it into a sauce, brush it on meat, and serve it back to the person who gave the feelings.

Let the Bull Demon King swallow his feelings from back then, and let Princess Iron Fan shed three hundred years' worth of tears.

Before returning to my stall, I made a special detour to the Spirit Beast Shop on Tianjie Street to inquire about the situation of Moyun Cave on Jilei Mountain from the old shopkeeper.

The old shopkeeper stroked his beard and said that a few years ago, the Bull Demon King obtained a pure white spirit calf from the Dragon King of the West Sea. It was so beautiful that it was covered in a single stray hair and was treasured like the back of his hand. He even had a spirit wood fence built around the Moyun Cave and sent little demons to guard it day and night.

"What's the use of that cow?" I asked.

"Useless." The old shopkeeper clicked his tongue. "It's just beautiful. A pure white spirit ox, rare indeed. The Bull Demon King said that having one by your side makes you feel at ease."

Suddenly, the image of that rock in the Flaming Mountains, steaming from the tears, flashed through my mind.

The pure white ox, without a single stray hair, lay clean and tidy outside the cave; but Princess Iron Fan had endured three hundred years on the Flaming Mountain, her skirt was covered with indelible charcoal ash, and even her jade hairpin had been ground into powder.

The Bull Demon King gave the cleanliness to his new lover and left the ashes to his wife.

"That's his heart and soul," I said.

"That's his heart and soul," the old shopkeeper nodded in agreement.

I thanked them and left the Spirit Beast Guild. It was already getting dark. The afterglow of the sunset spread down from the Heavenly Street, making the bundle of Flameheart Grass in my hand look as if it were on fire.

I stood on the street corner, switched the Flaming Heart Grass to my left hand, and squeezed the bottle of tears through my sleeve with my right hand, then went over the last thing I would do today in my mind.

The Bull Demon King kept a white bull outside the Cloud-Piercing Cave. It was his heart and soul. He kept his heart and soul outside the cave, but left his wife hundreds of miles away on the Flaming Mountain, watching the peach blossoms across the sea of ​​clouds for three hundred years.

All the ingredients for that dish are ready.

I need an opportunity for Princess Iron Fan to come to me.

This moment won't be long. Today, I was caught crying, I took away that pool of tears, and I also heard my last words.

She's not the type to chase after you and demand an explanation right away. She's the type to go back and think about it all day, then suddenly appear in front of you at some unexpected moment and blurt out a sentence.

"Make that dish you mentioned for me."

This is about timing. No rush.