On her first day as an invisible nobody in the Cold Palace, Lin Wanyi trades her last piece of jewelry for an iron pot.
The consort smashes her charcoal fire. “A lowly wretch like you doesn’t deserve warmth!”
That night, the emperor wakes, choking on the scent of chili, and follows it into a drafty side hall.
“What is this?” Xiao Che asks, staring at the bubbling red broth.
“Your Majesty, it’s called… a yin-yang hot pot.” She offers him homemade dipping sauce.
Three days later, the consort is demoted to the Cold Palace for “improper conduct before the emperor.”
Lin Wanyi wins over the Empress Dowager with milk tea, bribes the princes with cake, and keeps the emperor staying overnight with her hot pot.
When the noblewomen mock her for currying favor through cooking, Xiao Che angrily hurls a memorial. “How dare you criticize the soup the empress made with her own hands?”
Later, as she receives the court’s homage with her pregnant belly, she discovers that the iron pot from back then was actually a keepsake of the emperor’s birth mother.
