The Yellow River rages, and the cooking fires rise.
Changyuan, the hometown of Chinese chefs, has a thousand-year-old culinary spirit buried deep in its veins. On a stormy night, a flood washes away Junzi Eatery, a century-old restaurant, forcing its stubborn cook, Qu Xin, to embark on a journey in search of flavor. She encounters a fiery earth-baked chicken and a golden colt that comes riding the waves. Beneath the Yellow River’s silt, she also awakens the dormant “Ruin Hearth,” an ancient sacred culinary haven where heaven and earth form the oven and dragon’s breath fuels the flames.
To obtain a single drop of “flavor in a breath,” she relies on the help of Qiao Sandao, a veteran imperial chef, and Qu Boyu, guardian of the hearth. With the flames of three virtues, respect, loyalty, and discernment, she stands against the bulldozers of big business and an out-of-control dragon soul. Meanwhile, Wei Yuan, the young heir to a restaurant empire who has returned from Wall Street, brings blueprints for a prepared-food empire and vows to grind traditional culinary spirit into standardized assembly-line products.
Three days to go. The Yellow River opens its eyes, and a dragon’s roar shakes the wilderness.
The final round of the Chef God contest will be the ultimate showdown between flavor and efficiency:
One person, one hearth, one furious river.
The world asks: What makes a chef? What makes a flavor?
Daughter of Changyuan: When the Golden Colt Shatters Steel and the Junzi Banquet Faces the Prepared-Food Empire,
What will become of Changyuan’s flavor?
This story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.
This novel aims to draw greater attention to the mysterious ancient city of Changyuan in the Central Plains, while also bringing readers into a fantastical world of legend.
