A Lavish Banquet

From the heights to the depths, she is determined to bloom from the dust.

Lin Zhiwei, the youngest female executive chef in modern China's restaurant industry, is rational, precise, and relentless in her pursuit of perfection. But by accident, her soul transmigrates into that of Lin Xiaoya, a sixteen-year-old orphan in ancient times. Her family is dead, and she has been sold into servitude. In the rigidly hierarchical imperial kitchens, she is at the very bottom, a "bearer of bad luck" anyone can trample on.

Dealt a terrible hand, she is determined to play her trump card.

Faced with a harsh steward's oppression, the hostility of a traditionalist court chef, and constant conspiracies and false accusations, Lin Zhiwei silently tightens her grip on her spatula.

A bowl of "cabbage in clear broth," pure as water and rich as marrow, stuns the entire kitchen.

A medicinal dish that "borrows flavors" breaks a deadlock with clever ingenuity and wins the Empress Dowager's favor.

At a minor exam held by the Imperial Food Bureau, she dazzles her rivals and takes first place with "mountain-and-river vegetarian noodles" and "hollow glass spheres"!

Cooking is both her blade and her path.

She brings modern management and scientific principles into the ancient kitchen, and her efficiency reforms shake up vested interests. She writes books and teaches her craft openly, challenging the old convention of keeping techniques secret. From kitchen slave to chief imperial chef, from the palace's inner chambers to the bustling world beyond, she wields food as a blade to break through layer upon layer of shackles.

And she does not walk this road alone.

Xie Yunxi, heir to the Marquis of Jinghai, is cool-headed and perceptive. He goes from watching her with suspicion to becoming her most steadfast ally and confidant. They stand side by side: he protects her ideals, and she helps him achieve his ambitions.