At the broken engagement banquet, I served my fiancé a bowl of "Water-Boiled Cabbage" gone completely cold. He threw up on the spot, and the whole internet went wild.
The engagement banquet was being livestreamed when my fiancé, Shen Ao, broke things off in front of everyone, mocking my Su family's Huaiyang cuisine as "the kind of stuff you fob off on old people."
My father was so furious he collapsed and was hospitalized. Everyone online was waiting to see me make a fool of myself.
I didn't say a word. I simply smiled and set down a bowl of Water-Boiled Cabbage that had gone completely cold.
Shen Ao scoffed and took a bite for the cameras
The next second, golden light burst from his pupils. A vision of a grand state banquet, with a hundred phoenixes paying homage to the sovereign, filled his mind. The dish's exquisite, clean flavors hit his taste buds like a nuclear blast.
He lost control and vomited on the spot, tears and snot streaming down his face. The livestream footage spread like wildfire across the internet.
It turned out that in this world, food was a quantifiable "cultural authority."
The finest dishes came with culinary spirit realms that could heal, inspire, and even... strike at the heart and destroy a person.
And I, Su Yanqing, an heir to a private-kitchen tradition who had just been jilted and whose family business was on the brink of collapse,
decided to use these hands,
one dish at a time,
to make those who looked down on Chinese cuisine
regret it until their faces were swollen, their stomachs empty, and their souls shattered.
