The day Wei Zhao was reborn, the stoves in the imperial kitchen were still warm. In her previous life, Consort Xiao had sent her to her death with a bowl of lotus seed soup, and her entire family had been buried with her.
This time, she stood at the stove with a cleaver in hand. The first thing she did was add two ounces of bitter coptis to Consort Xiao's nourishing soup. The imperial kitchen might look like a place that simply handled three meals a day, but it controlled the lifeblood of the entire inner palace.
Starting as a fire-tending maid, Wei Zhao worked her way toward the central stove. If someone poisoned her food, she'd drug their soup in return.
If someone tried to cut off her livelihood, she'd cut off their food supply first. Then one day, in the cellar beneath the imperial kitchen, she dug up a recipe book left behind by an imperial chef of the previous dynasty. It recorded a dish called “A Family of Loyal Martyrs.”
