Nine Tripod Fried Rice

My name is Chen Guo. I’m twenty-eight, and I make fried rice at the night market. Grandpa says this wok of mine isn’t a wok. It’s a ding, like the ones Yu the Great cast. I didn’t believe him at first. Then one night, a faceless man came to my stall and ordered ten servings of egg fried rice. When he finished, he said, "The gate to Level -88 is about to open. Bring your wok." Then the patterns on my wok lit up. Later, I tracked down eight more cooking vessels: the copper pot from the hot pot restaurant, Grandma Liu’s clay pot, the steamer used by the bathhouse attendant, the frying pan of a French chef, the pressure cooker of a physicist, the rice cooker from a convenience store, and the earthenware jar of a homeless man. With my old iron wok, that makes eight in all. They say the ninth ding is inside me. Level -88 collapsed, the strange beasts of the Classic of Mountains and Seas escaped, and the underlying code of the Yellow River Map and Luo River Writings crashed. They say all nine dings must be brought together to stabilize the Nine Provinces. I say, what’s the rush? Let me finish this bowl of rice first.