A dull ache pulsed behind Lin Tian's eyes as he opened them to a world shrouded in shadow and cold. The ceiling above him was not the familiar gleaming steel of his old kitchen but a tangle of rotting bamboo rafters, their edges softened by decades of drifting smoke. The air smelled of stale soot, damp straw, and something else—something foul, metallic, and unappetizing that made his stomach twist with queasy protest.
He tried to sit up. Pain shot down his ribs, a sharp reminder that this body was not the one he remembered. His limbs were spindly, brittle as overcooked noodles. His hands—small and pale, caked with ash—trembled with entirely alien weakness. Lin Tian had never been robust, but the steady precision of his hands was the one thing he'd always trusted. Now, even that was gone.
Memories fluttered in disjointed fragments at the edge of his consciousness—blinding white light, the shriek of twisting metal, the copper tang of his blood filling his mouth. The last thing he recalled was the crash—an impact that had ended everything. Except it hadn't ended at all.
A voice whispered across the back of his mind, ancient and tired:
"The Dao lies not only in swords or flames…but in taste."
His heart lurched as if something vast and invisible had clenched around it. He pressed a shaking palm against the cold-packed earth beneath him and tried to steady his breath. In and out. Slow and deliberate. The old habit of centering himself before the chaos of service—five hundred covers on a Friday night, the line chefs panicking, tickets spilling like confetti. Only now there were no tickets, no kitchen brigade, no walls hung with Michelin plaques.
Just this broken hovel, the reek of burnt porridge, and the unsteady heartbeat of a child's fragile body.
This isn't real, he thought, but the pain said otherwise.
He shifted to one side, propping himself up against the warped wooden wall. The room was little more than a hut, hardly large enough to hold the blackened cooking cauldron in the corner. It rested on a pit of white-ash coals, the embers hissing with every drip of condensation that fell from the leaking roof. A ragged cloth had been draped over one side as a crude curtain, though it did nothing to keep out the draft.
Beside the cauldron lay a stack of cracked bowls and a single iron ladle, its handle worn smooth by generations of hands. The smell rising from the pot was a crime against everything he had ever loved—an acrid blend of scorched rice, muddy water, and something vaguely rotten. His stomach growled despite itself.
He pressed his palm harder into the floor, feeling the grains of dirt against his skin, grounding himself in the reality he could no longer deny. The memories of this body came to him in hesitant trickles, like broth leaking from a cracked pot.
Lin Tian, age twelve.
Orphan. Outer-sect laborer.
Assigned to tend the cooking fires for the last ten years of his short, pitiful life.
The Ironbone Sect—that was the name carved across the faded wooden plaque outside the gate he had glimpsed upon being dragged here. One of the countless minor sects clinging to the lower slopes of the Skyflame Mountains, overshadowed by the vast orthodox powers to the east. A sect too poor and too weak to attract the attention of real cultivators.
A sect that fed its disciples watery gruel and called it sustenance.
Heaven help me, he thought, tasting the air again. It was worse than prison food. Worse than military rations. He would have given his right hand for so much as a pinch of salt or a single clove of garlic.
The hunger twisting through him was no ordinary hunger. It was as though the body itself was starved on a level beyond mere malnutrition. His bones felt hollow. His skin was stretched tight across them, marked by bruises and shallow cuts. Even the heat of the cooking fire failed to warm the marrow.
Carefully, he rose to his feet. His knees wobbled under the effort, and he had to steady himself on the lip of the cauldron. The fire popped and spat, as if mocking his weakness. He peered inside.
Porridge. If it could even be called that. A handful of cracked grain swollen in twice its volume of tepid water. No oil shimmered on the surface. No color or fragrance hinted at nourishment. Just a thin, gray slurry clinging to the sides in gummy streaks.
For a long moment, he simply stared at it, a quiet fury building behind his ribs. In his past life, he'd devoted every waking hour to honoring the craft of cooking—to elevating food to an art that transcended culture or class. Here, the act of cooking had been reduced to brute necessity, to the most pitiful caricature of sustenance.
No. He would not accept this.
The second truth arrived with a clarity so sudden it nearly drove him to his knees again:
He was not dead.
And if he wasn't dead, then he could still cook.
Even in this backward corner of whatever cultivation world he'd been flung into—especially here—he would not let taste be murdered by ignorance.
He reached out with one trembling hand to lift the ladle, testing its weight. The handle was heavy, nearly half the length of his forearm, and the bowl was dented from years of careless use. But it was metal. It could stir. It could serve. In a pinch, it could kill.
A ghost of a smile tugged at his cracked lips. The familiar weight in his palm anchored him more surely than any meditation technique.
A whisper of motion drew his gaze to the curtain. It stirred, revealing a thin figure in tattered robes. A boy no older than himself, though perhaps taller by half a head, with sallow cheeks and eyes like burnt coals. His gaze darted from the cauldron to Lin Tian's face, wary as a cornered rat.
"You're awake," the boy rasped, voice hoarse with hunger. "Elder Han said…If you didn't wake soon, he'd feed you to the pigs."
Lin Tian's mouth went dry. "Charming," he said flatly, though the boy didn't seem to understand sarcasm. The child only nodded, as though confirming a simple fact.
The boy's eyes fixed on the ladle in Lin Tian's hand, then on the porridge crusting the cauldron's rim. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
"How…how much did you make?" he asked, trying and failing to sound indifferent.
"Barely enough to fill half a bowl," Lin Tian replied, glancing back into the pot. "And it's been left too long. Most of the water's cooked off."
The boy shifted from foot to foot, glancing back over his shoulder. "If you don't serve it soon, the seniors will come looking. They'll beat you again."
Again. Another shard of memory slotted into place: a line of older disciples with cudgels, a voice jeering that outer-sect laborers were only worth the food they could carry. His cheek still throbbed from that last blow.
Lin Tian felt something cold settle inside him—not fear, but resolve.
He would not cower before these brutes. Not over slop, he wouldn't have fed to a starving dog. Even if he was too weak to fight them now, he could do what he'd always done:
Make something better.
He set the ladle back across the pot and turned to the boy, studying his hollow cheeks, the hopeless slump of his thin shoulders. A customer, he thought absently. Hungry. Desperate. No different from the young dishwasher he'd fed in secret back in the Beijing kitchen.
"Do you have any salt?" Lin Tian asked.
The boy's eyes widened. "Salt? You think we're rich?"
"Any scraps? Bones? Old vegetables?"
He looked around the room—no shelves, no larder. Only a pile of kindling and a bucket of stagnant water in the corner.
The boy hesitated, then pulled a small cloth bundle from beneath his robe. He unwrapped it with trembling fingers to reveal a shriveled twist of something greenish-brown—a scrap of dried herb, so pitiful it was barely more than dust.
Lin Tian took it with the solemnity he might have reserved for a white truffle. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled carefully.
Bitter. Acrid. Faintly reminiscent of mugwort. But even this would be an improvement.
"Thank you," he said softly. "What's your name?"
The boy looked startled to be asked. "Bai Yue."
"Bai Yue." Lin Tian inclined his head. "Help me keep watch at the curtain."
Without waiting for agreement, he bent to the cauldron, stirring the sludge to loosen the crusted grain. His movements were slow, his body sluggish, but a clarity had come over his mind. Even in this wretched place, this was a kitchen. And he was a chef.
He pulled the ladle through the porridge again, judging its consistency by the drag across the bottom. Far too thick. He tipped in a careful ladle of water, stirring steadily. The embers flared with a soft hiss as the moisture dripped onto them. He sprinkled the powdered herb into the slurry and stirred again, working it into the gruel.
A bitter aroma rose—unpleasant, but better than the stale reek of boiled grain alone. Bai Yue watched in mute fascination.
Lin Tian caught the boy's eye and nodded once. "When they come, let me speak."
Bai Yue didn't answer, but he slipped closer to the curtain, peering nervously into the dark beyond.
Minutes stretched. Lin Tian kept stirring. The thin gruel loosened to something that at least resembled food. He scraped every last grain from the cauldron walls, careful not to waste even a mouthful. A lifetime of discipline had taught him that waste was the enemy of any kitchen.
By the time the first heavy footstep landed beyond the curtain, he felt a calm settling over him. The calm that came before service, before the crush of orders and the clatter of knives. He closed his eyes and let the rhythm of cooking center him.
When he opened them again, he was no longer afraid.
He was alive.
He was a chef.
And no bully with a cudgel was going to take that from him.
..........
The curtain snapped aside with a dry rustle. A trio of boys swaggered into the hut, their presence sucking all warmth from the smoky air. Each wore the same rough hemp robes as Lin Tian, but theirs were cleaner, newer, belted with strips of dyed cloth denoting seniority among the outer disciples. One carried a short wooden cudgel slung across his shoulder like a warrior's spear.
The leader stepped forward, tall and narrow-eyed, with a long scar slicing down his left cheek. He sniffed the air and curled his lip.
"Oi. Dead boy's up, is he?"
Bai Yue flinched, pressing himself against the wall. Lin Tian straightened as much as his weak frame would allow. His fingers tightened around the ladle, more for balance than threat.
The scarred boy loomed closer, his voice mocking. "Thought you'd sleep all day and skip your duties, Lin Tian?"
Lin Tian said nothing, studying the boy's posture. The way his weight shifted between his feet, the tension coiling in his arms—he moved like a man used to violence. In another life, Lin Tian had dealt with customers who wore similar expressions right before tossing plates across the pass. He'd learned how to defuse them—or how to duck.
The scarred boy leaned over the cauldron, sniffing. "What's this stink?"
"Breakfast," Lin Tian said coolly.
The boy scowled. "It doesn't smell right."
"That's because it's food," Lin Tian snapped before he could stop himself. "Instead of boiled dishwater."
The cudgel swung up so fast that Lin Tian barely saw it. Pain blossomed across his cheek in a hot flare. He staggered sideways into the wall, vision bursting into stars. Bai Yue let out a strangled cry.
"Watch your mouth, cripple!" the boy hissed. "Or I'll break your legs so you don't ever stand again."
Lin Tian tasted blood. Metallic and coppery, mingling with the bitter herb lingering on his tongue. For an instant, he nearly blacked out. But the moment passed, leaving him panting and furious.
He pushed himself upright. The scarred boy stared at him, clearly expecting him to cower, to beg. Instead, Lin Tian lifted the ladle and pointed it at the boy's chest.
"You're not going to eat this unless I say so."
The boy blinked. "What?"
"You heard me," Lin Tian said, teeth bared. "If you want food, you wait your turn. And you don't touch me again."
A dangerous silence fell over the room. The scarred boy's two companions exchanged looks, uncertain. No one ever talked back to Shan Long—not outer-sect laborers, not other disciples. Certainly not scrawny, half-dead orphans who'd barely crawled out of their sickbed.
Shan Long's eyes narrowed into thin slits. "You think you're somebody, Lin Tian? You think you've got power because you stand over a pot? You're nothing but a dog feeding scraps to the rest of us."
Lin Tian felt his jaw clench so hard it hurt. "Then you'd better pray the dog doesn't decide to bite."
For a heartbeat, Shan Long just stared at him. Then he burst out laughing, the sound sharp as cracking ice.
"Fine," Shan Long said, wiping tears from his eyes. "Serve it. Let's see if your dog food is any better than usual."
He jerked his chin at his cronies. The two boys pushed forward with battered wooden bowls, thrusting them at Lin Tian's chest.
Lin Tian ignored Shan Long's smirk. He dipped the ladle into the pot, careful to stir from the bottom where the thickest grains had settled. The gruel had loosened into a thin porridge with faint green flecks from the dried herb Bai Yue had given him. It wasn't fine cuisine, but it no longer reeked quite so much like swamp water.
He ladled a modest portion into each bowl. His hands shook slightly, both from weakness and from fury he could barely contain.
Shan Long grabbed one bowl and slurped a mouthful, then froze. He swallowed, glaring into the bowl as though it might bite him.
"It's…bitter," he said at last, scowling.
Lin Tian stared back coolly. "That's the herb. It's called bitterweed. Helps clear impurities from the blood. It's why the medicine hall uses it."
Shan Long's eyes flicked up sharply. "You think I'm poisoned?"
Lin Tian's lip curled. "I think you eat like a pig, and you'd die of worms if someone didn't cook for you."
One of Shan Long's cronies tried his bowl and blinked in surprise. "It's…better than usual. I can taste something."
"It's still bitter, fool!" Shan Long snapped, cuffing him on the back of the head.
Lin Tian crossed his arms. "I can make it better. If you bring me proper spices."
Shan Long turned back to him, eyes narrowing. "Proper…what?"
"Salt. Dried onions. Ginger. Bones to make stock. Anything. You want real food, you'll help me get ingredients."
Shan Long regarded him in silence, jaw working. The hut felt suddenly smaller, the smoke thicker. Lin Tian stood his ground, though his legs trembled like boiled noodles.
Finally, Shan Long thrust his bowl back under Lin Tian's nose. "More."
Lin Tian blinked. "What?"
"I said more, cripple!"
Slowly, Lin Tian filled the bowl again. This time, Shan Long ate it without another word. His friends quickly crowded closer, thrusting their bowls forward, and Lin Tian found himself dishing out the entire pot until the cauldron scraped empty.
By the time it was over, Shan Long wiped his mouth on his sleeve and jerked his chin at Lin Tian.
"You'd better keep cooking like this," he said darkly. "Or next time, I'll break both your hands."
He shoved Bai Yue out of the way and stalked from the hut, his cronies following. The curtain fell back into place with a hush of cloth.
Silence flooded the room in their wake. Lin Tian sagged against the cauldron, breathing hard. His cheek throbbed where the cudgel had caught him, the flesh already swelling. Bai Yue crept back, wide-eyed.
"You…you talked back to Shan Long," the boy whispered as though uttering blasphemy.
Lin Tian pressed a trembling hand to his bruised face. "Well, someone has to."
Bai Yue stared at him like he'd sprouted another head. "He'll kill you."
Lin Tian gave a crooked smile. "Let him try. I'm a chef. I've faced worse monsters in my old kitchen."
Bai Yue opened his mouth as though to ask more, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he whispered, "Thank you. For…for the food."
Lin Tian nodded tiredly. "Next time, it'll taste even better."
Bai Yue hesitated, then darted forward and flung his skinny arms around Lin Tian's waist. The gesture nearly toppled him over in his weakened state.
"Careful, careful!" Lin Tian grunted, steadying himself.
Bai Yue stepped back, eyes shining. "You are different."
Lin Tian didn't answer. He looked around the hut, at the soot-stained walls and the empty cauldron. He felt the echo of Shan Long's blow pulsing in his cheek like a distant drum. And yet—
Some tiny spark had ignited in his chest. The same spark he felt every time he stood at his cutting board, knife in hand, transforming raw chaos into beauty.
He was alive. And as long as he was alive, he could cook.
Lin Tian trudged across the cracked stone courtyard, carrying the empty cauldron slung over one shoulder. The sun hovered overhead, filtered through a haze of drifting ash that seemed ever-present in this part of the mountains. The Ironbone Sect's outer compound sprawled around him—rows of ramshackle huts, battered training grounds, and the looming shadow of the central hall perched atop a set of stone stairs like a vulture waiting for scraps.
Disciples moved through the compound in clumps, voices low, faces pinched. Hunger hung over them like a smothering blanket. Lin Tian caught snatches of conversation as he passed:
"—another patrol slaughtered by bandits in the lower valley—"
"—Elder says our sect might be annexed by Stormcloud Hall—"
"—poisoned stew last week, three died—"
He paused outside a small herbal patch beside the medicine hall. A few pathetic plants struggled to grow in the rocky soil. He squatted, fingers brushing the wilted leaves of a thin green sprig.
Bitterweed again. Useless for taste. But at least it was something.
"You. Boy."
The voice cracked across the courtyard like a whip. Lin Tian straightened and turned. An elderly man stood framed in the medicine hall doorway, white hair falling in a tangled sheet around a face grooved with wrinkles. His eyes were as sharp as a hawk's.
"Elder Han," Bai Yue whispered, appearing at Lin Tian's side.
Lin Tian inclined his head respectfully. "Elder."
Elder Han swept him with a gaze that felt like cold iron. "I hear you stood up to Shan Long this morning. Over food."
Lin Tian swallowed. "Yes, Elder."
The old man sniffed. "That's either courage or stupidity. Or both."
He hobbled forward, leaning on a gnarled cane. "They tell me the porridge tasted different today."
Lin Tian hesitated. "I…tried adding bitterweed. It's not much, but—"
"Bitterweed is a purgative, boy. Used in poultices for infected wounds. It tastes like donkey piss."
Lin Tian winced. "Yes, Elder. But it's better than nothing."
Elder Han stared at him a moment longer. Then, to Lin Tian's shock, the old man's lips twitched upward.
"Hmph. Come see me tomorrow at dawn. I'll show you the herb stores. You've got a tongue. Let's see if it's worth anything."
Lin Tian blinked. "Elder…you'd let me help in the medicine hall?"
Elder Han rolled his eyes. "Bah. You're too weak for real labor. But if you're going to be cooking for those idiots, you might as well know what's poisonous and what's not."
He turned away, muttering to himself. "A chef in this sect. What's next, pigs flying over the mountain…"
Lin Tian felt Bai Yue tug at his sleeve. The younger boy was grinning, eyes bright with wonder.
"You did it," Bai Yue whispered. "You're going to learn herbs from Elder Han!"
Lin Tian stared after the old man's retreating figure, his mind spinning. A part of him still struggled to believe he wasn't hallucinating. But another part—the same part that had driven him to experiment with foie gras and yuzu foam at two in the morning—felt a familiar thrill sparking to life.
Knowledge. Ingredients. Possibility.
The Dao lay in taste. And for the first time since waking in this strange world, Lin Tian felt a path opening before him.
He reached out and ruffled Bai Yue's hair. "Come on. Let's see if we can find some bones for tomorrow's stock."
Bai Yue laughed, a sound like a tiny bell ringing in the smoky air.
Together, they turned toward the kitchens, the sun glinting off the battered iron ladle still tucked into Lin Tian's sash.
And though his face still throbbed and his belly ached, Lin Tian felt lighter than he had since arriving.
He was alive.
He was a chef.
And he was just getting started. .....
Hey Guys!, Hope you enjoy this first chapter I will try too make them as long as possible give it power stones and make sure you add it too your library for future updates this isn't gonna be a fast paced story but a nice slow story with all the other wonders of a xianxia cooking story. Again, if you have any ideas, make sure to drop a comment down below so I can implement them in.