The silence left in the wake of the Frost Moon Sect disciples was heavier than any pot Lin Fan had ever lifted.
The familiar sounds of the village, the chatter of neighbors, the cluck of chickens, felt distant, muffled, as if he were hearing them from the bottom of a deep well.
His world, which had been neatly divided into broth, noodles, and debt, had just been cracked open.
He mechanically cleaned the three bowls.
Leng Xuan's was spotless. Junior Brother Zhang's was half-full, the noodles congealing in the residual broth.
As he washed it, a strange impulse made him dip his finger into the cooling liquid and bring it to his tongue.
It tasted… weak. Muddled. The vibrant, harmonious flavors he had crafted were gone, replaced by a flat, resentful bitterness.
It was as if the broth had absorbed the cultivator's arrogance and spite.
It didn't attack you. It disrupted you, Leng Xuan had said.
'The food became a mirror, reflecting the consumer's own energy back at them in a way they couldn't process.'
The thought was as terrifying as it was profound.
His gaze kept drifting back to the black-iron wok.
It sat in its place of honor on the stove, a dark, silent monolith.
He approached it again, this time not just touching it, but truly looking.
The iron was pitted and scarred from decades of use, but there were no cracks, no thin spots.
His grandfather had always said it was unbreakable.
Lin Fan had assumed he meant it was well-made. Now, he wondered.
He lifted it. The weight was familiar, solid, and grounding.
He ran his thumb over the spot where the handle met the bowl.
Beneath the grime and soot, he felt the faintest trace of a carving.
His heart beat faster. He grabbed a clean rag and a bit of oil, scrubbing gently at the area.
Slowly, a symbol emerged. It wasn't a character he recognized from any language.
It was a simple, elegant icon: a circle, and within it, a single, perfectly straight horizontal line.
☲
It looked like a pot with a lid. Or a cauldron. The symbol for the "Unfired Cauldron"?
A memory, sharp and clear, surfaced. He was a boy, no more than six, sitting on his grandfather's knee by the fire.
"Long, long ago, Fan'er, before the sects built their palaces in the clouds, there were chefs who walked the earth," his grandfather murmured, his voice a low rumble. "They followed the Gourmet Dao. They didn't hunt for treasures in secret realms; they hunted for flavor. Their cauldrons weren't for refining pills, but for refining the very essence of heaven and earth into a meal that could enlighten an emperor or soothe a wrathful dragon."
"Were they powerful, Grandfather?" young Lin Fan had asked, wide-eyed.
"The most powerful," the old man said, his eyes twinkling. "For what is more fundamental than the need to eat? They understood that all energy, all 'qi,' carries a flavor, a texture, a nature. Their greatest master, they say, had a physique called the 'Unfired Cauldron', a body that was a perfect, empty vessel, able to contain and transform any energy without being corrupted. He was a blank slate upon which the ultimate cuisine could be written."
"What happened to them?"
His grandfather's face had grown somber.
"The world changed. Fast power, flashy techniques… a sword is quicker than a simmering stew. The Gourmet Dao was mocked, then forgotten. It was deemed… inefficient."
Inefficient. The word echoed now, paired with Culinary Trash.
Lin Fan's hands trembled as he held the wok.
The stories weren't just stories. They were history. His history.
A new, desperate energy filled him. He had to know more. He had to understand.
He couldn't just wait for this "storm" Leng Xuan had warned him about. He had to prepare.
But how does a cook cultivate?
He thought back to the incident. The key hadn't been him.
It had been the broth. The ingredients, transformed by heat and his intention, had become the vehicle for power.
"You are the Unfired Cauldron... the wok and the knives are the foundation..."
The foundation for what? A recipe?
An idea, wild and half-formed, sparked in his mind.
If his body was the cauldron, then perhaps he needed to "fire" it.
He needed to consume. Not just food, but intention.
He needed to cook something with a purpose and then eat it himself.