Celestial Food Stall: I Set Up a Food Stall in Heaven

Even immortals must eat—and even immortals carry burdens on their hearts. Every worry that weighs on heaven mirrors a trouble from the mortal world below, and every trouble demands its remedy. Where other chefs compete over color, fragrance, and flavor, Chang Baiwei, a former apprentice of Yi Yamen, takes a different path, raising his humble stall at the foot of the South Heavenly Gate. His shop could hardly be humbler: a broken three-legged table propped up with shattered tiles, and a canopy cut from an old sail the patrol team had discarded. Passing immortals give him a wide berth, afraid his misfortune might rub off on them. Yet the dishes that emerge from his battered stove hold a power no grand banquet can match—they soothe the very anxieties of the divine. A single bite is enough to lay hearts bare: those with guilty consciences find their secrets impossible to hide, while the most hard-hearted feel their knees buckle at the taste of his soup. Soon even the Heavenly Emperor asks what exactly is being cooked in that stove. Every dish remedies a social ill; every immortal who tastes it reveals a type of person. Chang Baiwei's cooking cures the discontent of heaven—and eases the anxieties of the mortal world as well.