What exactly is delicious food?
Zuo Qiu Li had never pondered this question before.
When she was three, not yet practicing cultivation, she caught a cold and was bedridden. Her mother made her a bowl of meat soup with plenty of pepper.
At that time, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
When she was five, just beginning Fetal Respiration, her appetite surged.
There was never enough meat at home.
To keep her from going hungry, her father humbled himself to beg the fishermen to teach him how to fish. But as a frail scholar, all he knew was to grind ink and write.
It took him several nights before he caught a carp no bigger than the palm of his hand.
The family gathered around the table drinking fish soup, and her father poured the fish head from her bowl into his own.
At that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
When she was seven, having finally mastered Transformation, her parents took her out for the first time. They walked into a human market and shared a single Sugar Hawthorn Skewer.
The three of them ate together. At that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
At ten, her intellect was exceptional, and her cultivation talent surpassed her mother’s expectations. The local herb hall in town could no longer teach her, so the family moved into a small house in a larger town. Life was tight, and without a stove to cook on, the three of them ate only dried rations for half a month. At that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
At twelve, her mother fell gravely ill. Zuo Qiu Li wept, unable to understand why her mother would give up cultivation, willingly experiencing birth, aging, sickness, and death.
Her mother told her that Qingqiu foxes were overly emotional, even falling in love with different species, but once in love, they would never change their hearts.
She loved her father so much she was willing to give up everything for him.
That night, her father hurried home with herbal medicine and a hen, brewing a bitter, grassy chicken soup.
At that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
At fifteen, in early Qi Cultivation, aiming for a better future, her parents took her on a long journey to the Red Dust Nunnery in the south.
The nuns there were different from any she had seen—each deeply versed in Buddhism with strict codes of conduct.
Her mother told her she would cultivate there and could only meet them again after reaching Foundation Establishment.
At parting, she clung to their sleeves, crying bitterly.
Her mother secretly slipped a Flower Pastry into her mouth, promising that they would make some every spring for her return.
At that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
At twenty-two, after successfully reaching Foundation Establishment, she resigned from the nunnery and began her journey home.
She crossed Full Moon Lake on the wind and arrived at the small wooden house she had longed for, only to find her parents nowhere in sight.
The neighbors cowered as if hiding something. Uneasy, she caught a Magical Practitioner who seemed knowledgeable and Soul Searched him, learning:
Her mother, growing old, often lost control of her human form.
The townsfolk branded her a demoness and reported her to the lake’s Powerful Nobility. Many human cultivators, coveting the bounty, secretly organized to hunt them down.
Once the secret was leaked, her father fled with her mother.
The Powerful Nobility’s agents were everywhere, posting bounties on every waterway.
With no escape, the two had no choice but to trek into the deep mountains.
Since then, no news of them.
She scoured the Taihang Mountains with her divine sense and finally found two rotten corpses in a dark cave.
She carried them out, using her power to dispel the mosquitoes and flies.
Her father’s withered arm held her mother, transformed into a Qingqiu Fox, and her mother’s delicate beast paw clutched a half-bag of moldy Flower Pastries.
Zuo Qiu Li killed for the first time that day—slaughtering 180,000 people of the Five Surnames and Six Clans around Full Moon Lake.
She couldn’t understand why her mother, kind-hearted and gentle, was seen as a calamity just for revealing her true form.
Her enemies’ flesh and blood, along with the Flower Pastries, at that moment, she thought that was the greatest delicacy in the world.
This incident alarmed the Three Sects and Nine Schools. She became a Demon Cultivator known as “Stop Children’s Crying.”
To evade capture, she wandered the world like a vengeful ghost, traveling far and wide, killing many, and eating many.
At thirty-five, with exceptional talent and abundant Blood Food, she advanced to Purple Mansion but remained homeless.
The Qingqiu Fox Clan despised her for her bloody, filthy aura; the Noble Clans and Orthodox Sects hunted her relentlessly for her cannibalistic ways.
Only the southern Demon Sect welcomed her, but she rejected them, saying their ways were incompatible.
Wandering in circles, she returned to Full Moon Lake.
The humans on the lake hadn’t died out.
They rebuilt various settlements on the water.
Good, very good.
She treated the lake as her own pasture. When hungry, she ate but never exterminated all.
Noble Clans and Orthodox Sect cultivators came to challenge her.
She hid her cultivation, toyed with a few, then devoured them.
At that moment, she thought, this was the greatest delicacy in the world.
But at night, as a Purple Mansion Cultivator, she couldn’t help but dream of the Flower Pastry her mother slipped into her mouth.
She always woke with tears wetting her cheeks.
She tried to find that soul-stirring taste.
Was it poor cooking? She had tasted the world’s finest dishes, exquisite beyond words, yet none carried that flavor.
Was it the ingredients? She searched for the rarest foods under heaven, all delicious, but still missing that flavor.
Zuo Qiu Li didn’t understand what that taste truly was.
Until today. Perhaps driven by some indescribable yearning, she gave this human youth a chance.
“Cloud Shell”—a name that sounded like a joke.
But the youth actually served her a bowl of soup shimmering with oil.
Zuo Qiu Li didn’t even taste it at first; just looking at it, she knew it would be greasy and fishy.
Yet, as if compelled by fate, she took a sip.
She froze.
That flavor—the taste of the soup.
It was the taste that haunted her soul for a lifetime.
All the delicacies she had ever eaten, the finest treasures and gourmet dishes, paled before this single sip.
Not fragrant, not fresh, not salty, not sweet, yet it held a strange flavor, like the warm sun in winter, soothing her entire being.
Just like the meat soup her mother made when she caught a cold, just like the fish soup her father made after long nights of fishing.
If she had to use one word to describe that flavor, Zuo Qiu Li thought it could only be happiness.
She held the bowl, as if transported back to that long-ago night when her mother, seeing her mournful eyes, poured the last mouthful of fish soup into her father’s bowl.
Her father smiled, patted her hair, and pushed his bowl toward her.
The soup grew saltier and saltier as she drank, until she realized—it was the taste of her own tears.