The true authority on the Starlight Summit, Wei Fan had long ago decided, did not reside in the audience hall or the meditation pavilion. It lived in the kitchen.
Not the cavernous, steam-shrouded main hall that fed the thousands, but the small, tucked-away hearth kitchen that served the summit's permanent staff. It was a cave of warmth and profound order, ruled by Granny Liang.
Her summons came not as an order, but as a small, grease-spotted note left in the crack of his alcove door. The characters were spidery but precise: "Need a steady hand for the winter preserves. Come at second bell. Bring your own bowl."
Wei Fan arrived just as the pale dawn light began to define the peaks. The chill of the summit air, sharp enough to etch glass, clung to his robes until he pushed open the heavy wooden door.
Inside, the world transformed. The air was a thick blanket of smells: woodsmoke, the rich depth of bone broth simmering for a day already, the nutty sweetness of a thousand grains, and the sharp, clean scent of vinegar and brine. Shelves lined the walls, holding not just jars but ecosystems—fermenting vegetables, pickled eggs in murky depths, herbs hung in fragrant, drying bouquets. Every surface, though worn smooth by decades of use, gleamed.
Granny Liang stood at the central chopping block, her back to him. She was a small woman, her spine curved like a well-used ladle, her hair a thin, white knot pinned with a simple stick of polished bone. Her hands, however, moved with a dancer's precision, reducing a heap of sky-blue Spirit Chives into a mound of perfect, identical slivers. The knife, an ordinary-looking thing of dark steel, sang a soft, rhythmic thwick-thwick against the wood.
"You're late," she said, without turning. Her voice was dry, like autumn leaves skittering over stone.
"The cistern pipe was frozen, Granny," Wei Fan replied, hanging his broom by the door. He knew better than to offer elaborate apologies. "I had to thaw it for the morning water."
"Mm. The one on the north wall." She finally glanced over her shoulder, her eyes dark and sharp as obsidian chips. "Told the maintenance hall three winters ago the insulation charm was fraying. They said the array for the Elder's hot spring took priority." She snorted, a sound like a distant rockslide. "Priorities. Priorities leave the rest of us to break our backs. Come. The millet won't test itself."
She gestured to a giant stone mortar and pestle in the corner. Inside was a measure of unhusked Starlight Millet, the summit's staple grain. It shimmered with a faint, opalescent sheen under the kitchen's lamplight. "Well?" she prompted, going back to her chives.
Wei Fan did not ask what to test for. He scooped a small handful, brought it to his nose, and inhaled slowly, closing his eyes. He let a few grains rest on his tongue, not chewing, just feeling their weight and texture against his palate.
"It's clean," he said after a moment. "Cool. But the aftertaste is hollow. Like an echo in an empty hall."
Granny Liang stopped chopping. She turned fully, wiping her hands on a faded apron that had once been deep blue. A rare, approving glint lit her eyes. "Huh. You do pay attention. Most just feel the Qi and call it good. That batch is from the South Terrace."
She hobbled to a shelf, pulled down a squat clay jar, and scooped out a smaller measure of a different millet. This grain was duller, almost grey, and smaller. "This is from last year. The West Slope. Taste."
Wei Fan did. This grain had less of the immediate spiritual "ping," the buzz that disciples coveted. But its flavor unfolded slowly—a deep, earthy sweetness with a clean, mineral finish, like rainwater tasted from a stone.
"That," Granny Liang said, thumping the jar with a knuckle, "is what it's supposed to taste like. The South Terrace crop is all show. They expanded the 'Harmonious Growth' array there last winter. Pumps the yield, bleaches the soul right out of it." She shook her head, a lifetime of judgment in the gesture. "You can't force a land to give more than it wants to. Not without paying. The mountain gets its share, one way or another. Usually from the flavor."
She took the bland millet from him and poured it decisively into a separate sack marked with a simple charcoal 'X'. "This? This is for the administrative clerks. All head, no heart. They won't know the difference." The good, grey millet went into the main pot beginning to simmer over the low, eternal fire.
For the next two hours, they worked in a companionable silence punctuated only by her occasional mutters. Wei Fan ground rock salt and dried fire-peppers into fine powder. She orchestrated the beginnings of a master stock, tasting, adjusting, muttering to herself. "Too much fire in the ginger this year… the mountain's grumpy in its sleep… needs the cool of the cloud-fern root to balance…"
As the first rich, indefinable smells began to bloom from the pot, she spoke again, her voice softer, aimed at the steam.
"Old Liu—groundskeeper before your time, you wouldn't know him—he knew this. Said the mountain spoke through the weeds most everyone else pulled up and burned. Knew which stones would be warm on the south face even in deep snow, which streams would run quiet for a day after a nasty quarrel in the Elder's council." She stirred the pot, her gaze somewhere far beyond the stone walls. "They found him under a slide in the Verdant Valley. A disciple's sword-cut went too deep, triggered a shake. The mountain flinched, and he was in the way."
She looked at Wei Fan then, her ancient eyes holding his. "You have his way about you. Seeing what isn't meant to be seen. Just remember, boy: the mountain is old, and we are fleeting. You can listen to its stories, but don't expect it to hear yours. Now, take this."
She handed him a small, linen-wrapped bundle, still warm from the hearth's edge. "For the little songbird maid in the lower gardens. The one who scatters seed for the sparrows when she thinks no one's looking. Her face is too thin. The disciples' hall gruel is all water and ambition."
Wei Fan knew who she meant—a young mortal maid with a quiet smile who tended the decorative songbirds. He nodded, tucking the bundle (which felt like a steamed bun, something dense and fortifying hidden inside) into his sleeve.
"Thank you, Granny."
"Go on. And check that cistern pipe on your way. If it's still weeping, wrap it with the felt from the scrap bin. Do it properly, so even the blind crows in maintenance might see."
As Wei Fan collected his broom and stepped back into the bright, cutting cold of the summit, the kitchen's warmth clung to him like a second skin. He held not just a bun, but a lesson.
Granny Liang's wisdom was not in millennia-old secrets. It was in the taste of the grain, the pattern of the weather, the history written in people's faces, and the quiet understanding that you cared for the land by caring for the people who lived on it—one correct spice, one wrapped pipe, one secret bun at a time.
She was the living memory of the mountain's human rhythm. And as he walked towards the frozen cistern pipe, the deep, steady thrum he felt through the soles of his boots seemed less like a mystery and more like a heartbeat he was slowly learning to recognize.