042. EARTH, CHOPSTICK

The title character for that next section seemed to sink into the page as if it had been engraved in stone. When Ming Shi touched it, it felt warm and patient, like heated Kitchen tiles under your bare feet.

EARTH
The Foundation

Many novice chefs forget about the Earth Element—but then again, who thinks about the Earth beneath their feet? We take it for granted, like time itself, until suddenly we realize it’s been working on us all along. Earth embodies stability and the processes of aging and fermentation. Through it we learn that sometimes transcendence happens without us.

From multi-step foods like pickles, sauces, wines, and leavened breads, to singular steps like steeping tea and setting jelly, Earth is the invisible beat to which our recipes march. It is a true paradox that the Grounded Earth Path is perhaps the most ephemeral path of all: because it is time, made tasty.

What grounds every other element? Earth. What underlies every cooking process? Time.

Ming Shi smiled. It was not until he was six that he finally understood the back-patting feeling of the bronze block. It was the pulse of Earth, of time passing through him. After that he noticed something interesting about his Kitchen utensils: much of his cookware combined Earth and Metal. The two elements especially balanced each other. The patience of Earth grounded the excitement of Metal, while the high resonance tendencies of Metal made it easier to overcome the weight of Earth.

Fire, Water, Wood and Metal all measure time in their own relative fashions. But Earth … Earth is time itself.

[“Me, late with my rent: time depends on how you measure it, right?” - ZenChef420

“No.” - LandladyZhang

“Worth a shot!” - ZenChef420]

There is very little to explain in this text regarding Earth, because it is the Primary Element that is the most difficult to elucidate. You must simply taste and experience it yourself. What makes the Grounded Earth chef formidable is their command over whole recipes, their understanding of cooking as a process encompassing the time and space in which it occurs.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE

There are two parts to this one, novice chef.

First, the apparent: put your hand on a fermenting crock, aging wine jar, leavening dough, et cetera, and feel how Earth-qi feeds the process, and vice versa.

Second, the adventure: go and visit an old establishment. Ensure it’s one that’s been serving the same drinks or dishes for centuries, where the flavors are different even when they use the same ingredients as everyone else. You know the place. Years of cooking in the same spot creates channels in reality, like a river carving its bed. The longer a place has been making food with Intention, the deeper those channels run.

Ming Shi nodded to himself. That was also why Upper District Kitchens and restaurants were so heavily fortified. After generations of cultivating their signature recipes, those locations were now key ingredients in their own right, especially when it came to pulling off the most challenging techniques. Losing an Ancestral Kitchen was a devastating blow to a clan’s power that destroyed centuries of accumulated advantage. There were dishes in the Liu family scrolls that could only be prepared in their Ancestral Kitchen. They just wouldn’t taste the same elsewhere.

Earth corresponds to the sweet flavor. Not just sugar-sweet but the deep sweetness that comes from time itself. Think how aging brings out the sweetness in fruits and how fermentation develops sugars.

[“Sweet! I’m gonna live forever.” - Tian Lin

“Sweet! I’m gonna live forever.” - Sweet Lin

“Sweet! I’m gonna live forever.” - HoneyPhoenix

“Are you cultivating immortality through marginalia as a fallback?” - LandladyZhang]

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now you understand the elements individually, but cooking is about their interplay, not their isolation. Every dish you ever cook will use all five Primary Elements in some measure. Even if you advance to cultivating an Elevated Element someday, you will still be drawing on the Primaries in support of it.

Which brings us to the question that’s probably been burning a hole in your apron: If there are five Primary Elements to every meal, why does the Lower District only approve three paths for beginners? Namely, Steady Flame, Clear Water, and Grounded Earth?

That, Fellow Daoists, will be answered in the next section.

[“Further Question: if only 3 paths are legal here, what about Ascension Cuisine?” - CuriousNewbie

“Since when is Ascension Cuisine in the Lower District? Thought that was just for people who could afford to buy their way to power.” - StreetSmartCook

“Ascension Cuisine operates within perfectly legal parameters here because it enhances Approved Paths rather than replacing them. It is a healthy and collaborative supplement to public cultivation paths. Therefore, please avoid spreading misinformation and seek out official sources, rather than relying on subjective opinions.” - CulinaryPolice]

“What?! You’re spreading misinformation!” Ming Shi blurted.

“Hour of Yin-Mao! Milk clouds and dew on rivers! The sun sinks to bed and night markets awaken!”

The evening watchman’s sudden call coincided with Ming Shi’s exclamation, breaking his concentration. He was startled to see how close his face was to the book; he was so immersed that he’d leaned in unconsciously … and kept leaning.

“Nuan!” came an indignant cry. A’Nuan had tumbled off his lap and sat on the floor glaring up at him, pointing her sage and ginseng root at him in umbrage. Her herb-hair was decidedly bushy, leaves standing on end with displeasure.

“Sorry,” he said to the book and A’Nuan sincerely. He leaned over to pick A’Nuan up and reinstate her seat. “I wasn’t yelling at you. It was the comments that got me.”

The latest margin comments had roused something that had been nagging at him since his resurrection: the baffling presence of Ascension Cuisine in the Lower District as some kind of charity organization. He’d been too preoccupied, to say the least, to think deeply on this puzzle the past few days.

But now it was literally staring him in the face.

StreetSmartCook had summed up the conundrum: “Since when is Ascension Cuisine in the Lower District? Thought that was just for people who could afford to buy their way to power.”

In Ming Shi’s opinion, this margin comment was nearly spot-on. It was just missing one other key point: I thought it was just for people who could afford to court death?!

Although Liu Baozi had never cultivated Ascension Cuisine techniques, he was more than familiar with how they worked. After all, he’d grown up in the care of the greatest Ascension Cuisine chef in the city.

He knew, as an absolute and eye-witnessed fact, that Ascension Cuisine was about as “healthy and collaborative” as a shark in a koi pond. Each recipe from the Book of Ascension was a calculated risk, a game of chicken against the Dao. Survive consuming a recipe and your cultivation would skyrocket. Fail and your soul would be obliterated so thoroughly that even the cycle of reincarnation would forget you existed.

Yet here was CulinaryPolice describing it like some kind of helpful vitamin supplement. And both Madam Zhang and that Warden who chased him on his first night had talked about Ascension Cuisine Clinics like public services, helping injured chefs for free.

Was this another Soul Fodder/Gourmet dichotomy situation? Or had Ascension Cuisine split into factions, one pursuing the original path in the Upper District, while another branch did ...whatever this was?

He hadn’t felt compelled to add margin notes before, content to learn from others’ insights and disasters, but this needed addressing.

He either needed to correct this dangerous misinformation or be corrected himself.

As if sensing his Intent, the manual’s binding relaxed slightly, revealing a small capped brush tucked into its spine. The margin comments he’d been focusing on shuffled upward on the page, creating a blank space beneath for his addition.

“Thanks,” said Ming Shi, uncapping the brush.

He wrote:

[“According to my friend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s Senior Brother’s hairdresser’s son, who works in the Upper District, Ascension Cuisine is an elite, expensive, and all-consuming form of cultivation that calls for the single-minded, obsessive pursuit of, well…Ascension.

An Ascension Cuisine chef cooks with no aim but to raise their cultivation, in order to transcend the Dao and become as eternal as all existence. Their method of cultivation boils down to surviving their own cooking. They cultivate by taking on Spirit Recipes of increasing potency from the Book of Ascension, each one a minor tribulation unto itself—not just to cook but to eat afterwards.

Live, and your cultivation increases by leaps and bounds. Fail, and your soul is destroyed forever, without even the chance of reincarnation.

Lord Liu Yingguo himself, the greatest Ascension Cuisine chef in the city, meditates to the mantra “Eat or be eaten.” At least, that’s what I’ve heard.

So it’s not just illogical but impossible for Ascension Cuisine to supplement other Daos. Only chefs with enough power and resources to devote every waking (and sleeping) moment to Ascension Cuisine can survive eating its recipes. Eat or be eaten. One moment of weakness, one second of even contemplating another Dao, and you’re a goner.

Ascension Cuisine does not forgive infidelity. Once you start cultivating Ascension Cuisine, you are bound to it forever, locked in an eternal battle with the Ascension Cuisine dishes you’ve eaten until you die or Ascend.

How can something like this be a “supplement”?! This shit is all or nothing! It’s absolutely not suitable for beginners just starting out on an Approved Path! Anyone below Foundation Establishment has no chance of surviving Ascension Cuisine techniques!

Could the Fellow Daoist known as CulinaryPolice kindly refer me to official sources indicating otherwise? - CookThingsDon’tDie]

There. That was one question out of the way and some facts laid out to inform others. Now for the other question: why did the Lower District only approve three paths when there were five Primary Elements to culinary cultivation?

“Nuan!” said A’Nuan, tapping his hand with her ginseng root. Cap your brush! Put it back!

“Mmhm,” Ming Shi obliged as he carried on thinking.

And why’s cultivating with Elevated Elements so restricted down here? Is it about resources maybe?

Ming Shi’s fingers had just brushed the page to turn it when—

“Boy! Open up! Special delivery!“

The words were punctuated with heavy knuckles against his door.

“Oh, so she does knock?” said Ming Shi. “Just not when I’m naked?”

A’Nuan did not even deign to reply with a “Nuan!” She just looked at him, her dot eyes expressing, very clearly, It was justified. You set off the Pervert-Alert.

“Okay, you got me there,” said Ming Shi. He set down the book and went to open the door.

As expected, it was Madam Zhang.

What was not expected was the single chopstick she thrust accusingly under his nose.

“Young man,” she said, “When I rented to you four nights ago, you were a fresh Gourmet hillbilly from Three Carrot Province who made tasty, face-slapping flatbread. This morning you set off a Dao-Pervert-Alert with your breakthrough to Qi Condensation. And now ...” She tapped the tip of his nose with the chopstick. “Someone has sent you this. You cultivate the Dao of living loudly, it seems.”

Ming Shi took a step back to stare at the chopstick without crossing his eyes. It was a nice one—spirit bamboo, from the way it flickered with qi. Only … just one? Weren’t chopsticks supposed to come in pairs?

“Er. Thank you? Where’s the other one?” He made no move to take it. It was highly suspicious.

Madam Zhang snorted. “Boy, don’t you know what it means to send someone a single chopstick?”

“ … that you can’t count? Look, is this good news or bad?”

He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.

Why? Why did I have to put it that way? Is there an option for no news?

“Hmph!” Madam Zhang waggled the chopstick. “That depends on how you feel about cooking duels at dawn. Apron up, my boy. You’re going into battle.”