I dove to my paper and began to draw, careful to paint every vertebrae and crevice this time. As I finished the last stroke, I held my breath, and a tortoise materialized. I fist pumped. No one seemed to see. Most candidates already had roaring fires going in stoves, and the air was filled with white steam.

A complete tortoise plastron! I aimed my palms at the vat until flames licked the bottom. Soon, my vat of water was steaming like the others. Having chi was pretty awesome.

I glanced around. The steam was so thick that I could barely see my own hands. From the slightly slurred sounds above, the gods seemed to have already imbibed in several rounds of wine. No one would notice, right?

I quickly untied the strings that held the dead tortoise. Then I squatted in front of the stove to carve my question on the back of the tortoise bone:

What is the name of that god?

I paused. That didn’t seem clear enough.

Quickly, I added:

The really good-looking hunk with muscles bursting through his clothes who saved me from that yaoguai in the rice fields by the village of Flower Mount.

I took out the piece of my skirt with the weird diagram and traced it onto the bone as well, since Yuanshi Tianzun had carved it on his tortoise plastron. Gingerly, I held the bone over the flames. My fire wasn’t big and purple like the one I saw at Yuanshi Tianzun’s palace, but it was the best I could do with my chi.

According to my book’s instructions on Oracle reading, I had to burn the bone until it cracked. The white bone first turned yellow, then brown, then—

CRACK!

The smoking bone fractured. Another fissure appeared, and then another. By the time I extinguished the fire, the cracks had spread like spider webs, giving the bone the appearance of a plate that had fallen on the floor.

My eyes traveled over the fissures that crisscrossed and joined. They formed two characters: Boluan.

Boluan. I tried to remember if I had seen that name on the Investiture of Gods—

“Time’s up,” Chushen called, holding up the ashes of the four incenses for all to see.

It was over! I had no soup, and no soup meant “fail”. I tossed the remains of the tortoise into my vat of boiling water. I looked at the vats of other candidates that held dark brown broths and milky white concoctions. I looked at the contents of my own vat. My “soup” was a tortoise floating in water.

Perhaps a few more floating things would help. There was no time to draw more ingredients. I leapt back to my stove, tossed into my vat the strings that bound the tortoise, and stirred—

“Step away!” Chupo roared at me.

I stepped away. My heart pounded in my chest. Fairies took away all the vats, and lined them up on a long table, where a group of deities stood. One by one, they began to sample soup.

Everyone watched and waited. I dropped my gaze to the ground so I didn’t have to see their reactions when they drank my “tortoise in water”. Beneath the stage, Shangtian was giving me thumbs up. I grimaced in return. Was my soup even cooked? Gods didn’t get upset bellies, right? Even if they got diarrhea, they were gods and could easily fix that, I reassured myself.

There was an increase of fidgeting and whispering among the candidates. I looked up to see Chushen descending towards us. He held a vat that sloshed liquid down its sides.

“I’m sorry if it made someone sick—” I began when Chushen stopped in front of me.

“You won,” Chushen said. In a daze, I allowed Chushen to pull me onto his cloud. Amid the applause, we rose towards the top of the stadium where the senior dieties sat.

“Your soup was… uh not the most flavorful nor the most complex. To be honest, the flavor was a bit gamey. But you used the right herbs that complemented the medicinal qualities of the tortoise, which in itself is the most heavily Ying ingredient to combat an excess of Yang, of which bloating and phlegm are symptoms—”

“What herbs?” I asked, still dazed.

“The ginseng, atractylodes, and licorice in your soup of course. They nourish the spleen and heart,” Chushen replied. “Great choice adding a touch of angelica and peony roots. That boosts blood flow, very few know it.”

“I had no idea,” I murmured. The strings that came with the tortoise must have been these herbs. What a coincidence.

“Well, you are lucky then,” Chushen replied, scratching his head. “Yuanshi Tianzun was a heavy proponent for your soup. He believed your simple treatment of the ingredient allowed its gaminess—uh, natural flavor to shine.”

I was even more bewildered. Yuanshi Tianzun hated me! Chushen’s cloud stopped, and his wife Chupo helped me off.

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“Her majesty, Queen Vesper, will acknowledge you,” Chupo whispered. She kneeled in front of an elaborately-dressed lady.

“Your majesty, the Primordial Ruler, the Perfected Marvel of Western Florescence, I present to you Ziyan, winner of the Gastronomy,” Chupo announced.

Queen Vesper nodded slightly. Her headdress weighed her head back ever so slightly, giving the impression that she was looking down at others. Jewels gleamed from her hair, her throat, her arms, and her hands. I prostrated myself according to the old fairy’s teachings.

“If I’m not mistaken, there is tortoise in her soup?” A voice resonated from across the stage. I looked up despite knowing it was against etiquette to rise without permission. No one noticed. All eyes were on the person who spoke, Chila.

She was looking at me. The ends of her cat-like eyes tilted upwards, sultry yet fierce.

“Yes,” I answered, then forced myself to add, “your highness.”

Chila smiled but didn’t speak. She played lazily with the ruby ring on her finger. After a moment, her eyes fell on Chupo.

“You came up with this topic?”

“Yes your highness, I did,” Chupo replied carefully. “Yuanshi Tianzun predicted a shift in Venus in the near future that might cause kidney problems leading to bouts of predominance of yang and deficiency of ying. I thought that the candidates ought to be prepared to treat something like this.”

Chila continued to twirl the ring on her finger.

“Last time I checked, there was a ban on the collection of tortoises due to a supposed outbreak of disease in all tortoise populations in Fanjie?”

“Yes your highness, but luckily, Yuanshi Tianzun gave us his supply of tortoises that was collected before the ban,” Chupo replied nervously.

Chila let out an exaggerated sigh.

“How lucky indeed! In Mojie, I can’t even find a single tortoise for soup.”

“Chupo, surely there is some tortoise for our guest?” Emperor Jadeite said politely.

“Your majesty,” Chupo replied with wide eyes. “They’ve all been used to multiply Ziyan’s soup to serve to all the deities in the audience.”

I gulped. Every diety would be forced to drink my “soup’?

Emperor Jadeite turned to Chila apologetically.

Chila’s smile deepened. I marveled at her ability to appear domineering even when smiling.

“And I’m sure Yuanshi Tianzun is out of tortoises as well?” She asked lightly.

“That’s right!” Yuanshi Tianzun rose from behind Emperor Jadeite. He looked more haggard than I last saw him. “There will be no more tortoises available—”

“Until the end of the Purple Omen,” Chila finished. She clicked her tongue playfully. “What a coincidence…”

There was a strange silence. I would be stupid if I still thought this was about soup.

At that moment, Chushen rose through the clouds. He was swerving under the weight of what appeared to be hundreds of bowls. Each was the size of a basin.

“Freshly brewed with the last of the tortoises!” He announced.

Chila’s face darkened, and for someone who wanted tortoises for soup so badly, she did not drink a single sip.

I drew a sharp breath. She was trying to create an oracle, and she needed a tortoise plastron to create one. Yuanshi Tianzun knew this and used the Gastronomy test to get rid of all tortoises. That was why I won.

As Chushen and Chupo led me back down to the sidelines of the stage, my admiration for Yuanshi Tianzun trumped my dislike of him. Even without memory of last night, he knew to foil Mojie’s schemes. Chila desperately wanted Arum’s treasure, I realized.

By the time I descended to the stage, the dance round already started. Shangtian and Barette were both in this round, so I couldn’t gossip with anyone about what I had just seen.

Swirling girls, flipping girls, flying girls passed over my head. I tried to clap enthusiastically when Shangtian swayed elegantly across the stage, but my mind was bursting to share with someone everything that happened. Most importantly, I knew my god’s name. Boluan… Boluan… Boluan… I whispered.

After the dance round came weaving. Barette and Shangtian stayed on stage. As the looms hummed away, I watched them pull, twist, fold the colorful thread with dizzying motions. The challenge was to create life with fabric. The rabbit that Shangtian wove came to life and hopped out of the fabric. Similarly, Barette’s flowers were so real that they exuded fragrance.

“Ziyan!” Shangtian yelled as I came on stage again for Prosody.

I wanted to tell her about what I saw and that I knew the name of my god, but Shangtian grabbed my hands excitedly.

“You did so well! Barette too, she won both rounds. Her majesty is totally going to pick Barette to be her disciple. If only I were as smart as Barette.”

Low tables appeared in front of us as she spoke, along with the usual paper and brushes. A thin god with a tall hat descended from the stands.

“Present the spirit of gain and loss in four regulated lines,” he announced.

“What are regulated lines?” I whispered.

Shangtian’s face drained of all color.

“What do you mean? Didn’t you say you learned writing in your village?” She whispered back.

“Yeah, writing words,” I hissed. “What did you think we were writing?”

“Poems,” Shangtian hissed in horror. “Prosody is the writing of poems.”

I had never written a poem in my life.

“Damn this stupid horse shit,” I cursed. “What is the point of poems? Can’t we just write the way we speak?”

“Poems are developed by gods to help mortals societies remember important information before they had writing systems. Rhymes and repetition make long stories easier… oh dear, we are starting. Listen. Opening line, developing line, turning line, and concluding line make up a regulated poem—”

“What is a REGULATED poem?” I panicked.

“—Always tone-contrast and parallel the developing and turning lines—”

“No talking!” Immediately, a wall rose between me and Shangtian.

I stared at Shangtian’s scalp, listening to the sounds of brushes gliding upon paper around me. I dipped my brush into the ink well, hoping my mind would absorb new ideas like the brush absorbed ink.

I closed my eyes and searched my brain for some fancy phrases about gain and loss. Shangtian, Barette, Sylvestris and everyone else probably studied Prosody all their lives. Even if I made up something, how could I stand a chance? I had never read poems or even seen a scroll—

Scrolls! Tudi gave me scrolls, which I tucked into the sleeve of my undershirt. My eyes darted to my left sleeve. I couldn’t cheat.

“Do you want to save the villagers?” A voice inside of me yelled. My hand shook, and a droplet of ink fell from my brush, marring the snow white paper. In one instant, the paper forever ruined, just like the souls of the villagers if I didn’t help them.

In a burst of determination, I reached into my sleeve and pulled out one of the scrolls.

To reach eternity, we know is best.

But the greater good, he can’t overlook.

Where are the rulers of days gone by?

A mound of earth, a heap of grass.

We envy ducks, as they swim in pairs.

But power and fame, he can’t resist.

Where are the promises of past and present?

Gone with the wind, forgotten with time.

Does he, then, ensnare your heart?

Swear to love till death doth part?

Greedy hands seize, but cannot hold.

All will fade, alone in age.

I stared at the poem, dumbfounded. There it was again, my handwriting. The same familiar squiggles… the same script that was on the yaoguai’s pouch.