Chapter 36 - Six Dumplings Were the First Test
Roland denied everything.
Then Eli showed him the covenant mark glowing over his wrist.
Roland sat down.
"You can see that?"
"Turns out unemployment improved my vision."
They questioned him in a storage room behind the tournament stage.
Roland had joined Ash Pavilion three years ago after Golden Ox nearly failed. Ren's people offered capital in exchange for small favors.
Ingredient storage.
Private dinners.
Watching certain employees.
Watching Eli.
"Why me?"
Roland looked ashamed.
"Your father had enemies."
"Still vague."
"They told me if you ever started taking food home regularly, report it."
Eli frowned.
"Why?"
Jian answered from the doorway.
"Because the Ledger awakens around sincere nourishment under personal scarcity."
The six dumplings had mattered.
Eli had been hungry himself. Broke. Humiliated. Yet he chose to bring food to Mei.
Ren's agents were watching for exactly that behavioral trigger.
"You fired me to stop the awakening?"
Roland shook his head.
"I was ordered to fire you and confiscate the food. I didn't know why."
Eli thought back.
Leaving the dumplings behind had felt like losing.
But then he bought ingredients with his last money and cooked anyway.
The attempt to stop the trigger had completed it.
Reader engine had apparently started before the system came online.
Ren appeared outside the storage room as if summoned by narrative convenience.
"I miscalculated," he admitted.
"You arranged my firing?"
"Indirectly."
Eli punched him.
Ren could have dodged.
He did not.
"Fair," Ren said while touching his jaw.
Jian looked pleased.
Roland asked if he could leave.
Everyone said no.
He still had information.
Golden Ox's basement had hosted Ash Pavilion meetings. One meeting included Victor Vale.
Grant frowned.
"Dad claimed Ren was an enemy."
Roland shook his head.
"They argued. But they traded something."
"What?"
"A cookbook. Old. Red cover."
Jian's face changed.
"The Original Ledger Manual."
The Heavenly Kitchen Ledger was not purely mystical software. It had been built from a physical cultivation text centuries earlier.
The red manual contained administrator principles capable of rewriting Hearth systems.
Victor had given Ren access.
Ren did not deny it.
"I needed instructions to dismantle the network."
Victor had needed Ren to test vulnerabilities.
They had been enemies using each other.
Again, no clean sides.
Roland added one final detail.
"The book wasn't complete. One section had been cut out."
Jian looked at Mei.
Mei sighed.
"Why everybody look at me?"
Because she had it.
For twenty-three years, a missing administrator page from the Heavenly Kitchen Manual had been sitting beneath the liner of Mei's recipe box.
The page title:
HOW TO KILL A HOLLOW WITHOUT RELEASING ITS DEBT.
---
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
If you enjoyed the story, bookmark my site: https://vibe.treeiq.biz
May you like
New stories are posted daily, so check back for updates.
