The moment thick smoke and the smell of burning were sucked into her lungs, Su Mo pushed the apprentice beside her away from the tongues of fire. In the next second, searing heat and darkness completely swallowed her.
As a senior executive chef who had spent ten years in the culinary world, she had spent half her life accompanied by pots and pans, being extremely demanding about ingredient selection and heat control. She never expected that a restaurant fire would become the final chapter of her previous life.
Splash, splash. The sound of water was gentle and rhythmic.
Su Mo drifted in the darkness. While the burning pain still lingered in her lungs, her nostrils were filled with a different scent—the fishy smell of river water, the dampness of soil, and… the scent of rotting vegetation.
“Nian He… Nian He…”
Someone was crying. The voice felt distant yet very close, as if separated by a film of water.
She struggled to open her eyes, her vision a blur of cyan. After a long while, she finally saw clearly that it was a coarse cloth canopy with patches. The edges had turned yellow, and the embroidered lotus flowers on it had faded.
Where is this? Am I actually not dead?
She wanted to sit up, but her body felt like it was falling apart, and it felt as if countless needles were stabbing into her brain. Shards of memory that didn’t belong to her flooded into her mind—
Linshui County. Su Ji Eatery. Su Dashan and Zhou Yunniang. She had undergone a soul transmigration into a sixteen-year-old girl of the same name, Su Mo, nicknamed Nian He, at Su Ji Eatery. The original owner of the body had gone to the riverside to pick wild vegetables in the morning, slipped, and fell into the water. She had stopped breathing after being rescued, and when she woke up again, her body was inhabited by a soul from the modern era.
“She’s awake! Dashan, Nian He is awake!” a woman’s urgent voice rang out.
Then, a woman’s face entered her field of vision. She looked to be in her thirties with delicate features, though fine lines already touched the corners of her eyes. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she was currently wiping away fresh tears. She wore a dress of cyan coarse cloth with frayed, white-rubbed cuffs, her hair simply tied back with a wooden hairpin.
Su Mo’s throat was dry and tight. She rasped out a request for water. As a mouthful of warm water went down, her hazy consciousness finally cleared.
There was a complex scent in the air—the dampness of aged wood, a faint musty smell, and… the scent of cooking fumes.
“Nian He, are you still feeling unwell anywhere? Tell Mother.” Zhou Yunniang—her mother—held her hand, her voice choked with emotion.
Su Mo shook her head, finally able to speak. “I’m… fine.”
“What do you mean ‘fine’!” Su Dashan, her father, said in a gruff voice. “If it weren’t for Aunt Zhao next door passing by and pulling you out… I tell you, the riverbank is so slippery after the rain, yet you just had to go pick those wild vegetables!”
Wild vegetables? Memories flooded back again. Su Ji Eatery wasn’t doing well, with only five or six tables of regular customers daily. To add a free vegetable dish, Zhou Yunniang often went to the riverbank with her daughter to pick wild greens. It had rained yesterday, and the moss by the river was slippery…
“Alright, alright, the child just woke up. Why are you saying all this?” Zhou Yunniang wiped her tears again and turned to Su Nian He, saying softly, “Are you hungry? Mother will go boil some porridge for you.”
Su Nian He nodded.
Zhou Yunniang left. Su Dashan stood by the bed for a moment, looking as if he wanted to say something but held back. Eventually, he sighed. “Rest well.” He also turned and left.
The door was closed, and the room fell silent. Su Mo slowly sat up. She looked down at her hands. These were the hands of a sixteen-year-old girl, with slender fingers and thin calluses on the palms—left behind from years of helping in the kitchen.
She pulled back the quilt. She was wearing an inner garment of coarse cloth; the fabric was rough but washed very clean. Stepping out of bed barefoot onto the cold floor, she walked to the window and gently pushed it open.
Outside the window was a river. It wasn’t wide, and the current flowed gently, shimmering with ripples under the sunlight. On the opposite bank stood residences with blue tiles and white walls, with a few wisps of cooking smoke rising. Nearby, a wooden pier could be seen with several small fishing boats tied to it. The air was moist and fresh, carrying the unique gentleness of a water town. This was Linshui County, a place she had never heard of in her previous life.
Su Mo took a deep breath. The aroma of a stir-fry reached her, but the heat was a bit too high, giving the scallions a slightly scorched, bitter smell. Too much oil had been used, masking the original flavor of the ingredients. The salt must have been added a bit too early… Her culinary experience from her previous life automatically began analyzing in her mind.
She turned around, found a half-worn, light-cyan cross-collar dress in the wardrobe, and put it on. The cuffs were frayed, but it was washed very clean.
In the kitchen, Su Dashan was stir-frying the last dish of greens in the back, while Zhou Yunniang was boiling porridge at the stove. When they saw her, both were momentarily stunned.
“Nian He, why did you come here?” Zhou Yunniang hurriedly put down her spoon and looked at her.
Su Mo walked to the entrance of the back kitchen. It was smaller than she had imagined, with only one earthen stove, a large cutting board, and several bamboo baskets for ingredients. A few knives hung on the wall, their blades showing traces of rust. There weren’t many spice jars, but they were arranged neatly beside the stove.
“Mother, I’m fine now. I just came to take a look.”
Su Dashan was currently plating the stir-fried greens. The vegetables were a bit wilted and glistened with oil; one could tell at a glance that the oil was heavy.
“The oil is a bit too heavy.”
Su Dashan’s hand paused. He looked back at her, his brow furrowing. “What do you know? Customers like it oily; it goes better with rice.”
“Too much oil masks the natural sweetness of the vegetables,” Su Nian He took a step closer, looking at the dish. “Moreover, the heat was too high, making the leaves limp and lose their crispness.”
Su Dashan was stunned.
Zhou Yunniang was also stunned.
Ever since her daughter woke up after falling into the water, she seemed different somehow. She couldn’t say exactly what it was. It was still the same delicate face and thin frame, but the eyes… there was something in those eyes they had never seen before.
“Nian He,” Zhou Yunniang asked cautiously, “are you… still not fully recovered? Why don’t you go back and rest some more?”
Su Mo shook her head, her gaze falling on the pot of white porridge on the stove. The porridge was bubbling in the clay pot; the grains were boiled mushy, but the water and rice remained separate, unblended.
“Mother,” she said, “let me make the porridge for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Nonsense!” Su Dashan put down the plate. “You’ve just woken up. Why are you fussing? Besides, a woman taking the ladle—what would that look like!”
“Father,” she looked up at Su Dashan, her voice not loud but clear, “I want to try.”
Their eyes met. Su Dashan looked into his daughter’s eyes. There was no trace of her former timidity or the daze of illness, but rather a nearly stubborn earnestness.