Lady Zhuwu resumed her previously warm attitude toward Madam Yuan and her daughter, coming every day to inquire about their well-being, as if no unpleasantness had ever occurred between her and Feng Xian. Before Feng Xian’s departure, she even persuaded Ling Tao to have Madam Yuan move back to the main residence.
Aunt Xu marveled at this and mentioned it to Feng Xian, but worried that Lady Zhuwu harbored ulterior motives and had other schemes. Upon hearing this, Feng Xian said, “Lady Wu is indeed not a kind person. When she previously sent the pearl chicken, she deliberately mentioned the name ‘filial pheasant’ in front of mother and me, probably wanting to remind mother to have me present the chicken soup to father as a show of filial piety. She also calculated that father favors Lady Jiu, who was still in her confinement month, so father would easily think of giving her the filial pheasant soup to nourish her body. Lady Jiu is her greatest rival, and she naturally already knew her daily dietary preferences well. She used the dietary taboo between walnuts, mushrooms, and filial pheasant to damage Lady Jiu’s health, then made a big issue of it, causing Lady Jiu to lose her personal maid…”
Aunt Xu suddenly understood and asked, “But if one link in this chain had gone wrong, wouldn’t the filial pheasant soup not have reached Lady Jiu?”
Feng Xian nodded, “That’s possible, but even if Lady Jiu couldn’t drink the filial pheasant soup, she would still use this filial pheasant to make mother and me feel indebted to her, which would ultimately benefit her. No matter how she sent this filial pheasant, she wouldn’t lose.”
Aunt Xu sighed, “Lady Wu has such malicious intentions. How can you bear to leave your mother and entrust Madam to her?”
Feng Xian said, “In this household, whether I leave or not, I can’t stay long. If I don’t go to Pujiang, father will soon marry me off, and mother and I will still be separated by vast distances. I might as well gamble with father and Lady Wu. If I can enter the palace, father will have expectations of me and Lady Wu will be wary of me – neither will dare mistreat mother. If I’m not selected, I agree to replace Third Miss in marrying Yin Qi, which also solves a major problem for them. They probably won’t neglect my mother afterward. If they displease me, I have ways to make their hard-won marriage alliance unhappy, and this connection would be wasted. They might even pursue the matter of Third Miss’s escape from marriage… After I leave, the one who might oppress mother isn’t Lady Wu, but someone like Lady Jiu – young concubines who are proud, stupid, and arrogant in their current favor. So I explained the stakes to Lady Wu and had her protect mother. Lady Wu will also be willing to use mother’s legitimate wife status to constrain other concubines. That’s why she brought mother back to the main residence – it has the meaning of ‘controlling the lords by controlling the emperor.’ Afterward, she’ll certainly invite famous doctors to treat mother. Currently, the person in the residence most afraid of any mishap befalling Madam is her. Though she’s not good, fortunately she’s not stupid. She can weigh pros and cons and has ways to deal with other concubines. For now, entrusting mother to her is most appropriate. After I leave, I hope Aunt Xu will continue to care for mother attentively. If anything improper happens in the household, I hope you’ll find ways to inform me. Whoever bullies my mother, I’ll find the relevant people and settle accounts one by one.”
Aunt Xu admired Feng Xian’s intelligence but worried about her future prospects. Unable to help feeling anxious, she wiped her tears and said, “Miss’s strategy is naturally good, but there should be many girls registering for selection in Pujiang. If you can’t be selected as hoped, won’t you have to wrong yourself and marry that person with mental illness?”
Feng Xian looked up toward the horizon, where a lone wild goose was struggling to fly toward the sea of clouds edged with gold by sunlight. After watching for a long time, the bright light hurt her eyes, but she kept them open, controlling the urge to blink, maintaining her quietly standing posture. To Aunt Xu, and also as if to herself, she said, “Don’t worry, I will definitely be selected.”
The Royal Kitchen personnel selection in Pujiang was conducted over three days: the first day for physical examination, the second day for testing knife skills, and the third day requiring three dishes prepared using different techniques.
With hope of entering the palace, young women from Pujiang flocked to participate. Many girls between twelve and twenty who could cook two dishes came to register. On the first day alone, hundreds of women waited outside Pujiang County Government Office for entry to participate. However, after this day’s physical examination, only about thirty people qualified for the next day’s selection.
Several eunuchs from the palace sat inside the government office gates, first assessing the women’s appearances. Those obviously ugly or too fat, too thin, too tall, or too short were advised to leave without entering. Those who passed the initial screening were led into inner rooms and handed over to female officials for detailed physical examination.
The female officials worked in pairs, each pair in one room, allowing one woman to enter at a time. They ordered her to remove all clothing until completely naked, carefully examining the woman’s skin, requiring no hemorrhoids, sores, dark moles, birthmarks, or scars. They also had the women walk and breathe, rejecting those with unusual odors from mouth, nose, armpits, or feet, immediately ordering them to leave. Then, just as Feng Xian had predicted, they had participants lie on a couch while two female officials examined their private parts in turn to determine if they were virgins.
Zhenzhen passed these tests. A female official immediately used a soft measuring tape to measure her body – height, foot length, shoulder width, hip width, and distances from shoulder to fingertip, finger to palm, thigh to foot – all were measured and recorded by another female official with a brush. Zhenzhen secretly glanced and saw the official write a numerical evaluation for her: “Skin texture fine and clean, proportions appropriate.”
Feng Xian also successfully qualified. Both received notification and left through the gate, seeing some failed women crying outside, some angrily describing how a small scar led to their elimination, while most departed dejectedly under curious observers’ gazes. Among them were many familiar culinary experts. Zhenzhen and Feng Xian couldn’t help but pat their foreheads in succession, both feeling fortunate.
The next day’s knife skills evaluation was conducted in the back courtyard of the government office. Each participating woman was provided with a table, cutting board, knives, some oil for lubricating knives, and related cleaning supplies, along with three ingredients: scallions, radish, and fish meat. They were required to use knives for cutting, with the style of cuts left to their own decision.
The chief examiner for this day was Supervisor Qin from the Royal Kitchen. She was about forty years old, fair-skinned, slender, and could be called beautiful, but her gaze was stern and she never smiled, appearing unapproachable. The current county magistrate Shen Peiran treated Supervisor Qin with utmost respect, bowing deeply and calling her “Inner Lady” when requesting instructions. Supervisor Qin always maintained a distance of several zhang from him, responding only with brief phrases, coldly aloof, seeking only to convey meaning without allowing small talk.
When the competition began, all the women eagerly grasped their knives and began processing ingredients – chopping, slicing, splitting, or scoring – wishing they could cut these ordinary ingredients into flowers.
Supervisor Qin left the main seat and walked among the women, her sharp eyes fixed on their cutting boards and knife-holding hands. When she found something worth observing, she would stop to watch, her blade-like gaze moving between the cutting board and the woman she was observing.
She quickly identified several women for the first round of elimination, ordering them to be taken out without participating in further competition. The reason was that after cutting scallions, they had neither changed knives nor washed their knives and cutting boards before beginning to cut the next ingredient.
As someone who had learned to cut scallions beside the immaculately clean Teacher Lin, Zhenzhen naturally wouldn’t make such a basic error. Changing knives, washing knives, changing and washing knives, and washing cutting boards – Zhenzhen handled each step thoroughly. When using fish meat to make sashimi, Zhenzhen followed Lin Hong’s teaching by first wiping the knife with fish belly fat, earning Supervisor Qin’s attention and approving gaze.
During the sashimi section, Supervisor Qin eliminated several more women because they had used sesame oil, vegetable oil, or pork and mutton fat to oil their knives, which would contaminate the fish slices with foreign flavors.
After the remaining women finished processing the day’s ingredients, Supervisor Qin examined their work one by one, but first looked not at the ingredients on the cutting boards, but at where they had placed their knives and the cleanliness above and below their tables.
The processed ingredients all had plates as containers, but the tables had no special knife racks. Supervisor Qin was now checking where the women had placed their knives on the cutting boards, verifying whether the blade lay flat in the center of the board, with the tip not protruding forward and the handle not showing behind, and whether the back and edge extended beyond the cutting board’s range. Any slight error, including those who stuck their blades directly down into the cutting board, resulted in elimination. She also carefully checked whether knives and cutting boards had been washed, whether cut waste had been placed in containers prepared under the tables, and whether there was any garbage or water stains above or below the tables.
One woman had excellent knife skills, carving a radish into a peony flower and cutting fish meat into chrysanthemum shapes, very beautiful. However, when Supervisor Qin glanced at the radish scraps she had casually thrown under the table, she still announced her elimination. Magistrate Shen, looking at her perfectly carved flower shapes, felt very sorry and quietly asked Supervisor Qin if she could be flexible and let her advance to the next round. Supervisor Qin flatly refused: “Knife techniques can be practiced, but inherent coarseness is hard to change. Her knife work is already this good, yet in such an important competition she still casually throws waste. This shows how careless she is about details. Such a person doesn’t deserve to enter the palace.”
Feng Xian paid attention to maintaining cleanliness, and her finished work was also very good. She had split scallions from the middle into several strands, pulling them into curly scallion flowers. The radish was carved into rose shapes, and fish slices were straight-cut and scored into lychee forms with uniform crisscross knife marks of consistent depth. Therefore, she successfully passed.
Zhenzhen didn’t cut anything fancy – scallions were diced, radish was julienned, and fish meat was sliced into fish fillets, all standard methods. However, they were cut evenly and neatly, with uniform thickness according to proper standards. After processing the ingredients, she cleaned knives, cutting boards, and tables above and below without a trace of dirt. Supervisor Qin had also been quite impressed with her use of fish belly fat earlier, so she rarely expressed approval in front of everyone: “Royal Kitchen personnel serve imperial nobility, so everything related to food should be handled with utmost care. Unclean ingredients or utensils can cause illness through food, affecting noble persons’ health. Therefore, Royal Kitchen personnel must first have good hygiene habits. This young lady washed her hands before and after handling different ingredients, simultaneously cleaning knives and cutting boards. After processing ingredients, she paid attention to properly disposing of waste and cleaning the surroundings spotlessly – very much like our Royal Kitchen personnel’s style. Moreover, she wiped the knife with fish belly fat, which both lubricates the tool to prevent fish slices from sticking and avoids contaminating fish slices with other oil flavors. This shows she’s particularly careful and has sensitive taste perception. Since she’s so thoughtful in details, developing beautiful knife work wouldn’t be difficult. Today’s selection aims to choose exactly this type of person.”
Zhenzhen felt as if in a dream, startled and delighted to understand that Supervisor Qin’s words meant she could advance to the next round. She barely controlled the upward curve of her lips within a graceful range and, under the envious gazes of other women, bowed properly to thank Supervisor Qin.
When walking home with Feng Xian, Feng Xian asked with a smile what she thought about receiving Supervisor Qin’s praise. Zhenzhen raised her hands toward Wuyi Mountain direction and said sincerely, “Thank you to Teacher Lin, who forced me to wash my hands dozens of times a day with his cold gaze.”