After the Double Seventh Festival, the Ghost Festival quickly approached.

The Ghost Festival was a major celebration at this time, with temples and Taoist shrines throughout the city holding religious ceremonies. Every year, the palace would send valuable offerings in ullambana basins to major temples like Ci’en Temple and Qinglong Temple. Many common people also visited temples to make offerings and pray for blessings. In front of these major temples, there were often various theatrical performances and Buddhist sermons, with both singing and recitations, creating a lively atmosphere.

Even smaller temples without much renown were busy during these days. For instance, at Guangming Nunnery, they had begun cleaning and tidying up several days in advance. On the first day of the Ghost Festival, Master Yuanjue, wearing formal religious robes, chanted sutras and brought out the ullambana basin decorated with lotus patterns, gold baskets, and precious stones.

Shen Shaoguang offered her personally steamed honey ritual cakes and donated money for incense oil, then joined other devotees in listening to a session of sutra chanting.

After the morning ceremony concluded, Master Yuanjue smiled at Shen Shaoguang and said, “What exquisite items! They’re quite different from the Double Seventh Festival cakes, with several layers arranged on the plate – truly presentable!”

Master Yuanjue, being a connoisseur of food, immediately noticed the differences between the Ghost Festival honey offerings and the Double Seventh Festival cakes. The Double Seventh cakes were delicate and tender, emphasizing texture, but couldn’t be stored long or stacked. The honey offerings, however, were mostly made with cream, honey, and flour – either steamed, fried, or baked – with sturdy shapes that could be arranged in three to five layers on plates, looking beautiful and proper, and could last six to seven days without issue.

What wasn’t known was that Shen Shaoguang’s creation of these honey-offering cakes was related to the Double Seventh Festival cakes.

At this time, making sacrificial offerings was a family tradition, with “the mistress presenting simple offerings” being a required skill for housewives. Thus, Shen Shaoguang hadn’t initially planned to develop products for this festival. However, unexpectedly, a customer who had tried the Double Seventh Festival cakes came to the shop to order pastries to offer to his parents during the Ghost Festival.

“When my late parents were alive, we were poor and they never got to taste such refined things. Now that I’ve fortunately earned some money, I’d like them to try these,” said the middle-aged customer, around forty or fifty years old, wearing a Hangzhou silk robe with a weathered complexion, possibly a long-distance merchant. His face showed deep emotion as he spoke.

Shen Shaoguang’s expression grew solemn. Though understanding this feeling of “wanting to care for parents who are no longer there” and hoping to make the sale, she had to be honest about the flower cakes’ shortcomings – they wouldn’t last through the three days of the Ghost Festival, as they would either crack, fall apart, or even spoil when exposed to wind.

The customer furrowed his brow, knowing Shen Shaoguang spoke the truth.

Shen Shaoguang, recalling a special feature from her previous life about “The Lost Manchu-Han Imperial Pastries of Beijing,” said, “I’ll modify the recipe, using steaming, baking, and frying methods, which should work.”

The next day, she made several samples for the customer to try. Upon the customer’s approval, Shen Shaoguang began making these Tang Dynasty honey offering pastries in the style of Manchu-Han imperial confections. While they couldn’t compare to the imperial pastry kitchen of the Qing palace, or even to the pastry shops of the late Qing and early Republican period, they were more than adequate to comfort a merchant’s longing for his parents in this era over a thousand years earlier.

Making one batch was the same effort as making two, so Shen Shaoguang decided to make three portions: one for the merchant, one as an offering to Guangming Nunnery to boost its popularity and maintain good relations, and one to offer at the City God Temple outside the city on the Ghost Festival day.

The parents, siblings, and original body of this life hadn’t died natural deaths, and there weren’t even remains or graves. It was said that for such deaths, offerings should be made at the City God Temple outside the city. Thus, on the Ghost Festival day, Shen Shaoguang closed the shop and took Ayuan early in the morning, riding a rented mule cart to the outskirts.

Compared to the bustling splendor of the temples and Taoist shrines within the city, the City God Temple was much more desolate. Moss covered the walkways, and weeds grew along the courtyard walls, though the offerings of rice cakes and fruit on the altar were fresh and abundant, likely left by previous worshippers. A lame Taoist priest in his fifties and a young acolyte tended to the incense in the hall.

Shen Shaoguang arranged the fruit and pastry offerings, lit incense and candles, burned paper money, and made offerings to the City God and the parents and relatives of this life. Before leaving, she also gave some silver money to the priest as alms.

The old priest accepted the money, announced his religious title, and bowed, saying, “The local City God is most efficacious and will surely bless those for whom you make offerings.” Having received substantial silver from the previous worshipper, the priest wasn’t particularly impressed by Shen Shaoguang’s modest donation but rather admired her offerings – even when she had stayed at major temples in the city in her youth, she hadn’t seen such neat and proper offerings from the nobility, and she looked forward to tasting them after they were removed from the altar.

Shen Shaoguang smiled and returned the bow, hoping to do what she could, wishing their souls would find peace and not suffer from hunger or cold.

Since they were already on the outskirts, Shen Shaoguang asked the cart driver to wait while she took Ayuan for a walk. This was her first time seeing the countryside of this era.

Thatched cottages and grass huts, chickens crowing and dogs barking, wisps of smoke rising from burial grounds, and a few farmers returning home from ancestral offerings. It would make a poetic scene in a painting, but to live here…

The river water was genuinely clear. Under the willows by the river stood someone in white robes, with several servants holding horses waiting not far behind. The person turned around – it was the same scholar who had joked about Pang Erniang in front of Guangming Nunnery.

Both were startled. Shen Shaoguang bowed first and was about to step aside when the man walked over.

“Did you also come to make offerings at the City God Temple, young lady?”

“Yes,” Shen Shaoguang smiled.

“May I ask – for whom are you making offerings?”

Is it now fashionable in Chang’an to speak deeply of personal matters with mere acquaintances? Shen Shaoguang raised an eyebrow. The man had romantic peach blossom eyes, but now his expression carried traces of melancholy and sorrow.

“Family members,” Shen Shaoguang finally answered.

“And whom is the young gentleman offering to?” Shen Shaoguang asked in return.

“A teacher’s friend.” It was a friend’s teacher and friend.

Shen Shaoguang nodded. Coming outside the city to make offerings, it must have been a close teacher’s friend, and being here, it must be a sad story. Shen Shaoguang recalled Gu Zhen’guan’s “Jin Lu Qu” lyrics: “I too have drifted long. In these ten years, deep kindness exhausted, life and death parting teachers and friends.” Looking at this person in his desolate white robes, she couldn’t help but overlay the scene from the poem onto him, and her tone softened, “Please take care in your grief.” Then she bowed again, put on her veiled hat, and left with Ayuan.

Watching Shen Shaoguang’s retreating figure, the scholar in white raised an eyebrow and smiled. That day she had been sharp-tongued, today understanding and sympathetic – were all young ladies these days so interesting?

Lin Yan returned from his walk in the woods, following his friend’s gaze.

“Your female neighbor is quite interesting,” Pei Fei smiled.

Lin Yan pressed his lips together, “She’s a proper young lady, we shouldn’t discuss her.”

“You’re so old-fashioned! If you find such a clever and capable new wife in the future, won’t you be despised to death?”