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Hua Cheng hated scheming. He hated war. He hated plans that required him to keep a straight face while watching his beloved walk into danger.
And yet here he was, in the dim tent of their camp, watching Xie Lian hum as he tied a flimsy apron around his chest.
“Gege,” Hua Cheng said, because someone had to say it. “You know you’re not actually a spy, right?”
Xie Lian laughed like a bird. “All the better! I’ll be convincing.”
Hua Cheng pinched the bridge of his nose. “That isn’t comforting.”
They had tried everything. Threats failed, negotiations failed, dazzling displays of power failed. Jun Wu would not be lured, bargained with, or frightened into surrender. He liked being a problem. He liked being a mountain.
Hua Cheng’s eyes lingered on the pot on the table. He had watched Xie Lian cook so many times — watched the Crown Prince try to make porridge and almost rewrite the laws of nature in the process. Xie Lian’s cooking had a tendency to smoke, to singe, to make small statues weep; sometimes it was pleasantly edible, once it had actually resurrected a potted plant, and once it had very nearly dissolved a minor curse. It was, in most definitions, hazardous.
And yet — and yet.
“What if,” Hua Cheng said slowly, looking at Xie Lian like he was confessing a terrible love, “you cook for Jun Wu.”
Xie Lian brightened. “Oh! A peace offering? I should make dumplings—”
“No.” Hua Cheng’s teeth clicked. “Not a peace offering. A distraction.”
Xie Lian blinked. “A distraction?”
“A very convincing one,” Hua Cheng said, and then, because logic and love and all his ugly pragmatic parts were aligned, he said the words. “I will say you sided with him. He will let you near him. You will feed him. He will be taken out of the fight for a while. The generals will be distracted enough for our strike.”
Xie Lian’s brow furrowed the way it did when he tried to remember which direction was east. “But—if I side with him, won’t he take me prisoner?”
Hua Cheng laughed, a quick, sharp sound that was mostly nerves. “Gege, you’re the most charmingly disastrous person in existence. He’ll be defensive, of course. He’ll be suspicious. He’ll be...curious.” He looked sideways. “And he will accept food from someone trying to betray him because Jun Wu likes spectacle.”
Xie Lian's face lit up with that extraordinary, unguarded trust that always made Hua Cheng’s chest ache. “I can make a stew, I learned from mortals! It looks like loyalty and tastes like loyalty.”
Hua Cheng wanted to say no. He wanted to scream no. He wanted to drag Xie Lian away and lock him in the loveliest cell ever, where nothing could be eaten, burned, or used to end wars.
Instead, he turned to the small group that had gathered in the tent — the usual ragged handful of friends who had somehow become a band of conspirators. Feng Xin, leaning against a crate with his ever-unimpressed expression; Mu Qing, arms folded; Ling Wen, who had been reading a book upside down and now peered at them with amusement.
“You’re actually going to let him cook for Jun Wu?” Feng Xin said.
Hua Cheng gave him an expression that could curdle milk. “Do you have an alternative?”
Mu Qing, who very rarely said much, shrugged. “We could send a poisoner, but that is messy.”
Ling Wen closed the book with a soft thump. “We could let Xie Lian cook and then eat the stew ourselves as a test.”
Feng Xin made an involuntary sound that may have been a laugh and may have been a strangled sob. Hua Cheng’s mouth twitched.
“For once,” Hua Cheng said, voice small, “I am asking you to trust me.”
They looked at him. They looked at Xie Lian — at the person who stirred the pot and hummed as if peace were as simple as salt and water — and, surprisingly, they nodded.
“Fine,” Feng Xin said. “If he survives this and doesn’t accidentally burn down a temple, I will personally write your name in the margins of my ledger.”
Mu Qing gave a reluctant thumbs-up. Ling Wen offered an encouraging clap. For once, the sidekicks were on Hua Cheng’s side.
Hua Cheng wanted to fold under the weight of his own relief — and terror. He wanted to protect Xie Lian, to hide him, to keep him away from any food-related diplomacy. But the war demanded risk. Jun Wu had to be taken out, and if Xie Lian’s cooking could do it — whether through accidental chemical apocalypse or simple, lachrymose scent — then so be it.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Hua Cheng said, and then he tried to convince himself of a different truth: promise me you won’t know what you did.
Xie Lian hugged Hua Cheng like he was a person-shaped blanket. “I will be careful,” he said, and meant a version of it that included both honesty and disaster.
Jun Wu’s tent smelled of lacquer and authority. Servants moved like clockwork. The air was heavy with incense and the kind of silence that carries an empire’s steering wheel.
Xie Lian walked in with an enormous pot like a peace offering and a smaller tray of side dishes like a child bringing school cookies. Jun Wu looked up, cold and glittering and exactly the kind of man who could wear a crown as if it grew from his spine.
“You are bold to appear here,” Jun Wu said. His voice was a low thing that could make mountains negligent.
Xie Lian smiled with perfect, oblivious charm. “I want to help. I can cook.”
There was a long, dangerous beat. Jun Wu narrowed his eyes and motioned for a servant to set a low table.
“Very well,” Jun Wu said. “Cook for me, then. Impress me, traitor.”
Xie Lian's smile wavered. “Impress? I don’t think—”
Hua Cheng had insisted on following because he simply could not bear not to. He sat in the tent's shadow, polished teeth clenched, pretending to be calm. Feng Xin and Mu Qing lingered outside the flaps with Ling Wen making faces as if to impart strength. All of them watched Xie Lian arrange bowls like a man assembling fragile planets.
The first spoonful was a thing of contradictions. It smelled of hearth, of rain on summer soil, and something like old grief that had been stewed down into an aromatic ghost. Jun Wu stole his nose near it and his expression was unreadable.
He lifted the spoon.
Xie Lian watched like a child watching a puppet show.
Jun Wu put it in his mouth.
Silence arrived like a tide.
Jun Wu chewed once. Twice. His jaw worked in a slow, puzzled rhythm. A tiny crease appeared between his brows, as if a new math problem had been set. He swallowed.
“What is this?” he asked, and the word “is” seemed inadequate.
“Love?” Xie Lian offered with a tilt of the head. “And—uh—ginger?”
Hua Cheng wanted to leap up and declare that Xie Lian’s cooking would cause irreparable temporal damage, that the stew would mark Jun Wu for three days of existential reconsideration. He wanted to grab the pot and run. Instead, he said, in a voice that tried not to quake, “Gege—be careful.”
Jun Wu took another bite. He frowned, and then his knees gave in.
He did not fall as a dramatic villain might. He toppled as if the world had simply decided that he had had enough of being heavy. He sagged, as if his body could no longer hold the idea of conquest, and then he was on the mat, eyes fluttering, breathing shallow.
For a full second, Hua Cheng was too stunned to move. Then he was at Jun Wu’s side, palms hovering, not because he feared for Jun Wu — because he feared what Xie Lian had truly done.
Xie Lian looked betrayed. “He fainted? I didn’t mean to—”
Ling Wen, who had been watching with an expression of suspicious delight, clapped a single hand to his mouth.
Feng Xin, who had expected at best a minor burn and at worst a small rite of destruction, whistled. “Well. That happened.”
Mu Qing simply stared, eyes sharp.
Hua Cheng breathed in and let out a laugh that sounded startlingly like a sob. He pulled Xie Lian into his arms. “Gege,” he said, voice thin and fond, “your cooking—”
Xie Lian blinked, face as innocent as a dove who’d accidentally knocked over a cathedral. “Did I do it?”
“You did,” Hua Cheng said. He felt odd pride blooming like a dangerous flower. “You did, and for once I agree with the sidekicks.”
Xie Lian looked confused, then delighted. “Hua Cheng! I saved the world.”
Hua Cheng squeezed him so hard his ribs protested. “You saved it. And you nearly ruined it. But mostly saved it. For now, we will not tell anyone you are a weapon of mass digestion.”
Outside the tent, the generals and officers were thrown into chaos at Jun Wu’s sudden collapse. Orders misfired. Messengers stumbled. In the confusion, the allied forces moved. A strike, clean and efficient, cut through the remaining structure of the rebellion like a knife through overcooked pudding.
When the news came later that Jun Wu had been put under watch for “culinary-induced meditation” and would require rest for three days, mouths gaped and whispers spread.
Only a few knew the truth.
That truth sat in a small tent, hugging a pot that had nothing left but a few floating scallions, and humming a tune about how you could fix anything with a little salt.
Hua Cheng’s eyes were wet. “Please,” he said to Xie Lian, who was very proudly telling Ling Wen how he’d browned the onions, “never cook for strategy again.”
Xie Lian pouted. “But I can make dumplings.”
Hua Cheng pressed his face into Xie Lian’s hair and muttered, “You can make ruin and reconciliation in a single bowl. I will love you anyway. But maybe let Feng Xin taste-test next time.”
Feng Xin, from the tent flap, made a noise that might have been assent.
They all laughed, a little shakily. In the aftermath of war, it was sometimes the smallest absurdities that turned into legend.
The official records later stated that the fighting had ended due to “a sudden, irreversible loss of morale in Jun Wu’s camp.” A few priests wrote sonnets about divine intervention. The old historians, who liked tidy narratives, credited generals and speeches, and valor.
Hua Cheng kept his own ledger, a small, private list of improbable moments, and on it he wrote, in a messy hand, one line that scholars or clergy would not read.
Xie Lian made stew. It worked. Don’t let him near a temple kitchen again.
Xie Lian read it over his shoulder and beamed. “See, I told you my cooking could do anything.”
Hua Cheng kissed him, very hard, until the warmth of that kiss could be measured in bowls and battles. “Promise me one thing,” he said finally, with the kind of gravity that made the tent hush.
Xie Lian looked up, eyes luminous. “Anything.”
“Next time,” Hua Cheng said, “tell me before you save the world.”
Xie Lian yawned and was already dreaming of dumplings. “If I tell you,” he said, “it won’t be a surprise.”
Hua Cheng sighed, half exasperated, half grateful. He would take the surprise. He would take the stew. He would take the whole strange chaos that was Xie Lian.
Because some wars were ended with swords, some with treaties, and some absurdly, and gloriously with food that tasted like disaster and peace in equal measure.
The end.