The Supporting Female Character Isn't Getting Involve

Lin Dan was a cultivator of the Infinity Dao who spent six hundred years in unrequited devotion to her Dao companion. During their Dao Companionship Ceremony, he hesitated to swear the oath, revealing his heart belonged to another woman. When that woman appeared, he abandoned Lin Dan without hesitation. Instead of fighting for him, Lin Dan let go of her obsession, pierced his abdomen with her sword to end his suffering, and walked into her heavenly tribulation. Knowing the Ascension Ladder was broken and ascension meant death, she accepted her fate with peace. Upon dying, she was bound to an auxiliary system and sent through countless small worlds as a task taker. For eons, she served as a tool, enduring despair until she met a man from a higher plane who taught her to survive and regain her identity. She became his follower, chasing him across worlds, only to realize he was equally devoted to another woman. When she finally completed her missions and earned enough points to choose her fate, he revoked his recommendation, leaving her with no referrer to migrate to a higher plane. Rejecting his rejection, she chose to return to her original world, converting her points into wealth to live for herself.

Lin Dan awoke in the body of a twelve-year-old girl in the Great Chu Dynasty, a world of culinary arts rather than cultivation. The original Lin Dan was the daughter of a renowned imperial cook, Lin Baotian, who had died two months prior. The family had lost their status after Lin Dan lost a cooking competition to Yan Langqing, a maid in the Yongding Marquis residence. Yan Langqing claimed Lin Baotian had stolen the Golden Knife and recipes from her grandfather, Imperial Cook Yan Bo, labeling him an ungrateful traitor. The Lin family’s reputation was ruined, and Lin Dan’s two uncles seized their property and restaurant, leaving Lin Dan and her sickly mother, Madam Qi, destitute. Facing slander and poverty, Lin Dan refused to beg for charity from the Marquis residence. Instead, she publicly defended her father’s honor by exposing the inconsistencies in the Yan family’s story and the unfilial nature of Yan Langqing’s father, who had abandoned his dying father to pursue the imperial exams.

When Yan Bo’s widow, Madam Zhou, attempted to further slander Lin Baotian by claiming he withheld letters and stole money, Lin Dan responded not with words but with action. She returned Yan Bo’s memorial tablet, which had been meticulously cared for over the years, proving Lin Baotian’s filial piety. In a fit of rage, Madam Zhou smashed the tablet, revealing her true vicious nature to the gathered crowd. The public opinion shifted in Lin Dan’s favor, and the Old Marquis, learning of the truth, ordered the Yan family to leave his residence. However, Lin Dan declined the Marquis’s offer to return, choosing instead to leave the capital with her mother to start anew, avoiding the political entanglements and the lingering attachment of the young marquis to Yan Langqing.

Lin Dan and her mother settled in a small town where Lin Dan worked as a servant for an elderly tofu ball maker. She endured harsh labor and hostility from the old woman’s daughter-in-law, learning the craft with diligence. After three months, she mastered the dish and continued a ten-year journey across the country, seeking out masters to learn diverse culinary techniques. She traveled widely, tasting delicacies and experiencing life, transforming from a heartbroken cultivator into a resilient and independent chef. A decade later, she traveled to the capital under the guise of an ill shopkeeper named Lin, leading a convoy of carriages. Along the way, she encountered three mysterious martial artists, one of whom watched her with intense interest. Lin Dan prepared a meal using fermented tofu dregs and cured meat, demonstrating her refined understanding of flavor profiles. Her journey had shifted from seeking love to mastering her craft, and she now moved through the world with detachment and purpose, ready to forge her own path in the culinary realm.