Chapter 769 --769

Chapter 769: Chapter-769

Before Heena could ask him exactly what he found so interesting, a breathless servant in gray robes came jogging up through the market crowd, bowing deeply. "Master! There you are. Please, let’s go, we are expected back."

The man sighed, flicking his fan open one last time. "Yes, yes."

He turned away to follow his servant, but after two steps, he paused and glanced back at Heena over his silk-clad shoulder. Even through the veil, she could feel the weight of his gaze.

"Learn to check the stems," he called out, a faint trace of amusement in his melodious voice. "You will get cheated by people a lot less."

Heena open her mouth to ask his name .

Before the words could even leave her lips, Heena snapped her jaw shut.

Right. Societal rules. In this matriarchal empire, a woman casually demanding an unmarried man’s name in the middle of a crowded street wasn’t considered friendly—it was basically street harassment.

It was almost as though the man could guess exactly what she was thinking. As he turned to follow his servant, he paused, looking back over his silk-clad shoulder. Even through the white gauze of his veil, Heena could feel his gaze lingering on her for one long, unreadable second before he finally melted into the bustling market crowd.

Heena watched the spot where his celadon-green robes had vanished, the faint, mouth-watering scent of fresh citrus still hanging in the air, before giving her head a sharp shake.

There was no point in standing in the dirt thinking about a mysterious, sharp-tongued aristocrat. She had an empire to build and a severely empty pantry to stock.

First on her list were the aromatics.

She moved methodically from stall to stall, picking up sharp ginger, braided stalks of mountain garlic, heavy sacks of onions, and crisp green capsicums. She deliberately spread her copper coins across different vendors, buying a little from each rather than clearing out a single stall.

She also had to constantly remind herself of the era she was living in. There were no humming refrigerators or temperature-controlled pantries waiting in the corner of her apothecary. Buying a week’s worth of leafy greens would just leave her with a rotting pile of compost by Wednesday. Since her shop was literally steps away from the market district, she only bought fresh, perishable vegetables for the immediate future.

Except for the root vegetables.

When she spotted a farmer sitting behind a mountain of rough, dirt-caked potatoes and yams, Heena didn’t hesitate. She bought ten solid kilograms of potatoes on the spot. Potatoes, onions, and garlic were the holy trinity of survival cooking—they could sit in a dark, dry cellar for weeks without spoiling, they bulked up a meal perfectly, and they were incredibly versatile.

Next was the wet market. She couldn’t possibly walk past the splashing wooden tubs without buying something.

She picked out a few fresh, silver-scaled river fish for dinner, but her eyes gleamed when she spotted two fat, live fish swimming lazily at the bottom of a barrel, their bellies heavily swollen with roe. She bought them alive. If she could keep them in a water basin in the courtyard, she could harvest the fish eggs later to experiment with richer dishes.

At the poultry stalls, she bartered for two plump, freshly slaughtered chickens for the stew pot. Thinking long-term, she also purchased a woven bamboo cage filled with peeping, fluffy yellow chicks. A few coppers spent on chicks now meant a steady, free supply of eggs right in her own backyard in a few months.

To round out her pantry, she loaded up on coarse wheat and maize flour. But when she reached the spice and sweetener merchant, she immediately scoffed at the price of refined white sugar. In this era, sugar was an absurdly expensive luxury reserved for the inner courtyards of the high nobility.

Instead, Heena bought two heavy clay jugs of rich, dark jaggery. It was vastly cheaper, lasted forever, and gave braised meats a much deeper, caramelized flavor anyway. She grabbed a handful of essential spices and a basket of fresh eggs, finally tying off her purchases.

By the time she finished, Heena was practically a walking caravan, her woven baskets overflowing with enough ingredients to feast like a king.

But as she mentally reviewed her haul, her footsteps suddenly slowed to a halt in the middle of the dirt road. A massive, glaring flaw in her grand culinary plan had just dawned on her.

She had the ingredients. She had the spices.

But the kitchen in her abandoned East Market apothecary was an absolute disaster.

The only piece of cookware sitting on her dusty brick stove was a cracked, miserably thin iron pan that had nearly ruined her meager chicken soup two days ago. If she tried to braise a whole fish, deep-fry potatoes, or stir-fry a high-heat dish in that rusted piece of scrap metal, it would burn straight through the bottom and ruin her expensive ingredients.

Heena let out a long, heavy sigh, shifting the heavy sack of potatoes on her shoulder as she stared down the market lane toward the hardware and blacksmith stalls.

Apparently, buying the food was only the very beginning. If she wanted to actually eat anything edible, she was going to have to go buy a proper set of heavy cast-iron woks, clay stewing pots, and decent kitchen utensils first.

And the problem?

Heena had exactly one absolute, non-negotiable rule when it came to cooking. If she was going to tie back her sleeves and stand in front of a hot stove, her kitchen had to be the best it could possibly be.

She could accept the lack of electricity. She could silently mourn the absence of an instant-heat microwave, a temperature-controlled LPG gas stove, or a sleek induction cooktop that boiled water in sixty seconds. She could only imagine how ridiculously convenient those modern marvels would be right now as she stared down the reality of building a wood-fired brick hearth. Unfortunately, the universe was not going to magically drop a stainless-steel appliance package into an ancient, matriarchal East Market apothecary anytime soon.

Still, that didn’t mean she had to tolerate a miserable, half-functioning kitchen.

If she couldn’t have modern appliances, she could at least ensure that the manual tools in her hands were flawless. There was absolutely no reason she should struggle to chop a simple onion or burn a delicate braised fish just because she had transmigrated into another dimension.

With her heavy baskets of fresh produce, squawking chickens, and chirping chicks safely deposited with a hired cart puller at the corner of the street, Heena made her way toward the deafening, ash-scented hardware alley.

She stepped over the threshold of the largest ironmonger and culinary supply shop on the street. The air inside was thick with the smell of forged iron, quenching oil, and polished wood.

The moment she walked past the rows of hanging ladles, she noticed something rather fascinating about the local sociology. Most of the customers actively browsing the heavy iron woks and clay stewing pots were men. Dressed in modest, high-collared robes, they were meticulously checking the weight of the lids and quietly discussing the quality of the iron with the blacksmith’s apprentices.