Xiao Ying walked his ways through the corridors, following behind the head cook.
He had begun the morning as usual and had nodded to Ming Cheng once, before leaving and walking through the giant doors that lead towards the inner parts of the palace, where the walls were decked out with metal and gold plated décor, swirling wooden ornaments and windows giving masterful views to the inner courtyards, passageways and artful gardens.
It looked just as lavish and gaudy as Xiao Ying had described before in his works, the hubris of youth creating a vision of extravagance and lack of taste, where everything seemed to clash in terms of pattern and style yet somehow came together again to create something almost beautiful - like a garden full of flowers of all sorts of different species and colours that were shoved all together without rhyme or reason, yet still had managed to make some sort of cohesion and sense.
It was absolutely terrible but Xiao Ying had no choice but to almost admire it.
It was painful to look out and Xiao Ying turned his eyes down to keep his eyes on the wooden, polished floors.
The robes of the head cook, different from the plainer uniforms of her subordinates, was much more elaborate with emerald green patterns bordering the edges and swished behind her with each and every step.
Keeping his eyes on the repetitive and dizzying movements, Xiao Ying felt sick, as if there was something wrong and missing.
He knew exactly what it was as well.
If he was still human, then his vision would be blurring, dark borders forming around the edges of the scope of the range of his eyes, and the world would be spinning around him.
His knees would be weak.
He would be falling to the floor, and his eyes would flutter shut, become sealed through the weight of the exhaustion, and he would sleep, his mind becoming blissfully blank until there was nothing of him anymore.
The head cook stopped walking in front of Xiao Ying, prompting him to stop, and then she simply stood there, arms crossed impatiently as she clicked his tongue.
Xiao Ying lifted his head and looked up at her and saw that there were a giant set of double doors before him and he almost immediately recognised them as the entrance towards one of the lesser meeting rooms that the lesser officials used to discuss the less important and more internal palace propositions ordered by their superiors of whichever department that they belonged to.
The chefs and cooks of the palace were not strictly part of their own department, and were viewed largely as people lesser to those who calculated palace finances and those who organised the celebrations.
They were treated much like those who created the tapestries, the ornaments, and the weapons and armour for the palace.
They were essential, but not particularly viewed as such and were not particularly treated as such.
Xiao Ying knew that if the entire department went on strike, they probably would be given more rights only because nobody else simply knew how to cook, if they could get over themselves and view the action as a tactic to get what the staff wanted rather than some unreasonable lashing out of the poor and stupid common folk.