“Dapanji, dapanji…” Adelaide stood dazed on a street that flowed like a human tide, her tangled thoughts blown away by a sandstorm, leaving only that name echoing.

She knew that dish’s name, a lantern flaring in fog.

Recognized—that was the point. Not because the loser called Jiaqi in the dream kept ordering heavy Xinjiang takeout at lunch.

If it were just two menus overlapping, she wouldn’t blink; her world had scones and tea, camellia and lavender, scents and leaves mirroring that other place.

So much in the dream and her world overlapped, but the tongues didn’t; names and sounds diverged like two rivers under one sky.

But what she heard now was different, a pebble striking the calm of her heart.

The cook’s hawking rolled on like a brass bell, as if insisting she hadn’t misheard.

She knew the name—the “dapanji” itself—in the language of the dream.

Impossible, she told herself, but the wind carried spice like hot dust, and it confirmed her fear; she turned toward the shouting doorway.

A shirtless cook drove his spatula like an oar; chicken, potatoes, and green-red peppers tumbled in a wide iron wok, soaking in palm-brown broth thick with spice.

No mistake; that was the dish that wore the name, scent rising like banner smoke.

Adelaide lowered her hat, brim shadowing her face like a crescent moon, and stepped to the stall.

The guy saw a pretty woman dressed like an outsider and stared a few beats; then he grinned and handed over a stone-carved menu, words in a foreign tongue pointing at lines like reeds.

This desert city didn’t speak any official tongue of the Sarman Empire; Adelaide had never studied it, never heard it, yet she caught the gist, because familiar names bobbed like driftwood in his sentences.

“Kaobaozi, fengmijiu…”

Hearing those names she’d seen on a delivery app, her hand trembled on the slab like a leaf in dry wind.

Maybe she hadn’t woken; maybe she’d fainted from heat and this was a mirage stitched by a feverish brain—she could forgive herself for thinking so.

She’d always believed the dream touched her world only in its “script,” but these dishes matched the dream’s language like twin masks, shattering that belief.

A soul-deep panic surged, like finding a nightmare’s carved mark in daylight; borders between worlds blurred into heat shimmer.

She had sworn it lived only in her head, yet if the dream’s tongue existed here, then that failure named Jiaqi...

Thoughts she’d dodged rose like buried thorns; pain pricked her wrist, and that old soul-tear pulled at her mind like a riptide.

After a brief silence, she asked, voice quivering like a plucked string, “Excuse me, are these local dishes?”

The cook heard her and flashed a sunny grin, nodding with the pride of a drumbeat.

“Only three Tela for dapanji!”

Clearly, that was all the Common he knew, a single bead on a bare string.

Adelaide lowered her head; if he didn’t understand Common, he couldn’t answer the question she’d thrown like a rope.

A flat female voice cut in from the side, a knife through cloth.

“They’re recipes passed on by the Elves.”

The woman spoke fluent Common; Adelaide’s eyes widened under the brim like stars in shade. She turned and saw a woman in a wind-scarf at a diner’s table, spitting out a chicken bone, gaze lifting like a hooked brow.

“What’s wrong, little miss from the Empire? Got a taste for Elf things?”

Elves…? Dapanji and kaobaozi… and Elves?

Adelaide pictured a handsome long-eared, gold-haired, blue-eyed Maimaiti selling lamb skewers by the street, and she froze, the absurdity cooling her panic like a splash of well water.

“Kind stranger, you’re right. I’m curious about those legendary beings; every storybook in the Empire swears they’re born aloof, not fond of mingling with humans.”

“Aloof? Ha!” The woman’s laugh cracked like dry wood. “Imperial dogs love wrapping Elves in rainbow silk; what is that, Emperor Belior’s way of atoning for his sins?”

She drained her honey wine in one pull, wiped the foam with theatrics, and slammed the cup, a stone on a drum.

“So, want to see the truth the Empire hid for millennia, girl?”

Adelaide watched pale-yellow wine trace her neck like a vine, then nodded, a curious, naive curve tugging her mouth.

“I knew it. The books were all lies!”

The woman snorted, rose, and beckoned over her shoulder, finger curling like a hook.

“If you want to know, keep up.”

Adelaide obeyed at once, following the woman through several corners, until they slipped into a grimy alley.

It was too narrow for sunlight to fall, yet the heat sucked moisture from stains, painting the ground with a sticky yellow film like melted wax.

Adelaide pinched her nose, face folding back like a wilted petal. “It reeks!”

She kept fanning, as if she could bat the stench off her cheeks like flies. The tall woman watched and snorted, a sound like grit in a chuckle, mocking a sheltered lady set against sand.

“If you don’t dare come in, don’t. What you hear next is scarier than this, girl.”

Adelaide hesitated, tension knotting her brow, then held her breath and picked her steps, careful not to stamp the slime, following like a shadow.

The tall woman seemed unsurprised and turned to lead on, missing the tiny motion Adelaide’s fingers made in that moment, a flicker under cloth.

They reached a shack that looked stitched from scraps; she pushed the door, and darkness rose like ink. The woman jerked her chin at the opening.

“Go on. After all this, don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“I—I’m not! I’m already here!” Adelaide slapped her cheeks for courage, then took two steps into the dark like someone entering a lake at night.

“Uh… so… is there no lamp?”

She called into the black, and the answer was the door shutting behind her with a dull thunk.

“Don’t rush, girl.”

The woman’s voice came from behind, and light bloomed, not from a torch or lantern, but from the floor beneath Adelaide’s feet like frost-fire.

“See? Now you have light.”

The woman’s cackle burst with the glow, and in the next heartbeat, rubbery bands whipped around Adelaide’s wrists and ankles, matching the magic circle carved into the boards—binding magic.

“You, you! You—” Adelaide jolted with fear, tried to run, and went down at once as her feet cinched. “Eek!”

“In this day and age, a dumb heiress playing tourist in the desert?” The woman laughed, harsh as dry wind. “Too funny.”