Dinner

Chapter 19 Dinner

The rain had not stopped the next day, and the stone slabs in the courtyard were shining. The two waited until noon, and finally found two soldiers knocking on the door of Wang's house. After knocking for a while, one of them held his hand and wanted to help the other climb over the wall. But the mud on the ground was slippery, and after falling twice, he barely climbed up and opened the door from the inside. After a while, the two mud monkey-like soldiers kicked the door open and left in a hurry.

About half an hour later, a dozen soldiers surrounded another man in white shirts and arrived at the door of Wang's house. It was not convenient to go out to see at this time, so Li Wuxiang stuck one eye out of the door frame and looked from a distance, but he couldn't see his appearance clearly. The man in white shirt asked the soldiers to stay outside the door and walked into Wang's house alone. After a quarter of an hour, he came out.

He said a few words to the soldiers, and one soldier pretended to come to Xue's house, but was stopped by him. Then the group walked away in the rain.

Although his face was not clear, Li Wuxiang could roughly see their clothes. The soldiers were wearing navy blue cloth, and many of them had patches on their elbows and knees, which were of different sizes and colors, and they were probably not original. They all held sticks that reached their eyebrows, but the two ends were wrapped in iron sheets, which made them different from ordinary farmers. The man surrounded by them was dressed completely differently, in a white shirt. Although the hem was stained with mud due to the muddy weather, it still made him look transcendent among the soldiers.

Xue Baoping said that the owner of Jinshui Town was in his fifties and had only a daughter of the same age, so this person should be the Qigong master named Zhao Qi.

After the group of people walked away, Li Wuxiang retracted his eyes and turned to Xue Baoping and said, "No one should come to ask you."

Xue Baoping shrank behind him: "Ah?"

"It should be a smart man." Li Wuxiang said as he gently closed the door, "Just as I thought, after entering the Wang family and taking a look around, I knew that they were afraid of hunting tigers in the mountains and escaped at night, so there was no need to come and ask. Smart people, especially confident smart people, this is a good thing."

Xue Baoping was stunned for a while, then took a breath and looked at Li Wuxiang: "But you are smarter than him."

"That can't be said, it's just that we are in the dark, deliberately and unintentionally. But dealing with smart people is a good thing, which means everything is controllable and predictable. Then let's do our own things first." Li Wuxiang paced a few steps in the yard, frowned and turned around, "But there is one thing I have always wanted to ask you-our family has no rice, flour, meat and oil, how did you open your store before?"

The word "our family" made Xue Baoping dazed for a while, she hadn't heard people say that for a long time. Then he scratched his chin: "Yes, yes, yes..."

"Tell me slowly, don't be in a hurry."

Xue Baoping took a deep breath and waited for a while: "There will be guests coming down from the river, bringing their own food, and I will cook for them."

He added embarrassedly: "But it's not delicious. They don't like it very much."

Li Wuxiang nodded: "It's not a big problem, it's easy to solve. But we have to rebuild the stove today, open the store as soon as possible, and keep everything normal."

So they spent the whole afternoon rebuilding the stove, using the old bricks that Xue Baoping had picked up before and the yellow mud mixed with straw. Li Wuxiang also built back the hollow brick that had imprisoned him. He still finds it hard to imagine that Zhao Kui actually has such magical powers, being able to stuff more than a hundred people in and feed them for more than ten years. He also wants this kind of magical power.

The two talked while working, and the rain outside gradually got heavier, knocking on the door. After rebuilding the stove, Li Wuxiang told her about Zhao Qi and his future plans.

"So I think he might be Zhao Kui's disciple, friend, or enemy." He slowly washed the yellow mud from his nails in the basin. "I have to find out some things from him. I have to find a way to get close to him and know what I am like now and what to do in the future. But I have to solve my identity first, so that I can have a suitable reason to walk around the town--"

He paused and looked at Xue Baoping. The little girl was squinting her eyes and burning wet firewood, trying to warm the new stove, but she listened very seriously and hummed heavily at this time.

Li Wuxiang smiled: "This matter is a bit dangerous, and it may implicate you."

"I'm not afraid." Xue Baoping said immediately, and then carefully looked at Li Wuxiang's face, and mustered up the courage to make a little joke, "I raised you, and you were already... implicated. And Zhao Kui also made me burn fires for many years in vain."

"Okay. Then, does the Jinshui River often burst its banks and flood in recent years?"

Xue Baoping blinked in surprise: "Yes, how did you know?"

Because she said that the upper reaches of the Jinshui River were diverted when the Xuanjiao was making trouble decades ago. And his world, even at the peak of the ancient dynasty's national power, could not completely solve the flood disaster, not to mention that like here, there is no unified regime at all, all independent cities and towns, and it is unlikely to have a well-maintained river bank under such circumstances. And according to his observation, there are obvious signs of water erosion on the higher parts of the river on both sides of the Jinshui River that flows through Jinshui, which means that the Jinshui River may flood every year.

But he just smiled: "I calculated it. You said I was a god - what month is it now?"

"June, I can't remember which month it was."

Li Wuxiang nodded: "Does it start to rain at this time in previous years?"

"Yes."

The mountain near Jinshui is called Bishan. It is not an independent mountain, but a long mountain range. The sky of Jinshui has never been clear these days. There are always dark clouds in the sky, and there is always thick fog in the mountains. This reminds him of a city called Jinguan in his world... He remembers that he lived there for a long time.

So, in the rainy season, there are many mountains, and rivers that have been forcibly diverted and are unlikely to have strong embankments... Another flood or a big water may not be far away. This is his chance to obtain legal status in Jinshui.

When the sky was gloomy and it was necessary to light a fire for lighting, the rain had not stopped, and it was getting heavier and heavier, causing a white mist on the bluestone slabs in the courtyard. Xue Baoping heated the stove, took out the piece of venison that Wang Wen brought last night, and dug out a piece of dried meat from the corner of the wall, and put the pot on the stove to make some food for the two of them.

Li Wuxiang moved a stool and sat by the wall, watching her add water to the pot, intending to throw the meat in and cook it all at once. She rolled up her sleeves while cooking, and when she was walking around in the yard, she rolled up her trouser legs, revealing her slender hands and feet and long neck. He looked at her in the mist for a while, and suddenly felt that he was indeed hungry.

But when he had this feeling, he knew that he was not looking at venison or jerky, but Xue Baoping. The girl's exposed skin, which was covered with fine beads of sweat, made him feel soft and delicate. In a moment of distraction, he felt that he was not looking at human skin, but more like a piece of cheese, cream, or something else that would give him a strong stimulation after entering his mouth, and make him feel that his entire mouth was filled, and at the same time, there was warm and slightly fishy blood... meat... bone marrow...

Li Wuxiang stood up and exhaled deeply: "Let me do it."

Xue Baoping was struggling to chop the hard dried meat with a kitchen knife, and blinked in surprise: "Can you do it?"

"I'm a god, I know a little bit of everything." He took the kitchen knife from her hand, "You scoop out the water in the pot first, I'll use it later, and then bring me a small bowl."

Xue Baoping was skeptical about this and wanted to tell him that it was not okay to throw the meat directly into the pot, it would be mushy. She couldn't remember how her parents cooked, but she had the impression that they always boiled the meat in a large pot of water and then processed it slowly.

But she thought about it, smiled in her heart, picked up the ladle and scooped water obediently - no one had cooked for her for many years, no matter what it turned out, she felt very happy.

While she was scooping water, Li Wuxiang began to process the deer spine meat brought by Wang Wen on the chopping board. When nutrition is lacking, people like to eat fat meat, and this piece is the same. Fat and lean tendons are interspersed, but there is a little more fat, and it is unknown which part of the deer it is. He sliced ​​the fat meat little by little, mixed with some lean meat, and put them into a pile. When the remaining water stains in the pot are cleared, he threw the fat meat in and asked them to be refined steadily for a while, and then turned it over slightly when the oil came out.

At this time, the dried meat had been soaked in warm water for a while, and the surface became soft. He carefully washed the stains on the surface with a rag, then cut it into thin slices with a kitchen knife, asked them to continue soaking in hot water, and then picked up the spatula to continue refining the oil in the fat meat. The fragrance of oil filled the whole room, and it was even more fragrant when he wanted to slip out but was trapped by the downpour.

Xue Baoping was squatting to make fire, but he couldn't help but stretch his head to look at the pot, and then looked at Li Wuxiang's profile illuminated by the firelight, and swallowed his saliva.

Li Wuxiang smiled at her with his side face, and scooped up a smaller piece with a wooden shovel. This small piece of fat was almost turned into oil residue, which was light yellow, and the lean meat part was dark yellow. He took it and blew it to cool it down, and the oil residue became more crispy.

Then he handed it to Xue Baoping: "Here, I'll give you one first."

Xue Baoping didn't reach out to take it, but leaned over to bite it. The oil residue was still slightly hot, but she only inhaled into her mouth without exhaling, fearing that the fragrance would run away, and her eyes narrowed.

"Is it delicious?"

"Yeah."

"There's more. You can eat half later, and leave the other half to soak in the oil. Next time there are guests, I'll teach you how to make oil residue noodles."

Xue Baoping nodded, and lowered his head to make fire again. The newly added firewood was still damp and emitted smoke, which choked her so much that she wiped her eyes twice.

There was a large pool of oil in the pot, so Li Wuxiang wrapped his hands with a rag, brought the pot to the stove, and scooped the oil into a porcelain bowl, filling up more than half of the bowl. He also scooped out the oil residue, soaked half in the oil, and placed the other half in another small bowl. Only then did he take out the meat slices soaked in hot water and put them all into the pot. With a sizzling sound, a high cloud of oil smoke rose up - he saw Xue Baoping burning the fire while inhaling the smell.

He stir-fried it several times, scraped the salt from the bottom of the damp salt jar, dipped his tongue in it to taste it, and then added a little more, stir-fried it in the pot several more times, and took it out of the pot and put it on a plate. There was still a greasy piece left in the pot, so he broke the spine meat into three pieces and threw it in. When the surface of the cooked meat was slightly golden, he added water, and when it started to bubble, he took it out of the pot and served it in a large wooden bowl with the milky white soup.

Then, the two of them sat by the stove, and in the dim red firelight of the stove, each of them held a bowl to eat meat and drink soup. The door of the wing room was open, and the heavy rain outside was gurgling, and the moist water vapor with the new fragrance of plants and trees came in. Halfway through the meal, the light emitted by the remaining fire in the stove gradually dimmed, leaving only the warm warmth.

Li Wuxiang heard Xue Baoping sniffing a few times in the dark and taking a few deep breaths, so he gently touched her with his elbow: "Let's go to the mountains to dig some wild onions in a few days, it will taste better."

"Yeah."

"If the rain stops tomorrow, you have to go out for a walk, go to the more crowded place over the bridge, let people see you, and prepare for what I'm going to do next - eat this piece, it has more lean meat, and it will be more crispy."

Xue Baoping said with a nasal tone: "Okay."

This chapter is nearly 4,000 words! So touching! I can't help but give more recommendations and monthly tickets! I was even moved to subscribe to other books to support me!