Chapter 151 Meat & Wood Ear Stir-fry (a)

Translated by Gumihou

Edited by Gumihou

 

While Lin Fan and Feng Luo were desperately fighting for their lives, Shiyu sat by herself in the middle of Spiritual Beast Mountain Range. She remained in place for a long time before finally coming to a possible conclusion.

“Fatty, do you think it’s possible that my cooking is too all over the place?” asked Shiyu. “I made a lot of dishes, but, to be honest, I have no idea what the food is supposed to taste like. I may have taken the task for granted and just made things randomly. Should I be more systematic in my approach? If I continue to bumble about like this, it would be too difficult to get the combination right unless I get really, really lucky.”

After all, cooking with Spiritual Beast meat is still an entirely new field to her. All those delicious dishes she had made before already reached their peak as great cuisine. To make something good, all she had to do was follow a recipe. [1] When she grew confident, she would make adjustments to suit her taste, such as adding lots of chilli peppers and Mala Oil to a dish just because she likes spicy food.

However, there was no set recipe for Spiritual Beast meat. She had cooked the meat randomly, adding spices and Mala Oil willy-nilly since that’s her preferred taste. [2] However, if Wen Heng was anything to go by, an ascetic’s life is rather bland and tasteless. What if she had to make dishes similar to fancy French or snooty high-end Japanese style cooking that elevates the flavour of one ingredient, ah?

“How nice if Master is here,” thought Shiyu.

Master was probably the only Human who had eaten every kind of Spiritual Beasts in the world. If he’s here, perhaps he could teach her how to properly cook these monster meat…

As she was pondering over this, she felt a shock radiating through her body. After shaking herself, she discovered that the Saint’s Dwelling in her Dantian had finally reopened after more than 10 days of being closed for maintenance.

Impatiently, Shiyu flashed into the space.

On the table, the <<Soul Drawing Book>> was still floating over it, the little pond of Spring of Life water was also there. However, the surrounding space was much, much larger than before. [3] The space from before was stuffed full of plants. She had planted herbs from 12th Martial Uncle, as well as some mundane vegetable and herbs. There’s also her jar of crabs, the Osmanthus Blossom and Plum Blossom trees, as well as whatever plants from Qi Chuyun that she managed to stuff in the remaining space. She still has hundreds of plants in the ring that she did not manage to plant the last time.

[4] There was barely enough space to turn around the last time. Maybe the space kicked her out after she packed the ground full of plants?

Shiyu looked around the suddenly widened space. Beyond the mist that had receded by a lot, she could faintly see outlines of houses and snow-capped mountain peaks in the distance. It was all very hazy, so, Shiyu could not be sure that she was actually seeing something real.

Now that there was a sudden increase in real estate, Shiyu was shot through with motivation. While she was at Xuan Chu, she had considered putting in a lotus pond and maybe raise some fish in it. However, the number of precious herbs increased too suddenly and she ended up scrapping the idea. It was more important to plant herbs for her Cultivation, after all.

However, things were different now. With the extra space, she could put in all the trees, plants, ponds and whatever else she wanted.

Now that the Saint’s Dwelling is back online, Shiyu’s mood lifted. That’s right, she’s luckier than most people. While she has some trouble with this current mission, she still has time to figure things out. As long as one doesn’t give up, one could always find a way to overcome one’s obstacles.

After gloating over her hundreds of precious herbs, Shiyu walked over to the table where <<Soul Drawing Book>> was still floating. The black piece of paper she had gotten last time has attached itself into the book, revealing itself to be the Prologue of the <<Soul Drawing Book>>.

Shiyu reached out to touch the slightly glowing black page. As soon as her fingers made contact, she felt a sucking sensation and images suddenly flooded her mind.

It all happened in a flash and Shiyu soon returned to her senses. As she stared at the glowing page, she recalled the image that had been seared into her mind.

It was a single still image of an old city wall with large characters showing the word ‘City of Dawn’.

When she first got this Prologue page, Fat Cat had explained that the function of the Prologue is to act as a guide to find the rest of the scattered pages. When she first touched the page, aside from a curious feeling, she did not get any special visions.

At first, she dismissed it as the page not respecting her enough due to her low Cultivation rate. She never thought that the page would merge itself into the <<Soul Drawing Book>> or that it would grant her this vision.

Was the Prologue trying to tell her that she would find remnants of the other pages in the City of Dawn?

When she told Fat Cat about her vision, he said, “Since the Prologue itself has informed you, perhaps it is so. There’s no harm checking the place out. With a little luck, you could get your hands on the Contents page.”

Since the book was incomplete, Shiyu also hoped that she would be a little lucky in this.

“I wonder what the next task would be?” All she had done thus far was improve her knife skills. Who knows what the next page would bring? Would she gain some kind of reward for completing those tasks too?

After popping out of the Saint’s Dwelling, Shiyu did not immediately leave for the City of Dawn. She just thought of an idea to try. Thus far, she had been cooking Beast meat with regular ingredients. What would happen if she cooks the Beast meat with their Beast Cores together?

Since Beast Cores contained the essences of a Spiritual Beast’s Spiritual power, it’s possible that the lack of this final ingredient caused her to end up with mediocre results.

Eager to test out her theory, Shiyu got the fire started.

She decided to go with one of the simpler recipes. Meat & Wood Ear Stir-fry. The Wood Ear was collected fresh from the trees. Meanwhile, the meat was sliced into sticks and marinated with potato starch and wine. She threw these two ingredients into the pot and tossed them a few times with her fire blowing hot. Just before the food was done, she threw in the Beast Core, which she had ground into powder form and stirred with a little water.

The smell that came out of the pot was very concentrated, quite different from the earlier dishes she had done. Though Shiyu did not receive any visions, the result from this dish was vastly different from the rest. She could feel the Spiritual powers humming within the food.

So… all she had to do was add Beast Core into her cooking?

In a sudden burst of motivation, Shiyu made another batch of Meat & Wood Ear Stir-fry. However, this time she ground up 9 Beast Cores and stirred it into a thick soupy goop with water.

When the Meat & Wood Ear Stir-fry was nearly done, Shiyu up-ended the bowl full of shiny goop and suddenly, the Spiritual powers within the pot flared up. Unwilling to lose the powers within the pot, Shiyu quickly wrapped the entire thing with her own Spiritual powers to prevent it from escaping into the air. [5] When the pot continued to shake, Shiyu wrapped a layer of her mental powers around it and tried to force the pot of Spiritual energy to calm down.

[5] Suddenly, the pot exploded.

[5] Shiyu flew backwards, her Spiritual energy and mental power ripped to shreds as she landed on her back. Everything hurt, her back, her hands, her face, her brain…

“Cough,” blood dribbled from her mouth and Shiyu… she could not think… it was… all…

Fat Cat, who had been napping on the side was suddenly woken by the sudden explosion. [6] He bounded over to see Shiyu sprawled on the ground, surrounded by bits of broken pot, dispersed spiritual energy and remnants of some kind of food. The girl was also coughing up blood.

“What did you do?”

It took a while for Shiyu to gather herself enough to say, “I tried adding some Beast Core into the food.”

“Just adding Beast Core would not cause this,”

“I added 9 at once…”

“… …” should he even mention what manner of stupid this move is?

[7] He stared solemnly at Master’s promising student writhing on the ground like a worm. Well, his only student ever. Since no one had ever expressed interest in Cultivation through cooking. “A Beast Core is the Cultivation base of a Spiritual Beast. It’s what they had gathered over a lifetime of Cultivation. Even putting two Beast Cores into the same pot would result in a very bad reaction. You should be thankful that you’ve thrown in low-level Beast Cores together.

I advise you to not do this again. Your physical injuries would repair themselves soon enough. However, mental injuries are more serious. If you ever encounter such a situation again, [8] I advise you to dodge than to block. Most people can’t recover from serious mental injuries. If you damaged yourself seriously enough, you will become an idiot.”

[7] From Fat Cat’s belligerent glare, it was clear that he thought that she’s an idiot…

Shiyu never thought that the consequences would be so dire. However, from the way her brain hurt, she was feeling rather nervous about suffering permanent brain damage.

Painfully, Shiyu pushed herself to a sitting position and began circulating her Spiritual energy. After a few cycles, her headache reduced and her injuries began to heal. Only…

“If my mental powers are damaged, is there a way to fix it?”

“Some rare medicines could repair mental functions, but none of them is found in the Ninth Realm. The other thing is the Spirit Jade Essence, which could only be discovered through luck.”

“… …” Shiyu wanted to cry.

If she had known, she would not have courted death earlier…

 

[Gumihou: I’ve already said it all along. But I shall be generous and say it again. Shiyu, you’re a stupid idiot]

Picture from thatspicychick.com

Click on the link for the recipe!

 

Gumihou is keeping track so that you don’t have to ~

凝氣	Condensation Stage	Stage 1
化丹	Core Transformation	Stage 2
凝丹(46)	Core Condensation	Stage 3
化神(52)	Divine Transformation	Stage 4
成嬰	Nascent Formation	Stage 5
合體	Unification*	Stage 6
返墟	Revert Decay*	Stage 7
歸真	Original Purity*	Stage 8
成仙	Become Immortal*	Stage 9

 

*Changed the words to something more mysterious sounding

 

[1] Additional Details for Logistic Purpose: Added this detail to reinforce her random and unexplainable cooking as well as random, unexplainable behaviour.

Which is possibly just author trying to force her character into situations so that Things Could Happen, but Gumihou would still like a semi-plausible explanation thank you very much. Hence the addition of random willful behaviour that popped up due to overblown confidence in one’s own skillz.

[2] Additional Details for Logistic Purpose: Also, to show some Chinese Nationalist attitude by acknowledging (and looking down on) other kinds of cooking. While Shiyu did use and mention other styles of cooking, she’s bad at it, this could go partway in explaining her weirdly weird cooking.

Her barbecue made no sense: Overly Charred Rabbit in Fruit Juice (90), Grilled Oyster Abused In Garlic (98)

Her Korean cooking is not authentic: Stone Bowl Bibimbap with Beaten Eggs (118)

Her Chinese cooking is lacking too: Lump Noodles in Dew Water (112), Jelly Cake that Turns into a Mochi (110), Meatballs that turned into Cube Meat Soup (93)

Her basics are lacking too: Crab Powder from Crab Meat No (89), Overcooked Crabs in ‘Reduce the Sauce’ Sauce (67)

And you wonder why your cooking failed?!!?

Yes, Gumihou is a grudge carrier.

[3] Additional Details for Logistic Purpose: What do a thousand planted plants look like? What do five thousand planted plants look like? If a stalk of ‘precious herb’ takes us 4 x 4 inches of space that’s 9 plants per square feet… 5000 new plants from Qi Chuyun would take up 555ft2 of space. That’s 51m2 of space. A single bungalow home could easily take up 50m2 of build-up space. Not taking into consideration the table, the pool, the vegetable garden, the jar of crabs and herbs she had gotten from 12th Martial Uncle…

Also, it takes time to plant things. Let’s say you’re super-efficient and only needed 30 seconds per plant (which is impossible, but bear with Gumi), that’s 2500 minutes which translates to over 40 hours of work. Shiyu gave the impression she was only missing for 2 to 5 hours. Also, 30s per plant? You still need to water them, so that’s 48 hours of non-stop planting and watering at least!

Even if she only planted one of everything, that would take 500 minutes if you take 30s to plant.

In short. Author-san is pulling numbers out of her ass. Or Shiyu’s ass. The same place where they kept butter.

Patched with: “She still has hundreds of plants in the ring that she did not manage to plant the last time.”

[4] Additional Information for Logistic Purpose: Logical Thought Procession because it’s needed. Come on, make some sensible conclusion, please.

[5] Rearranged some lines for greater impact. The author gave everything away, reducing the shock value. Meh.

Patched.

[6] Adjusted Details for Prevention of OOC: “she suddenly vomited blood and he couldn’t help but rushed over…” because fxck the sudden rise in spiritual power and the exploding pot. Fat Cat only realised something was wrong when he saw his stupid Mistress spit up blood, yeah?

Patched.

[7] Additional Information for Character Development: Also, taking advantage of Fat Cat’s derision to properly assess Shiyu’s stupid.

[8] ‘It’s better to dodge than to block’ was originally Shiyu’s thought process before the ‘Boom!’ which I thought was premature and oddly articulated for someone who had their brains scrambled. Therefore, it ended up in Fat Cat’s lecture.

 

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