Chapter 214 Sweet & Sour Pork with Pineapple (f)

Translated by Gumihou

Edited by Gumihou

 

After she was done stewing the Vermilion Meat, she lifted it out of the broth. Next, she prepared the hot oil for the frying stage to set the shape.[1].

[1] Shiyu debated calling for San Pang to freeze the meat when she poked the deep blue translucent thing. Master Wang had frozen the piece of fat last time before deep frying to preserve the pork fat’s shape. However…

[1] Shiyu poked the ice blue meat again. It wobbled but maintained its shape. It was nothing like a fragile piece of pork fat. She had a feeling that it could stand up to being fried without having to be frozen first.

[1] After some debate, Shiyu decided to fry the meat as is. There’s no point following a shape-retaining step if the meat doesn’t require it, right?

[1] Therefore, once the oil was moderately hot, Shiyu carefully lowered the meat into the oil and watched as the oil began to crackle around the meat. When she lifted the meat out, it was still a brilliant blue. [1] She scratched her head, then shrugged. Oh well, the frying was originally meant to set its shape and make it easier to absorb the red sauce anyway.

[1] After some consideration, Shiyu crushed the beast core, rolled the beast meat in it and set it aside. When she made the red sauce, she also stirred the rest of the crushed core into the sauce and carefully placed the beast core dusted meat in. She had prepared plenty of red sauce so that she could submerge the entire piece of meat inside.

[1] Once the meat was in, Shiyu sealed the cauldron with Ocean Heart Flame. Through her mental powers, she could see as the tiny particles of the beast core were purified and refined by the fire, turning it back into pure spiritual power that was further absorbed into the beast meat.

As she continued to surround the Vermillion Meat with her Spiritual Fire, the cauldron deformed a little at the collision of powers inside.

Gritting her teeth, Shiyu continued to exert her Spiritual power. She must not stop halfway or the Spiritual powers collected inside the meat would disperse and all her efforts would be wasted. At long last, a fragrance floated from the closed cauldron. However, there was no glowing halo above the food.

Nevertheless, Shiyu persevered. Something told her that it wasn’t done yet. The flames from the Ocean Heart Flame had reduced by a lot and she was basically warming the meat from within. Eventually, the fragrance changed and grew more intense. The smell was like the blooming of glacial flowers. The cold fragrance seeped into her senses right into her heart.

To better focus on her mental powers, Shiyu had been keeping her eyes closed all this while. Suddenly, she snapped her eyes open. There, floating gently above the cauldron was a brilliant piece of Vermillion Meat. Shiyu quickly fetched a plate and gently slid it under the meat and withdrew her flames. The meat sat in the middle of the white plate like a perfect dark red rectangle.

It was too bad that she did not achieve any vision or glowing lights, or, did it? She was not very sure. Perhaps it was so fleeting that she actually missed it? [2] Then again, she managed to make the meat float! Surely that’s even cooler than any glowing lights, right?

Shiyu studied the meat more closely and froze. She picked up the plate and tipped it at different angles to better study the meat. The light she was seeing… was not a reflection, but came from the surface of the meat itself! Could it be…? [2]

Suddenly excited, Shiyu hurriedly called for Fat Cat.

Fat Cat stepped into existence with a yawn. He still looked more transparent than solid.

Shiyu was fairly vibrating with excitement as Fat Cat stepped daintily around the plate.

“Well? Did I succeed?!”

Fat Cat stepped around the plate once more before leaning down for a sniff. Then, he looked up at Shiyu and said, “Talent is an odd thing and is not fairly shared out. Congratulations, you have advanced another step. No, I should say you have taken a great leap forward.”

Shiyu was so excited that she could only cover her mouth with her hands as her eyes grew hot with emotions. After two years of effort she finally, finally felt as though she was moving forward. To finally move forward after getting stuck for so long… she was so touched she could cry, ah!

“What are you doing standing there in such a silly way,” Fat Cat laughed. “Don’t you want to have a taste of what you’ve made?”

“Yes, yes,” Shiyu quickly rubbed her face and picked up her chopsticks.

She observed the rectangular piece of meat and gently pinched a corner. [3] The meat parted like soft tofu under her chopsticks, a stark contrast from the nearly indestructible texture earlier that required such a long cooking time. [1] The red of the sauce gave the meat its signature vermillion red, but the inside…

When Shiyu lifted the meat to the light, she could see the translucent blue of the original meat literally shining with Spiritual power.

Shiyu carefully placed the little corner of meat into her mouth and gently rolled it with her tongue. The meat melted, seeping down her throat in a pure majestic force of Spiritual power into her belly and spread gently to the rest of her limbs.

Beyond the ecstasy of the power flow, the fragrance of the meat suffused her senses and she felt as though she was strolling by a snowy river and suddenly saw a flower bloom on top of a mountain.

A little while later, Shiyu opened her eyes. When has she closed them?

“This magnificent power, it’s more concentrated than anything I’ve ever made before.”

“The light emitted last time was also red,” said Fat Cat thoughtfully. “The light this time is red as well. Perhaps the dishes you made with a red light will increase Spiritual powers. It’s good to note these things down.”

“Alright,” said Shiyu agreeably. “Would you like to give it a try?”

“Better not, there’s only that one piece. You might suffer from incomplete Cultivation if you don’t finish it all. I don’t need it anyway.”

Shiyu knew there’s no point trying to coax Fat Cat and quickly ate the whole thing. Once the Vermillion Meat was gone, she felt her Dantian suddenly began to agitate. The Spiritual powers in her belly had spread through her meridians.

She quickly sank into a lotus position and closed her eyes. She had gathered so much Spiritual power that she could faintly touch the edges of Core Condensation 7.

“How far has your Cultivation increased?” asked Fat Cat.

“I think, I’m on the edge of breaking through,” Shiyu said with a rush of excitement. If she ate a few more pieces, would she really breakthrough for real?

“That’s good, I shall return to the Saint’s Dwelling. Just call me if you need anything. That’s right, your Radish is still asleep, you should check on him soon.” After that final remark, Fat Cat disappeared.

Shiyu tipped her head thoughtfully. Now that Fat Cat mentioned it, it had been quite some time since she last saw San Pang. Ever since the last time they visited Spirit Beast Mountain, it was almost like that guy was in hibernation, only waking up when there’s good food around. Speaking of which, it was rather strange that this greedy radish did not come and bother her when the Vermillion Meat floated out of the cauldron.

She cleaned up the kitchen and took out some ingredients to experiment with later. She planned to take a short break after this and took the opportunity to check on San Pang. The Radish Demon was currently snoozing in a flowerpot upstairs. He was in his white radish form, looking like a perfectly ordinary radish in a pot.

Shiyu crouched down and poked the flowerpot. The radish shuddered and [4] dirt exploded all over the place when the vegetable suddenly turned into a person with his bottom stuck in the pot. Shiyu studied the flailing figure.

“San Pang, you’ve seemed to have grown a little more,”

“Eh? Really?” San Pang gave a little stretch, popping his bottom out of the pot. He gave a little hop, “No wonder I’m so sleepy lately. Wait…” he sniffed the air. “Have you been making something good? Why didn’t you call me?!”

“I can make more for you later,” said Shiyu. “Anyway, what’s going on with you lately? Aren’t you sleeping too much? Can you grow just by sleeping?”

“Not really, but sometimes it’s difficult to absorb the Spiritual powers in the body so I just went to sleep. I tried to wake up a few days ago, but the Spiritual aura in the air was too rich and I got drowsy again.” He yawned a few times, clearly doing his best to keep his eyes open.

“Then, do you know how long you’ll sleep?” without San Pang around, it was rather lonely. She has her friends, of course. However, most of them were rather stoic…

“Until I’ve grown up? So, I guess about 3 to 5 years? Maybe 10 years or a bit more?” Shiyu had no idea whether it had anything to do with San Pang ‘growing up’, but his rather high pitched voice felt a lot more mature than before.

At that moment, Shiyu felt a sudden stricken feeling in her chest. Our family’s radish is about to grow up, ah!

“I see, so you need to sleep to grow… Hmm, is the Immortal Jade Petal Lotus still useful to you?”

San Pang suddenly looked more alert, “You have more?”

 

[Gumihou: Ahah, please don’t forget the steps to your imaginary recipe. Or the end result.]

 

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

 

 

[1] Consistency, please: Original recipe for this fictional as per Chapter 38.4: Stew in Broth > Freeze with Cultivation > Deep Fry until Golden Yellow > Cover in Seasoning > Simmer in Sauce in a flat bottom pan

Over here, the dish is: Stew > Cover in reddish-brown soy sauce > Fry in Oil until red and crisp (wut?) > Beast meat goes back in the pot (which pot!?) with beast core (whole beast core!?) > Cook with Magic Fire

End Result: Inside blue, outside red and crisp

… dear, you mixed up your stupid magic recipe. Also, your ‘original Vermilion’ was NEVER crispy. How can you mess up your imaginary recipe??!! The frying is to ‘set the shape’ so that you can simmer it in your imaginary red sauce for the Vermillion colour not to make it crispy. Dear, please don’t make a continuity error.

I’m changing the recipe since it’s fictional anyway and I have a reference.

Also, I’m totally deleting ‘The soy sauce has the effect of toning and freshening the meat. After the hot oil rolled over the Swelling Ocean Beast meat, the surface of the ice blue meat block become red and crisp, and it makes a sizzling sound when it is taken out.’

Technically, it is possible to fry meat until it turns red. By first covering it with a red batter. If you use soy sauce, you will just brown the meat. I know this because I’ve fried meat covered in soy sauce.

The reason why I fry meat covered in soy sauce is to make Steamed Pork Belly with Taro, and the purpose of the soy sauce is mostly to help the browning process. Because darker meat (the skin really) looks better when you serve it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM7tz3PqvGc

[2] Why tho: Why did Shiyu make such a big deal about the ‘vision’ and ‘glowing lights’ and was completely blasé about the bloody floating meat!!!?? Deleted remarks about the meat being ‘redder than red’ because wow, awesome, yay.

¯\_ – ﹏ – _/¯

[3] Description of taste, texture and colour changed due to a switch in the recipe. It’s not crispy on the outside anymore. It might be 紅 but absolutely cannot be 酥. Gumi will fight you to death over this pointless detail.

[4] Added Details for Comedic Effect: Original text ‘the radish turned into a person. It was funny because the pot could not hold him’.

Uh, sure, ha ha ha.

 

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