Strange World Little Cooking Saint – Chapter 0024 – Spiritual Beast Snow Rabbit Meat (4)
Since it's the first time first time she cooked with this fire, she did not dare to let to burn too strongly, lest she accidentally burned the pot to crisp. Slowly, making sure to keep it under control, she wrapped the blue fire around the pot, keeping the temperature even in order to bake the contents.
In order to keep the fire steady, she continued to desperately suck in the surrounding fire elements.
For a time, the things around the kitchen seemed to move and flutter on their own without the presence of a breeze. A cultivator would be able to see the red fire elements rushing towards Shiyu, forming a vortex around her.
Shiyu felt like she was back it her primary school years, doing math, adding and subtracting, adding and subtracting. Luckily she has the Fire Seed inside her to purify and filter out the random bits of things that rushed in with the fire elements, sending out pure fire along her meridians, through her four limbs and hundreds of veins.
As energy flowed through her meridians, the channel became larger little by little. Shiyu only felt it as tingling and itching, but these sensations were fleeting. Though the most annoying thing about them was that they kept repeating themselves over and over again, itching and stopping, then itching again, which made it almost unbearable.
Shiyu gritted her teeth and pushed onwards, seeking to maintain the steady fire until a strong fragrance emitted from the pot, before finally letting go and nearly collapsing from exhaustion.
"It's surprisingly difficult to cook porridge." She was panting heavily, just letting her body suck in energy from the surroundings and filling up her spent energy paths.
After resting for a bit, she felt quite energetic again. So she checked her dantian just to see what happened. Unexpectedly, within that good thing in her belly, a fourth tear drop was already starting to form.
She's unexpectedly close to a breakthrough!
Shiyu's heart was filled with glee, she felt that her future was really bright at that moment.
Actually, these were merely basic level powers. Because she had no natural talent, but had acquired her powers by planting a Fire Seed into her body, letting it become part of herself. The seed had reforged her body via a cleansing fire, burning off any impurities that it could find. This was equivalent to actually shedding her body and changing her bones in a literal way!
Additionally, the fire elements that she had absorbed into her body were all purified by the blue fire. It saved her the effort of having to consciously purify it herself, which naturally helped in speeding up her cultivation process.
She stood up and walked to the clay pot and took off the lid. The smell of the porridge rushed upwards with the steam. Another look into the pot showed that the minced rabbit had dissolved, leaving just a thick white porridge settling inside. Just the sight alone tempted her to try some.
Replacing the lid, Shiyu went outside to check the time. Almost breakfast time. She went out to call the others in to eat. The moment her feet stepped over the threshold of the kitchen, not a whiff of the strong porridge fragrance could not be traced.
Has the smell been trapped in?
In her previous life, a lot of famous kitchens would utilize this technique [1] where the fragrance of the food only lingered around the dish. Maximising the impact of the dish for the person who eats it in terms of flavour and fragrance, arousing a feeling that was just too wonderful for words. In her previous life, she had tried to create dishes like this, but had failed time and again.
In other words, this was a technique which she could only look at, but never master.
Unexpectedly, she had accidentally stumbled into this much sought after technique achieving a much desired cooking breakthrough, though she's still a long way away from the true mastery of the technique.
It did not take long for everyone to arrive. Each person was given one bowl of bright white porridge, with some fried peanuts as a side dish. The dish was irresistibly fragrant and sweet.
"Today's porridge is really yummy!" Xiao Qi declared, "I feel like my body's all warm and my hands aren't stiff any more. Is there any more, big sis?"
Looking at Xiao Qi's pitiful expression, Shiyu could not resist rubbing her head.
"Yes, yes, there's still quite a bit in the pot."
Xiao Qi has grown much taller in a short span of time, her attitude more open as well. Though her face still remained the same, but her eyes seemed much brighter and livelier.
Looking at Lao Er, he's definitely much healthier and fitter than before, however, that area between his browse seemed much more dense as well.
Shiyu knew the source of that frown, and she may have a solution for it, but she would have to find a suitable time to speak to Lao Er about it.
After breakfast, Xiao Qi and Lao Er had to go back to martial arts practice. Grandfather had brought Xiao Wu and Xiao Liu to help out at the restaurant. Shiyu had wanted to go to the restaurant with them, but unexpectedly all three had disappeared when she did not pay attention.
"Why did they leave so quickly today?" having no other option, she went back to her room to polish her newly acquired skills.
That night, Xiao Qi came back all a twitter, "Big sis, I'm complimented by the drill master today! I ran 30 li [2] and got number 1! Second brother also managed to stay with the group, so today is a great day!"
Shiyu knew that they had to run 30 li every single day without stopping before they could rest and start with the regular martial arts practice. Before this, Xiao Qi had to struggle hard to stay within the group, and Lao Er was always been the slowest one there. Today's improvement was really great news all around.
Lao Er also looked happy, "I felt like I had more strength today, and was much faster than before." he believed that this was the result of his hard work and could finally look forward to a better future.
"That's right, I felt like that too!" Xiao Qi nodded her head.
"Looks like I'm not the only one who felt that way." hearing them say this, Xiao Liu also chimed in. "Today I felt like there's endless strength in my legs, even my normal walking speed went up."
"… …"
If it's just one person, it could be chalked up to hard work and gruelling practices, but now it looked like everyone was had the same condition, which made it a bit puzzling.
Thinking about the morning's porridge, Shiyu suddenly remembered that her legs had felt particularly nimble that day, but she had credited that to her newly developed cultivation skills and had not thought too much of it.
That's to say, this was the special effects from the porridge?
The next day, she went to the library to look through information about spiritual beasts, and found the section about Spiritual Snow Rabbits. The reason why Snow Rabbits were considered Level 2 beasts was due to their shocking speed. Normally, they're very difficult to catch due to their ability to just lose their attackers, and considered quite troublesome beasts.
A Spiritual Snow Rabbit's special ability was speed, and she had just used its meat to make food that somehow increased the speed of those who had eaten it. If that's the case, what if she made a bit more of this food, and use it during moments where she needed to escape most?
Also, what if she were to make food using Spiritual Beasts with different kinds of special attributes, would it increase other physical effects as well?
When she thought about this, Shiyu was suddenly caught up with the irresistible need to experiment.
With [Spiritual Beasts' Special Attributes] in hand, she found a few other books on the basics of cultivation and went to check them out at counter guarded by an old man.
At this moment, there were quite a few Lin family members, they saw Shiyu checking out books on basics of cultivation and could not resist laughing. "When did kitchen hands start to learn cultivations anyway?"
Others started to chime in, "Not only kitchen hands, even useless trash are suffering from such delusions! Did they really thought cultivation is something they could learn just because they wish for it? They should really measure the cloth properly for their own person."
Shiyu knew that the kitchen hand was meant for her, but what about useless trash? Were they talking about Lao Er?
Hanging around with such a group of show offs and braggarts, just how much as Lao Er suffered?
Translator's notes: I like that the author still talks about the other kids and the old man from the first chapter and not just dump them like a bunch of used NPCs.
[1] What is this mysterious technique? Someone explain it to me!!
[2] 30 li – 500m per li so 15km
Special Rabbit Meat porridge probably looked like this. Ah, nice and warm.