With only two rooms in total, the few of them chatted and worked until four in the afternoon before finishing.
Great-aunt and Aunt Guifang went home to prepare dinner. Before leaving, they both invited Liu Yu to eat at their respective homes, but he declined. It was one thing before, but now that he had his own kitchen, going to someone else’s house to eat felt a bit embarrassing.
Besides, he had been in this world for a good few days now. In his past life, his only hobby was studying culinary arts and cooking for himself. Now that he had his own kitchen, his cravings and itching hands were getting the better of him.
The Liu Wenyu brothers stayed at his house. Earlier, when Aunt Guifang wanted to take them both along, Liu Weisheng stubbornly refused.
He really liked this newly acquainted older brother, who spoke softly and gently, unlike his usual group of brothers who were noisy all day long, and unlike his older brother and father, who looked like they were about to beat him after not even three sentences.
Seeing this, Liu Wenyu decided to stay as well. He chatted very congenially with Liu Yu, getting along even better than his classmates at school, and didn’t find spending the afternoon here boring at all.
Liu Yu planned to make something delicious tonight to host these two newly made friends. He rummaged through the cabinet and found six eggs and a small cloth bag of white flour that Aunt Guifang had sent over in the afternoon. Because Liu Yu’s household division was hasty, he hadn’t had time to go into town to buy oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar, so Great-aunt had packed a little bit of everything for him.
Even a clever housewife finds it hard to cook a meal without rice. With no food or cooking tools set up at home, Liu Yu racked his brains and couldn’t think of any other trick besides making an egg pancake.
Making up his mind, Liu Yu dropped the words, “I’m going to the vegetable patch to pick some greens,” and ran all the way to the Liu family’s vegetable patch. Liu Weisheng followed right behind him.
“Brother Heqing, what kind of greens do you want? My family’s vegetable patch has all kinds planted, why run so far?” he asked, not understanding.
Liu Yu didn’t answer. He returned a meaningful smile and skillfully began picking chili peppers. Since it was only September, it was the season when chili peppers hung heavy on the branches. Liu Yu bent down and picked over a pound, and it didn’t even look like anything was missing.
Just as he was about to stand up, he suddenly caught sight of a patch of potato vines growing a few rows away. Potatoes were wonderful things; they could be eaten as a vegetable and as a staple food. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought a hoe, making it inconvenient to dig them up. With Liu Weisheng, they struggled and managed to pull out seven medium-sized potatoes by hand.
Liu Yu wasn’t greedy, and he was still in a hurry to go back and cook. He casually grabbed a few green onions and left with Liu Weisheng. As for whether the Liu family would notice, he couldn’t care less. The money the original owner had been swindled out of by this family was enough to buy two tons of potatoes from them.
When the two of them returned home, Liu Wenyu had already piled a bundle of straw inside the earth stove. Without this stuff, Liu Yu wouldn’t even have been able to light the firewood. He quickly thanked him, thinking that he genuinely liked this newly met older brother who was much more meticulous than himself.
Liu Yu smiled and invited the two of them: “Stay for dinner at my place tonight! I’ll make egg pancakes for you.”
“Egg pancakes? Will there be eggs inside?” Liu Weisheng was a little tempted. At home, he rarely got to eat eggs; usually, it was only when guests came over that he could get a couple of bites in with his chopsticks.
Liu Wenyu frowned. In their parts, eggs belonged to the category of proper meat dishes and were rarely eaten except during festivals and when hosting guests. Whenever the hens laid eggs at home, their mother would save up a dozen or so and take them to town to sell to subsidize the household expenses.
Liu Weisheng couldn’t consider these things, but he had to. No matter how much his cravings acted up, he couldn’t eat this egg pancake.
Observing that Liu Wenyu’s expression wasn’t quite right, Liu Yu could guess what he was worrying about without overthinking it: eggs were expensive, and he felt bad eating them. He hadn’t expected that material supplies in the rural areas of this era would be even scarcer than he imagined. Even so, Aunt Guifang and the others had sent him so many things, treating him genuinely well, something that perhaps even blood relatives couldn’t manage.
He quickly cut off Liu Wenyu’s train of thought: “Auntie and the others sent all these good things over. How could I have the face to lock my door and eat alone? Aren’t we good friends?” With that, he opened the flour bag of his own accord, scooped a large bowl into a basin, and added water.
Liu Wenyu thought he had made him angry, so he stood quietly to the side, only occasionally stealing anxious glances at him. It wasn’t until Liu Yu smiled a bit playfully at him and asked him to help tend the fire that he silently let out a sigh of relief. As long as he wasn’t angry, that was fine.
How could Liu Yu possibly get angry at someone who treated him well? If he did that, he would be completely ungrateful. It was just that he didn’t like staying in a state of constantly being taken care of; a good relationship shouldn’t involve only one person giving. He hadn’t had the capacity before, but now that he had a little bit of condition, he wanted to give back to them in his own way.
Three eggs were cracked into the basin, and chopped green onions and salt were added to the egg liquid and stirred evenly. Liu Yu poured the large bowl of flour into the basin with care, added a small ladle of water, and continued stirring.
After finishing the preparations, the wok was already heating up. He added a small spoonful of oil to the wok, spread the oil evenly, and poured in a ladle of batter. Constantly spreading the batter in all directions with a spatula, in less than a minute, a golden and tender large round pancake was ready and lifted out of the wok.
“Wow! So this is called an egg pancake, it smells so good!” Liu Weisheng’s nose inched closer bit by bit, ending up staring blankly at the egg pancake while swallowing his saliva. It wasn’t really his fault for having such a greedy look; he had never seen an egg pancake in all his years alive. Seeing one now, and such an alluring one at that, how could his cravings not be hooked?
“Don’t rush. Once I finish making the pancakes, I’ll stir-fry a dish of shredded potatoes and then we can eat,” Liu Yu laughed, successfully making another pancake while talking.
The flour and eggs were used sparingly; after making eight pancakes, the batter was finished. He turned to pick up the potatoes and skillfully began peeling and shredding them. Potatoes had a high starch content, so he usually rinsed the shredded potatoes several times with clear water, otherwise the stir-fried shredded potatoes would turn out mushy instead of crisp and refreshing.
Using the oily wok, Liu Yu added a bit more oil, tossed in green peppers to stir-fry until fragrant, then dumped all the shredded potatoes into the wok, added seasonings, and stir-fried them until cooked. A basin of stir-fried shredded potatoes with green peppers was done.
Liu Yu hadn’t eaten a single proper dish since coming here, and smelling this familiar, dominant aroma almost made him cry tears of joy. People in this place simply didn’t know how to cook; no matter what vegetable it was, it was either steamed or boiled, and eating it for a few days could make your mouth feel utterly bland.
Liu Yu served the dishes on the table and gave the order: “Let’s dig in!”
Liu Weisheng eagerly picked up an egg pancake, cautiously took a small bite from the edge, and squinted his eyes happily: “This is too delicious, I wouldn’t get tired of eating this even if you let me for a lifetime!”
Liu Wenyu also picked up a pancake and began eating: “I really didn’t expect that mixing eggs and flour could make something this delicious.” He had always thought flour could only be made into noodles and flour-paste soup, and eggs could only be scrambled or boiled; he truly didn’t expect this kind of combination. It seemed his horizons were still too narrow.
Liu Yu couldn’t help but cry out and yell inside his mind: Of course you couldn’t have thought of it, because your development of food hasn’t even reached 0.01%!
He laid an egg pancake flat in his hand, picked up a few mouthfuls of shredded green pepper potatoes to place on top, and finally rolled the pancake tightly like a towel, showing it to the two brothers: “Look, eat it like this, the flavor will be very different!” He handed the pancake in his hand to Liu Weisheng, and quickly wrapped one for Liu Wenyu as well.
Delicious! They had thought eating the egg pancake plain was already delicious enough, but they hadn’t expected an even better way to eat it. The moment it entered the mouth, they felt their taste buds explode, slightly sour, slightly spicy, mixed with the fragrance of eggs, making people unable to help taking another bite.
Liu Yu had no idea that the pancakes he casually threw together with local ingredients would become the most delicious food the two brothers before him had ever eaten in their teens. After eating two pancakes, he lost interest, and the remaining ones were completely devoured by the two of them, leaving not even the vegetable juice behind.
By the time he sent the two brothers off, it was already getting dark. Today had been another exhausting day; Liu Yu didn’t want to do anything now except boil water for a hot bath and sleep soundly.
Outside the window, cicadas chirped in waves, and an occasional breeze blew the leaves into a rustling sound, like a quiet lullaby. Liu Yu’s tense body gradually relaxed, and he sank into deep slumber.
Liu Yu felt his body losing control, vaguely wrapped by a pool of warm, clear water, slowly drifting toward a wooden door emitting white light, and entering into…
Huh? He entered his own room from his past life?
He hovered in the air, observing his physical body from before, completely intact, without any signs of drowning. At this moment, he was rapidly flipping through a dictionary, and a novel was placed on the desk. The cover looked somewhat familiar to Liu Yu, but the title and content escaped his memory.
After about half a quarter of an hour, he was once again enveloped by the warm water and drifted into the darkness, his consciousness gradually blurring.
When Liu Yu woke up, it was already late morning. He lay in bed for a while before his mind cleared up from the chaos.
Liu Yu didn’t think the absurd scene he saw in his dream last night was fake. He had a strong premonition that Liu Heqing hadn’t died, but rather, just as he had guessed before, transmigrated into his body.
Recalling that little brat using his own body while having to use the elementary school dictionary covered in dust on his bookshelf just to read a novel, he felt an inexplicable sense of shame. Letting himself and a ten-odd-year-old kid swap bodies like this, was this something a normal person could pull off?
Liu Yu’s thoughts flew all over the place for a moment, but he suddenly remembered what that novel on the desk was called. The book was titled Commercial Hegemon, thrown to him by his college roommate when packing up luggage upon graduation, saying it was too far to carry back home.
Liu Yu had only read a bit of the content, remembering only that the author’s moral values were exceptionally touching, which made him feel very uncomfortable. The protagonist inside was comparable to a malicious version of a powerhouse-type protagonist, doing all sorts of bad things while sailing smoothly all the way. Anyone who dared block his path rarely lived past three chapters. The author kept exclaiming in writing how thrilling this character was, leaving Liu Yu speechless; put into reality, such a person would be shot countless times by the police.
To tell the truth, Liu Yu wasn’t quite sure why the original owner specifically picked up this book when there were clearly many novels on the bookshelf. His intuition told him that this book probably hid some secret.
However, none of these were things he could consider with his current abilities. He only knew that he no longer needed to feel guilty or uneasy about occupying someone else’s body. While he was here worrying about his next meal, the original owner was probably living it up using his savings!
Once Liu Yu figured this out, his mood instantly cleared up. He got up, packed up simply, shouldered his large basket, locked the door, and walked toward the village entrance. He had agreed with Liu Wenyu and his brother last night to meet at the village entrance this morning and go into town to buy things.