Gan Lan hurried back to the dormitory with the 10,000 Credit Points she had borrowed from Ms. Ye Lanyu. Fortunately, the classroom building and the dormitories weren’t far apart. Otherwise, she would have had to spend five Credit Points to take a Flying Car back, which would have pained her wallet even more!
She bought a few bottles of nutrient fluid and pinched her nose to down one, finally feeling like she had come back to life. Although the nutrient fluid tasted strange and was somewhat hard to swallow, it could at least fill her stomach! Gan Lan didn’t dare to be picky anymore.
Gan Lan had already scouted the market yesterday. The comprehensive university had a dedicated trading market for students, equivalent to a Food Street from the Earth Era. However, the food sold there consisted of various bizarre concoctions one wouldn’t even dare to imagine on Earth.
Of course, there was normal food too, but finding it depended on luck. If one was unlucky, they might buy something that smelled amazing but tasted like a chaotic mixture of bitter, spicy, sour, and sweet all at once, making it impossible to swallow without throwing up. If someone was slightly luckier, they might find food that was marginally palatable to the people of the future.
For instance, colorful sugar water? Perhaps brown sugar water mixed with chili? Or white sugar water flavored with bitter gourd and mustard? Or what about salted meat roasted black as charcoal? Or bread baked so hard it could chip a tooth—though people with strong teeth might find it tastier the more they chewed?
In short, it was an exceptionally unforgettable Food Street! Every day, alumni with a spirit of adventure came to explore, making the street incredibly bustling and lively!
When Gan Lan visited for the first time, she had been endlessly amazed and astonished. The people of the future were truly incredible! They actually managed to make food look like that! Although some dishes were genuinely hard to swallow, their talent was astounding; the color and aroma were already executed exceptionally well.
She thought, "If the culinary civilization hadn’t been lost during the Great Destruction Era, causing a regression to the early stages of food culture, things would probably look completely different now..."
Gan Lan logged onto the Star Network using her Light Brain and browsed the ingredients to find the seasonings she needed. Some of the spices looked different from those on Earth, but the taste was about the same. There were thousands of pages of meats, edible plants, fish, and seafood.
As soon as she saw the pork ribs, her mind involuntarily recalled recipes for sweet and sour, braised, dry pot, cumin, and garlic ribs. When she saw the lobsters, she thought of spicy, numbingly hot, and thirteen-spice variations... She didn’t dare to look at them anymore, afraid she wouldn’t be able to control her drool.
Ever since arriving in the interstellar era, Gan Lan felt her memory getting better and better. Many small details from the past could now be recalled with absolute clarity. Even when she saw familiar ingredients, the recipes for them would automatically pop into her head.
She searched directly for mutton. Tsk, there were hundreds of pages just for mutton alone. Gan Lan couldn’t find regular goat meat, only something called "pig-goat" with a texture similar to goat, though it was several times larger. After selecting a hind leg and purchasing all the necessary seasonings and tools, all she had to do was wait for the delivery.
While waiting for her package, Gan Lan browsed through the Star Network’s introductions to artificial intelligence, warships, battleships, spaceships, Mecha, Flying Cars, and more. In short, everything she had read about in sci-fi futuristic novels on Earth actually existed here. It was incredibly cool! Even more astounding, the natural lifespan of humans here had reached six hundred years!
"DING DONG. Your delivery has arrived. Please open the door to sign for it!"
It had only been five minutes, and the delivery robot was already here! With nervous excitement, Gan Lan opened the door and watched the delivery robot pull items out of a tiny box.
This must be the spatial temperature-controlled box! Time inside the box was completely frozen, so the food placed inside would maintain the exact same state it was in a moment ago when taken out! And that wasn’t all—the tiny box could hold an enormous amount of things! It was just like a Space Ring from Earth’s cultivation and sci-fi novels. What a magnificent invention!
The hind leg of the pig-goat weighed a full forty kilograms, about the same size as a cow’s hind leg on Earth. One could easily imagine that the pig-goat was as big as a cow! Even the smallest onion weighed ten kilograms! It felt as though all the ingredients here had evolved!
First, she cleaned the hind leg and cut it into uniform, bite-sized pieces, yielding two massive platters of nicely marbled meat.
Next came marinating the meat. In one platter, she added large eggs, onion, ginger slices, a pinch of fennel seeds, chili powder, black pepper, cumin powder, five-spice powder, sugar, salt, chicken bouillon, and salad oil. In the other platter, she added all the same spices except the chili powder. One platter was spicy, the other non-spicy. After stirring everything evenly, she let the meat marinate for an hour.
Looking at these ingredients, Gan Lan couldn’t help but feel relieved. She thought, "Thank goodness spices and seasonings have been perfectly preserved in this era, otherwise making them from scratch would be a massive hassle!"
She rented a robotic assistant from the school to help skewer the meat and process some ingredients, and she also rented a spatial temperature-controlled box! The robot cost 20 Credit Points a day, and the temperature-controlled box was 50. Gan Lan only rented them for a week. She was so poor, but she really wanted to buy them outright so they could be hers!
Once the marinating was done, Gan Lan and the robot worked together. By the time they finished, there were about two thousand skewers of meat.
Looking at the two small mountains of skewers, Gan Lan felt as if she were looking at individual piles of Credit Points. After separating the flavors and placing all the skewers into the spatial temperature-controlled box, she went to sleep completely satisfied.
The next day.
Gan Lan brought her temperature-controlled box along. As soon as she walked into the classroom, she once again heard Zhao Mengru’s sarcastic voice directed at her.
"How does this ugly freak from a poverty star still have the face to stay in this school? First place in theoretical knowledge, but dead last in practical operations in the whole grade—oh, wait, no, dead last in the entire school! Even students who aren’t in the culinary department cook better than this ugly freak, right?" Zhao Mengru sneered, crossing her arms as she glared at Gan Lan.
"Meng Ru, you didn’t know? This broke, ugly freak actually went to Yama Ye to borrow money yesterday. I heard she even knelt down, hugged Yama Ye’s thighs, and cried! How thick-skinned and disgusting. As expected of someone from a poverty star, absolutely shameless. Tsk tsk!" Zhao Mengru’s lackey told her, looking at Gan Lan with contempt.
Gan Lan looked up at Zhao Mengru expressionlessly. She thought, "What a waste of a pretty and pure-looking face."
Half the reason the original owner of this body had committed suicide was because of this Zhao Mengru. Gan Lan couldn’t fathom why; they were all just seventeen or eighteen years old, so how could someone be so incredibly mean, stupid, and vicious?
Zhao Mengru had posted on the school forum, claiming that the original owner only managed to get accepted into the comprehensive university as the top scorer from a poverty star because she had secretly climbed into the bed of the poverty star’s fat, undiscerning planetary governor. She allegedly used her excellent "skills" to get the governor to pull strings for her.
According to the rumors, theoretical knowledge could be faked, but practical cooking techniques couldn’t be cheated, which was why the original owner was finally exposed during the monthly exams.
The rapid spread of these rumors on the school forum led to classmates looking at the original owner with contempt, mockery, and knowing sneers. All the pointing and whispering made the original owner both furious and deeply resentful!
Afterward, the original owner complained to the counselor, stating that Zhao Mengru was slandering her and begging for her name to be cleared! Once the counselor investigated and uncovered the truth, they ordered Zhao Mengru and the other students who had slandered her to apologize publicly in front of the entire class, as well as post a clarification on the school forum.
Because of this, Zhao Mengru harbored a deep grudge and became even more vicious with her words! She constantly played petty tricks behind the scenes, making life incredibly frustrating! The rest of their classmates became even more unwilling to associate with the original owner, choosing to isolate her and retaliate through the silent treatment. Driven to pain and despair, the original owner eventually took a path of no return.
Gan Lan pursed her lips and clenched her fists tightly. She would solve her food and clothing problems first, and then she would deal with this vicious little brat! Just wait and see!
Shooting Zhao Mengru a contemptuous glance, Gan Lan turned and walked to her seat.
Infuriated to the point of exploding by Gan Lan’s gaze, Zhao Mengru pointed a finger at her and shrieked, "Just you wait! I’ll show you! Don’t you dare come crying and begging me for mercy when the time comes!"