“Mo Ze, there might be more than one stalk of Enchanting Grass.
Besides, Beichen was there at the time too.
Don’t you believe Xi’er?” Yunxi’s tears welled up in her eyes.
Her fair little hands tightly gripped the front of Mo Ze’s clothes as she looked pleadingly at Mu Beichen in the crowd.
She was gambling that in a situation where no one knew the truth, everyone would choose to believe her.
Su Cha followed her gaze and saw Mu Beichen standing openly in the crowd with a swagger.
He must have already met with the Clan Leader.
The crowd also noticed this Beastman, who was clearly not from their tribe.
He was dressed luxuriously in premium merfolk silk, and the half-concealed beast marks on his arms indicated his formidable strength.
Stepping forward under everyone’s scrutiny, Mu Beichen prepared to speak up for Yunxi.
However, he paused when he saw Su Cha rub her fingers together, her eyes flashing with an unspoken threat.
She thought that if this simp of a snake dared to ruin her plans, she would drain his blood next time, dry him into snake jerky, and thoroughly study the Beastmen of this beast world.
Her gesture successfully froze the playful smirk on Mu Beichen’s lips.
His mind unconsciously replayed the previous two times he had completely lost face as a snake, and an involuntary shiver ran down his spine.
He thought it was an absolute humiliation for a dignified Fifth Rank Snake Beastman to be threatened by a female who couldn’t even manage a Transformation.
“I don’t know anything,” Mu Beichen said, spreading his hands and shooting a look that conveyed his helplessness.
He knew that if word of this got out, it would be an even greater disgrace!
As soon as he said this, everyone’s attention shifted back to Yunxi in Mo Ze’s arms.
At this moment, the beauty looked utterly heartbroken.
Tears streamed down her face—PATTER, PATTER—and her swollen, red cheek made her look even more pitiful.
It was such a pathetic sight that even Su Cha couldn’t stand watching it anymore.
“Enough.
It’s just a slap, it’s not a big deal.
Have I endured few slaps in the past?” As soon as Su Cha said this, Mo Ze’s expression predictably filled with even more guilt.
He could only continue wiping Yunxi’s tears and murmuring words of comfort.
Ultimately, much to Yunxi’s resentment, the matter was dropped and left unresolved.
Later that day.
Su Cha used the beast coins refunded by the Witch Doctor from Cang Yuan’s medicine to exchange for some fine salt from the Clan Leader.
Seeing that the animal skins were cheap, she traded for some of those as well.
Today was the middle of the month, the time when the tribe distributed meat rations.
Su Cha received her share: a piece of beef and some half-fatty, half-lean wild boar meat.
She also asked for some of the bones that the other Beastmen had discarded.
Back home, she inspected the slightly blackened salt.
They called it fine salt, but it wasn’t fine at all.
She tasted a pinch and found it somewhat bitter.
Recently, she had been cooking with the refined salt from her spatial inventory.
However, since that supply would eventually run out, she decided to purify some salt herself.
The Langri Tribe actually possessed a small salt mine, but no one in the tribe knew how to extract edible salt from it.
Therefore, they had no choice but to cooperate with the Balin Tribe, selling them salt rocks at a low price and then buying back the black salt at a premium.
Fortunately, this high price was still twenty percent lower than what other tribes had to pay.
Aside from the Balin Tribe, the Merfolk Clan could also refine edible salt.
Theirs was finer and of better quality, but it was considerably more expensive.
Su Cha went to the back of the mountain to forage for some necessary herbs, then headed to the river to bring back a large bucket of water and a bamboo tube full of pebbles and sand.
Cang Yuan simply watched her busy herself, running back and forth without saying a word.
In truth, refining fine salt was quite simple.
It only required dissolving, filtering, and evaporating the salt, then repeating the process two or three times.
The only difficulty was the lack of filter paper here.
To solve this, Su Cha thought of the mechanics behind modern water purifiers.
She poured all the black salt into a pot, stirred it until it dissolved, and then crushed some herbs, squeezing their juices into the mixture.
Next, she began making a filter.
Su Cha carefully washed the sand, pebbles, and charcoal, then packed them in layers into a large bamboo tube.
She used a piece of woven bamboo to block the bottom so the materials wouldn’t fall out.
Afraid that a single filter wouldn’t be effective enough, she made a few extra ones to filter the solution multiple times.
She patiently filtered the liquid over and over again until the water flowing out of the bamboo tube became crystal clear.
Cang Yuan watched quietly from the side, entirely unsure of what she was trying to do.
Su Cha poured the filtered salt water into a clean stone pot and began to heat it.
She boiled it until all the water evaporated, leaving behind salt crystals that were much less black than before.
They now looked just like the fine salt sold by the Merfolk Clan.
A hint of shock gradually crept onto Cang Yuan’s face, and a rare seriousness surfaced in his usually icy eyes.
“This is fine salt?” he asked.
“To be precise, this is coarse salt.
The Merfolk Clan refines this exact type of coarse salt.
For it to become truly fine salt, the purification process needs to be repeated two more times,” Su Cha explained to Cang Yuan after tasting a pinch.
“Does every Beastman in your tribe know how to do this?” Cang Yuan’s Cui-green eyes narrowed slightly as they locked onto Su Cha’s calm little face.
Su Cha looked back at him, well aware that he was probing her again.
“No,” she replied nonchalantly.
She proceeded to redissolve the newly obtained pale yellow crystals and added more herbs.
However, the herbs she used this time were different from the previous batch.
This step was called brining.
Its purpose was to remove toxic substances like barium and sulfide ions from the black salt.
Without modern chemical reagents, Su Cha could only grind up herbs that naturally reacted with these elements and add them to the mix—similar to the process of using lime water to curdle tofu.
Then, she filtered and crystallized the mixture just as before.
She repeated the entire process one last time until the crystallized salt became perfectly fine and pure white.
She thought, “Phew, finally done.”
After this entire operation, the original amount of black salt had been reduced by half.
Su Cha stored part of the salt in a small bamboo tube to use in the kitchen, and took the rest back to her room to store in her spatial inventory.
She cooked lunch as usual, and the savory aroma of pork ribs soon drifted through the entire courtyard.
KNOCK KNOCK!
A knock at the door broke the quiet.
Su Cha set down her spoon.
She couldn’t imagine who would come looking for her or Cang Yuan at this hour.
When she opened the door, she found Mu Beichen leaning against the frame, flamboyantly brushing a few stray hairs from his forehead.
“Little female—”
SLAM!
Mu Beichen rubbed his nose and stared at the tightly shut door.
He wondered when he had become so unwelcome.
KNOCK KNOCK!
The knocking rang out again.
Cang Yuan looked questioningly at Su Cha, who had walked back to the kitchen as if nothing had happened.
Cang Yuan didn’t ask, and Su Cha didn’t explain.
She simply continued cooking her meal.
The knocking stopped after a while.
However, shortly after, a loud CRASH echoed as the entire right-side wall collapsed.
CLATTER!
The commotion startled Su Cha so badly that she dropped her spatula into the pot.
After she finished plating the beef steak, she marched out into the courtyard with a dark expression on her face.
Cang Yuan was the first to spot the awkward-looking Mu Beichen.
Unconcealed hostility flared in Cang Yuan’s eyes; this was the Snake Clan scent he had smelled on Su Cha last night.
Mu Beichen touched the tear mole by his eye and flashed a provocative smile.
“Are you the little female’s rogue Beastman mate?”
Cang Yuan’s Cui-green eyes darkened, but he didn’t answer.
Just as Mu Beichen was about to step forward, he was startled by a bamboo chopstick hurtling straight toward his face.
“Little female, this is a misunderstanding.
I didn’t expect the wall to collapse from a single touch.” Mu Beichen dodged sideways and shot Su Cha a roguish grin.
Su Cha looked at his lower half, which hadn’t fully undergone Transformation and was still a snake’s tail.
Her face darkened with exasperation.
“Don’t you know you aren’t welcome here?
Also, I have a name.”
She didn’t like people constantly calling her “little female.” The original owner of this body had just come of age, but in the modern world, Su Cha was already in her twenties.
Beastmen in this beast world could increase their lifespans based on their ranks, so to them, there was no real difference between being eighteen and twenty-four.
Still, the term made her feel incredibly awkward.
She didn’t think she had anything to discuss with the heroine’s second male lead, which was why she hadn’t let him in.
But now, she definitely had something to say.
“Alright, I’ll call you Su Cha from now on,” Mu Beichen said, shamelessly ignoring the first half of her complaint.
“Mu Beichen, do you have a death wish?
If you don’t patch up this wall for me today, don’t even think about leaving.”
Seeing Su Cha reach into her sleeve to pull something out, Mu Beichen hurriedly nodded in agreement.
“Su Cha, don’t.
I’ll fix the wall for you.”
Then, seeing that her expression had slightly softened, he shamelessly strolled toward the source of the delicious aroma.
“Su Cha, what delicious food are you making in there?
Can I stay and eat before I fix the wall for you?”
“No,” Su Cha refused without hesitation.
Mu Beichen looked a bit hurt.
“I fell out with my savior just so I could speak up for you.
How can you be such a heartless female?”
Su Cha raised an eyebrow, her eyes clearly asking what that had to do with her.
Ultimately, Mu Beichen admitted defeat.
“I’ll pay you in beast coins, alright?”
This was something Su Cha could reluctantly accept.
She was short on money.