Miss Zhou curled herself into a ball, wishing she could turn into Sun Wukong’s underground-dwelling counterpart and burrow straight into the ground.
The Zhou family’s servants finally recovered enough to move. They hurriedly took off their own clothes and wrapped them around her, not daring to utter another word as they carried her away in disgrace.
Xiang Xi dusted off her hands and turned back into the cloth shop.
“Shopkeeper Liu, how much had we agreed on for that outfit?”
Shopkeeper Liu was completely dumbfounded.
This girl was truly fearless!
She had humiliated the eldest daughter of the Zhou family to this extent, yet she wasn’t afraid at all. She had even come back to haggle over the price!
Impressive!
He was truly impressed!
“This outfit is free. I’ll give it to you, Miss.”
“How could I accept that? I’m not the kind of person who takes advantage of others,” Xiang Xi said. “How about this? I’ll give you 150 copper coins for everything. But let me make one thing clear—you can’t haggle with me anymore!”
Shopkeeper Liu: …
“Miss,” Shopkeeper Liu quickly wrapped up the clothes and advised her, “the Zhou family isn’t someone you can easily provoke. They’ll certainly come out in full force soon. You two should leave as quickly as possible.”
“Hehe. Do I look like someone who’s afraid of trouble?”
“This…”
“However, it is getting a little late,” Xiang Xi said. “Shopkeeper Liu, can I borrow your back door?”
Shopkeeper Liu: …
Following Shopkeeper Liu through the backyard, which was filled with hanging dyed fabrics, Xiang Xi and Second Fool Liu slipped out through the back door into a quiet alley.
“Wife,” Second Fool Liu asked after looking around, “where are we going?”
Where else could they go?
Obviously, they had to run as fast as their legs could carry them!
Did she really intend to stay there and wait for the authorities to arrive?
Before she could even determine which direction to take, a commotion came from the street ahead.
“Where are they?”
“They’re not in the shop! They must have escaped through the back door!”
“Hurry! Surround the area! Don’t let them get away!”
…
As the approaching footsteps grew louder, Second Fool Liu asked,
“Wife, what do we do? Do we keep fighting?”
“Keep fighting my ass! The authorities will be coming next!”
Xiang Xi entered the phantom world and clearly observed the movements of her pursuers over the next ten minutes.
Only then did she calmly lead Second Fool Liu into a side alley ahead.
The moment they entered, more than a dozen servants carrying sticks flooded out at the mouth of the alley.
“They’re not here!”
“They must have escaped somewhere else! Chase them!”
After the group left, Xiang Xi led Second Fool Liu into another alley, perfectly avoiding the next wave of pursuers.
The two continued weaving through the narrow alleys.
Every time, they accurately avoided the Zhou family’s servants.
Along the way, they even bought thirty steamed meat buns for lunch.
Eventually, the Zhou family’s people were so exhausted that they were practically spitting foam.
They hadn’t even caught a glimpse of Xiang Xi and Second Fool Liu.
All they could do was return dejectedly to the entrance of the cloth shop.
A well-built, middle-aged man stood there with an ashen expression, glaring at this useless bunch.
“This place is barely the size of a palm!”
“And you can’t even find two people?”
“What the hell am I feeding you for?”
“Master, we really did our best…”
Smack!
Zhou Chenglin slapped one of the servants across the face.
Still unsatisfied, he kicked him hard enough to send him sprawling face-first onto the ground.
“If you can’t find them, keep looking!”
“Even if you have to turn the entire Sanjiang County upside down, you must find those two!”
“Cut them into a thousand pieces!”
“Reduce them to ashes!”
…
On the way home, Second Fool Liu rubbed his growling stomach.
“Wife, I’m hungry!”
Xiang Xi frowned.
This guy had just eaten more than ten buns, and he was already hungry again?
Actually, she had eaten quite a few herself.
And somehow, she was hungry too.
Not just a little hungry either.
It was the kind of hunger where your stomach felt stuck to your back and you saw stars before your eyes!
This definitely wasn’t a problem with the buns.
There had to be something going on with the two of them.
Fortunately, they soon arrived home.
Xiang Xi took out the battered iron pot, washed three pounds of rice, and started cooking.
She also took the pork offal they had bought and cleaned it thoroughly by the river.
Second Fool Liu stared at the large basin of offal and seemed somewhat disgusted.
“Wife, it doesn’t taste good!”
Xiang Xi couldn’t be bothered to answer him.
She boiled water in the pot, then added all the spices they had bought, along with plenty of green onions and ginger.
She also added half of the bean paste and half a pound of cooking oil.
Once the aroma of the spices began to rise, she put the blanched offal into the pot.
She brought it to a boil over high heat, then lowered the heat and cooked it until everything became tender.
After turning off the fire, she let it sit and absorb the flavors for a while.
After all that preparation, every trace of the unpleasant smell was gone.
All that remained was a pot of fragrant braised offal.
The aroma attracted every dog in the village.
Second Fool Liu’s mouth was practically watering nonstop.
“Wife, it smells good!”
Xiang Xi chuckled inwardly.
Who the hell had just said it wouldn’t taste good?
Let me tell you something.
There is no food in this world that tastes bad.
There are only cooks who don’t know how to cook!
As long as you have enough ingredients, I could even turn a pair of slippers into a delicacy!
“Eat.”
“Okay!”
Each of them held a bowl of rice and began devouring the braised offal.
As she ate, Xiang Xi gradually realized something was wrong.
Damn, Second Fool Liu could really eat.
The bowls they were using weren’t small, yet he could shovel away a third of a bowl in one bite!
A foot-long piece of braised intestine?
He could swallow the whole thing in one go!
Was being an idiot directly related to having a huge appetite?
But what shocked her most wasn’t Second Fool Liu.
It was herself.
She admitted that her braised offal was indeed delicious.
But she hadn’t expected to quietly finish three bowls of rice and at least two pounds of braised offal!
Even when her appetite had been at its peak, that amount would’ve been enough for three meals.
Could transmigrating into another world have turned her into a female praying mantis?
Watching Second Fool Liu stuff the final piece of braised offal into his mouth, Xiang Xi fell into deep thought.
Lu Xun once said: There must be a reason behind everything.
Second Fool Liu had eaten so much today.
She could reasonably assume that his fight with those servants had caused him to release too much adrenaline and expend a great deal of physical energy.
But why was she eating so much?
Could it be because she had spent so much time observing the phantom world yesterday afternoon and today?
It was possible.
If she observed it too much, could that cause her ability to improve?
Highly likely!
So she entered the phantom world again.
And this time, what she saw shocked her.
The amount of future time she could predict in the phantom world had suddenly increased from ten minutes to one day!
That’s right.
A full twenty-four hours!
She had leveled up!
“Wife!”
Second Fool Liu patted his stuffed belly and foolishly said,
“Let’s go pick mushrooms!”
Xiang Xi chuckled.
What ambition!
Now that she could predict an entire day into the future, why would she bother with something as trivial as picking mushrooms?
She needed to find something valuable to sell.
She had already planned this.
Once she earned her first pot of gold from selling mushrooms, she would target the eels in the village.
It was currently the season when the rice plants were flowering.
There were tons of eels in the rice paddies, and they would even come out at night to breathe.
All she needed was a torch.
In one night, she could easily catch twenty or thirty pounds.
But Xiang Xi knew that vegetable vendors would never make as much money as restaurants.
That was exactly why vegetable sellers set up roadside stalls while restaurants operated storefronts.
The bulk of the profits went to the restaurants.
So she decided to develop a new way of selling eels.
Others sold them alive.
She would sell them cooked and ready to eat.
To make delicious eel dishes, she needed plenty of seasonings.
Sichuan peppercorns, chili sauce, garlic, pickled vegetables, anise hyssop…
Most of these could be bought fresh at the market.
The only thing she needed to gather herself was anise hyssop, and there was plenty of it in the mountains.
So now everything was ready.
All she lacked was the eels.
“Second Fool.”
“Present!”
“Go to sleep. Tonight, we’re catching eels.”
“Yes!”