Liam put the wok he had used for the greens into the sink and switched to a flat-bottomed pan.
"Now I’ll show you how to make the omelet. Crack the eggs into a bowl first, add seasoning powder and a pinch of salt, and beat until it’s fully combined. Remember this bit: hold the whisk at forty-five degrees and beat in a circle from left to right, staying in exactly the same spot, the way I’m doing here. The yolks and the whites come together far more evenly that way."
"An omelet needs plenty of fat to taste good, but we don’t add much at the start. To begin with, just heat the pan, then use a brush to spread a thin layer of fat over the surface. Turn the heat right down, then pour the eggs in from a low height, and only pour half."
"Tilt the pan so the egg spreads evenly across the surface. Scatter the chopped scallion over the top quickly, then roll it up. Once it’s rolled, push the roll toward yourself, brush on another thin layer of oil, and pour the rest of the egg in..."
As he talked, Liam demonstrated how to cook a rolled omelet without needing a square pan.
"Only once you’ve finished rolling do you add more oil, tilt the pan to spread it evenly, and turn the heat up to medium. Do it this way and the surface of the egg comes out very crisp, and far more fragrant with it."
[Brother, please stop describing it. My tears are about to flood the house.]
[Damn it, I’ve eaten star-bird eggs before. Fifty silver stars for three the size of a mosquito, and they weren’t half as fragrant as what the Streamer is making.]
[I submit. My Papa bought me star-bird eggs once and all I knew how to do was boil them.]
[Ahhh! Shut your mouths, you rich people. I’ve never even seen the shell of one.]
Liam eased the eggs carefully onto a plate, cut them into pieces with a sharp knife, and drizzled chili sauce over the top. Only after drizzling did he suddenly remember, and call out:
"Eldest brother, second sister, can the two of you eat spicy food?"
Benjamin and Isabella answered in unison. "We can!"
Even if they couldn’t, they would have to. Boohoo, they were dying of hunger.
The egg dish finished, Liam lifted the lid of the sea-beast soup pot to check. The broth had turned milky white and the aroma came billowing out. The comments section filled up with ten thousand screams of agony all over again.
Liam added the Crystal Coral greens, pressed them down under the broth and turned the heat up. The water bubbled and the bright red strands of vegetable gradually wilted. The moment the greens were cooked, Liam turned off the stove.
"That’s it. Once you’ve ladled the soup into a bowl, put a little pepper on top. And for this soup, if you can handle spice, add a few slices of chili, it tastes much better that way. Now I have to go and eat my dinner. Goodbye, everyone~"
Ignoring the pleading not to end the stream, Liam reached out and cut it off. He was no mukbang streamer; why should he let people watch him eat?
The staff member responsible for the livestreaming division slammed the table, a half-finished tube of nutrient fluid still in his hand, and wailed:
"Oh no, don’t turn it off~ Why would he turn it off now? Let me contact him and tell him to put it back on!"
The division manager raised a hand and stopped him at once. "Don’t. The contract states plainly that we respect the room owner’s decisions. If he doesn’t want to stream anymore, leave it."
He opened the main smart system. "I’ll send him an invitation for an exclusive partnership myself. You get on to the promotion department and tell them they’re working overtime tonight on a promotional video. Our company may well be relying on this room owner for traffic from here on."
The staff member tipped the rest of the nutrient fluid down his throat and hurried off.
Elsewhere, the three Martinez siblings had begun their dinner.
The vegetables and meat in this world carried a great deal of energy, so even without any staple food, those two things alone left a person entirely full.
Liam was an Omega and his appetite was very small. He ate a few chopstickfuls of greens with some pieces of meat, two pieces of omelet and a bowl of sea-beast soup, and was already so full he was burping. His brother and sister still wanted to pile more into his bowl.
"I’m really full, I can’t manage another bite. Do the two of you want me to die of a burst stomach?"
Once they had confirmed that Liam genuinely could not eat any more, the other two fell on the dishes on the table. Even down to the last piece of meat on the plate, the two of them very nearly came to blows over it.
Liam had no words. He picked up his chopsticks, took the piece of meat and put it in his own mouth, which finally brought the food war to an end. When all three of them were full, they let out satisfied burps. Then Isabella got up to take the bowls away and wash them, while Benjamin wiped down the dining table and cleaned the stove.
Liam had in fact already washed the cooking utensils and wiped the stove down, but Benjamin felt that if he didn’t find something to do he would die of guilt. Liam let him get on with it.
He opened his network account to see how the day’s broadcast had performed, and could not stop his eyebrow going up. The viewer count had passed five hundred million, and the channel had gained a hundred million followers from that one session. It was a colossal number in the livestreaming history of the entire galaxy.
Perhaps it was because Liam’s broadcast had landed exactly at dinner time, or perhaps the platform had seen the enormous potential in his room and pushed it to the top.
Liam opened the gift statistics to look. He had been so absorbed in the cooking earlier that he had no idea whether anyone had sent him anything.
The volume of gifts today turned out to be huge. Converted into real money it came to eight million silver stars, not counting the loose change. After the platform’s commission, he cleared four million. Four million silver stars from a single session, the equivalent of several months’ work for an ordinary person.
In the message notifications, which had already hit 999+, Liam skipped past the greetings and compliments and went straight to the few that mattered. Several were from the studios of high-end restaurants, asking whether they might use his recipes.
One was from the platform’s own studio, inviting him to sign an exclusive contract.
He meant to reply to them one at a time, but found it too much bother, so he went back to his channel’s personal page and posted a status instead:
#I’m sharing these cooking methods publicly. Anyone can use them freely, no need to ask my permission.#
Then he returned to the message section and turned down the livestreaming platform’s invitation. He broadcast to share, not to make money, so there was no need to tie himself into any contract.
His goal was still to terraform this planet, and to grow one decent blade of grass on it.
The platform kept up its coaxing regardless, and even called him directly. Liam was entirely unmoved and declined politely. The division manager on the other end sighed in disappointment and said a dejected goodbye.
Twenty minutes or so later, the platform’s studio sent another cooperation agreement, revising the original 5:5 revenue split to 7:3, seven for him and three for the platform.
Liam’s eyebrow went up. He hadn’t expected them to be willing to pay that much to hold on to him. It seemed the profit they stood to make from promoting his cooking videos was anything but small.
Isabella and Benjamin had finished the clearing up. Seeing it was still early, the two of them invited Liam up to the roof to look at the stars, hunting for topics of conversation to close the distance between them. Benjamin and Isabella did most of the talking throughout; Liam took charge of listening and put in a sentence here and there.
Benjamin looked up at the starry sky and sighed. "Since you managed to find your way out to this desolate place, you must already know everything. Elijah wiped out every coin in the house. He even sold off the farming assistance tools. This was the only thing he left."
Benjamin handed Liam an iron sphere that looked entirely unremarkable. "This is Papa’s keepsake. They say it’s been handed down from our distant ancestors. It’s usually entrusted to the Omega of each generation for safekeeping. Even our grandmother on Papa’s side never knew what it was. Now that you’re back, I’m giving it to you."
Liam took the sphere and weighed it in his hand. The thing was about as heavy as a tennis ball, and looked for all the world like a steel ball bearing out of a machine. Apart from the weight not matching the shape, Liam turned it over and over and could not find a single distinguishing feature.
He stored it in his spatial bracelet, then asked his brother and sister about the situation on planet Cygnus. The situation was even more dismal than Liam had imagined.
The planet had been abandoned since the generation of their grandfather on Daddy’s side. Even before that the harvests had never been good, but once those thorny weeds took hold, the soil grew more and more barren until it finally turned into dead ground.
"Can’t they be eradicated?"
Isabella shook her head. "They can’t. Chemicals, fire, pulling them up by the roots, it makes no difference. Wipe them out today and they’re back at full height tomorrow."
Liam nodded. "I’ll go out and take a look tomorrow."
Benjamin asked curiously, "Liam, where did you learn to cook?"
"From the chefs at home." Liam started spinning his story. "I’ve liked tinkering with this sort of thing since I was small, so I learned from them."
It wasn’t entirely a fabrication. Although he had only eaten fresh food once a week, the original owner remembered clearly what the various vegetables and the star-beast meat tasted like. Setting those memories against the information he had researched beforehand, Liam had realized that these ingredients would take to Earth’s cooking methods perfectly.
Benjamin and Isabella believed him without a flicker of doubt. The Hall family was a great noble house after all, and although they stood apart from the Royal family now, their wealth and political influence were known throughout the galaxy. Whatever Liam had picked up in the Hall household was nothing to be surprised at.
The three siblings talked for about two hours and then went off to their own rooms. After Liam had showered and dried his hair, he opened the original owner’s drawing tablet. Something had sparked in him while he was cooking earlier, and he spent an hour drawing the three dishes he had made that day.
When he was done, he looked over his work and clicked his tongue a few times. Looking at the dishes in the picture, he could taste them immediately. It was true what they said: give a drawing some inspiration and it acquires a soul on the spot.
Liam polished it a little and posted it to his personal page. Once it was up he didn’t even bother checking the notifications; he logged out of his account and went to bed.
Before he slept, Liam also thought that he ought to make time to have Benjamin take him to redo his household registration and identity card. Using this black card anonymously online was certainly convenient, but for travel it was rather less so. What worried him was the day he wandered into a high-security zone by mistake, because if it came out that he was carrying a black card, he would be finished.
As the sound of steady breathing filled the bed, the sensor lights in the room shut themselves off, and the space sank into the quiet dark of the night.