“Why did she suddenly stop moving?”
Shao Xingyang circled Lu Shiyu a few times, but she remained standing in place as if making a difficult decision.
“Is it possible Lu Shiyu doesn’t really know how to cook pumpkins?” Yan Hong looked at the pumpkins covered in round spots and began to wonder if they could be eaten raw, though she wasn’t sure if this kind of pumpkin was poisonous when eaten raw.
“I’ve decided! I’ll make that!”
Lu Shiyu’s sudden shout startled Shao Xingyang.
Shao Xingyang leaned toward Yan Hong and whispered, “What does she want to make? She’s so excited.”
Lu Shiyu turned around and asked the group, “Which of you will help me find some other ingredients?”
“We still need to look?” Yan Hong glanced at the spoils from the “vegetable garden battle.” “There’s enough here to eat.”
“But having only pumpkins and vine melons without other ingredients to pair them with will lack flavor,” Lu Shiyu said. “How about going to see if those ducks are edible?”
“Go provoke those ducks again?” Shao Xingyang touched the wound that Chen Yunliang had only recently healed and said, “I don’t want to be chased again.”
“Go check the one on the ground from before to see if it’s edible. If not, then forget it.”
Shao Xingyang took the order and headed back into the village. Along the way, he avoided the houses and tried to stay in the middle of the path to prevent a black spiked ball from suddenly flying down at any moment.
He found it successfully, but seeing the way the duck had died, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it died with its eyes wide open in grievance.
“Is this considered edible or not…”
Shao Xingyang had zero cooking experience, let alone an eye for ingredients—especially meat. He originally thought he’d just drag it back regardless and ask Lu Shiyu, but when he lifted the duck by its wing, he found a row of red protrusions hidden underneath.
Those protrusions were actually the duck’s mammary glands. This kind of duck was actually a mammal!
Shao Xingyang fell silent for five seconds, imagining what this duck would look like on a dinner plate, and finally put the duck back.
“How was it? Did you find it?”
“No, I guess some other animal dragged it off and ate it.”
“Never mind then,” Lu Shiyu didn’t find it too pitying. “Let’s wait and see what the others can bring back.”
After a while, Yan Hong returned covered in weeds and duck feathers, carrying a basket of eggs.
“The nests of those ducks stink so bad! What a stench!”
Yan Hong cursed as she set down the duck eggs, took a towel from her backpack, dampened it with water, wrung it out, and reached into her clothes to wipe her body.
“You went to steal duck eggs? You’ve made such a mess of yourself.”
“It’s because those ducks are too alert. If I didn’t have their scent on me, they would have spotted me instantly.”
After wiping herself, Yan Hong tossed the towel into the water basin and couldn’t help but complain, “Why do I feel like what we’re doing now is getting further and further away from our original mission assignment? I feel like we’re looking for food every day; anyone who didn’t know better would think we’re a gathering team.”
“Mission assignment? What’s that?” Lu Shiyu, who had been peeling pumpkins, suddenly took an interest upon hearing Yan Hong’s words.
“Oh, that,” Yan Hong crouched down to scrub the towel in the basin. “Exploration teams have different divisions of labor. Generally, they don’t change. Everyone keeps working in one area until they know it inside and out.”
“For example, those responsible for gathering always do gathering, and those responsible for mapping always do mapping. In the end, the gatherers can know where everything is and how to collect it just from memory, and the mappers can draw a detailed map just by hearing a simple description. Our team’s main task is to go to places that are further away, detached from most exploration teams, to do scouting—basically acting as the vanguard.”
“Don’t you do other things besides your fixed tasks?” Lu Shiyu asked.
“No. There are specific people for odd jobs. Everyone just needs to do their own part. Meddling in others’ work leads to being ostracized,” Yan Hong said after pouring out the slightly murky water from the basin. “Though, exploration teams don’t really communicate with each other much anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Sounds like the relationship between colleagues is pretty bad…”
“If it weren’t for work, I wouldn’t want anything to do with those people,” Yan Hong got angry just thinking about them. “All of them are such pretentious jerks. Hmph.”
Lu Shiyu only peeled the small pumpkins; she just washed the dirt off the surface of the large pumpkin. Shao Xingyang thought Lu Shiyu only intended to cook the small pumpkins and that the large one wasn’t for today, worrying there wouldn’t be enough to eat. Lu Shiyu shook her head, however, and told him to just wait and eat.
Using a knife, Lu Shiyu cut a serrated opening on the top of the large pumpkin, removed the top, and used a spoon to reach inside and scoop out the seeds. After peeling and de-seeding the small pumpkins, she cut them into small pieces. She then took out a leftover piece of fruit pulp that looked like a baby and cut it into small pieces as well.
She poured water into an iron pot and placed an empty bowl inside; the water level could not exceed the height of the bowl. She placed the fruit pieces and pumpkin pieces into the bowl to steam until soft. After poking them with chopsticks to confirm they had become thoroughly soft and glutinous, she took them out and mashed and stirred them together into a paste.
Then, she took out the hollowed-out large pumpkin, set it over the fire, and poured in fresh water and the pumpkin paste.
While Lu Shiyu went to deal with the vine melons, Shao Xingyang sneakily moved to the side of the pumpkin pot. Looking at the bubbling pumpkin pot, he let out a sigh:
“Sigh, boiling soup is so bland and watery; it still depends on me to step in.”
Saying this, while no one was paying attention, Shao Xingyang dropped something into the pot with lightning-fast speed. He then walked away acting as if nothing had happened, quietly excited for his little surprise to be discovered.
Lu Shiyu peeled the vine melons, which were covered in concentric lines, then similarly de-seeded and cubed them, tossing them into the pumpkin pot to boil with the other ingredients. Once the ingredients in the pumpkin pot were nearly cooked, Lu Shiyu added seasoning and a spoonful of ant honey, stirring evenly. She then took five duck eggs from the basket and cracked them into the pumpkin pot. The top of the pot was filled with eggs. Next, she just needed to cover it with the pumpkin lid and wait for them to simmer until cooked.
Lu Shiyu looked at Shao Xingyang, who was rubbing his hands in anticipation, and said, “You seem really excited for this dish. Do you like pumpkin?”
“Huh? Haha, actually I’m not a picky eater. I’ll eat anything. It’s just that I’m starving right now,” Shao Xingyang glossed it over with an excuse. “How much longer? My stomach is flattened from hunger.”
“Just five more minutes to let the eggs simmer until cooked.” Lu Shiyu felt Shao Xingyang’s expression was a bit strange, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
After waiting a few minutes, Lu Shiyu opened the lid on the pumpkin. The top layer of eggs had turned into round, full poached eggs. Lu Shiyu carefully scooped them out one by one; the poached eggs wobbled in the bowls as if the yolks inside might flow out at any moment.
Only after giving everyone a poached egg in their bowl did Lu Shiyu check the state of the pumpkin pot. The soup inside had turned a beautiful golden yellow. Finally, Lu Shiyu used some red jam she had made earlier to drop a few droplets onto the surface of the soup as decoration. The pumpkin bisque was complete.
“The result is even better than I expected,” Lu Shiyu couldn’t help but marvel at the perfectly golden pumpkin soup. “The quality of this pumpkin is really good; the soup it makes is yellow enough.”
“Hurry up and serve me a bowl! I can’t wait!” Shao Xingyang urged Lu Shiyu.
Yan Hong, however, keenly sensed something was wrong and said, “Why are you being so proactive today?”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Shao Xingyang’s eyes darted around, which only drew more suspicious looks from Yan Hong.
“You’re usually so hesitant when eating, always waiting for the captain to eat before you do. Why are you demanding to be the first to eat now?”
“Sigh, isn’t that just because those mutated creatures look too weird?” Shao Xingyang talked nonsense. “It wasn’t easy to finally get a meal of normal food; isn’t it normal for me to be happy? You’re too sensitive.”
“Am I too sensitive, or am I right?” Yan Hong scrutinized Shao Xingyang. “Don’t try to fool me.”
While the two were still bickering, Tang Zeyu and Chen Yunliang on the other side had already started eating.
Tang Zeyu blew on the scalding pumpkin soup. The soup was mellow and thick, as rich as molten gold—neither a thin liquid nor a heavy paste. The surface of the soup had a soft luster, with large chunks of vine melon pulp and fine bits of pumpkin pulp floating within.
Tang Zeyu took a sip directly from the bowl. The first thing he felt was the heat carrying the fragrance of the pumpkin. After steaming and boiling, the sweetness of the pumpkin had been thoroughly extracted, seemingly concentrated in this bowl of soup. Strands of pumpkin bits floated in the soup and went down with it, adding a richer texture. With a careful aftertaste, one could even taste a milky flavor.
At first bite, the vine melon might make one mistake it for pumpkin, as its appearance had been completely assimilated by the pumpkin and its outer layer was coated in a thick pumpkin soup. But upon eating further, one could taste the unique refreshingness inside the vine melon, as if eating a piece of heated honeydew.
Seeing that the others had already started eating, Shao Xingyang raised his voice a few notches and said, “Why have you guys already started eating!”
“Who told you to keep messing around with Yan Hong?” Chen Yunliang said without a shred of guilt. “If you don’t eat properly during mealtime, you’ll behave once all the food is gone.”
“Don’t say that. There’s plenty of pumpkin, enough for everyone,” Lu Shiyu turned to Shao Xingyang and Yan Hong. “You two come and eat too. This pumpkin tastes really sweet.”
The bickering pair finally shuffled over awkwardly and picked up their bowls to eat.
Chen Yunliang put the poached egg in his bowl and poked the yolk with a spoon. The tender yellow liquid flowed out from the enclosure of the snowy white egg white. Chen Yunliang tasted it after thoroughly mixing the poached egg with the pumpkin soup, but felt the taste wasn’t as good as drinking the soup directly.
“Not every combination of foods tastes good together.”
Chen Yunliang silently finished his bowl of pumpkin soup mixed with a poached egg, feeling that the original natural sweetness of the pumpkin had been ruined.
“Wow! It’s really delicious, so sweet. It’s practically a dessert!” Shao Xingyang was also won over by the deliciousness of the pumpkin soup. “If I had known, I would have taken a few more pumpkins. Being pecked was worth it.”
“I hope you remember what you’re saying now the next time you’re being beaten,” Yan Hong said, then took a sip of the soup. The rich flavor also exceeded her expectations. “Mm, why is it so good?”
“Right?” Lu Shiyu said, holding her bowl. “The taste of this pumpkin is much better than the ones in the base. If only it could be introduced to the base for mass cultivation and production.”
Yan Hong imagined the scene and shook her head. “I feel like before they could achieve mass production, they’d kill each other first, causing the yield to plummet. Plus, they might even have to pay workers’ compensation.”
“Ah, that seems true,” Lu Shiyu mused while biting her spoon. “But it’s such a pity that such a delicious variety of pumpkin can’t be artificially cultivated.”
“Hey, I’m saying, did you guys really not taste anything different in here?” Shao Xingyang pointed to the soup in his bowl.
“What’s different?” Lu Shiyu thought for a long time but couldn’t think of anything unusual about this pot of soup.
“Spill! What did you sneakily do again?” Yan Hong had already guessed. Given Shao Xingyang’s typical behavior, he had likely done something secret and was waiting for someone to notice. An elbow strike nearly sent Shao Xingyang and his bowl flying.
“Ouch, actually, I put a bit of cheese into the soup,” Shao Xingyang scratched his head. “How did none of you taste it?”
“Cheese?” Tang Zeyu looked at the orange-yellow soup. “No wonder there was a faint milky taste.”
“Cheese? Where did you get cheese?” Lu Shiyu asked.
“Need you even ask? It must be snacks this kid brought along secretly again.”
With that, Yan Hong stood up to rummage through Chen Yunliang’s backpack, and Chen Yunliang hurriedly put down his bowl to stop her.
“Hey, hey, hey! Stop flipping through it! There really isn’t much! I don’t even have enough for myself!”
“Nonsense! When have you ever left the base without bringing a ton of snacks!”
In the end, Yan Hong returned with an armful of snacks, leaving Shao Xingyang to weep while holding his visibly deflated backpack.
“Robbery! This is blatant robbery!”