Last summer and autumn, Jizhou received very little rain, and a drought began.
Everyone had been hoping for spring rain, but when spring arrived this year, it was still hot and dry. Many rivers and streams dried up, and eventually even shallow wells could no longer produce water.
No water meant no food. Even wild vegetables had become scarce.
There were many families selling their sons and daughters, with girls being the first to be abandoned. Families who loved their daughters kept them even closer than before. Once a girl was alone, she could easily be kidnapped and sold in exchange for money or food.
That was why most beggars on the streets were boys or old men. Girls… almost never wandered around alone.
No wonder this little beggar had hidden inside the shop and pretended to be a ghost.
If this had been the Su Wan’ning of her previous life, she would have looked down on such behavior. She would have thought it selfish and shameless, believing the girl would do anything just to stay alive.
And yet, in the end, the poor child had still been beaten to death.
But now, Su Wan’ning felt that the little beggar’s only mistake was that she hadn’t been careful enough.
What was wrong with wanting to survive?
Was she supposed to simply wait for others to eat her alive?
“Big Sister, please save me!”
The little beggar was covered in blood, but she suddenly threw her arms around Su Wan’ning’s leg.
The man had just sent someone to fetch his precious plant. When he turned around and saw that the little beggar still dared to ask for help, his anger flared again.
“You filthy beggar! I’ll let you off today only because you’re lucky. Get out of here!”
“Shopkeeper, please calm down. Why don’t we go inside and discuss this properly? The agent, Xie, should have come looking for you these past few days, right?”
Su Wan’ning deliberately brought up Xie Yan because she also wanted to find out what had happened.
The man froze, obviously remembering her.
Selling the shop was far more important than beating the little beggar to death.
He hurriedly invited them inside.
Su Wan’ning helped the little beggar in and asked the carriage driver to find a physician and buy some medicine.
The man simply pretended not to see it.
Then he dropped a bombshell.
“I thought Miss Su wasn’t going to buy my shop anymore! I went to the brokerage to find Agent Xie, only to learn that she’d quit. It nearly drove me crazy.”
“Quit? Why?”
They had seemed perfectly fine when they met that day, so Su Wan’ning felt uneasy.
“No idea.”
The man wasn’t very interested in the subject. He quickly pulled out the property deed.
“Miss Su, are you still buying this shop? You’ve seen it yourself. There’s nothing haunted about it. And look at how good the layout is! It’s only one hundred taels. If you say yes, we can complete the paperwork right now.”
“I’m buying it.”
Under normal circumstances, the shop would have been worth at least two hundred taels.
Now that the incident had happened, the owner hadn’t taken advantage of it to raise the price. It was a good deal.
The two had just reached an agreement when a young servant came running in, carrying a large flowerpot in his arms.
He was panting heavily.
The seedlings in the pot looked incredibly healthy, covered in clusters of slender red fruits.
“It’s really chili peppers!”
Xu Lingxi could no longer pretend to be ladylike.
She immediately plucked one off and brought it close to her nose, taking a deep sniff.
The intense spicy scent rushed straight into her nose, making it itch.
“Achoo!”
“Miss!”
Qingfang was speechless.
Then she asked curiously,
“Is this the chili pepper you were talking about?”
Xu Lingxi nodded vigorously.
She practically wanted Su Wan’ning to prepare an entire table of insanely spicy dishes right away.
But she also knew that the more she wanted this thing, the less she should show it.
So she forced herself to remain calm.
“Eating too much of this causes internal heat. No wonder the shopkeeper has such a bad temper.”
“So this is called chili pepper?”
The man was surprised.
Looking at the clusters of red fruits, Su Wan’ning blurted out,
“Facing-heaven chili?”
“You know it? How could you know?”
Xu Lingxi had been worried that recognizing the facing-heaven chili too quickly might arouse suspicion.
But Su Wan’ning, a native of this era, had actually recognized it?
Chili peppers shouldn’t even exist in this era.
“It seems I read about it in a book once. Facing-heaven chili gets its name because its fruits grow upward toward the sky.”
Su Wan’ning’s expression darkened slightly. She didn’t want to dwell on those memories and instead explained,
“Facing-heaven chili has a strong spicy flavor and an intense burning sensation. Eating it for a long time can indeed damage the body’s fluids and cause excessive liver heat. Now that we’ve found the cause, it should be easy enough to deal with.”
“But I can’t stop eating it.”
The man introduced himself as Mu Xun.
Although he was the owner of the shop, he didn’t actually live in Qingshan County. He traveled around and could barely be considered a traveling merchant.
He had obtained the facing-heaven chili by accident.
At the time, he thought the plant looked festive and beautiful, so he brought it home before the New Year to decorate the house.
But his mischievous little daughter plucked one and ate it.
The chili was so spicy that she cried her eyes out. She insisted that her father eat one too before she would let the matter go.
After Mu Xun tried it, he found it painfully spicy.
He sweated profusely, yet somehow wanted another one.
“You’ve been eating this for three months? Just eating it directly?”
Xu Lingxi looked at him as though he were an idiot.
Mu Xun hurriedly waved his hands.
“How could I? At first I ate it directly. Later, I had the cook experiment with it and put it into dishes and soups. Let me tell you, it’s delicious no matter how you prepare it!”
Once he started eating it, he became increasingly addicted.
Later, when his body began showing problems, he obediently drank medicinal soups and took pills, but he never thought the facing-heaven chili itself was the problem.
The physicians couldn’t figure it out either.
They kept wondering why his condition was getting worse despite giving him such strong medicine.
The main problem was that the physicians didn’t even know that something like facing-heaven chili existed in the world.
The more Mu Xun talked, the more excited he became, though he was also rather embarrassed.
“Miss Su, do you think I’m still curable? I can’t even control my appetite. What future can I possibly have?”
Su Wan’ning immediately helped him save face.
“Once someone becomes accustomed to spicy food, it can indeed be addictive. In your condition, you shouldn’t stop eating chili peppers abruptly. You need to reduce them gradually.”
The shop had originally been a small restaurant serving stir-fries and soups.
The stove was a standard two-burner connected brick stove. Although it had been unused for some time, it could still be used after a little cleaning.
Some of the other kitchen utensils were damaged, while others were still usable.
Su Wan’ning said,
“At noon, I’ll prepare several medicinal dishes for you to try. If you think they’re suitable, I can specially design a medicinal meal plan for you and slowly help you adjust.”
Then she looked at Xu Lingxi with a smile.
“Now I finally understand what you meant whenever you asked for spicy dishes. You were talking about chili peppers! And I kept putting so much dogwood pepper in your food.”
“Dogwood pepper is delicious too.”
Xu Lingxi was already drooling.
“How about boiled sliced pork for lunch?”
So Qingfang stayed behind to look after the little beggar.
Mu Xun went to the government office to handle the property documents, then returned home to bring pots, bowls, and other kitchenware for lunch. He also had people clean up the shop.
By the time Su Wan’ning and Xu Lingxi returned from shopping, the shop had already been completely transformed.
Besides oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and other seasonings, Su Wan’ning bought two slabs of high-quality pork belly, a fish, and a basket of eggs.
For vegetables, she bought bean sprouts, tofu, winter melon, lotus-root shoots, white fungus, tender spinach, as well as mint, chrysanthemum, bamboo leaves, and other ingredients.
Half of the pork was stewed to make rich, tender, glossy braised pork.
The other half was sliced thinly in preparation for the boiled sliced pork Xu Lingxi had described.
“First, boil the bean sprouts and meat in water. Then sprinkle on Sichuan peppercorns, green Sichuan pepper, and dried chili peppers. Finally, pour hot oil over everything. It goes sizzle and suddenly the whole dish smells amazing! It’s so good!”
Xu Lingxi knew how to eat but not how to cook, and the more she talked, the hungrier she became.
“What does it taste like?”
Su Wan’ning asked carefully.
“It’s numbing, spicy, fragrant, tender—everything! Even the bean sprouts taste delicious! Actually, you can use other vegetables as the base too. Everything gets coated with that amazing flavor. But bean sprouts are my favorite, hehe.”
“We could also add thinly sliced lotus root.”
Su Wan’ning suggested it.
Xu Lingxi immediately agreed.
However, Su Wan’ning couldn’t help thinking that simply boiling everything in water shouldn’t produce such an intense flavor.
After boiling the meat, they only poured hot oil over it. That alone shouldn’t be enough to make the vegetables underneath absorb such a rich, spicy flavor.
No wonder the dish was called boiled sliced pork.
The key was actually that “water.”