novelraw Chapter 112: This Chicken Soup Is Quite Delicious
Chapter 112: This Chicken Soup Is Quite Delicious
Tang Xiaoxue looked puzzled. "What did you buy all this for?"
"Did you finish the free-range chickens I brought last time?"
"Not yet."
"Perfect, then! Ginseng braised with an old hen, it's tremendously nourishing!"
Hu Caiyi patted her own smooth little cheeks. "Winter is so dry. It's the perfect time to stock up on nutrition!"
Spring has already arrived, dear. What are you going on about?
"As for the rest..."
"I don't really know about any of that either. Whatever it is, just let your kitchen staff sort it out!"
Hu Caiyi shoved the assortment of medicine boxes into Li Qiuchen's arms, grabbed Tang Xiaoxue by the hand, and went running inside.
She had only gone a few steps when the girl lifted her nose and sniffed."Are you braising chicken in here?"
Foxes were canines, after all. That nose was no ordinary thing.
"No."
Tang Xiaoxue denied it without hesitation.
"You can't fool me. Not only are you braising chicken, you're braising it with ginseng."
Hu Caiyi followed the smell toward the side room.
Li Qiuchen caught up with his armload of gifts and offered an explanation, "It was made for me. If the young miss wants chicken, I'll have the cook make a fresh pot."
He might have been better off not mentioning it, because the moment he did, Hu Caiyi's expression turned distinctly complicated.
"No, I have to have a taste!"
Hu Caiyi grabbed Tang Xiaoxue's hand and ran toward the side room, muttering under her breath as she went, "You're braising chicken in here and you still won't admit it. Xuexue, your conscience has gone thoroughly rotten!"
"This is the chicken you brought last time."
"I most certainly did not bring ginseng last time!"
She burst into Li Qiuchen's room, looked around, shook her head and remarked, "They have young Steward Li living in such sparse conditions, tsk tsk. And he's a top student in the county school's inner hall, too."
"He likes it this way."
"If it were at my house, hmph..."
Hu Caiyi left the thought unfinished. Her gaze had landed on the food basket sitting on the table.
Had she gone eight hundred years without a meal? The moment she spotted a chicken she had to get her teeth into it.
Li Qiuchen moved to stop her, but Hu Caiyi had already whipped open the basket with nimble hands, picked up the ladle, scooped up a spoonful of steaming hot chicken soup, and tipped it into her mouth.
Don't... well, too late now.
Li Qiuchen let out a long inward sigh.
That was, after all, the rock sugar braised chicken produced by Young Miss Tang on her very first time in the kitchen, a dish he himself had not yet dared to attempt.
"Hmm? Why does this taste different from what we make at home?"
"Rock sugar."
Hu Caiyi smacked her lips and scooped up another spoonful. "Your cook really knows what they're doing."
"I made it."
Pfft.
Hu Caiyi sprayed a mouthful of soup and clapped a hand over her mouth, coughing furiously.
"What's so hard about braising a chicken?"
Tang Xiaoxue said coolly, "Why do the two of you both assume I'm an idiot who can't manage even something this simple?"
"No, that's not what I meant at all!"
Hu Caiyi rushed to explain, "It's just... you personally made chicken soup for young Steward Li?"
"What of it?"
"You're the young miss!"
Hu Caiyi stole a quick glance at Li Qiuchen, pulled Tang Xiaoxue to one side, and spoke to her with the gravity of someone imparting serious wisdom, "You are the mistress, he is the servant. How can you be making chicken soup for him? People will get the wrong idea if this gets out..."
"There's no one else here."
"That's not what I, oh never mind, what I'm saying is that you need to understand that between a mistress and a servant there cannot be any of that... Steward Li, am I right?"
"You are."
"You see, even he says so!"
Hu Caiyi turned back and fixed Tang Xiaoxue with a firm stare. "The point is simply that this sort of thing isn't done. You could have the cook make it, or have Little Lamei bring it over. There has to be an intermediary step. That's the proper way. Do you understand?"
Tang Xiaoxue responded lightly, "Mm."
Then thought for a moment and added, "You have more and more rules these days."
"Do you think I enjoy it?"
Hu Caiyi let out a long sigh. "My father makes me study all of this every single day. He says if I don't learn it I'll never find a husband. Our family already has a poor reputation in Yun County to begin with. If I don't know how to conduct myself properly, people will talk even more..."
Hu Caiyi had harbored grand ambitions from a young age, aspiring to be a young lady of refinement.
She also hoped to reshape her one and only close friend, Tang Xiaoxue, into a young lady of refinement.
In Li Qiuchen's view, this was an exceedingly tall order.
A fox who was timid as a mouse and reverted to her true form at the slightest disturbance, paired with a single-threaded thinker who was always looking for an excuse to pick up a weapon and start swinging, neither of them fit the image of a refined young lady by any stretch of the imagination.
What surprised him most, however, was the chicken soup Tang Xiaoxue had actually produced.
It was genuinely proper chicken soup, nothing had gone catastrophically wrong with it.
A false alarm after all.
The northern style of ginseng braised chicken was wonderfully straightforward, just ginseng, an old hen, a few slices of mature ginger, and a small pinch of fine salt.
Tang Xiaoxue had learned the technique from Governess Zhang. Among the great households of the capital, ginseng chicken soup was prepared with considerably more care. Beyond the ginseng, one also needed red dates, wolfberries, Chinese angelica root, astragalus...
The household hadn't stocked all of those ingredients, so Governess Zhang had taught her to add two pieces of rock sugar instead to bring out the flavour.
She had said a little, and Tang Xiaoxue had used a little. In that respect, she was not the sort of person given to wild improvisation.
...
More than ten days had passed since the tragedy on the Dragon Scale River, and still there was nothing further to report.
After every available means had been exhausted without result, everyone had tacitly accepted that the missing classmates, Senior Sister Peng Lan among them, were not coming back.
The students who had been ordered to stay home in reflection all received notice to return to their studies. Life had to go on.
But the matter would not be laid to rest so easily.
On the day they returned, Li Qiuchen found many unfamiliar faces in the inner hall.
Forty-two cultivators at the Qi Refining realm in total. This was the true depth of strength the county school's inner hall possessed.
Even Senior Brother Yang, who usually kept to himself and never appeared within the school grounds, was among them.
Chief Senior Brother Murong Feng stood in the courtyard, his expression grave.
"This incident was a serious provocation against the county school's inner hall. I ask each of you junior brothers and sisters to do everything in your power to help me find the truth and bring the culprit to justice."
Someone spoke up at once, "Senior brother, you have been investigating this for days. Do you have any leads? If there are none at all, even those of us willing to help won't know where to begin."
"There are no leads."
Murong Feng's face was expressionless. "But the absence of leads is itself the most significant lead of all."
"Our opponent is absolutely not some reclusive old bottom-feeder with no interest in the world's affairs. The fact that they were able to tie up every loose end this cleanly means they have a thorough understanding of the inner hall and the county government's methods of investigation."
"With all of you present today, I may as well be direct about it. I have every reason to believe that there is a traitor within our county school, and that the true culprit is somewhere among you."
The moment those words landed, the whole courtyard erupted.
"Senior brother, isn't that a rather rash conclusion?"
"What does the teacher make of this?"
Murong Feng raised a hand to quiet the chorus of voices from his junior brothers and sisters.
"I know that some of you, myself included, carry certain secrets that cannot be brought into the open. That is perfectly normal."
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