novelraw Chapter 984 - 539: Food Stall
Chapter 984 - 539: Food Stall
The Balanidae is also called "horse teeth," because its shape resembles horse teeth somewhat. What impressed Ning Xiaoxian the most about it is that although it looks like a shell, it’s actually not a shellfish, but an arthropod. It’s in the same class as shrimp and crabs. These creatures are abundantly found on seaside rocks, the underside of large ships, and even on whales. They stick with such tenacity that when their numbers increase, they slow the ships down. Thus, every time a large ship docks, the sailors have to go under the ship to clean them off.
Food stalls purchase them from the sailors at a very low price, roughly a few pennies for every ten pounds, and then expertly prepare them. In the Huaxia Wenzhou region, Balanidae is dealt with by "salting heavily for long preservation," but here, the food stalls knock off their hard shells, then mix them with ginger, green onion, vinegar, coriander, and sweet peppers. The taste is surprisingly fresh and sweet; while it doesn’t have the strong flavors typical of other seafood, savoring it slowly one bite at a time reveals a crisp, fresh taste, making it a perfect complement to alcohol.
Another cold dish surprised her quite a bit—it was pickled mud snails. These seafood morsels are each smaller than the tip of her index fingernail and typically found in coastal mudflats. As Duling City is near Mirror Sea, it naturally produces abundant mud snails. In this region, it’s currently late autumn, and mud snails are also known as "spit iron," but they are at their best quality when produced during the peach blossom season. The mud snails available in autumn, while not as exquisite as the "Taohua mud snails" from the lunar month of March, are nonetheless plump, fatty, and extremely tasty.
The food stall she sat in used salt to first draw out the sea water from the snails, then added ginger, sugar, and high-proof aged liquor to pickle them. This region has also started popularizing spicy flavors, so a bit of Sichuan peppercorns is added to the marinade. The taste is deliciously rich, fresh, crispy, and tender, leaving a lasting impression. Additionally, this item has good medicinal properties and can be used for liver and kidney yin deficiency. Men, well, eating a little is quite beneficial; yes, everyone knows.
Sadly, mud snail shells are thin and fragile, so one needs skill to eat them. You have to "slurp" the snail meat in one go; otherwise, the shell fragments will break into your mouth, and you’ll be spitting endlessly. Ning Xiaoxian had eaten this often before, so she naturally wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of Huangfuming. She thought to herself, fortunately, she wasn’t a young lady of proper manners; otherwise, faced with such a delicacy, she wouldn’t know where to start.
Huangfuming suddenly chuckled out loud watching her eat mud snails.
Ning Xiaoxian lifted her chopsticks and tapped him lightly on the head, annoyed, "What are you laughing at? While a lady is dining, do you dare make such noises?"
Do ladies eat like this? Huangfuming grinned, "Last time I brought someone here to eat, Jin Manyan wouldn’t touch this nor that. This pickled mud snail was obviously delicious, yet she could sit and watch without eating."
She hesitated, then covered her mouth and laughed. Jin Manyan, being the daughter of Jishi Building’s Sect Leader, admired Huangfuming and wished to show her best to him. How would she dare to slurp mud snails and ruin her image? This guy took her here ostensibly to watch her make a fool of herself.
While the cook was busy preparing dishes, she casually asked, "Your kung fu, isn’t it some ordinary Divine Skill?"
He chuckled, "It’s not what I learned from my sect but a secret technique passed down from my King Jinghai Mansion. Sister Ning, my father doesn’t allow me to tell anyone the secrets of these Divine Skills, so..."
"I know, I know, I won’t ask." She wasn’t surprised either. If the secrets of King Jinghai Mansion were so easily spread, then Miluo wouldn’t have found it so hard to investigate. However, when Huangfuming was casting just now, she felt he gave her a strange feeling, as if he was not using Spiritual Power or demonic power. This feeling, she had seen in one other person before—the Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator who stood up for Qing Ji when he was being pursued. The techniques he used, Painted Skin Technique and Grassman Curse Technique, seemed similar to Huangfuming’s Divine Skills.
Huangfuming was curious, "How did you unravel the poison from my little yellow snake? Ordinary Spirit Pills can only antidote ordinary poisons. Truly potent toxins aren’t neutralized by common Detoxification Pills; one needs to treat them symptomatically like folk doctors do. The snake I summon is extraordinarily venomous; neither Stabilizing Void Pill nor Beneficial Poison Clearing works at all."
Ning Xiaoxian dipped in water and casually drew on the table: the snake’s twisting body, small wings, and some little bumps on its head. Huangfuming recognized it as his summoned little snake. "Given this appearance, isn’t it evident? It’s even yellow; it’s an ancient exotic beast called Viper, capable of flying through mist, incredibly swift, with a poison that leans towards yin. I suspect what you summoned wasn’t the true Viper, otherwise, this kind of exotic beast isn’t easy to control; if it throws a tantrum, it would gnaw clean every cultivator and mortal here. Changtian’s True Body is a giant snake; she adores these creatures and naturally knows this famously renowned Viper.