Da Zaojun

Chapter 182 The Legend of the Huang Family Compound

Most people don't like to eat these bitter vegetable buns, but some people have a particular taste for them.

However, once the special effects of bitter vegetable buns became apparent, many people exchanged work points for them, storing them up as dry rations, since the effects were quite good.

However, for the first batch of food made from wild vegetables, in order to recreate the original recipe as closely as possible, kaolin clay and rice bran were added.

Now that he had mastered the five flavors, Song Wuji naturally wouldn't deliberately make the food taste bad and ruin his reputation.

However, the disciples of the Beggars' Sect's Life-Gathering Clan, who had neither good food nor good clothes, found that eating this bitter vegetable bun actually increased their cultivation speed, and they wanted the Kitchen Office to make more.

Thus, of the five flavors, Song Wuji had already mastered three: salty, sweet, and bitter. Adding the natural flavor of food, "umami," he actually had the courage to venture into the Netherworld.

But it's best to control the sour and spicy flavors.

Sourness is easy to achieve; aged vinegar, sauerkraut, pickled plums, and pickled cucumbers are all excellent examples. Mastering fermentation is key to mastering sourness.

If we're talking about pungent flavors, then the original flavor of the two little chive demons that were cut is actually spicy, or perhaps other spices.

Creating the five flavors is easy, but understanding the human emotions and sentiments they contain is not so easy.

Song Wuji persisted for a while, pickling several jars of sauerkraut and making dishes like leek dumplings and stir-fried wild onions with chili peppers, but he still couldn't directly master these two flavors. Neither the stove manual nor the stove grid provided any concrete hints, so Song Wuji could only think that if all else failed, he could use other flavors as substitutes, such as "stinky".

Having experienced bitterness firsthand, Song Wuji actually had some ideas about eating pungent foods, such as stinky mandarin fish, stinky amaranth, and stinky tofu...

This is also a flavor that can be paired with umami to replace spiciness and sourness.

Alternatively, you can combine spiciness and sourness, such as making a spicy and sour fish head dish.

The women were picking wild vegetables and had already found wild chili peppers. Before the great change of the demons in Taichang, people generally preferred spicy food, so it was normal to find wild chili peppers in the wilderness.

Although these wild chilies did not turn into spirits, their spiciness increased dozens or even hundreds of times, perhaps due to some kind of "spiritual mutation."

More importantly, this chili pepper is a bird's eye chili, which is sharp and spicy. It is only about the size of a finger, but if you get a little bit of its juice on your hand, you will feel an unbearable burning sensation, as if you are on fire.

According to the Fire element in the Five Elements theory, wild mountain peppers are fiery and ascending, and thrive in the sun. They absorb the fiery energy from the sunlight and concentrate it in the pepper, which is why they are so extremely hot.

With careful nurturing, it can be cultivated into a ninth-grade fire-attribute spirit seed.

Song Wuji thought of the industrial chili peppers from his previous life and thought to himself: If these chili peppers could be made into chili oil, it would be so delicious to use them as a hot pot base!
It's the spicy smoke produced when stir-frying hot pot broth. As the Kitchen God, Song Wuji can collect it, since it's considered incense for offering sacrifices to the Kitchen God.

Next time you encounter a demon, even if you're evenly matched and can't defeat it, you can use spicy smoke to sting its eyes, making it keep tearing up and sneezing. Anyway, this stuff isn't poison, so maxing out poison resistance won't help. It's just a bit insidious and vicious.

Who knew that Song Wuji only had this "spicy" idea, and then put it into practice, drying some wild mountain peppers, crushing them into chili powder, intending to use them against the enemy, but accidentally comprehended the spiciness of the five flavors.

Even so, it was a case of hurting the enemy a thousand while losing eight hundred of one's own. Just from pounding the chili peppers, he was choked and his eyes watered. You must know that Song Wuji could even fight a seventh-rank demon. In addition, chili peppers belong to the fire element in the Five Elements, and Song Wuji is in charge of the fire virtue. He should have some immunity to this kind of spiciness, but he was still like this. I really don't know how painful it would be for other demons and monsters if they got chili powder in their eyes.

[By making chili powder, you will understand the five flavors of spiciness and gain the trait: Burning Qi]

Burning Qi: The spicy flavor is refreshing, but the spiciness isn't immediately apparent; it intensifies over time, with each bite stimulating the taste buds in turn. The intense heat provides a powerful and exhilarating experience, leaving a lingering aftertaste. It also invigorates the mind, promotes yang energy, and dispels evil. Effects: Ignites internal qi, temporarily increasing martial arts power by 10% and temporarily increasing burn damage to non-human beings by 1-10%.

very good!

Song Wuji carefully put away the chili powder. The spiciness is for seasoning; just a little bit is enough, don't add too much.

Compared to salty, sweet, and bitter flavors, this spicy flavor, though so spicy it stung my eyes, thankfully didn't cause any major problems.

Overall, if you replace sourness with umami, that's enough to make up the five flavors.

But the five flavors are a fixed combination: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty.

Sourness is ranked first, and Song Wuji didn't dare to gamble on whether he could really give up and go directly to feast the gods and ghosts to achieve the seventh rank.

So, I spent the rest of my time making sour food.

Meanwhile, Master Bao and Huang Qiaoyun, while searching for hemp and kudzu, quickly found Huang Qiaoyun's maternal home, the "Huang Family Compound".

Before the great changes in the world and the calamities caused by demons, the Huang family compound was a family-run workshop that specialized in making summer cloth.

There are hemp fields, hemp soaking ponds, hemp washing pools, hemp drying fields, silk reeling rooms, and hemp weaving areas.

Ramie grows back in batches after each harvest. Back in the day, whenever the Huang family compound harvested raw ramie and handled the subsequent tasks, the entire village worked together.

But now, after the demonic catastrophe, the Huang family compound has also been struck by demonic calamity. Looking at the abandoned Huang family compound and the vast fields of ramie, Huang Qiaoyun couldn't help but sigh, "It seems this is the place."

Master Bao was very wary. Both Matian and the Huang family compound had a dangerous atmosphere. He chopped the ramie in front of him with a kitchen knife and felt a chilling aura. He immediately asked, "Young lady, are there any stories or rumors about this place before?"

Huang Qiaoyun said, "Our place is all about weaving. There are some rumors that are related to why our Huang family was able to master hemp production and become wealthy in the first place."

After saying that, she slowly told a story.

Inside the Huang family compound, a familiar demon was watching the outside world with apprehension.

This monster was one of the demons who gathered after the Tiger Demons' rebellion. After the Tiger Demons were defeated, she went into hiding and returned to her original place, which is this Huang Family Compound.

The monster was none other than the spider demon who wielded twin swords, and the Huang family compound had become a spider's den.

The silk thread that Huang Qiaoyun longed for could be used to weave brocade. It was the "colorful spider silk" from the secret realm where spiders originated that could be used to weave brocade.

“Back then, my Huang family ancestor was also a destitute famine refugee. On the way, he found a field of wild hemp and settled there. Not long after settling down, my ancestor received a dream in which a deity appeared in his dream. It said that a deity had become our neighbor and wanted to visit us.”

The next day, a female deity appeared and asked our ancestor to take good care of Matian. She also lent our ancestor a magic shuttle, saying that with this shuttle, they could weave a rare and exquisite cloth. They said that we should offer her twenty bolts of cloth every month, and she would come back to collect them in three years.

"We're waiting for our ancestors to use the magic shuttle and discover that this treasure is extremely useful. They can weave twenty bolts of cloth a month, or even two hundred bolts of cloth in one night... But after all, the immortals will come to take it back in three years."

"Three years later, the female immortal indeed returned to retrieve the cloth. She pieced the cloth together, and the cloth transformed into a ray of light leading to the heavens, and she ascended directly into the sky."

People say she is the Weaver Girl from heaven who came down to earth to buy things.

Master Bao listened and clicked his tongue in amazement: "It sounds like a storybook, but it's usually these kinds of legends and rumors that make it easy to form a secret realm. The city lord has re-established the Bureau of Interviews to collect these strange and supernatural tales, so why hasn't it come here to investigate?"

Huang Qiaoyun shook her head: "I didn't say anything. As soon as I came to the city, I was busy weaving this and that, teaching other old ladies, and exploring the unorthodox weaving rituals. It wasn't until the city lord issued the decree to revise the bathing law that I had some free time. As soon as I had some free time, I went out to dig for wild vegetables... That's when I remembered this matter."

The Huang Family Compound was a truly grand compound, where the entire clan lived in one large, square courtyard, with one courtyard inside another, and one courtyard upon another, all enclosed by a high wall, large enough to house hundreds of people.

Huang Qiaoyun was merely a daughter of a collateral branch of the family who had married out of the area.

She sighed, "Such a high wall should have held out for a while, how could it have been completely slaughtered by demons?"

Master Bao said, "Let's go back first! It's very dangerous in here. Let's go back and report to the city lord first. Once the Huang family compound is cleared out, it might be able to be put back into production."

Huang Qiaoyun did not force her way in, but only collected some raw hemp from outside and put it into the basket behind her.

The basket behind her, with the interior space of ten baskets, was a magical artifact she had woven herself. It reduced the weight of the basket and had been divided into sections so that she could organize things by category. It was just in time for harvesting a batch of hemp.

She cut some hemp, but then a large spider pounced on her, and then it exploded automatically, and a ball of spider silk spread out into a large web.

Master Bao made a slash, tearing open the spider web, but he was also startled.

Huang Qiaoyun lowered her head and touched the spider web, concluding, "This spider silk is spiritual silk, which can be used to weave magical artifacts."

But the explosion of this spider had already alerted the other spiders in the field, and spiders of all sizes crawled out.

Seeing this, Master Bao had no choice but to carry Huang Qiaoyun on his back and flee in panic.

Upon seeing this in the Huang family compound, the spider demon let out a slight sigh of relief and then walked deeper into the compound.

She disappeared into a dry well, which led to a demon cave. Entering the cave revealed a secret realm.

This secret realm is filled with spiders, and among these spiders, one can see a spider with a human head and a spider body, which is very strange.

These spider-headed figures were transformed from the people of the Huang family compound.

The spider demon ignored the spider people who were constantly weaving cloth and went to the deepest part.

There was only a coffin, and inside the coffin was a lifelike female corpse.

Above the woman's head, a silver shuttle emitting a precious light was shuttling back and forth.

It weaves silk threads, which originate from the heads of the spider-people, just as this ethereal shuttle manipulates puppets.

The spider demon crouched cautiously beside the coffin, lost in thought.

(End of this chapter)