Strange World Little Cooking Saint

Chapter 28 – Mountain Treasure Fish Slice Soup

Translated by Gumihou

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Everyone understood that coming to Beast Mountain meant encountering demons and spiritual beasts. However, now that a spiritual beast had actually appeared, they were all a little frightened.

Even Shiyu felt that this was strange. For a spiritual beast to quiet down the sounds of birds and animals had to be a really powerful creature. However, no matter how much she concentrated, she could hear no sound of movements at all. At the very least, she should be able to hear the movements of a powerful beast.

Does this means that there’s an extremely powerful spiritual beast that could frighten the birds and animals into silence from far away? If so, just what rank of spiritual beast could it be? Level 2? Or the incredibly powerful Level 3?

Suddenly, Yong Ming shouted, “Look up!”

Shiyu raised her head and gasped.

Goodness! Right above their heads floated something that looked like a pile of bunched up cotton. It was weird enough to see a giant wad of cotton floating above their heads, but the thing actually had a face like a human, smiling sinisterly down at them. Just looking at it sent shivers down their backs.

“Just what is that thing?” One of the female adventurer asked. Women were particularly sensitive against creepy things like these.

“It’s a Cloud Beast. Curses! How could we bump into this unlucky fellow.”

The thing above them was called a Cloud Beast, all adventurers hunting for spiritual beasts hoped to never meet this thing. Despite their strange look, they were actually Level 3 beasts, which meant killing them would be difficult. However, the most annoying thing about Cloud Beasts was that almost nothing could be sold for money.

Adventurers hunt spiritual beasts for meat and hide, but a Cloud Beast’s meat was soft and spongy, and once dead would dissolve quickly. Not only that, Cloud Beast rarely have magical stones in them. In short, encountering one would meant a loss for an adventuring group, but not one they could just run away from.

In Shiyu’s memory, the <<Spiritual Beast Special Attributes>> mentioned that these things were afraid of fire, which meant she has an element that’s strong against it. However, she was not sure whether her raw power was enough to actually roast this creature to death.

Just as Shiyu was pondering over this, a foreign voice suddenly sounded behind them. Others have arrived at the same clearing. Most of them looked up at the creepily floating Cloud Beast in disappointment. “And here I thought something good had finally appeared, it’s just this garbage.”

Shiyu’s eyes zeroed in on the extremely beautiful woman among the rest of the adventurers. From her face, Shiyu guessed that she was probably 17 or 18 years old, with an extremely well developed body. Things that should stick out really stuck out, the parts that should be slim have no excess fat. A sexy body combined with a beautiful face, this was definitely what one would consider the rarest among the rare.

“Miss Ren, it’s such a surprise to meet you again.” A different group of adventurers had trooped in. This time, the slightly flirty voice was extremely familiar to Shiyu.

Shiyu turned, and well, well, if it isn’t her target—Zhao Shangqing?

There were actually a few women in Zhao Shangqing’s group. All of them were cute, delicate looking specimen. However, there were no life in their eyes, they might as well be puppets. Under their shabby clothes, one could see bruises and injuries. That Zhao Shangqing, his lack of morals really made Shiyu sick. Though they were all hunting within a dangerous mountain, he still found time to abuse others. Moreover, a few of those girls were practically children!

She came to this mountain intending to make life difficult for Zhao Shangqing, however, the sight of those poor girls made her resolved to kill this despicable man.

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Since the leader of the latter two groups that arrived were no ordinary people, Yong Ming dared not offend them. He could only stand aside and make sure not to catch their attention. Though it was clear to him that this Miss Ren did not have any intention of getting on with this Zhao Shangqing character. He could not blame her either, especially when he noticed the poor conditions of the girls in that man’s group. It really sickened him to see people treated like that.

“Get rid of that Cloud Beast, we need to move on.” she ordered.

The people with her were clearly servants of the Ren family. Among them there were three rather high level martial artists. Which meant dealing with a Level 3 beast posed little difficulty. The only problem was that the Cloud Beast was floating very high above their heads, making it difficult to deliver damaging blows.

Since there was no benefit in fighting a Cloud Beast, once it gusted out of range of their attacks, nobody bothered to give chase. Yong Ming was extremely grateful to these people who helped him out of a sticky problem, and ventured to thank them.

At the same time, Shiyu had more or less confirmed the identity of this Great Miss Ren. The Ren family were also one of the great clans of Qing Shan City, in fact, the head of the Ren Clan was also the head of Qing Shan City. This woman before them was Ren Xue, the beloved daughter of Elder Ren.

Come to think of it, this Ren Xue also got involved with Lin Fan. However, afterwards since she could no longer keep up with Lin Fan in terms of martial strengths, she eventually became one of the many flowers in his harem.

How annoying, Lin Fan’s ‘close female friends’ seemed to be everywhere.

Shiyu muttered curses to herself deep in her heart, even that annoying Zhao Shangqhing had popped up out of nowhere. She wasn’t sure sure whether Ren Xue was trying to avoid confronting this creepy guy, but she seemed keen to avoid speaking to the man directly. She even invited Yong Ming and his group to go hunting together. Possibly with the added number of people, Shanqing’s creepiness level could be diluted a little.

Thus, the original troupe of 9 people suddenly turned into a grand scale adventuring ensemble. This made Shiyu happy as she schemed in secret.

Night fell, and the group decided to make camp next to a lake. As usual, Shiyu started to prepare food. Since there’s a water source nearby, she decided to use the materials at hand and caught a few fish from the lake.

After gutting and scaling the fish, she sliced the meat into even pieces with her trusty dagger. She then took out some spices and other ingredients from her basket.

Once the iron cooking pot was properly heated up, a splash of oil was added, followed by dried red chillies, ginger slices, and garlic pieces. The spices were sautéed until fragrant and the oil started to turn red from the dried chillies. Shiyu then poured clean water from her secret spring into the pot, she then added salt and other seasoning to taste. Almost immediately bright red dots of oil danced on top of the soup like tiny bouncing stars.

With the soup at a roiling boil, she tossed in a bunch of herbs and wild vegetables she had collected on the way, and slid the properly cleaned and sliced up fish into the soup. Just like that, the Mountain Treasure Fish Slice Soup[1] was almost done.

The spiciness of the chillies tickled the noses of the people around her, with the complex fragrance of the nearly finished soup wafting about, anyone with any degree of interest in food would be moved. The first to approach was Ren Xue, this girl have very little defence against delicious food.

She made a big show of sniffing the air and asked, “Little sister, this fish dish you made, would it be all right to share?”

Shiyu beamed an innocent smile and said, “Of course.”

Now that one person had stepped forward, others began to approach in groups of two or three. A whole pot of fish soup soon disappeared, however, there were plenty of people who still lamented about not having enough to eat.

Because of this, plenty of people volunteered to catch more fish, still others to collect water and clean the fish. The simple pot of fish soup ended up turning into an impromptu hot pot[2] party.

Luckily there were plenty of ingredients, and everyone was able to eat their fill happily. Even Zhao Shangqing was unable to resist creeping forward, wishing to eat and drink with them. However, he still remained cautious and used his own silver bowl and chopsticks to eat.

As for Shiyu, she served him a portion as normal as you please.

This auntie is not afraid of you eating too much, just afraid that you won’t eat.

Additionally, poisoning was a matter of dosage. Just because your silver bowl cannot detect poison, it did not mean that there was no poison. It was entirely possible that the dose was just too low…

[Gumihou: Hmm, what do you guys think about MC who judge characters like this? Deciding their right to live or die?]

[1] Mountain Treasure Fish Slice Soup – Delicious, especially if you put lots of garlic and onions

[2] Fish Hot pot – Since Shiyu added chilli into her first fish dish, I imagine the soup would be little red from the hot oil