Ever since obtaining the space, Qi Jun’s life had clearly improved. At the very least, he no longer had to endure those horrifying foods.
However, he still did not understand this world particularly well. To avoid arousing suspicion, he continued buying one serving of the cheapest nutritional food every day. Fortunately, now that he had seasonings and vegetables from the space, even those flavorless nutritional foods could be treated like rice porridge and made quite tasty.
The important problem was that he still had not figured out how to use the grain-threshing machine. He could not yet eat the rice or wheat. The only grain he could eat directly was corn, and unfortunately the corn was already old and mature. The stone mill was far too heavy for him to operate, so for the time being, he could only make do with nutritional food as his staple.
o(╯O╰)o
Whenever Qi Jun busied himself with things inside the space, his mood improved considerably. The original Qi Jun’s sadness was also gradually weakening there. Qi Jun felt as though he was slowly absorbing and dissolving the emotions the original owner had left behind.
Sometimes he still felt guilt, regret, or even reluctance to let those feelings go, but overall he considered his outlook remarkably optimistic.
After all, with such a miraculous treasure in his possession, if he still couldn’t stay optimistic, even heaven would have no reason to forgive him.
Over the past two days, Senior Qiu Bao had called every day to “harass” him for a while, and as a result, the two had become more familiar with each other. Qiu Bao even invited Qi Jun to come help them “work” at the freshman reception desk. For one thing, he could chat with the bored seniors there. For another, when new students arrived, he could get to know more people.
In a new environment, having another friend could only bring benefits.
Qi Jun hesitated only briefly before agreeing.
He knew perfectly well that isolating himself from everyone else was absolutely inadvisable, especially in a large social environment like a university. He would need to find work and support himself in the future, so maintaining good interpersonal relationships was genuinely important.
More importantly, university in the beastman world lasted six years. If students failed to graduate, they had to continue studying even longer. During such a “lengthy” university career, making new friends was practically essential.
There was one thing that left Qi Jun rather frustrated, though.
Ever since he agreed to help at the freshman reception desk, the seniors insisted on dragging him out to eat with them every afternoon. Qiu Bao had filled in the blanks with her own imagination and told everyone his family was not wealthy, so they refused to let him pay.
But Qi Jun genuinely did not like the food!
As a result, everyone now had another impression of Qi Jun in addition to “gentle” and “easygoing”:
He ate far too little.
During the day, he laughed and joked with the seniors. Besides becoming familiar with various matters concerning the West Campus, he also learned a little gossip about the other two campuses.
For example, the beastmen on the East Campus loved “fighting” more than anything. The slightest disagreement was often settled through sparring.
By contrast, the high-psychic-power pure humans and powerful beastmen on the Central Campus—who were stronger than the East Campus students—were generally very refined and well-mannered. There were naturally some arrogant people who practically looked at everyone through their nostrils, but most were normal enough.
Comparatively speaking, however, the beastmen from the East Campus were much easier to get along with.
After all, beastmen liked choosing sub-beastmen as partners, so students from the West Campus were extremely popular with the male beastmen from the East Campus.
“I heard this year’s freshman military training will be handled by people from the Central Academy. I wonder which instructor we’ll get. Last year, military training practically stripped off an entire layer of our skin! Those beastman officers have absolutely no concept of a sub-beastman’s physical limits. We already had such exhausting tasks, and they still kept drilling us. It was miserable!” Qiu Bao had just finished a serving of roasted Dilu Beast meat that tasted neither properly sweet nor properly salty. She leaned lazily back in her chair and grumbled.
Nan Yi, a male sub-beastman sitting beside her, added, “You haven’t heard? Apparently the chief instructor is General Dongfang!”
At that, everyone’s ears practically stood upright.
Even Qi Jun, who had no idea what the fuss was about, became curious.
Having a general personally supervise freshman military training seemed like an absurd waste of talent, didn’t it?
Nan Yi looked around to make sure no one else was nearby before lowering his voice slightly. “I heard the Dongfang family arranged a blind date for General Dongfang, and the person is one of this year’s first-year students on our West Campus.”
Several people immediately went, “Tch~!”
Qiu Bao did not believe it at all. “What kind of joke is that? Even if General Dongfang comes from a collateral branch of the Dongfang family, he’s still the strongest person of his generation, all right? Besides, at the Central Academy, the people who admire him could practically form an entire fleet. Why would his family arrange a blind date with someone from our West Campus? And another thing—General Dongfang may not have formally graduated from the Central Campus yet, but he’s already been working in the military for a year! If all he needed was to meet someone for a blind date, why would he waste an entire month on it?”
The others chimed in with agreement.
Nan Yi shrugged. “I already said it’s only something I heard! Honestly. You females are terrible. The moment you hear General Dongfang might be going on a blind date, why do all of you react so strongly?”
Qiu Bao was the first to look at him with contempt. “You’re talking as though you don’t admire General Dongfang yourself!”
Nan Yi’s face abruptly reddened. “Don’t talk nonsense! I’m a male who loves females! Besides, look at my build. I’m almost as sturdy as a beastman. A cute pure human like Xiao-Jun is far better suited to a powerful and domineering General Dongfang!”
Qi Jun, struck by a stray arrow for absolutely no reason, instantly felt black lines cover his forehead. “How did I get dragged into this?! I don’t even know who you’re talking about or what he looks like!”
And another thing—he was a male who loved females too, all right!
Although apparently he no longer had the qualifications for that…
Uh…
Come to think of it, in his previous life he had never genuinely fallen in love with any female either…
Whatever! The point was that this entire topic clashed horribly with him!
All the daytime chatter made Qi Jun feel pleasantly full inside. He genuinely loved the feeling of not having to fear loneliness. Even when everyone occasionally made him the target of a joke, he could tell there was no malice behind it.
But when evening came and he returned to the dormitory, the sudden silence around him felt strangely cold.
Qi Jun understood very clearly that loneliness had created a kind of fear inside him.
And that loneliness did not come merely from losing the Qi family’s so-called “relatives.” In reality, it came from having crossed into an utterly unfamiliar time and place.
He was determined to integrate into this world, but the sense of wrongness he felt in every detail of daily life would not disappear overnight.
So at times like this, he chose to enter the space and throw himself into cultivating the fields.
He wanted to see what the space would become after leveling up, of course, but more than that, the work helped him vent some of the panic and anxiety of being completely alone in a strange era.
Because the flow of time in the space differed so drastically from the outside world, even if Qi Jun spent only one hour of real-world time inside each day, a very long period passed within the space.
Unfortunately, he truly knew nothing about farming.
Even though the seeds had a one-hundred-percent survival rate, the simple sequence of digging holes, planting seeds, and covering them with soil exhausted him every day.
That was how he discovered another miraculous property of the little thatched room: it reduced fatigue.
As long as he rested inside that room for eight or ten minutes of space-time, most of the soreness in his arms and legs disappeared. At present, however, it did not vanish completely. He wondered whether the effect would become stronger after the space leveled up.
Qi Jun thought that leaving the space while still slightly tired helped him avoid overthinking and allowed him to fall asleep faster and more comfortably.
So perhaps that was actually a good thing.
At noon the next day, yet another senior treated him to lunch.
Qi Jun felt that if he continued shamelessly eating and drinking at everyone else’s expense, it would become truly unreasonable. He now possessed assets of more than two hundred thousand points. Although that was currently his entire fortune, he could certainly afford to pay for one meal.
The problem was that the food tasted awful, and the thought of spending a large amount of his own money on it genuinely hurt.
In the end, he decided that when he returned that afternoon, he would buy ingredients at the supermarket. The next morning, he could cook something edible and bring it for everyone.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Qi Jun said “edible,” not “delicious.”
He had absolutely no confidence in the ingredients of this world.
And he could not take food from his space out and use it.
That was truly tragic.
After several days of eating for free, Qi Jun had developed a general understanding of several common kinds of mutant-beast meat.
Actually, the texture of some beast meats was acceptable, and a few even had quite pleasant mouthfeel. The real problem was their overwhelming gamey smell. Some also carried sour or astringent flavors, which made them difficult for him to accept.
Of course, part of the problem was that people in this era had virtually no concept of cooking.
Here, pan-frying, stir-frying, braising, and deep-frying had been reduced to four basic methods: heat-roasting, boiling, dehydration, and processing into nutritional agents.
Except for the final method, none involved any concept of removing unpleasant odors or flavors. And the final method processed food so thoroughly that the resulting taste became excessively simple and pure.
That evening, Qi Jun searched the internet for a great deal of information about food.
In the end, he decided to use the Dilu Beast meat he had eaten the day before to make some jerky as a gift for the seniors.
According to the information, the Dilu Beast was a Level Three mutant beast and relatively easy to hunt. It was not especially large. Judging by the dimensions listed in the data, Qi Jun thought a Dilu Beast was probably about the size of an adult goat.
Its appearance, however, was genuinely difficult to describe.
It looked like several different animals had somehow been combined together.
To be honest, the moment Qi Jun saw an image of a Dilu Beast, his appetite plummeted. He could not help it. It gave him the distinct sensation that he was about to eat some kind of biochemical monster.
Because they were relatively easy to hunt, Dilu Beast meat was not particularly expensive—only twenty points per jin.
However, people in the beastman world, whether powerful beastmen or sub-beastmen, had impressive appetites. Only pure humans ate what Qi Jun considered a normal amount. So he knew that buying enough beast meat would still cost a fair amount.
Even more important than the meat itself was figuring out how to remove its gamey smell and sour, astringent taste.
The best ingredients for removing gameiness were aromatic spices. Yet among the edible mutant plants, Qi Jun could not find a single thing he recognized.
He did find something resembling a scallion, but the information listed it as a rare species, and its price was enough to break his heart.
Eventually, he shifted his attention to medicinal mutant plants and cultivated plants.
To his delight, he discovered something called milk ginger.
Milk ginger was a Level Four cultivated plant. Its yield was only average, but because it could provide both flavoring agents and nutritional components for manufacturing nutritional food, while other extracted compounds could be used to produce medicines, it was not cheap.
Fortunately, he would not need much if he used it purely as a seasoning.
In the end, Qi Jun bought thirty jin of Dilu Beast meat and deliberately selected some pieces with fat attached.
The meat alone cost him six hundred points.
Just thinking about it made his heart ache. His dormitory cost only five hundred points a month!
People treating him to meals really wasn’t necessarily a good thing!
Milk ginger was also sold at the supermarket, for one hundred and sixty points per jin.
That made Qi Jun quietly miserable for a moment.
But when he picked one up and smelled it, he noticed that one piece had a small sprout emerging from it. He immediately placed it in his cart.
He could take it back and put it in the space to see whether the sprout would grow!
If it did, he would never have to buy milk ginger again. He might even be able to sell some of what he grew himself and earn money.
Besides, the smell was quite pleasant. It combined a milky fragrance with the sharp aroma of ginger. Ground into juice, it ought to work very well.
He had bought enough salt and sugar earlier. This time, Qi Jun also purchased a small bottle of the cheapest alcohol.
He sincerely hoped alcohol in this world could also remove gamey flavors.
But since he had not paid for it yet, he was too embarrassed to twist the cap open and taste it.
If it tasted terrible or could not be used in cooking, then… he could always serve it to someone else someday.
It was really expensive!
Still, when he brought the ingredients home and genuinely managed to cook something from them, the sense of achievement was completely different from cooking with ordinary ingredients.
Qi Jun felt that these bizarre mutant beasts and mutant plants might still be salvageable if prepared with the right methods.
Take the Dilu Beast meat he made today.
The meat itself was naturally springy, so he thought it should be well suited to jerky. After marinating it in milk-ginger juice, alcohol, and sugar, he sprinkled on some salt and first tested the mixture by pan-frying a slice.
The flavor was remarkably normal.
Although “normal” could not exactly be called praise, when it came to food in this world, it was already an extraordinary achievement.
At least Qi Jun considered it a major success!
The gamey and astringent flavors of the Dilu Beast meat had been removed very effectively by the milk ginger and alcohol. The milk ginger’s creamy fragrance also enhanced the aroma of the meat, so seasoning it with nothing but salt still produced a very pleasant result.
After marinating all the lean meat, he rendered the fatty pieces into oil and then used that oil to fry strips of meat.
There was no helping it. He had not found any vegetable oil, and the supermarket sold only solid chunks of animal fat. He thought he might as well use what came with the meat.
The flavors of different mutant beasts varied so drastically that the thought of mixing meat from one species with fat from another made him deeply uneasy!
