Ever since obtaining the space, Qi Jun’s days had become noticeably more comfortable. At the very least, he no longer had to endure those terrifying foods.
He was still unfamiliar with this world, however. To avoid arousing suspicion, he continued buying one pouch of the cheapest nutritional food every day. Fortunately, now that he had seasonings and vegetables from the space, even flavorless nutritional food could be eaten like rice porridge and made to taste quite good.
The problem was that he truly could not figure out the grain-threshing machine, so for the moment he could not eat the rice or wheat. Corn was the only grain he could use, and unfortunately the corn in the fields had already matured past the tender stage. The stone mill was too heavy for him, so he had no choice but to make do with nutritional food as his staple for now. o(╯□╰)o
Whenever Qi Jun busied himself with the space, his mood improved. Inside it, the sorrow belonging to the original Qi Jun was also gradually weakening. He felt as if the original Qi Jun’s emotions were being absorbed little by little into his own. Sometimes guilt, regret, or even reluctance still surfaced, but overall he believed his own mentality remained remarkably optimistic. With a miraculous artifact like this in his possession, failing to be optimistic would practically offend heaven itself.
Senior Qiu Bao had called to “harass” him every day for the last two days, so the two had become more familiar. Qiu Bao even invited him to help them “work” at the freshman reception station. That way, he could chat with the bored upperclassmen, and when other new students arrived, he could get to know more people. In a new environment, having more friends could only bring advantages.
Qi Jun hesitated for only a moment before agreeing. He understood very well that isolating himself from everyone was absolutely undesirable, especially in an environment as large as a university. He would eventually need to find work and support himself, so good interpersonal relationships genuinely mattered. More importantly, university in the beast world lasted six years, and students who failed to graduate had to continue beyond that. During such a “long” university life, making new friends was practically essential.
One thing, however, left Qi Jun somewhat depressed. Ever since he agreed to help at freshman reception, those seniors insisted on dragging him out to eat with them every noon. Qiu Bao had imagined an entire poor-family backstory for him and passed it along, so none of them allowed him to pay. But Qi Jun sincerely did not want to eat those foods! As a result, everyone’s impression of him gained an extra trait alongside gentle and easygoing: he ate far too little.
Spending the day joking and chatting with his seniors did more than teach him about the West Campus. He also picked up a little “gossip” about the other two campuses.
For example, beastmen on the East Campus supposedly loved “fighting.” The smallest disagreement could end in a sparring match. By contrast, the high-mental-power pure humans and powerful beastmen of the stronger Central Campus were all extremely refined. There were still plenty of arrogant people who looked down their noses at others, but most were normal enough. Even so, East Campus beastmen were said to be easier to get along with. Beastmen generally preferred sub-beastmen as partners, so students from the West Campus were extremely popular with male beastmen from the East Campus.
“I heard this year’s military training for freshmen is being handled by people from the Central Academy. I wonder which instructor we’ll get. Our military training last year practically peeled off a layer of skin! Those beastman noncommissioned officers had absolutely no idea how to account for a sub-beastman’s stamina. We already had exhausting assignments, and they still drilled us afterward. It was miserable!” Having just eaten a plate of roasted Dilu-beast meat that was somehow neither sweet nor salty, Qiu Bao leaned lazily back in her chair and muttered.
A male sub-beastman named Nan Yi picked up the conversation. “You haven’t heard? They say the chief instructor is General Dongfang!”
At that, everyone’s ears immediately perked up. Even Qi Jun, who had no idea what they were talking about, became curious. Sending an actual general to handle military training for first-year students seemed like a ridiculous waste of talent, didn’t it?
Nan Yi glanced around to make sure no one else was nearby, then lowered his voice slightly. “I heard the Dongfang family arranged a blind date for General Dongfang, and that person is among this year’s freshmen on our West Campus.”
Several people immediately made exaggerated sounds of disbelief. Qiu Bao refused to believe it. “You’ve got to be kidding! General Dongfang may come from a branch line of the Dongfang family, but he’s still the most outstanding person of his generation, all right? And on the Central Campus, the people crushing on him could probably form an entire fleet. Why would they arrange a blind date with someone from our West Campus? Besides, General Dongfang hasn’t officially graduated from the Central Campus yet, but he’s already been working in the military for a year! If they just wanted him to meet a blind date, one meeting would be enough. Why spend an entire month on it?”
Everyone else voiced agreement. Nan Yi shrugged. “I said I only heard it! Seriously. You females are terrible. The moment you hear General Dongfang might have a blind date, why do you all react so strongly?”
Qiu Bao was the first to sneer at him. “As if you don’t admire General Dongfang yourself!”
Nan Yi’s face suddenly reddened. “Don’t talk nonsense! I’m a male who loves females! Besides, with my build and appearance, I’m almost as sturdy as a beastman. A cute pure human like Xiao-Jun is much more suitable for someone as powerful and domineering as General Dongfang!”
Caught in the crossfire, Qi Jun’s face immediately filled with black lines. “How did I get dragged into this? I don’t even know who you’re talking about or what he looks like!” And I’m a male who loves females too, all right! Although apparently I’m not qualified anymore… Uh… Then again, in my previous life I never actually fell for any female either… Whatever. The point is, this entire topic clashes badly with me!
The daytime chatter made Qi Jun feel pleasantly full inside. He truly liked the feeling of not having to worry about loneliness. Even when the others occasionally used him as the target of a joke, he could tell there was no malice in it. Yet when he returned to the dormitory in the evening, the sudden silence around him felt strangely cold.
Qi Jun knew very well that loneliness had become a source of fear for him. And that loneliness was not merely because he had lost the Qi family’s so-called “relatives.” The deeper reason was that he had transmigrated into a completely unfamiliar era. His determination to fit in could not immediately erase the sense of wrongness he encountered everywhere. So at times like this, he chose to enter the space and work hard planting the empty fields. It was not only because he wanted to see what the space would become after leveling up. The labor also helped dispel the panic and unease of being alone in a strange spacetime.
Because time flowed so differently inside the space, even spending only one real-world hour there meant a very long period passed within it. Unfortunately, Qi Jun had absolutely no talent for farming. The seeds had a one-hundred-percent survival rate, but even the simple sequence of digging holes, dropping in seeds, and covering them with soil left him exhausted every day.
That was how he discovered another miraculous function of the small shabby hut: it reduced fatigue. If he rested inside for eight or ten minutes of space-time, most of the soreness in his arms and legs disappeared. At present, it did not remove the fatigue completely. He wondered whether upgrading the space would strengthen the effect.
Qi Jun thought that leaving the space with a little lingering tiredness helped reduce his tendency to overthink and allowed him to fall asleep faster and more comfortably, so in a sense that was a good thing.
At noon the next day, yet another senior treated him to lunch. Qi Jun felt that shamelessly eating and drinking for free like this was becoming unacceptable. After all, he now possessed more than two hundred thousand points. That was his entire fortune for the moment, but he could still afford to buy everyone one meal. The trouble was that paying a large amount of money for food he found disgusting made his heart ache. In the end, he decided that after returning to the dormitory that afternoon, he would buy ingredients from the supermarket and get up early the next morning to make something actually edible 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 simply bring ingredients out of the space and use them. It was a tragic situation.
After several days of freeloading, Qi Jun had gained a rough understanding of several common kinds of mutated-beast meat. Some actually had acceptable textures, and a few were even quite good. The problem was the overwhelmingly strong gamey smell. Some also carried sourness and astringency, which made them difficult for him to tolerate.
Of course, much of that might be because people in this era had almost no concept of cooking. Here, pan-frying, stir-frying, simmering, and deep-frying had been reduced to four methods: heat-roasting, boiling, dehydration, and processing into nutritional agents. Aside from the final method, none included any concept of removing unpleasant odors or flavors. And the final method purified the taste until it became absurdly one-dimensional.
That evening, Qi Jun searched the internet extensively for food-related information. In the end, he decided to use the Dilu-beast meat he had eaten the day before to make dried meat as a gift for his seniors.
According to the information online, the Dilu beast was a Level Three mutated beast and fairly easy to hunt. It was not large. Based on the listed measurements, Qi Jun thought an adult Dilu beast should be roughly the size of a full-grown goat. Its appearance, however, was genuinely difficult to describe, as if many different animals had been combined into one. To be honest, the moment he saw what a Dilu beast looked like, his appetite plummeted. He could not shake the feeling that eating one meant devouring some kind of biochemical monster.
Because Dilu beasts were easy to hunt, their meat was not too expensive—only twenty points per jin. But beastmen of every category, from powerful beastmen to sub-beastmen, had impressive appetites. Pure humans were the only group who ate amounts that Qi Jun considered normal. He had a feeling that the quantity of meat he needed to buy would still cost quite a bit.
More important than the meat itself was figuring out how to remove its gamey, sour, and astringent flavors. The best ingredients for that purpose were aromatic spices. Unfortunately, among edible mutated plants, he could not find anything familiar. The closest thing he found to a scallion was listed as a rare species, with a price high enough to break his heart.
In the end, he expanded his search to medicinal mutated plants and cultivated plants. To his delight, he discovered something called milk ginger. It was a Level Four cultivated plant with only moderate yields, but because it could provide both flavor enhancers and nutrients for nutritional food and could also be processed for ingredients used in medicine, it was not cheap. Fortunately, seasonings did not need to be used in large quantities.
Qi Jun ultimately bought thirty jin of Dilu-beast meat and deliberately chose some cuts with fat. The meat alone cost six hundred points. Just thinking about it made his heart hurt. His dormitory cost only five hundred points a month! Being treated to meals by other people was not necessarily a good thing!
The supermarket also sold milk ginger, but it cost 160 points per jin, which made Qi Jun quietly mourn. Then he picked one up and smelled it. When he noticed a little sprout growing from one of the pieces, he immediately dropped it into his cart. Once he got back, he could put it in the space and see if the sprout would grow. If it worked, he would never have to buy milk ginger again. Perhaps he could even sell what he grew and make some money.
The plant smelled quite pleasant too. It carried both a milky fragrance and the sharp scent of ginger. Qi Jun estimated that grinding it into juice would work perfectly.
He had already bought enough salt and sugar before, so this time Qi Jun purchased one small bottle of the cheapest alcohol. He very much hoped alcohol here could also remove gamey odors, but since he had not paid for it yet, he did not feel right opening the bottle to taste it. If it tasted awful or could not be used in cooking, then… he could serve it to a guest someday. God, it was expensive!
Yet once he brought all the ingredients home and actually cooked with them, the sense of accomplishment was completely different from what he felt when using ordinary ingredients.
Qi Jun decided that these strange mutated beasts and plants were still salvageable if prepared correctly. Take the Dilu-beast meat he was using today. The flesh was naturally springy, so he thought it should suit dried meat quite well. After marinating it in milk-ginger juice, alcohol, and sugar, he sprinkled on salt and tested a few slices in the frying pan. The flavor was surprisingly normal.
“Normal” was not exactly a synonym for delicious, but when it came to food in this world, that was already an extraordinary achievement. Qi Jun considered the experiment a tremendous success! The milk ginger and alcohol had removed the gamey and astringent flavors very effectively, while the milk ginger’s creamy fragrance added richness to the meat. Even with salt as the only direct seasoning, it tasted quite good.
After marinating all the lean meat, Qi Jun rendered the fatty portions into oil and used that oil to pan-fry the meat strips. There was no helping it. He had not found any vegetable oil, and the supermarket sold animal fat only in solid slabs. He might as well use fat from the same beast. The meats of these mutated species already differed so dramatically in flavor that the thought of mixing one animal’s meat with another animal’s fat made him nervous!
