Chapter 90: Junzi Alliance, Five Grains Essence

The moonlight shone obliquely into the door.

The back kitchen was lit with lamps.

Lady Wenjing yawned lightly and scooped half a ladle of water from the stove.

The hot water boiled last night had been kept warm on the stove, and it hadn't cooled down yet, just right for washing up.

She basically only slept for two hours every night before getting up to prepare the pastries needed for the day.

By the time the sky was just getting light and the kitchen helpers and waiters were all at work, the back kitchen would become very busy, and everyone was preparing the food for the day.

It would be busy until the afternoon, after the meal time, and Dao Bai Shu would go on stage to tell stories.

Lady Wenjing would have time to sleep for another two hours.

In total, the time she slept every day was not short.

After getting used to this routine, even if she got up in the early morning, she only felt slightly tired and not too exhausted.

Once washed, she gradually felt her spirit being awakened.

Lady Wenjing tied her sleeves and poured glutinous rice flour into the basin, mixed it with warm water, and added a little sugarcane juice.

Five wooden basins, one of the glutinous rice balls was the original color, and the other four were colored with peach blossoms, green essence leaves, banana flowers, and bean powder.

The pastries in the wine house have always been a signature.

It's not a problem for the kitchen helpers to help with roasted mutton, green essence rice, and the like.

The craftsmanship of pastries still requires Lady Wenjing to do it herself to grasp the best taste.

After kneading a few glutinous rice balls, Lady Wenjing covered the basin with wet gauze and lit a stick of incense to calculate the time.

During this free time, she took half a bowl of sugarcane juice by the stove, mixed it with a little warm water, and drank it slowly.

Her grandfather left early, and he had many illnesses, which was fine.

And her parents passed away one after another in the past two years, but it was because of stomach problems.

The couple themselves opened a wine house, made the business more and more prosperous, recruited helpers, and turned the wine house into a wine house.

As a result, as people who opened a wine house, they didn't eat well when they were young, and when they were old, they had no appetite for anything, and died of illness and thinness.

In those years, her mother often exhorted her to pay attention to diet, and not to eat too much when getting up in the early morning, but she had to eat a little.

"Can sugarcane juice be used to brew wine?"

Lady Wenjing sat by the stove and suddenly thought, "It seems like I heard Dao Bai Shu mention that a poet named Zhang Zai in the Western Jin Dynasty mentioned wine brewed from sugarcane in his poems."

"It's a pity that Old Man Dao probably doesn't know the details."

Lady Wenjing picked up the bowl and drank a large mouthful heroically, "Then I'll figure it out myself. When it's brewed, I'll give that blind man a fright."

"Clatter!"

Lady Wenjing heard the sound of a blind man's cane touching the ground and turned her head to look.

She saw Chu T

Neither of these two people made any sound at all while walking.

Did they walk closer and deliberately tap their blind cane to remind me?

A thought flashed through Madame Wenjing's mind, and she smiled as she stood up and said, "Why are you two up so early?"

"Just went out and killed a few people."

Chu Tianshu pointed at Cheng Xiazi and said, "He discovered a group of people with ill intentions during the day, went to resolve it at night, and after interrogation, it turned out those people were specifically targeting Madame Wenjing."

"So we wanted to come and ask if you had any major enemies in the past?"

Madame Wenjing was slightly stunned.

Cheng Xiazi also turned his face toward Chu Tianshu.

Why are you so blunt, talking about killing people right off the bat?

If I had known, I would have said it myself!

"It's like this."

Cheng Xiazi added, "Those few were members of the Yuwen family, who are famous in the Great Tang martial arts world. I already had old grievances with them, so I was particularly vigilant."

"This group acts ruthlessly, and having traveled such a long distance, they certainly won't give up because of one failure."

"You need to think back carefully. If you were inadvertently drawn into some event, identifying the crux of the matter early is the only way to have a method of prevention and resolution."

Madame Wenjing put her hands on her hips and fell into deep thought.

The incense in the corner burned lower and lower, and the very last bit of the incense tip fell into the ash.

Madame Wenjing came back to her senses.

"Is the incense finished?"

She returned to the wooden basins, took out a wooden mold, pinched the glutinous rice flour into pieces, and filled the mold. Once filled, she quickly inverted it into the steamer, tapping it to shake the cakes out.

Cheng Xiazi said, "Don't panic, you can think about it slowly."

"I'm not panicking."

Madame Wenjing looked back and smiled, "This step of making pastries requires quick hands and feet; perhaps it sounds a bit chaotic."

She lowered her head to look at the glutinous rice dough, her hands still moving without pause, and spoke.

"You are always timid and unwilling to get close; is it because you think that I, a commoner, cannot truly view the lives of you martial artists with composure?"

"Actually, before this place became the Wang Cheng, it wasn't this peaceful, and the trend of swordmasters dueling inside and outside the city was heavy."

"From childhood to adulthood, I have seen no shortage of fresh corpses, and I have personally washed the ground more than two or three times."

Although Madame Wenjing was looking down, she was clearly smiling.

"The first time you took action in the building, it was to stop two swordmasters who wanted to duel here, so they wouldn't ruin the ground."

"So, you should be able to imagine the lack of peace here, yet you treat me differently; does this count as being overly concerned?"

Cheng Xiazi's hand tensed slightly, then relaxed, and he sighed, "Let's talk about the main business first."

Madame Wenjing suddenly raised her head and glanced at him.

This glance, with clear apricot eyes, contained a deeply captivating power.

The usual gentle and soft affection seemed to have fermented to a certain point just now, revealing her true nature and turning into a kind of determined, heroic beauty.

Chu Tianshu watched from the sidelines, finding it very interesting.

Clearly, Cheng Xiazi could kill three or four people of Madame Wenjing's level with a casual turn and a strike.

But at this moment, the sense of strength and weakness they gave others was completely reversed.

"It is precisely because I can't think of the main business that I talked about these things first."

Madame Wenjing had already withdrawn her gaze, stacked the steamer layers one by one, moved them into the large pot, and turned to sit on the small stool behind the earthen stove.

Striking the flint, she lit the grass first, then burned the firewood.

After setting up a few pieces of firewood, she clapped her hands and walked out.

"I really can't think of what I could have been involved in recently that would make a Great Tang family run so far to kill me."

"If you say it's an old grudge, that shouldn't be it either."

Madame Wenjing said calmly, "My grandfather's generation was abducted by the former King of Nanzhao and, like other abducted Tang people, was forcibly relocated to various parts of the Nanzhao Kingdom."

"It wasn't until my parents' generation that we gradually made the restaurant prosperous."

"Commoners like us would never have any deep-seated old grudges in the Great Tang."

Chu Tianshu began to ponder, "Then that is truly strange."

"If the intent to kill doesn't come from an old grudge, and it's not from an event you might have recently been drawn into, then it might come from... your identity."

Chu Tianshu proposed a perspective, "After your family came to Nanzhao, besides opening a restaurant, did you obtain any other status?"

Madame Wenjing's expression shifted, "As early as when the Six Zhao were merged, this city was already one of the top cities in the Nanzhao Kingdom, and Tang people had already moved here."

"At that time, they were not accustomed to the local customs and human sentiments, so they had to band together for mutual aid and established a Junzi Alliance."

"The heavens are in motion, the superior person strives for self-improvement; the earth is receptive, the superior person carries things with great virtue."

"Later, the former King of Nanzhao repeatedly abducted Tang people, and all the Tang people who moved here were more or less cared for by the Junzi Alliance, so they joined it."

Madame Wenjing counted on her fingers, "Our family has been joined for over thirty years."

"The Junzi Alliance has annual fundraising, and the donated money is planned and recorded to help those families of members who are truly in difficulty."

"My family's restaurant was harassed in the early years, and thanks to the Junzi Alliance stepping in to mediate, once our business became prosperous, we donated more each year, and now I also hold the title of Elder of the Society."

As soon as Chu Tianshu and Cheng Xiazi heard this, they both immediately felt that this must be the reason why Madame Wenjing was targeted by the Yuwen family.

"The Junzi Alliance is for helping Tang people who moved here; why would a family from the Great Tang want to take action against us?"

Madame Wenjing asked in confusion, "Could it be that they want to control the Junzi Alliance and eliminate stumbling blocks?"

"But that shouldn't be it either; my status as an Elder is just for donating money, the reputation sounds good, but I have never held any real power."

Cheng Xiazi said, "Caution is never a mistake; you should find someone to remind all those people in the Junzi Alliance."

Madame Wenjing smiled, "The group that truly holds power in the Junzi Alliance actually all hold some official position in Nanzhao."

"After the King moved the capital here, they can be considered to be living in the Wang Cheng; as the water rises, the boat rises, and they recruit swordmasters as guards, so their defense is much tighter than mine, and it's not that easy to assassinate them."

Although she said that, when the kitchen helpers and staff arrived one after another, Madame Wenjing still sent a few people, each carrying a box of pastries, to visit the Elders of the Junzi Alliance on her behalf to give them a reminder.

Seeing the pastries come out of the steamer, Chu Tianshu couldn't help but go over and get two plates.

The kitchen had already begun to get busy.

He and Cheng Xiazi walked to the main hall and simply paired the pastries with plain water to taste them.

There is plenty of sugarcane in Nanzhao, but the sugarcane juice here is not very sweet, and the taste of pure sugarcane juice after being boiled is actually a bit strange, not as fresh and sweet as eating it raw.

However, Madame Wenjing's stirring, kneading, and heat control were all handled very well.

The duration of the glutinous rice cakes on and off the stove, and the intensity of the fire in the stove, all had to be paid attention to; one minute less and they would be slightly bitter, one minute more and they would be mushy and stained with a metallic, watery taste.

Only by grasping the best heat can the sweet fragrance of the glutinous rice itself be highlighted.

It blends with the taste of the sugarcane juice, compensating for each other's shortcomings.

Chu Tianshu had ordered pastries a few times in the past few days, but they were always cold; besides being fragrant and sweet, they were slightly chewy.

Eating this hot one, the fragrance was richer and it was softer and stickier, but after eating it, one wouldn't feel sweet and greasy in the mouth; it was all a plant-like fragrance similar to green sugarcane.

"Good!"

Every time Chu Tianshu ate a piece of cake, he drank a large mouthful of water; the hot pastries and slightly scalding water gave his body a sense of transparency.

That was an experience similar to, yet different from, the heartiness of eating spicy food and meat.

"Breakfast really should be light, fine grains paired with hot water."

Chu Tianshu felt the digestion of the food in his stomach and felt that his intestines and stomach were as flexible as his fingers.

If he wanted to, he could consume everything he had just eaten in an instant.

Yet he could also control his digestive ability, slowly dissolving and absorbing it, gently and peacefully.

If he chose the former, he felt no difference whether he ate meat or vegetables; it was just whole digestion and violent absorption.

But if he chose the latter, because the process of slow absorption was so delicate, only the experience brought by grains was the most comfortable, without the harshness of meat or the coldness of vegetables.

"So that's how it is. Those who eat grains are wise and skillful. Once one truly reaches the realm of 'Food as Immortal,' controlling digestive ability and not eating meat or vegetables is relatively easy, but there is still a certain dependence on grains."

"That is why the highest requirement for fasting among ancient practitioners is described using the term 'Bigu' (grain avoidance)."

Chu Tianshu ate another peach-colored cake and closed his eyes, feeling enlightened.

Food as Immortal, Great Success!

(End of Chapter)