Chapter 702: The Wretched Cook

Naturally, Baifeng later demurred, feeling that this was a bit too unfair to Xuanyuan, but Xuanyuan did not realize how difficult it was to collect lotus silk and insisted on giving it; Baifeng reluctantly agreed, and after Xuanyuan finally learned the reason, he also bit the bullet and wasted a massive amount of labor to collect enough lotus silk for Baifeng.

Returning to the matter of Xuanyuan signing the contract, he handed one copy to the Navy, letting them take this copy back to Huaxia to give to Baifeng, while they kept the second copy themselves, and then burned the third copy on their altar, with the witness being, likewise, the Wild Rice.

Xuanyuan was also very satisfied with the other two matters Dahong negotiated; two thousand five hundred women were absolutely nothing to the Xuanyuan Tribe, and he completely agreed with the age restriction requirement that Baifeng mentioned.

As for the reason for the age restriction, he felt it was still necessary to first conduct a census in the Xuanyuan Tribe to see exactly how many who were too young had died because they were pregnant; if the number was relatively high, then it showed that what Baifeng said made sense and they could learn from it, but if this proportion was not high, then it was completely unnecessary, as after all, the earlier they gave birth, the better it was for a tribe, so that the population growth rate would be fast enough.

For the two thousand five hundred women, there had to be an age restriction, but there were no restrictions on their bodies, because it was already very clear what Huaxia wanted them to do; they did not need to do overly heavy labor, so they could send the thinner women, and after eating more of Huaxia's food, they might even grow a bit fatter.

The robust women still had to stay in the Xuanyuan Tribe to work, and Huaxia also said that as long as their bellies were big, they would send them back, so once one batch was sent back, they could send the next batch; children were an endless stream, there were people helping them raise their own tribespeople, and there was even compensation to be had, which was simply like Huaxia giving food to their Xuanyuan Tribe for free.

If they hadn't been clear about Huaxia's intentions, they really wouldn't have dared to do this, as it was simply too outrageous.

As for the Soybean Oil sent over, they immediately opened the mud seals to check it, and there were no problems at all; they were all full, and there was no watering down, but those jars that had been opened for spot checks when they arrived, because they lacked tight seals, resulted in some of the oil leaking out on the swaying Boat, which made them feel a bit pained.

Such a large quantity of Soybean Oil was directly distributed by Xuanyuan to the leaders of the Xuanyuan Tribe and those elites; with this Soybean Oil, even if there was no meat in their meals, just by boiling Rice porridge or Wheat rice, they could feel it was glistening with oil, which would be much more filling.

The Slaves brought back by Zhishou felt a huge disparity in the Xuanyuan Tribe; the house they lived in could barely be called a house, and this was only thanks to Zhishou, because they had to take care of Zhishou personally, so they had to live near Zhishou, and there were no Grass sheds prepared for Slaves there, so they were given the worst room to live in.

If it weren't for Zhishou saying that these few Slaves were of high value and should be cherished a bit, according to the customs of the Xuanyuan Tribe, they would likely have had to sleep in the open on the empty ground.

But they had a more difficult point, which was that the lifestyles of Huaxia and the Xuanyuan Tribe were vastly different, and the skills they had learned for serving people were mostly useless here.

This was especially true for the cooks; although there were cooking utensils, the ingredients were vastly different from those in Huaxia—Wheat was just Wheat, not ground into flour, and Rice still had its husk, requiring them to pound it again in a wooden mortar before it would work.

There was plenty of meat, but it lacked Incense and other vegetables, and the meat had not been thoroughly bled when the wild beasts were slaughtered, resulting in the meat having a very strong, gamey odor.

If it had been in the past, they certainly wouldn't have been picky, but after studying in Huaxia for so long, they had also started to become particular; ingredients that weren't good enough certainly couldn't produce good-tasting meals.

This once caused the cooks, who had performed quite well in Huaxia, to now doubt themselves: "Do I even know how to cook?"

Furthermore, there was no oil, so wild vegetables could only be boiled in water, and the Xuanyuan Tribe even popularized steaming wild vegetables; the wild vegetables were steamed together with Wheat, and the resulting Wheat rice was the main food of the Xuanyuan Tribe people.

The huge gap after arriving at the Xuanyuan Tribe caused the Slaves to be constantly impacted; as the saying goes, going from poverty to wealth is acceptable, but having already become accustomed to a wealthy life, suddenly becoming poor again, the intensity of this impact was still somewhat great.

After tasting the cooks' food, Xuanyuan also felt it was very average, not much different from what their own tribespeople made, and even wondered if these so-called cooks didn't know how to cook and if Zhishou had been deceived.

But Zhishou had also enjoyed the culinary skills of these cooks, and now that it had suddenly become worse, he didn't understand why either, only feeling that perhaps these cooks felt their lives had no hope, and thus were slacking off.

Zhishou also didn't know how to cook and knew nothing about ingredients or Incense; he wouldn't go to defend the Slaves, and the Slaves had no opportunity to defend themselves, but fortunately, they didn't receive any punishment either.

Just when the cooks were frowning at the day's meal, not knowing what to do, someone sent a jar of Soybean Oil to Zhishou.

The Soybean Oil was delivered to the kitchen, and after the cook saw the long-lost Soybean Oil, he almost wept with joy; finally, there was a way to cook, as without oil, he could say he couldn't do anything at all.

Subsequently, he immediately used the Soybean Oil, along with bird eggs and some Wild Onion that others had freshly dug up, to make a dish of stir-fried Wild Onion with eggs for Zhishou; the taste could be said to be infinitely close to when they were in Huaxia, except that the Xuanyuan Tribe's salt had a bit more of a strange taste than Huaxia's, and although it was relatively faint, this taste would also exist in the prepared food.

After stir-frying a plate of wild vegetables and steaming some white Rice, looking at the food after it came out of the pot, the cook finally felt that life had at least a little bit of hope.

Zhishou looked at today's meal and felt a bit strange, because it was like returning to Huaxia again; ever since he had been in the Xuanyuan Tribe, he hadn't seen food of this style, so, curious, he called the cook over.

"Why is the food made today relatively delicious, while the food from the previous period was just like that?"

Hearing that there was an opportunity to defend himself, the cook hurriedly knelt on the ground: "Master, someone sent a jar of Soybean Oil today; with oil, we finally had a way to cook the dishes. Without oil, we could only use the boiling method."