Why isn’t Song Xu enthusiastic about cooking? Because in all the years she’s grown up, she’s never seriously cooked a few times. Even when she had convenient kitchen appliances, abundant ingredients, and all kinds of seasonings, she didn’t like going into the kitchen, let alone now, at a time when there’s nothing of anything.
If she were still a normal human with human taste, for the sake of satisfying her appetite, she would at least be a little more diligent in creating a better life. But the key point is that she is now a squirrel beastman. She feels that fresh fruits, tender leaves, and roots are simply more delicious than cooked food. Plus, the big snake she lives with also has no requirements regarding food. If it weren’t for occasionally wanting to reminisce about civilized life, she wouldn’t even bother to start a fire.
After laying all this groundwork, the point is: if the food turns out not tasty, it’s only because she isn’t skilled, and has absolutely nothing to do with her soul and bloodline coming from a nation of gourmets.
“Oh hidden Chef God bloodline within my body, reveal your true power before me! The people take food as heaven, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty! Let me find the suitable seasonings!” After finishing the incantation, Song Xu plucked the rice-grain-sized red fruit hanging on the tree and stuffed it into her mouth to taste it.
Snake-snake was on a nearby tree, vigilantly watching a group of small primitive beasts in the distance. He heard Song Xu muttering to herself at the side, then suddenly covering her mouth and coughing, followed by frantically spitting saliva, and even making a series of strange movements similar to hopping in place and bumping into trees. He was so startled that he dangled down from the tree, his snake tongue touching Song Xu’s shoulder.
He only heard Song Xu, after catching her breath, continuously shout one word: “Spicy! Spicy! Spicy!”
She must have eaten something with a stimulating flavor. She clearly looked very uncomfortable, yet looking at those tiny red fruits, she was all smiles, as if she had found some kind of treasure, sticking out her red tongue and saying, “I knew it, my luck is maxed out, didn’t I just find it!”
“What is spicy anyway… You turn into a half-beastman, you transform, I definitely must let you taste what spicy means! This is the soul of all food!”
The unsuspecting Snake-snake, not remembering the countless past experiences of being tricked into eating stimulating-flavored things, still listened to Song Xu’s soft-voiced plea and obediently transformed back into that miserable, hard-to-look-at strange half-beastman form, opening a pair of eyes that looked cold and aloof on the surface but were actually innocent, and tried this new flavor he had never tasted before.
This was the most stimulating-tasting thing he had ever eaten. From then on, he had a deep impression of this flavor, and would never forget it. The level of “never forget” ranked only after the squirrel’s despicable deeds.
Song Xu looked at him supporting himself against the tree trunk with his tail knotted, let out an evil laugh, and picked and stored that patch of red fruits.
“Although you don’t look like chili peppers, from now on you have a new name—chili peppers.” Song Xu muttered, pulling Snake-snake toward the next place to continue searching.
This place had primitive beasts everywhere. Song Xu did some counting—she had already seen no fewer than a hundred different kinds of primitive beasts. If she returned to her original world, she could definitely write a dinosaur encyclopedia.
You basically couldn’t see other familiar animals here. Correspondingly, there were especially many strange plants as well, which Song Xu couldn’t recognize at all. This was a peculiar continent, filled with plants never recognized by people, and never exploited. With just a bit of searching, there were huge gains.
Ever since that not-very-successful seafood feast, Song Xu had been perfunctorily dismissed by the attitudes of two diners, the tiger and Snake-snake. From then on, a fighting spirit ignited in her regarding making food. She resolved to make seafood unbelievably delicious, to the point that Mama Tiger would eat until she never wanted to touch primitive beasts again.
In order to achieve this goal, she spent a lot of time in the nearby forest searching for ingredients that could serve as seasonings.
So far, she had already found countless sour and sweet fruits. Bitter and salty went without saying. Now she had found spicy as well. Along with the umami of seafood itself, she had already gathered all the basic seasonings.
The previously launched sweet-and-sour cuisine, once introduced, did not receive widespread praise. Both the tiger and Snake-snake didn’t really like this flavor. There was no helping it—they probably didn’t like eating fruit in the first place, so for things like cutting sweet fruits into pieces and stewing them with fish, or cooking fish soup with fruit chunks, they weren’t very enthusiastic.
It was a pity that for the sake of the dish’s visual appeal, Song Xu had even specially studied color matching. How bright and vivid the colors were when red fruit flesh and yellow fruit flesh were paired and stewed together. A representative dish of this classic color pairing is tomato scrambled eggs.
“It’s fine. If they don’t like sweet-and-sour flavors, spicy dishes will definitely be popular.”
Song Xu felt that before, she might have paid too much attention to plating techniques, doing too many fancy things. The diet of the beastman world should emphasize a return to simplicity—meaning you can’t use too much effort. Just boil simply and add a bit of spice.
Dripping juice, smearing fruit flesh, hiding fruit peel inside the fish belly—these methods were still too advanced.
This kind of simple boiled seafood meal, because it had spicy seasoning added, gained a soul, and appeared especially different.
Song Xu stood at the entrance of the cave. Her eyes were slightly red as she faced the wind, letting it blow away the choking spicy smell lingering around.
In the distance, the big tiger was running along the beach, occasionally throwing her head back and letting out a long roar, as if she were about to breathe fire. She had eaten spicy seafood without any preparation, and then became like this.
The culprit, the squirrel chef, watched and couldn’t help laughing. After laughing, she then drooped her face, turned back to look at Snake-snake, and said, “Later, if Heisen wants to hit me, you run.”
Because once Wumu ran, Heisen would subconsciously go chase after him, and then wouldn’t have the time to come settle accounts with her. The malicious squirrel calculated to herself.
At the beginning, the squirrel could be considered a culinary disaster, but her growth speed was astonishing. After mastering the accurate application of various seasonings, the food she made became more and more delicious.
The most obvious change was the big tiger. In the past, when Song Xu placed the cooked fish in front of her, she would just symbolically eat a couple of bites. Occasionally, if she didn’t want to eat, she would even deliberately hide farther away when Song Xu was making a fire, then come back after a while. But now, every meal she would return on time to wait for Song Xu to cook, and moreover, she strangely loved spicy food.
Song Xu’s fragrant spicy grilled fish was peerless. No matter how much she made, the big tiger could eat it all. One fish, two fish, none of it was enough to fill the gaps between her teeth, always making Song Xu unable to resist sighing: Your tooth gaps are way too big!
In sharp contrast was Wumu. His attitude of treating any food equally made people feel that giving him anything delicious was a waste, yet Song Xu still did not play favorites—the portions given to the two were exactly the same.
“As long as we keep working hard, Heisen will soon give up eating primitive beasts!” Looking at the big tiger who had clearly gone outside to eat primitive beasts again and was now sleeping with a round belly, Song Xu cheered herself and Snake-snake on.
Her food temptation strategy had produced results. At the very least, she had successfully… made Heisen’s appetite bigger. The big tiger now ate a big seafood fish meal at home, and then ate primitive beasts outside, like having one proper meal and one snack.
Judging from the portions on both sides, the grilled fish Song Xu made might actually be the little snack for nibbling.
The squirrel rubbed her hands, which were trembling from grilling fish, and wailed, “Why can Mommy eat so much!”
Such a huge tiger couldn’t be filled by her grilled fish alone, and this way she couldn’t stop her from going to eat primitive beasts.
Even Wumu had almost evolved into a fisherman recently. He didn’t need to eat every day, but he conscientiously went to sea with a net every day to catch fish and feed the big tiger. The nearby area had almost been fished to extinction by him, so he could only drag the net to deeper waters—true deep-sea fishing.
On nights with moonlight, the sea surface was calm and peaceful. Song Xu gloomily weighed the thick belly fat of the big tiger and felt that the big tiger had gotten fatter lately.
“Can’t you just eat a little less? Even eating a couple fewer bites of primitive beasts would be fine. That stuff isn’t good for your body if you eat too much, you know. Eating outside is nowhere near as healthy as eating at home!”
The big tiger lifted her eyelids lazily to glance at her, yawned, then casually licked her once, and then fairly licked the big snake beside her once.
The big snake shrank his tail and crawled a little farther away.
Aside from the first few days, in this cave, Snake-snake slept in another corner and kept his distance from the big tiger—probably a habit of his as a dangerous adult beastman. Song Xu moved around in between. When she felt cold, she slept on the tiger’s bedding; when she felt hot, she lay on Snake-snake’s bedding.
Song Xu lay beside the big tiger’s belly and felt something cool coil around her foot. She lifted it to look, and sure enough, it was a section of snake tail tip winding around.
“Hey, hey, don’t be a hooligan, Tiger Mom is watching right there.” Song Xu said this with her mouth, but her body was very honest as she climbed up and moved over to Snake-snake’s side. He had already prepared his bed—coiling his body into a nest, just right for Song Xu to lie inside.
Sleeping alone on the side, the big tiger’s ears twitched. She could hear all kinds of tiny movements in the cave. The little cub was talking, a very noisy little cub. She often talked nonstop. Those sounds that once resembled meaningless bird calls, now the big tiger could occasionally catch one or two familiar words from them, and suddenly understand their meaning.
For example, a sentence the little cub was saying: “If your uncle Weishan knew Heisen was still alive…”
One of the words in it was “Weishan.”
Before understanding the meaning of this word, the big tiger’s mind abruptly conjured the image of a tiger—round head, round brain, short tail. The reason it was short-tailed was because a section of that tail had been bitten off by her when he was young.
They were from the same litter. When she was little, she was the fiercest one. The moment she opened her eyes, she could bite others. Weishan was the opposite of her. Even when he was almost grown, if he couldn’t catch the prey he wanted, he would secretly cry. The first primitive beast she ever hunted was given to Weishan, hoping he would become stronger and stop crying.
Facing these suddenly appearing fragmented images and information in her mind, the big tiger opened her eyes in confusion and looked toward the moon outside.
Back when she knew nothing, she had food and a nest that sheltered her from wind and rain. She should have had no worries, yet every time she lay here alone, there was an indescribable anxiety, as if something was about to be too late. This irritability could only be vented by running wildly outside to fight a few primitive beasts.
Now, when she turned her head to look at the two little cubs, that inexplicable urgency in her heart would ease a little. It was just that the increasing number of fragmentary memories appearing in her mind made her often want to stare at the moon in a daze, seeming to recall something, yet unable to recall more, and thus could only remain dazed.
Song Xu didn’t know that her efforts were indeed effective. Recently, the big tiger had been eating a lot of fish, and would only take a few bites of primitive beasts before tossing them aside. She truly was full, and besides, that stuff had no flavor.
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the big tiger would remember her own name, and also remember that she actually had only one cub.
