"Miss Peng...Your Highness…" Butler Cui called out with a weak smile while Headmaid Yang stared at the two with a cold light in her eyes.
Sighing at the appearance of the two servants, Peng Mingzhu turned to the stricter one of the two and said, "Headmaid Yang, would you mind telling your master to stop stealing my food? I've been starving for an entire day and my first meal just happens to be this dinner."
Although Headmaid Yang knew that Wei Kangnuan was in the wrong for taking the food of someone else, she really loved to spoil him, so she instead offered with her straight face, "Miss Peng, perhaps this servant can cook some for you? His Highness has also not eaten."
Hearing the offer that Headmaid Yang was giving her, Peng Mingzhu knew that she would not be able to stop Wei Kangnuan from eating her food, so she replied with a calm face, "No need. I'll head back to my room instead."
At first, Wei Kangnuan was smiling and giving Headmaid Yang a grin for not stopping him from eating the food that belonged to his beloved woman. However, hearing that she may starve herself, his grin became a frown.
Even if he loved teasing her and stealing her food, he was not fond of starving her. Which crazy bastard out in the world would starve the woman they loved?
Wearing a repentant frown, Wei Kangnuan said, "Stay here. Have Headmaid Yang cook a meal for you. Don't starve."
"Who told you that I'm going to starve?" Peng Mingzhu scolded the man.
Peng Mingzhu did not like to eat much. However, she promised Xiao Qiqiang that she would always make sure to eat at least one meal per day, so she could not starve herself even if he was not standing beside her currently.
Besides...if he knew about her actions from whatever source there may be…
She shivered thinking about the consequences.
"You plan on eating the snacks in your room?" Wei Kangnuan asked, his previous frown that was originally guilty turning dark. "Ah Nai, that is not good."
"Who the hell is your Ah Nai?" Peng Mingzhu lectured the man while crossing her arms. "Also, what's not good about eating snacks? And who told you that I'm eating only snacks?"
"What matters is not how I call you, but what you are going to eat," Wei Kangnuan told her, placing the empty plate on the island table. "The snacks in your room are already cold, how can they be healthy for you? Not only are they not nutritional, they do not even taste good anymore."
"Alright, can you just shut up and let me go back to my room?" Peng Mingzhu pleaded in an irritated tone. "I'm tired."
"Ah Nai, I am not-" Wei Kangnuan started saying.
However, he could not finish his sentence as Peng Mingzhu quickly ignored him and left the kitchen, passing by Butler Cui and Headmaid Yang.
She normally would be able to put up with everything he was talking about no matter how angering it was, but today she was just too annoyed and irritated at everything.
First, she had to ride a horse with this damn royal prince. Second, he did not even give her the books he promised her and ran to his study without even talking to her about their trade, causing her to have to go to the bookstore instead. Then, that stupid incident at the library that caused people to start recognizing her face.
'Ugh, why didn't I wear a mask?' Peng Mingzhu internally scolded herself angrily.
When Peng Mingzhu left, Wei Kangnuan wanted to follow her, however, she yelled in an annoyed tone, "If you dare follow me to my room, I'll leave the estate!"
In fact, Peng Mingzhu did not want to associate herself with the prince, but he was indeed very hospitable to her. Not only that, by sticking to him, she would have more access to things that would allow her research to go by easily.
Of course, if he managed to annoy her to hell, she would not mind leaving him and going back to her plan of doing everything solo. Anyways, it was just some money lost to rent a room at an inn, something she had plenty of.
Hearing her threat, Wei Kangnuan did not follow her like he wanted to, but turned to the two bystanders and asked pitifully, "Butler Cui, Headmaid Yang, did I do something wrong to make her not like me?"
At his question, both of the persons answered with a nod, "Your Highness, you ate her food that she used effort to make."
"Is it not just food? Could she not just cook more food?" Wei Kangnuan asked, not understanding why she would get mad at him. 'I mean, she even promised to cook me food whenever I asked her.'
Seeing that Wei Kangnuan did not understand, Headmaid Yang, the only person out of the trio who knew about cooking, informed him, "Your Highness, when you eat Miss Peng's food, do you not notice that there are ingredients and spices that we have never used nor seen before?"
"Hm? Is that so?" Wei Kangnuan questioned with a tilt of his head.
He truly did not think about that. All he could think about was how her food tasted even better than what the imperial cooks made in the palace.
"This servant believes that Miss Peng carries her own seasonings distinct to her home place, which would be limited as there are probably no places where she could buy them," Headmaid Yang told the prince to try to make him understand.
When Wei Kangnuan heard that, his eyes finally shot up like he understood something, 'Ah! So that's why she's always getting mad! Because it's hard to get the stuff she uses to cook! No problem, I'll ask my people to search for them. Then, maybe she would stop getting angry at me."
Actually, if Peng Mingzhu was a normal traveler and not someone who carried incredibly high technology, she would be getting mad about the spices. However, she carried so much in her bracelet that she did not care.
Instead, the only reason why she got mad at him was because she was a lazy person. As a person who hated to eat, how could she love cooking?
Making her cook again when she took so much effort just to cook one meal for herself...naturally she would want to murder that person.
"I understand," Wei Kangnuan nodded his head in understanding before leaving. "This prince shall be taking his rest then."
"Please rest well, Your Highness," the two servants bowed respectfully before also leaving the kitchen.
Back in the room with Peng Mingzhu, she was chowing down on a plate of rice with baked tofu while drinking a cup of Da Hong Pao tea. Like she said, she would never starve herself, only for Xiao Qiqiang.
Da Hong Pao tea traces its roots back to the Ming Dynasty and is one of the priciest black teas on the planet. Also known as Big Red Robe tea, this Chinese tea embodies the characteristics of the Pengyi Mountains where it is cultivated. It features a layered body with notes of earthy and mineral flavors, brews into a deep red hue, and boasts a lively finish.
The rare tea is so expensive largely because the leaves are harvested from plants that have grown on the mountains for more than 300 years. Most of these old-growth plants last produced true Da Hong Pao in 2005. The result is astronomical prices for some of the dried leaves from these ancient plants. This tea can fetch more than 30 times its weight in gold - one gram of the tea leaves costs $1,400. Many companies sell cheaper versions of Da Hong Pao from newer tea plants cultivated in nearby locations offering a more affordable way of enjoying the flavor and terroir of teas from the Pengyi region.
As a tea lover, Peng Mingzhu made sure to keep stock of all teas in the world, especially her favorite ones. This type of black tea just happened to be one of them and even though they were expensive and rare in the world, she managed to culture a method that would produce a large amount of them in a single year.
With this, while the world was spending millions just to get a single pound of the tea, she was freely sharing this tea with her colleagues without a care in the world. Even in her bracelet storage, there was at least 22 kilograms of fresh Da Hong Pao tea leaves and another 11 kilograms of dried Da Hong Pao tea leaves.
Once she was done eating, she cleaned up her dishes by just throwing them into her bracelet storage.
One of the features of the storage was that if the owner gave the command, there would be an auto-clean function. As for the excess waste, they would be recycled to become an energy source for the bracelet. As for the person who thought of this function, it would be Peng Mingzhu since she was always too lazy to wash her dishes and even take care of her clothes that needed washing and folding.