"In fact, we're only going to have one piece per person here. There's no more smoked fish!" The cook helplessly displayed the empty tray she was holding.
Seeing that the crowd had almost eaten, I came out and said to them all, "A light taste is the only way to keep the nostalgia alive and will make you look forward to the next gathering even more, so allow me to present you with a second course of pine nail mushroom soup, a very nourishing chicken soup made from a mushroom called pine nail that grows in the autumn in the pine forests of the New Siachis."
Actually, the trick here is that the chicken soup itself doesn't taste too bad, and it goes even better with the mushrooms, and I asked the cook beforehand to skim off all the fatty oils, leaving only the clear broth. The mushroom broth was a great way to wash away any flavours left in the mouth from the first course of smoked fish.
Another small bowl for each person, with a few slices of pine mushrooms floating in the creamy broth, whets the appetite.
The cook was skimming the excess chicken oil from the soup with a ladle, and the dried mushrooms in the soup pot had absorbed enough of the stock to become full and oily, and the faint aroma of chicken soup was already coming out.
The second and third courses were served close together, and just as everyone at the table had had time to taste the first bite of the soup, just as they were getting a taste of the chicken soup, the two cooks took turns presenting the main course to everyone, each with a large white porcelain plate in front of them, containing, in turn, grilled chicken legs, spicy chicken wings and pan-fried lamb chops. The whole restaurant was immediately filled with the unique smell of barbecue.
"Ahem!" I had to cough lightly in the face of the noise, but obviously it didn't help.
At this point the seven girls sitting at the main table gave Singh a look before Singh straightened up once more and said calmly, "Ladies, please be quiet, I wonder if we could have the chef's opinion before we eat this exquisite and unique beast-style meal."
Clearly the previous two courses had won me the favour of everyone and no one was saying anything odd. The main course was grilled spicy chicken wings with grilled secret chicken thighs and black pepper magic antelope lamb chops. The barbecue was nothing special really, just a delicious sauce that instantly took the dish up a notch.
But I was worried if any of these girls were afraid of spice, which Kurtz was, and although he liked it just as much, he needed to drink a lot of water, and watching this guy eat spicy chicken wings was rather like dunking a big belly. So I had to step up and say, "The third course is secret chicken thighs, spicy chicken wings and black pepper lamb chops, with ingredients exclusively provided by the Seven Ladies of the Dance Company, but I have to warn you all that if you can't eat spicy food, it's best not to touch that chicken wing. At the end of the meal, there will be chestnut noodles and sweet cakes. Well, have a nice dinner everyone."
I turned and nodded to Singh, who gave me a secret thumbs up, and seeing that there was nothing more for me to do, I turned and headed for the stairway, stepping on the soft velvet carpet, brushing my hand over the carved brass parapet on the stairs and running down at a brisk pace. When I got back to the kitchen, I saw Kurtz and Fred grilling lamb skewers over the unlit coals, both of them with their mouths full of grease, and I rushed over to them, grabbing a skewer and taking a bite, regardless of whether it was hot or not.
"How are those pussy ... women eating?" Fred opened his mouth, but held it back when he thought he was still in the private kitchen of the dance camp.
Kurtz said vaguely with lamb chewing in his mouth, "How could it be, must have loved it. Look at the burnt bun look on Ka's face ..."
I had a bit of a headache, the little orc was originally a non-swearing person, but now he was actually picking up on it.
--beautiful divider--
With the moonlight of the night, the grassland became extraordinarily silent. A few wisps of smoky green clouds floated in the clear night sky, and there was a breeze blowing. A distant lake of stars reflected the moonlight, not with the dull low roar of a thundering rhinoceros. Kurtz and I sat back to back on the earthen hill, pillowing each other's shoulders and counting the stars in boredom. Uncle Fred was lying with his legs crossed, humming a little tune.
After the song was over, he rolled over a bit and lay on his side with his head propped up on his hands and said to Kurtz and me, "You two are really good at this.
I laughed at Kurtz and said, "Aziz, you haven't even touched the shadow of the Hunter King title, but I'm afraid you're the number one cook of the beast race. Ha ha."
Kurtz, however, had a rare serious look and instead of giggling with me, he just looked at the sky and sighed and said, "Ja, you actually look really good in human clothes!"
I, however, was a bit speechless, knowing that Kurtz meant to lament our impending separation. I could only digress and say, "Remember to take those guinea pig skins to Singh tomorrow too, she's promised to help me make a sleeping bag."
"Uncle, are you planning to marry Singh?" I don't know why the words just jumped out of my mouth, maybe because I was lonely? Maybe because Singh had touched me when he was shining my shoes? Anyway, I just wanted to ask. But I always felt that Uncle Fred and Singh didn't go together, that their original circles were like two worlds.
Uncle Fred was silent for a while before he said, "Yes, I guess!"
I then asked, "What about your wife at home?"
"What do you mean? I'll do what I have to do." Uncle Fred plucked a sweet grass root and chewed it in his mouth.
"Uncle, what is the human world really like?" The thought that in a few months I would be living alone gave me the urge to go to the toilet. Was this the fear in my heart?
My question obviously caught Uncle Fred's interest, and he sat up straight next to me and scratched his head for half a day before saying, "Haha, finally in the mood to learn about our world, I guess, I thought you were going to follow an orc boy to the end. I'll see what I can tell you, it's a bit of a big topic."
"The city I'm in there is usually known to outsiders as Sloat City, only we call it Sloat Province ourselves ..."
I was struck by the way Uncle Fred mouthed the description of the city of Sloat.
It sits at the confluence of the Pennine and White Elephant rivers, the fast and raging Pennine flowing north-west to south-east from the Pai plateau down to the north of the city of Sloit before it turns east and flows into the sea. To the south of Sloit, the winding White Elephant River flows from south to north until it joins the Puma at Sloit, where it gently flows into the sea.
Summer is a short time in Sloete, so people treasure it. In summer, the men of many families would get together and board large boats and sail down the White Elephant River to catch fish, and when every cabin was filled with salted fish, it was time to return. Some say that summer is the harvest season in the city of Siloit.
And how big is it? The city's centre alone is thirty-five kilometres long from east to west and ten kilometres north to south in the shape of a cashew, built on the northern bank of the River Penma and straddling the White Elephant. The city is divided into sixteen districts, each with a population of around half a million, and each district is very independent, whether it is a school, a hospital, a shopping street or a tavern. It is easy to get to other neighbourhoods by taking one of the fixed route carriages, which start at five coins and do not exceed ten at the most.
The most famous school of magic in the city of Schroeter is located in the fifth quarter of the city, just north of the central square, which has a magnificent marble building. The marble building is thirty metres high and is shaped like a curved moon across the north side of the square. On the stone steps in front of the marble building are five statues of the greatest magicians that have ever lived at the Ivory Tower Academy of Magic in Sloat. If you count from left to right, you will see Xatun Ally, Gogoi, Palubui, Komol, and Rong Yu. All five are legendary mages who have made great contributions to the advancement of human magic and have been the pride of the city of Sloat for centuries, and who have established the highest school of magic in the north of the Green Empire.
The largest block is the 13th block in the north-east corner of the city. It is the most populous neighbourhood, with over a million people, 300,000 of whom are resident soldiers and over 700,000 of whom are mostly military families and ex-servicemen, and it is one of the most uninhabitable neighbourhoods in Sloat.
Uncle Fred's house is in the eleventh arrondissement, where the tanners' guild is located and therefore a large number of tanners are gathered. Most of the shops on the street were also leather-related. He worked for six years as an apprentice and three years as a junior leatherworker, before becoming an intermediate leatherworker when he became involved in a personal dispute with the local nobility and offended Kai Ito, the youngest wizard of Sloat, the second noble family in Sloat. If it wasn't for the owner of the Blue Workshop, who paid a large sum of money to the Director of Intelligence, Hodumu, to intercede, Uncle Fred would have been killed. Even so, Uncle Fred was banished from Sloat and spent many years wandering in the caravans. Every time the caravan passed through Sloat, Uncle Fred would take the opportunity to meet with his family, which had been going on for almost four years.
I asked Uncle Fred, "Are you going to keep wandering with the caravan like this?"
Uncle Fred smiled helplessly and said, "No, my children are getting older and I can't have my wife cooking hides in the workshop all the time, it's not only a tiring job, but there's not much money to be made. This time I want to move my family to the imperial capital. With the money I have, I should be able to buy a commoner's status in the capital. A commoner like me can live anywhere."
"Is that nobleman very powerful?"
"His father is a count. A big nobleman with his own family fiefdom." Uncle Fred said calmly.
It was clear that even if Uncle Fred still had resentment and discontent in his heart, it had pretty much worn off after all these years. Then Uncle Fred spoke of the hierarchy of the Greene Empire: Emperor, Prince, Duke, Waiter, Uncle, Son, Male, Knight, Commoner, Untouchable, Vagabond and Slave. A baron or above was considered a noble. A knight is only considered a public servant. A commoner was defined as someone who had the ability to pay taxes of 5 silver coins or more per year and had legal status protected by law. Untouchables, although they also had legal status, were among those prisoners, thieves, ** and beggars who had a stain on their legal status and were stamped with a big red seal. But they still pay taxes and will still be protected by the law and have their status. And further down the list of vagrants are those who have never paid taxes, have no official status and will not be protected by the law, well! It's people like me who don't have any status. And the last category is slaves, and there are no slaves in the merchant guild because no one in the merchant guild can afford to sell slaves, and Uncle Fred says there are in the dance guild.
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