Chapter 11 — ILK Chapter 11

Dangkang Ham and Coral Salt (1)

Hearing Wu Jianing's words, Sang Ye wasn't yet sure what had happened, but Wu Huansheng and Mu An had already rushed over with faces full of joy.

"Don't be afraid, Ningning. That’s your little spiritual form talking to you," Mu An soothed with a smile. "Try responding to it in your mind."

Under her parents' encouraging gazes, Wu Jianing moved her mental power for the first time, attempting to communicate with the little Dangkang. Spiritual forms and their masters were usually of one heart; both could accurately understand each other's intent. In this era, the spiritual form was a human's ultimate soulmate.

When Wu Jianing was born, Wu Huansheng knew she was a Guide and felt happy for her. Although Sentinels possessed great power, almost every one of them suffered from more or less mental distress. Guides were different; their mental worlds were exceptionally stable, and few among them ever experienced mental riots. Under the Empire’s preferential policies for Guides, most lived peaceful and smooth lives.

Three hours later, Wu Jianing’s legs and feet had completely finished growing. The nearby doctors clicked their tongues in wonder, though their eyes kept darting greedily toward the leftover Northern Snakehead Tofu Soup and noodles. Sang Ye pretended not to see; she couldn't exactly offer people leftovers.

Wu Jianing looked at her new limbs with novelty, much like a puppy discovering its tail. Her little toes wiggled, and she occasionally lifted her legs high only to drop them back down with a heavy thud. She was eager to get out of bed and walk, but Wu Huansheng and the others refused, a chorus of voices dissuading her.

As the ward filled with celebration and chatter, Sang Ye signaled her robot to pack up the remains of the meal and quietly slipped out, like a hero who does a good deed and disappears without a trace.

After sending the robot back to the kitchen to clear the dishes, Sang Ye stared blankly at the scraps destined to become swill.

How was kitchen waste handled in this world? Shifang Grotto’s restaurants never had this worry; the leftovers weren't even enough to feed the livestock, let alone go to waste. These meals made from spiritual plants and beasts were only called "swill" for lack of a better word; they didn't produce the rotten, fishy stench of the mortal world.

She realized handling kitchen waste was a blind spot in her knowledge. But perhaps I can crush them with the bone meal to use as fertilizer? In the Interstellar Era, technological developments were sometimes more useful than their spiritual arts.

She asked the robot, "Can you crush these? The finer the better—into powder, if possible."

The robot remained silent, but it swapped its side arms for a pair of circular saw-like blades. It seemed it could. Sang Ye stepped aside as the robot quickly pulverized the hardest remains—the pork bones that had lost their spiritual energy—followed by the fish bones, heads, and leftover noodles. When it finished, it automatically cleaned its arms.

Sang Ye gave a thumbs-up. "What if you get too busy to handle it all?"

The screen on the robot's chest lit up with text. Sang Ye leaned in to read: The base has a total of 2,700 domestic service robots.

Oh. As long as there were enough robots, no amount of leftovers would go unprocessed. Sang Ye was satisfied and sent the robot to wash the dishes. After a few practice runs earlier, it had mastered the skill. It didn't matter if it dropped a dish; Interstellar-era bowls were unbreakable.

She dragged the bucket of "fertilizer" into the garden. Every robot had a built-in recording and monitoring function, and the authority to turn it off didn't belong to Sang Ye. She could order the robot to leave, but she couldn't disable the surveillance. Thus, she decided to simply do the fertilizing herself.

This craft was learned from a Senior Sister who loved helping humans establish villages and start farming. She had brought back the skill of composting, but it had no use near the spiritual veins of Shifang Grotto. Unexpectedly, it had found its purpose here.

Normally, kitchen waste has to be dumped into a cellar with yeast and fermented in an airtight environment to become fertilizer—a process that is incredibly foul-smelling but effective. Due to the nature of her ingredients, Sang Ye didn't need that nauseating step. As long as the scraps were ground to powder, they could be buried. The soil, enriched with spiritual energy, would decompose it automatically.

Arriving at the plot she had filled with soil yesterday, Sang Ye wondered if it was her imagination, but the soil seemed to have risen slightly. With practiced speed, she scattered the fertilizer powder and loosened the dirt with a homemade hoe to help it mix. Then, using two long iron rods, she packed the earth down, roughly dividing the plot into four sections.

She then pulled out a handful of seeds. She had decided what to plant on her way back. Her pocket dimension couldn't grow many varieties yet; due to high yield demands, she had to prioritize the staples like fruits, vegetables, rice, and flour.

She decided to plant various peppers, peppercorns, black pepper, fennel, and star anise in the garden. These seasoning crops weren't worth the space in her pocket dimension because their single-harvest yield was too massive. They were perfect for the garden, serving as a test to see if the soil from her dimension could function in the outside world.

The weather on this planet was erratic, especially those black sandstorms. However, the base had a protective shield that maintained a constant temperature. Furthermore, an artificial sun rose from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM to provide light and warmth. It was quite suitable for these warmth-loving "ancestor" plants.

Ignoring any strict order or quantity, Sang Ye scattered the seeds freely; the soil had its own self-regulating ability. As she sowed, she could almost smell the heat of the chili peppers, the numbness of the Sichuan peppercorns, and the spice of the black pepper. The first harvest of green peppercorns could be ground into black pepper; if some were left to turn red and then soaked and processed, they became white pepper.

Different stages of life produced different fruits. Black pepper with salt was perfect for marinating steak, while white pepper was better suited for seasoning soups.

Once finished, she slapped the dirt off her hands and put the hoe back in the storage room. The robot had finished the dishes and was in standby mode by its charging port.

After a quick cleanup, Sang Ye prepared to make a ham. She felt she might never have the chance to obtain Dangkang meat again, so she wanted to cure one of the hind legs into a ham. That way, she could slice off pieces whenever she wanted—whether for stews, noodle toppings, or hotpot, it would integrate perfectly.

A Dangkang over 150 years old had four joints in its legs, carrying an immense weight of meat; a single leg weighed about two hundred catties. Curing one leg will last me a long time, she thought. After all, there aren't many people to feed here.

Curing a ham was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. It required adding salt six times with varying intervals, followed by two to three months of high-temperature hanging and one to two months of trimming and turning. In a natural environment, it took about a year. Thus, ham was quite expensive in the mortal world.

Shifang Grotto had its own tricks. The tedious salting steps before hanging were meant to draw moisture out of the meat, which depended heavily on the quality of the salt. In the era Sang Ye grew up in, salt was a state-monopoly commodity. Most commoners used coarse salt, which had to be processed into fine salt for daily cooking. No one would waste fine salt on curing ham—not even the largest processing houses.

But the salt used by Shifang Grotto didn't come from any lake or sea; it was produced by a spiritual plant called Coral Beast. Coral Salt was delicious, possessing a unique "oceanic" breath. Its concentration was so high that a single fingernail-sized amount could season a massive pot of soup.

Coral Beasts were extremely picky about their environment. They lived on spiritual energy and only inhabited the vicinity of spiritual veins. If they lost that energy, they would drop dead in minutes. In other words, as long as there was enough nourishment, they would tirelessly produce high-purity salt.

Sang Ye had dug a small pond beneath her Parasol Tree and raised four or five Coral Beasts. She threw in a piece of Jade Marrow and had the tree infuse them with spiritual energy occasionally. When the water surface was covered in undissolved salt, the tree would scoop it up with its leaves. Once twenty leaves were full, the tree would tap Sang Ye to come and pack it away.

Using this salt to extract moisture not only reduced the steps but cut the time in half. In the mortal world, shops would hang hams during the peak of summer to dry them quickly. Shifang Grotto didn't need summer; they had outer-sect Fire-element disciples. They would build a stone hut five feet off the ground, ventilated on two sides, and bake it with fire for a week straight. The hut would become a dry, ventilated "waterless steamer," and the stone itself prevented the meat from charring.

Here, while there was no stone hut or Fire disciples, there was a walk-in heating oven that could be set from forty to three hundred degrees—perfect for hanging ham. In ancient times, this would have been an instrument of torture.

Sang Ye placed the massive Dangkang leg on the processing table. Although there was much meat, the length was only about the size of her arm. There was a trick to deboning a Dangkang; a standard boning knife was enough.

She sliced through the fat-rich skin, and the meat fell to the sides under its own weight, but because of the succulent fat and elasticity, it actually "boinged" twice. The tip of her knife quickly hit the central joint bone. With a flick and a tug, the joint bone was removed like a key from a lock.

In ancient times, there was Pao Ding who butchered oxen; today, there is Sang Ye who deconstructs pigs.

Repeating the process for the other three joints, the entire leg was broken down into four manageable parts.

Sang Ye then pulled out a blowtorch.