Chapter 388 - 260: Brewing Snow at the Humble Cottage, Spirit Gourd Persimmon Wine to Warm a Sunny Winter Day
Chapter 388: Chapter 260: Brewing Snow at the Humble Cottage, Spirit Gourd Persimmon Wine to Warm a Sunny Winter Day
"What a schemer," Yao Yao muttered, exasperated. "And to think she had the same idea as me."
Many hands make light work. They were quite fast, preparing eighteen wine gourds and thirty-two gourd ladles in a single morning.
The wine gourds required further processing; they needed to be hung under the veranda to air-dry until they were seventy percent dry before the next step. The work after that, however, was relatively simple.
In the afternoon, they started picking persimmons to make dried persimmons.
Grandma was in the front yard chatting with the villagers, so with no one in the backyard, Li Xiang unleashed his Superpower. PEW PEW PEW~ With a flick of his hand, bolts of Cold Ice Sword Qi shot out, and persimmons dropped from the branches, a feat comparable to the Six Meridian Divine Sword.
It was much more convenient than using a hook like they used to.
Down below, Yao Yao, Zhao Xueqing, and Lei Xiaohui each held a cloth sack to catch the falling fruit. Their movements were agile, their figures graceful—it was, without a doubt, a beautiful sight.
The three stood in a triangular formation, and no matter how fast Li Xiang’s Cold Ice Sword Qi flew, they managed to catch every persimmon. Their skills had clearly improved at a rapid pace.
"This is like playing tennis! Brother Xiang, you just keep shooting, and we’ll keep catching," Yao Yao said with a coy laugh.
As soon as the words left her mouth, both Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui blushed and rolled their eyes. ’Yao Yao is so shameless,’ they thought. ’She has no filter and will say absolutely anything. I wonder if she did that on purpose... or on purpose?’
They glanced at Li Xiang and saw he looked a little awkward too. Clearly, everyone’s mind had gone to the same place.
Yao Yao giggled. "What are you all thinking about? Your minds are so dirty!"
’What the hell!’ Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui almost coughed up blood. ’What is wrong with her? She’s the one who said something so suggestive, and now she’s playing the victim and calling *us* dirty-minded.’
"I’m speeding up! Don’t drop any of the persimmons!" Li Xiang said, changing the subject. He began to fire off his Cold Ice Sword Qi in a flurry, about thirty or forty percent faster than before.
"Brother Xiang, faster! Even faster!" Yao Yao shouted.
Li Xiang: "..."
Zhao Xueqing: "..."
Lei Xiaohui: "..."
"Oh, come on, don’t let your imaginations run wild. I was talking about his normal... shooting speed," Yao Yao chuckled coyly, feeling like she couldn’t quite salvage the situation.
In reality, Li Xiang’s Cold Ice Sword Qi was far more powerful than the Six Meridian Divine Sword. The Six Meridian Divine Sword was merely a mundane form of Martial Arts, while his ability was an Extraordinary Superpower. Furthermore, it was only in its first form, with plenty of room for future upgrades. It was just that his Achievement Points were limited, so for the time being, he couldn’t spare any to improve this Superpower’s Attributes.
He had an Earth Attribute constitution with a minor affinity for the Ice Element—a little, but not much—so it wasn’t his main focus.
Aside from the "Earth Pivot World Record," Li Xiang was particularly fond of "Giant Power" and the "Divine Movement Technique." After all, what man could resist the pursuit of power and speed?
Li Xiang’s Giant Power was currently at 55 metric tons and his Extreme Speed was at 5.5 Mach, but he felt it was far from enough. ’There are still some large Bat Caves in the United States,’ he mused. ’They’d be excellent places to harvest Achievement Points, but there’s just too much to do at the end of the year. I probably won’t have time to go for a while.’
’I still have to harvest the Fragrant Rice in Thailand. Plus, I bet there are special Earth Veins in places like Thailand and Vietnam. Since they’re so close, it would be a huge shame not to check them out while I’m there.’
"Brother Xiang, I’ve been researching a recipe for persimmon wine recently. Want to give it a try?" Yao Yao asked while they were peeling the persimmons they had just picked. Her fair wrist moved deftly, the fruit knife in her hand carving a flower of orange-red peel.
Zhao Xueqing and Lei Xiaohui raised their eyebrows. ’Why didn’t we think of that?’
They had so many persimmons; they’d never be able to eat them all if they just made them into dried fruit. But Brother Xiang loved wine. A unique persimmon wine would definitely make him happy. The two exchanged a look, thinking, ’Yao Yao got the upper hand this time, but we won’t be discouraged. There’s still plenty of time; we’ll even the score sooner or later.’
Li Xiang was naturally intrigued. He immediately agreed, "Alright, I’ll leave it in your hands. Hmm, Xueqing and Xiaohui can help out too when they have time. We’ll drink persimmon wine for the New Year."
"You can count on me, Brother Xiang," Yao Yao said, instantly thrilled. If the wine turned out well, she planned on adding it to the menu at the National Style Tavern.
Once spring arrived and the flowers bloomed, business would surely be even better than last year. After all, they now had five giant pandas. Those five pandas alone were a guaranteed draw for the scenic area.
’I heard Tuantuan and Yuanyuan have been very affectionate with each other lately. I wonder if Yuanyuan is pregnant yet? If she is, and has a cub next year, that would attract even more tourists.’
’Plenty of people have seen giant pandas, but how many have seen a pregnant one? Or a newborn cub?’
’The number of people interested would be staggering.’
Since they were going to make persimmon wine, they only made a little over sixty jin of dried persimmons. While delicious, people didn’t eat them in large quantities, and eating too many could lead to kidney stones.
Brewing persimmon wine was a long process that couldn’t be finished in just two or three days.
For the next few days, they focused on selecting the persimmons and removing their astringency. They chose fresh fruit that was over eighty percent ripe, washed it, fired up a stove, and steamed the persimmons at a high temperature for twenty minutes to break down the tannins. After that, they removed the stems, calyxes, and other inedible parts, keeping only the flesh, which they then crushed to extract the juice.
Li Xiang, Zhao Xueqing, and Lei Xiaohui helped Yao Yao move the processed ingredients to the cellar of the National Style Tavern for slow fermentation. The procedure was complex and required great care, but Yao Yao had done her research and was always reliable, so Li Xiang left the entire matter in her hands.
Not only that, but Li Xiang also selected over a hundred jin of Spiritual Medicine and asked Yao Yao to help him brew Spirit Wine, a request she gladly accepted.
Zhao Xueqing found an opportunity when Yao Yao and Lei Xiaohui weren’t around to see Li Xiang in private and give him a gift. "Brother Xiang, this is the Spirit Dew Rain I’ve collected over the past few days. Please take it and keep it for when you need it."
Zhao Xueqing was shy by nature, and her face flushed red as she spoke. It was, after all, rather embarrassing. This "Spirit Dew Rain" was a fluid secreted from the flower bud at the tip of her tail. It had taken her many days of coaxing it out to collect these three hundred milliliters, which she had stored in a small white porcelain bottle decorated with a plum branch pattern to give to Li Xiang.
The process of collecting the Spirit Dew Rain was strange. Each time a drop of the spirit fluid seeped out, it produced an indescribable, tingling itch, like a silver needle gently teasing the stamen of a flower. Just thinking about it made a flush of heat spread from her tailbone, as if her long, vine-like tail was about to pop out and send a soul-deep shiver through her.
"It smells wonderful, like the sweet fragrance of a flowering crabapple. And it’s brimming with Spiritual Qi. Thank you." Li Xiang opened the small bottle’s stopper, held it under his nose, and took a gentle sniff. The spiritual aroma that filled his nostrils made him exclaim in praise.
"Mm, in the future... in the future... I’ll try to collect more," Zhao Xueqing stammered. ’I’m so useless,’ she thought, feeling she could never be as bold as Yao Yao. She mused silently, ’If Yao Yao were the one giving him this, she’d probably be teasing him with all sorts of flirtatious lines by now.’ In truth, Zhao Xueqing had thought of many sweet things to say before she came, but in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to say a single one.