Chapter 97: Dealing with Food

After recording the giant serpent’s data on paper, Liu Zhi had nothing else he wanted to study.

What remained was the handling of the serpent’s body. In practical terms, that meant nothing more than stripping the sinews, removing the bones, and cutting the meat away.

By the time Liu Zhi brought the serpent’s corpse back, he had already been thinking about how best to use it.

The flesh and blood had to be separated, of course. At first, Liu Zhi had planned to pour the blood into the burial ground, but after thinking it over, he realized that would not be quite right. The burial ground was a place for corpses; blood on its own would not have much effect.

So after some thought, he poured all the blood into a corner of the Underworld Palace.

That was a place created when the Underworld Palace first expanded, and in that spot lay the complete skeleton of a giant serpent.

Liu Zhi had considered dealing with that skeleton, but every time he tried, some mishap or another prevented him from digging it out.

So in the end, he simply left it where it was.

When it came time to handle the serpent’s blood this time, the skeleton immediately came to mind.

He had the corpse cart dump all the blood onto the giant serpent’s bones.

After that, what remained were the organs, the raw meat, the serpent hide, the sinews, and the bones.

Each of these had its own uses.

The organs were excellent alchemical materials. Liu Zhi planned to soak them all in Earth Stability Agent first, and leave them until he had learned new alchemical formulas later on.

As for the hide, he intended to dry it first and then see whether it could be made into leather armor. His undead underlings ought to have a set of armor; otherwise, with their skeletons left bare, they would hardly look presentable.

As for the bones and sinews, those were fine materials for making weapons.

The ribs and sinews could easily be fashioned into good longbows, which gave the skeleton archers still using vine bows a chance to upgrade.

As for the serpent’s vertebrae and the like, they were excellent materials for spears. Once polished, those bones would become razor-sharp, and with a good branch as a shaft, they would make a decent spear indeed.

Those were all easy enough to handle. What gave Liu Zhi pause was the raw meat.

In his view, the best use for it was simply to eat it.

But the problem was not there. The problem was that he did not have a proper way to cook it.

Although his cooking skill had reached level two from living on his own in the Golden City, the food he made was merely edible. It did not compare with ordinary games, where eating would even grant temporary stat bonuses.

So Liu Zhi felt a little unwilling to settle.

Then again, after thinking it over, he brushed that faint reluctance aside. The raw meat from this serpent alone looked to amount to at least five tons of edible portions.

Even if he ate it every day, he might not finish it all before he left.

And that was not even counting the several other giant serpents still waiting outside.

Thinking of that, Liu Zhi stopped fretting.

He selected two pieces of the raw meat that looked particularly good from the pile he had cut apart and set aside.

“Ever since I entered the Golden City, I haven’t had meat once. The last time I finally got hold of an eagle, it ended up being used in the burial ground. This time, no matter what, I’m going to eat properly.”

As he spoke, he began to prepare the meat before him.

Since he did not intend to return to the real world, he could only use water brought from outside into the Underworld Palace to wash the two cuts of raw meat.

Then, without taking up a knife, he gathered wind blades at his fingertips.

This was both a challenge and a fine exercise. If he could control the wind blades well enough to slice through the various cuts of meat cleanly, then even if the level of his Indigo Wind-Chasing Swordsmanship did not increase, its power would still change for the better.

Liu Zhi guided the wind blades to follow the grain of the meat, starting with the larger pieces.

After each slice, he would take out leaves of a sort, squeeze out their juices, and carefully spread them over the meat.

These were leaves he had discovered during this period that were edible and possessed flavor.

At the very least, he needed to marinate the meat a little.

As his “knife work” grew ever better, the pieces became smaller and smaller, until at last Liu Zhi was slicing them into shreds and dice.

Of course, he did not spend the whole time cutting. After the two pieces of meat were finished, he separated the cuts and laid them out apart from one another: the large marinated pieces on one side, the shredded meat set aside by itself, and the small diced bits cut last, which were used immediately.

Liu Zhi brought out the “Golden Pot” he usually used for meals. He had forged it himself, bit by bit, and had already been using it for quite some time. But before now, he had only been able to eat fruit and boiled leaves, so the pot had never really been put to use.

Now things were different.

He poured a little water into the pot, threw in the diced meat, and lit a fire beneath it. Then he watched carefully as the little cubes slowly changed from red to white, releasing a few beads of oil.

“The only bad thing about this snake is that it’s too lean. If it had some fat, I could render serpent oil out of it. Even if it couldn’t be eaten, at least it could be used on the hands and such. Looks like a serpent that lives on grass just won’t do.”

While stirring the diced meat with chopsticks, Liu Zhi muttered to himself and squeezed more leaves and fruit juice into the pot.

Over these past days, he had grown used to alchemy and poison-making. He was so practiced at such things that he could almost do them with a single flick of the hand.

Before long, the rich aroma of meat reached his nose, and the broth in the Golden Pot was nearly done.

Liu Zhi swallowed, then carefully took up a spoon and skimmed a layer of oil from the surface of the soup.

He then took out a slightly larger golden plate and spread the oil across it.

By then, the larger pieces of raw meat had been marinated about enough. Liu Zhi found two gold bars, set up a small grill beside the fire, and laid the meat across it one slice at a time to roast directly over the flames.

The strips of meat, meanwhile, were tossed into the golden plate and stir-fried again and again, ready to become a dish of fried meat for him to eat.

Even while he was swallowing his saliva, Liu Zhi did everything with meticulous care. He was even multitasking with remarkable focus, constantly adjusting the heat at three different places.

Liu Zhi knew perfectly well that without enough seasonings, the best he could do was force out the most primitive flavor of the food with fire.

Even if it could not grant him any additional attributes when eaten, it still had to taste as good as possible.

At that moment, Vednina and the Thread-Spinning Spider Woman also came running from their respective places. They stood close at Liu Zhi’s side, as if waiting for something.