Chapter 26 Sugar Making

Chapter 26 Sugar Making

Chapter 26 Sugar Making
After getting up early the next day, Li Wuxiang continued to teach Xue Baoping how to make winter melon candy. When they got home yesterday, they first washed the winter melon, cut it into finger-sized strips, and then soaked it in quicklime water for two hours. When the strips became hard, they took them out, washed them, and soaked them in cold water overnight.

This morning, the melon strips were washed once more and put into the pot to cook. In the steamy wing, while waiting for the melon strips that had been hardened by the quicklime water yesterday to gradually become transparent, Li Wuxiang said, "Zhao Qi came last night."

Xue Baoping turned his head and widened his eyes.

Li Wuxiang sat by the stove, slowly drinking the raw egg beaten into a porcelain bowl while tilting his head: "Like a thief, he jumped onto the roof of my house, drugged me, and asked me some questions."

"Then he..."

"Just as I thought, his master should be Zhao Kui." Li Wuxiang looked at her face that was flickering in the firelight, drank the egg in one gulp, put the bowl down, and looked at her seriously, "Then there are some things I have to tell you."

"I beat someone up the day before yesterday, took you to town yesterday, and taught you how to make winter melon candy today. All of this was to draw attention to us, and to teach you how to make this candy so you can sell it to Miss Chen. I wanted to use you to slowly get close to her and get some information about Zhao Qi to share with me. But I didn't expect that he would be more impatient than I thought, which is a good thing."

Xue Baoping thought for a moment and said, "Well... we don't have to do this now, right?"

Li Wuxiang sighed: "The key is not here. I want to use you to get information from the Chen family for me."

Xue Baoping frowned slightly and thought for a moment: "Hmm?"

Li Wuxiang stared at her for a while and smiled: "It's okay. It's almost cooked."

When the melon strips were fished out, they had become translucent, so they were drained and poured into a large wooden basin, and a thick layer of sugar was added. Xue Baoping was so distressed when he saw Li Wuxiang pouring almost all the sugar in that he gasped, so he had to say, "We are making candy, so we can't do without it."

Then he asked Xue Baoping to wash his hands and slowly mix the sugar, while he scooped some of the hot water used to boil the winter melon to drink.

"Next, I will start to get closer to Zhao Qi and try to get some skills from him to solve my problems."

Xue Baoping looked at him worriedly: "Is it dangerous? Otherwise... Li Wuxiang, let's go. Look, now everyone knows that you are Li Jiye. If we leave quickly, then..."

Li Wuxiang shook his head. "I had this plan at first, but after a trip around the town, I realized it wouldn't work. When the people in Jinshui Town looked at the people floating down from the upstream towns, they didn't seem to treat them as human beings. I thought that this world... the world would be very cold, but I never thought it would be this cold."

"This means that wherever we go, we will encounter groups of extremely xenophobic people. In that case, our situation will be a hundred times more dangerous than it is now. So we can't leave. We have to at least solve part of the problem here."

Xue Baoping bit his lip: "Yeah."

"So there is danger." Li Wuxiang washed his hands after drinking the water, and walked to the wooden basin to slowly mix the melon strips with her. He accidentally touched her fingertips. "I don't fully understand what kind of person Zhao Qi is, but since he came to check on me immediately after hearing about my situation, it means that this person is very cautious. A cautious person is definitely a smart person, and he may come to test you. You have to remember that I was the one you fished out of the river."

"Yes." "If I fail and the truth is revealed, you must also say that you know nothing. If someone tortures you, you must stick to your statement and tell yourself that you don't need to stick to it for too long, two days will be enough. After two days, others will no longer suspect that you are lying."

Xue Baoping bit his lip and said, "It won't be like that."

Li Wuxiang smiled and said, "Okay, that won't happen. Well, let's leave it like this and marinate it for another three days. Then we can move on to the next step and we'll be able to eat winter melon candy soon."

Xue Baoping forced a smile: "Yeah."

Li Wuxiang put his finger into his mouth and sucked it, making a smacking sound: "But now I can eat finger candy."

Xue Baoping then laughed, and imitated him by sucking his fingers, licking every bit of sweetness, and then his voice became cheerful: "Then... do I have to sell candy to Chen Xiu again in a few days?"

"Yes. Indirect information is also very important. It would be best if she could become your good friend. That would be a great help to me."

Then a smile appeared on Xue Baoping's face, as if she was a poor girl who had been confined in the backyard of the boudoir and was suddenly given a mission to explore the lush wilderness. She nodded heavily and happily took the ladle to scoop the hot water from the pot.

When she walked out of the house with the basin, the smile on Li Wuxiang's face suddenly disappeared.

He did hope that Xue Baoping and Chen Xiu could become friends, but not for himself. He would eventually leave Jinshui, and he probably wouldn't take her with him. He knew a lot of ways to make people feel close to him, but he didn't like real intimacy. Regardless of his past life or this life, he preferred to be a lone walker in the dark.

The world outside of Jinshui and the mysterious power that he wanted to pursue that did not exist were not something Xue Baoping could bear. He felt that her best ending should be to live a relatively stable life in Jinshui, sit by the wall of her house in the winter sun when she was old, and then think of a fairy trapped in a stove that she had met when she was a girl.

He sighed, stood up and walked to the dirt road outside the house. The water of the Jinshui River was still muddy and foamy, but the green grass on both sides of the river had grown a lot, and even the willow tree on the bank in front of the door looked greener. He walked under the willow tree and sat on the big rock that had been smoothed by time, speculating on what Zhao Qi would do next.

The incident that Zhao Kui was rescued and taken in by the Xue family happened at night. Li Wuxiang guessed that Zhao Kui did it on purpose. He sealed himself and more than a hundred children in the Xue family's stove to practice "Taiyi" and didn't want others to know. Xue Baoping said that Zhao Kui didn't leave the house during the days he was recuperating at home, saying that he was afraid of causing trouble for them, and this was probably because of this.

Zhao Qi is a cautious person, but he has stayed in Jinshui for so many days, so he should have lost all clues about Zhao Kui... Then what will he do?
Li Wuxiang thought of the Kitchen God statue in his house when he killed the Wang family father and son. The thing seemed to be magical for a moment, and then immediately became ordinary. He didn't know why, but he was sure that there must be gods in this world. Would Zhao Qi happen to know some methods to capture gods and ghosts?

But if he really had such magical powers, why did he jump onto the roof like a thief and use magic to knock himself out last night... I know too little about Zhao Qi, and my current identity is not suitable for wandering around the town to inquire. Li Wuxiang raised his hand and pressed his neck, turning his head——

I saw a girl in a white shirt and green skirt walking towards me along the road.

(End of this chapter)