Luosifen (river snail rice noodles) with Melosin, Best of the Best

After washing the pickled bamboo shoots, mulberry leaves were hung on a rack under the eaves to dry slightly.

In the kitchen, Du Yuan was preparing the durians that had been delivered. This time, the durians came in both dry and wet packs. The wet packs could be eaten directly on the table, while half of the dry packs were put in the freezer to make frozen durians. After freezing, they could be taken out and thawed slightly before eating, like a smoothie.

Put the other half in the oven to bake the durian. The durian becomes fragrant, the dry outer shell is baked until slightly charred and crispy, and the flesh becomes hot and softer, exuding a different kind of aroma.

Melusin finally gave in and elegantly picked up a piece of durian flesh with a small fork.

Bertha wasn't sitting next to her. She was holding a freshly baked durian, looking around the kitchen with great interest. Everything seemed so new and exciting.

But what attracted her attention the most was the central garden.

The variety of trees and flowers is dazzling.

Compared to all this, her years of research achievements seem so insignificant.

When Melusin asked her to bring her team to Black Tower for research, she was somewhat reluctant; it wasn't until she received the crops Melusin sent back that she realized how wonderful things were.

Sangye is working on the base ingredients for snail rice noodles.

After cleaning the snails by removing their heads and tails, extract the snail meat and stir-fry it with star anise, fennel, rice vinegar, garlic, and other seasonings. Then, stew it together with pork bones and chicken carcasses in spring water. As it stews, the aroma is released.

The rice noodles used are freshly produced round rice noodles from the processing plant; they are fine, easy to soak, and absorb flavor well.

Side dishes such as water spinach, snails, shredded wood ear mushrooms, dried orchids, duck blood, chicken feet, meatballs, and beef balls can be added according to personal taste.

When eating snail rice noodles, Sangye always eats fried eggs.

This is different from a regular fried egg. Fried eggs are made by cracking eggs and then placing them in a pot full of oil at high temperature to set their shape. They are crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, with a porous texture. The surface is covered with a uniform golden-yellow color, and the edges are slightly charred, giving off an enticing sheen.

Once soaked in the broth, the cloud-shaped interior absorbs the broth, and with one bite, the aroma of oil and broth bursts forth, while the outside remains crispy, creating a rich and complex texture.

Moreover, a fried egg uses less egg liquid than a regular fried egg, yet its volume can expand dozens of times. Combined with the added oil, it's very filling. One beaten egg can make two fried eggs.

After the snail rice noodle soup was cooked, Sangye sautéed a handful of dried chili peppers, then added the soup back into the pot and simmered it again. He then added rice noodles, pickled bamboo shoots, shredded wood ear mushrooms, and pickled cowpeas. After cooking, he took them out and added the side dishes.

"Come back for dinner." Sangye didn't care whether the two people outside the door thought it smelled bad or not, and forcibly called them back.

The two people outside the door pinched their noses and carried the kitten and puppy into the kitchen.

Du Yuan boiled rice noodles in water with a little salt, then deboned the chicken feet, filtered them several times in water, and put them into four small bowls for the cats and dogs to eat lunch together.

At this moment, the smell in the kitchen became very strange. The particularly prominent sour and pungent smell was accompanied by the sweet aroma of bone broth and spices, and it was not so unbearable after all.

Du Yuan watched with amusement as the group moved in.

When it came time to eat, the two of them changed their tune again.

The first bite of the rice noodles, soaked in a deep reddish-brown broth, is a burst of flavors: the rich aroma of bone broth, the fresh taste of snails, the thick sauce, the fragrant fried egg, the tender braised chicken feet, the crunchy water spinach and pickled cowpeas... Even the pickled bamboo shoots have no unpleasant odor, but are crisp and sweet, with a myriad of flavors all at once.

Sangye watched as the two who had just been so disgusted with their food now wolfed it down.

She slowly soaked the braised chicken feet in the snail rice noodle soup for a while. After they had absorbed the soup, she gently bit into them. The tender, stewed chicken feet fell off the bone very easily, as if the meat had fallen directly off the bone. The chicken bones she spat out were clean, with not a single piece of meat left.

Although it wasn't Bertha's first time trying normal food, it was the first time she had ever eaten such a rich variety of side dishes.

She ate very slowly and was still getting used to using chopsticks; she couldn't even pick up the rice noodles as quickly as the others.

After enjoying the deliciousness of snail rice noodles and durian, no one mentioned their "not-so-pleasant smell" anymore; everyone tacitly avoided the topic. The next time, the unanimous response became: "You'll know once you try it."

*

After lunch, Du Yuan took her cats, dogs, and two teenagers to take a nap.

Sangye and the Seren sisters were walking on their way to the hospital.

During their conversation, Sangye learned that Bertha had successfully obtained permission to establish a laboratory on Black Tower Star, and her research project would focus on the plant samples provided by Sangye. Bertha planned to use modern technology to genetically modify and graft these plants, allowing them to survive in the original interstellar soil.

Bertha once successfully developed two types of plants, which covered most of the planets in the interstellar space. However, the survival rate was not high, and they were greatly affected by the mental fluctuations of the local sentinels. When the sentinels' mental strength fluctuated severely, the mortality rate of the tree species reached as high as 91%, a problem that remains unsolved to this day.

The reason why Mingyang Star was able to preserve so many plants was not only due to the continuous financial support, but also because Marshal Wu Jinyue, as an S-class guide, could control the fluctuations of his mental energy within a reasonable range, allowing the tree species to grow steadily.

Whether Sangye provided tree seeds or medicinal herb seeds made little difference to Bertha. In her eyes, they were all spiraling gene columns. As for their more specific uses, Bertha cared even less; she was a focused research fanatic, only concerned with her research results.

Born into the Seren family, she was provided with an excellent research environment. She didn't have to deal with tedious social etiquette, write piles of academic reports, or worry about funding.

Therefore, she felt that it was a necessary way to repay her family by using her patents for money, and she didn't want to spend time and energy thinking about anything else.

The team she brought was also mostly composed of these types of people; they were all talents personally trained by Bertha when she was a professor.

As soon as she arrived at the hospital, Bertha went into the medicinal herb field by the entrance, squatted down by the field, and stretched out her hand to Sangye: "Please give me the seeds."

Her expression was serious. Kuwano was initially taken aback, but then he realized that Bertha was asking Kuwano for the "enough seeds for scientific research experiments" that he had promised.

Faced with someone of this personality, Sangye was speechless and could only hurriedly take out several storage boxes containing thousands of seeds, enough for Bertha to conduct experiments for a period of time.

Although there was plenty of mulberry pods, she still reminded me, "Use them sparingly." Selecting seeds for my grotto wasn't easy either.

Bertha nodded solemnly, cradling the seeds to her chest, and then ignored the two people standing in front of the field, looking at each other blankly.

Everyone in the hospital was taking a nap, and the only sound in the silence was the occasional chirping of cicadas.

“Melushin, do you know Ms. Eugenia Retona?” Kuwano asked softly.

Melusin's brow twitched slightly, and she looked up at Sangye without making a sound.

"I'm collaborating with Camellia, and I'd also like to learn about the executive officer on Muli Star. But I haven't found much information about her on the StarNet. There's very little information about her. She was born on Muli Star, graduated from the Imperial Military Academy, joined the G39 Legion, and after several promotions, suddenly returned to her hometown to serve as an executive officer. She hasn't left since, nor has she been promoted again. In recent years, she has never appeared in public, and her affairs are basically handled by her adjutant," said Sangye.

Eugénie Retner appeared to be an ordinary, capable military officer who had chosen to return to her hometown for a semi-retired life. Even with Lin Changli's access privileges, she couldn't find any hidden resume information.

But Kuwano instinctively felt that something was wrong.

So she tried to ask Melusin, who could see clues through the movement of money and was very likely the person in the empire who knew the most inside information.

"Does she make you feel uneasy?" Melusin didn't answer directly, but asked in a similarly soft voice.

Kuwano understood her subtext: Melusin was like a super cheat code, knowing a little bit about everything; but if you wanted to know the secret from her, you had to exchange it for an equal secret.

After thinking for a moment, Kuwano replied, "I'm afraid she'll become an obstacle in my career."

“Is that so?” Melusin said indifferently. “I don’t know what your plan is. I’ll tell you if you want to know. But I have no evidence, so I haven’t told anyone, and I haven’t said this to you today either.”

Sang Ye nodded.

She and Melusin retreated to the furthest tree, where no one could hear their conversation.

“You know, most of us only know who our mothers are, not who our fathers are. I don’t know either, because it doesn’t matter. My mother just wanted to find someone to have a child with, and that’s how I came to be,” Melusin began. “It’s the same in the royal family. But the current Her Majesty is an anomaly in the royal family. She married a man early on and later had the Crown Prince. But they divorced a few years after the Crown Prince was born. It’s said that Her Majesty discovered that the man had abused the Crown Prince. There were a lot of rumors at the time, and nobody knew the truth.”

Melusin's voice was very soft: "That man's name is Yu Shen."

While reviewing hundreds of millions of military expenditures, Melusin discovered a connection between Yu Shen, Song Yu, and Eugénie Retona, who regularly provided each other with financial support through various legitimate expenditures.

When she said there was no evidence, she meant that all expenses were routine, previous military exchanges were normal, and there were no problems with the accounts. Furthermore, there was no connection between the three individuals.

Melusin was only acting out of curiosity. She went back hundreds of years and found that no one would do something so pointless except Melusin, who was confident in her mental abilities.

She discovered a record showing that the three of them had lived with the same man in their childhood. It was just a rental agreement; the original photo was almost blurry, and the names on it were either misremembered or they had changed their names later. Song Yu was written as Song Yu, Eugénie Retner was called Eugénie, and they didn't even have a surname.

They lived on a planet that served as a garbage dump, a chaotic and unmanageable place. And before long, it was destroyed along with the garbage.

There was nothing else.

In Eugénie Retner's background, she was born with her mother, but was sick as a child and rarely saw people.

Song Yu was an orphan who was abandoned at the gate of an orphanage when he was three years old and grew up in the orphanage.

Yu Shen was abandoned at the doorstep of a family and adopted.

Sangye remained silent.

"So you suspect they are siblings...?"

"Furthermore, when you checked Retona's background, did you look at the date of her retirement?" Melusin didn't answer, but asked in return.

Kuwano tried hard to recall that date.

“It was the year His Majesty divorced her ex-husband.” Melusin shrugged. “The timing itself isn’t a big deal, but when you connect these clues, there’s probably some connection. But none of this counts as evidence; even the names on the rental contract don’t match. Seeing a financial connection doesn’t count as evidence, otherwise, wouldn’t I be able to frame whomever I want?”

Sangye fell silent.

"Moreover, back then, Song Yu got into some trouble and was exiled. Initially, he wasn't on Muli Star, but on an icy planet. However, that planet was suddenly invaded by space pirates—not the insignificant White Wolf Gang, but a real armed pirate group. Song Yu survived by sheer luck. At the time, the Empire paid quite a bit of attention to this incident, and many people hoped that this S-rank guide would return—after all, he was an S-rank guide—so they transferred him to the relatively safe Muli Star next door," Melusin said. "At the time, some people even suspected that because of his incompetence, the Emperor wanted to assassinate him."

Melusin patted her gorgeous dress, still carrying the lingering aroma of snail rice noodles: "Alright, I'm going back for my afternoon nap."

Sangye nodded and prepared to return to the West Building.

Melusin suddenly called out to Sang Ye.

Sangye turned his head.

Melusin said, "Sangsang, you probably haven't seen the extent to which an S-rank ability can be achieved." Melusin was too smart; she could connect the dots with just a few clues. Since Sangye didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't willingly get involved in a vortex that had nothing to do with her. "But you must be very careful."

Kuwano nodded solemnly: "Thank you, Melusin."