Seeing that her daughter was finally willing to eat, Sanette seemed to relax, and her wrinkled face twitched slightly.
"Stranger, you remind me of my wife. She's passionate about experimenting with all sorts of ingredients, even the supposedly poisonous datura flower, which she's tried cooking..."
Xu Milu nodded slightly:
“I saw that painting. Your wife was a very beautiful woman, but what exactly happened back then? Since you didn’t stop me, it proves that you knew the mandolin fruit was edible, otherwise it wouldn’t have appeared in the castle kitchen, would it?”
Sanate paused for a moment, then slightly raised her wise eyes, as if looking through Xu Milu at someone else:
"Long, long ago, dwarves and humans lived on this island. For a long time, they did not disturb each other. The dwarves lived south of the Yellow Sugar Desert, while the humans occupied the north of the Yellow Sugar Desert. They lived peacefully like this for hundreds of years."
Later, in order to establish friendly relations with the dwarves, the humans sent seeds of the two-colored mandolin. This plant grew extremely fast, quickly covering the entire Yellow Sugar Desert. The king of the dwarves at the time then used these seeds to build the Mandolin Kingdom.
Xu Milu listened intently, but suddenly realized that the Yellow Sugar Desert was barren and only cacti could survive there, and couldn't help but ask:
What happened next?
Such a vast desert, planted with bicolor mandolin peppers, must be a beautiful sight.
"Eating mandolin fruit will cause severe pain in the mouth. The dwarf ancestors believed that mandolin fruit was highly poisonous, so they warned their descendants not to eat mandolin and called mandolin 'the food cursed by the gods'."
Sanette's beard twitched, as if he were recalling something:
"Until a hundred years ago, a young gourmet hunter named Missy came to the closed Mandolin Kingdom from outside the island. She was very interested in this fruit with a strange taste and began to study how to use mandolin in cooking."
"That gourmet hunter is Queen Missy, Princess Sunny's mother?"
Xu Milu had a vague idea in her mind.
Sanette stared at the still-boiling hotpot, silent as a red stone.
"Missie's health was poor, and her condition deteriorated day by day after giving birth to Sunny. However, she still had great enthusiasm and not only cultivated many varieties of mandolin, but also wanted to share dishes made from mandolin with everyone."
The dwarves, mindful of their ancestors' teachings, vehemently opposed the plan. Some claimed Missy harbored ulterior motives and even united to try and expel her from the country.
Sanette's face grew increasingly red, her bark-like features filled with sorrow, and her breathing became heavier and heavier.
“Even after leaving me to go to the ancestral resting place, Missy still remembered her mission as a gourmet hunter. Shortly after she reported the mandolin to the Gourmet Association, she left me and Sunny completely.”
Rumors are spreading throughout the kingdom that Missy left after consuming mandolin, and some even say that mandolin was part of a human conspiracy. Therefore, I ordered all the mandolin in the Sugar Desert to be burned and all mandolin recipes to be destroyed.
His expression was gloomy and indifferent.
Sunny's eyes were dim, she clung to Lola's clothes and refused to look up, large, crystal-clear tears rolling down her face, she looked extremely pitiful.
Xu Milu looked at the oil painting behind Sanate.
Although the queen in the oil painting is old, her human identity is still evident. With her full head of silver hair, she smiles confidently, showing no fear of the marks that time has left on her face.
She already had a vague idea in her mind.
One hundred years ago, Sanette met Missy. Even though Missy was just an adult at that time, she was already a centenarian when she passed away. Even though there are many magical ingredients in the Gourmet World, there are also objective realities that cannot be affected.
That is lifespan.
"May I ask, when Queen Missy passed away—"
Xu Milu probed.
"One hundred and thirty-one years old, that's quite a long lifespan for a human."
Lola was very tall, which allowed her to easily carry Sunny on her shoulders. Hearing Xu Milu's question, she couldn't help but shake her head regretfully.
"Human life is short, and the average lifespan of dwarves is over five hundred years. Queen Missy was simply reaching the end of her life. Her last meal before she died was Swift Rabbit stewed with two-colored mandolin. This was her own request, not because she died from eating mandolin as rumored."
I came here specifically to find mandolin, but I never imagined that a country named after mandolin would abandon this plant.
One hundred and thirty-one years old, that's considered a long life on Earth! Even a funeral for that would be considered a joyous occasion, and the descendants would have to set off a couple more strings of firecrackers!
Xu Milu couldn't help but sigh. Queen Missy had spent her whole life studying mandolin and cultivating countless new varieties, but she still couldn't change the deep-seated prejudices in the hearts of the dwarves, who even used this to slander her cause of death.
"But verifying that mandolin is non-toxic is very simple, so why is no one willing to try it?"
She still had some doubts:
"With just a small verification, it can be proven that what the Queen said is true. Has no one tried it?"
“Dwarves have always been arrogant and conceited. Sanette marrying a human woman has already annoyed the elders enough, not to mention that a non-human being is instigating the dwarves to violate their ancestral teachings—those rumors are most likely spread by those old fogies.”
Lola seemed quite familiar with Sanette, and complained without any restraint:
"So you dwarves are really troublesome. Do you still think this is the time of great chaos, when humans can harm dwarves at will? Intermarriage between humans and dwarves is nothing new."
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