Chapter 58 Restoring Taste
Explaining magic is a laborious and time-consuming task. Although Jiangyou can be said to be a good student with top-level understanding, the sun was about to set when Polina had just finished explaining the use of the spiritual wood.
Holding the piece of wood, Jiangyou made an appointment with Polina to continue learning the magic of detecting sterilization the next day, and then followed Lolisa who led the way back to his room.
The witches arranged for her, Aunt Wolf and Jericho to stay in a townhouse at the east end of the village. This was an inn reserved for honorary members. It was located near wheat fields and hop fields, and was full of birdsong and flowers.
Each of the three people had a room, Jericho was on the far left, Takumi was in the middle, and Aunt Wolf Talia was on the far right.
When Jiangyou came back, Jericho and Aunt Wolf had just finished dinner and were strolling back from the village.
The Witch's Forest is a communal settlement. People don't often cook their own food. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are usually eaten in the village cafeteria. Only the witches in charge have their own small kitchen.
Because the night after tomorrow is the 'Midsummer Carnival' that witches value most, a bonfire has been set up in the village square tonight. All the men, women and children in the village have to go there to help, so Aunt Jasmine, who is in charge of the village cafeteria, also prepared dinner early: black bread, orange jam and a bowl of thick cream soup.
It wasn't a delicacy, of course, but it was something the people here were used to. Although Jiang You had caused quite a commotion in the small kitchen at noon, only the seven head witches and the two little witches actually enjoyed the delicious dishes. People were still unaware of the agreement between the head witch and Jiang You, and didn't have any unusual expectations for dinner.
They were all looking forward to the festival two days later - people would party all night long, with endless wine and delicious barbecue in the square... In the villagers' limited knowledge, this was the ultimate gourmet feast.
"That means I don't need to look for Cook Jasmine again tonight." Jiang You grasped the key point.
"That's right!" Lolita said with a smile, "There's still time to go tomorrow!"
...The witches here are particularly easy to talk to.
Jiangyou was enjoying her leisure time, and she also wanted to take advantage of the free time at night to deal with the spiritual wood.
——Yes, Jiang You already has an idea, now he just needs to put it into action.
According to Polina, the spiritual wood itself has a certain hallucinogenic property, and direct contact with real food may cause contamination, which discouraged Jiangyou from making tableware.
But it can’t be used to make tableware, it can be used to make other things.
She asked Lolisa to borrow a set of tools from the village carpenter, and then returned to her house to cut the piece of spiritual wood into two pieces, one large and one small. The smaller piece would be a simple wooden plaque pendant, and the larger piece would be carved into a memorial tablet, on which she could write her own name.
As a Cantonese who has the importance of ancestor worship and worshipping gods engraved in his blood, when Jiangyou listened to Polina's lecture, he felt that this was probably the real use of spiritual wood.
She was a wandering ghost who had traveled through another world, bound to this magically generated skeleton, yet still needed offerings to taste the aroma of food. So, it was only logical for her to make a memorial tablet for herself, right?
But… Jiang You scratched his skull, his pupils sparking with a few sparks: "How do I write on a memorial tablet I made for myself? Forget it… I'm not that particular anyway, so it's fine as long as it works."
She aggressively split the wood into a rectangular block and hastily carved a base that would stand flat and stable. The front of the tablet was inscribed in her native language: "The Divine Tablet of the Chinese, the Craftsman's Daughter, You, who traveled across the planet Tashkani." The back was inscribed with her own birth and death dates. The finished product looked a bit crude, a bit half-Chinese, and it was truly a rather subtle memorial tablet.
"Hmm... With this description, it can only be pinpointed to me. No matter how hard I try, there's no way there could be someone with the same name and surname as me who traveled through this world at the same time!"
Jiang You took a closer look at the finished product he had worked so hard on for most of the night. He couldn't help but be speechless for a moment, and could only comfort himself: "It doesn't matter if it's a little ugly. I don't despise myself. The key is... as long as it's usable!"
She removed her head again and fished out a cup of [Test Snack Tea Jelly] from within her skull. She placed it before her freshly baked memorial tablet and bowed respectfully. The next second, a faint silver light shone from her memorial tablet, and a shadowy figure appeared on the tea jelly. Before Jiangyou could fully grasp it, it was sucked into the tablet with a whoosh.
Almost immediately, a green soul fire appeared in Jiangyou's bone claws. She sniffed it and was pleasantly surprised to find that it really tasted like tea jelly. She took another lick... slurp... yes! That's the smell!
"It works! It really works!" Jiang You exclaimed in surprise, "With this thing, I don't have to bother Aunt Wolf every time!"
Compared to Aunt Wolf, the wolf meat translator, the tablet is indeed much more convenient: you don’t have to bother anyone, you won’t see a lot of inexplicable memory images when eating, and you don’t have to worry about whether the taste will change during the process of translating from Chinese to English... Even the taste can be restored to 70% or 80%!
After testing this ugly thing and finding it truly useful, Jiangyou became increasingly satisfied with her handiwork. She carefully placed the tablet into the large storage space within the skull and gathered up the remaining scraps.
Jiangyou carefully selected for a long time and finally chose a piece of scrap with the right size and perfect shape as the material for the small pendant.
Making a small pendant was much simpler. She polished the rough edges of the wood slightly, shaping it into a smooth oval. The wood was too small for her to carve many words, so she carved "Jiang You" in the center and wrote her own birth and death dates on the back.
"Hmm... In order to avoid having the same name as someone else, let's add something..." She thought for a moment and then carved her ID number from her previous life into the blank space below her name.
"Can we try again..." She put on the pendant and took out a few fried soybeans from her skull - these were the leftovers from feeding the horses last time - then she took a deep breath. Sure enough, the shadows of a few beans floated into the small wooden block, and then Jiangyou smelled the soul fire aroma of the fried soybeans.
"It works!" She laughed with great joy. "Finally, I can eat some normal food! ...Well, although this method is a roundabout way to save the country and not so normal, as long as I can taste the real flavor of the food, why bother with so many things?"
Jiangyou worked for most of the night to finish these two ugly wooden carvings. Now that she had regained her sense of taste and cleaned up the mess in the room, she felt a little...hungry and greedy.
It's hard to sleep on an empty stomach, so Jiang You felt she needed to go out and find some food, and test out her new pendant. But as soon as she opened the door, she heard the murmur of conversation coming from nearby.
The conversation was quiet, barely audible even in the stillness of the summer night. He could only vaguely make out two familiar male voices. Takumi scratched his head curiously and headed in the direction of the sounds.
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