Chapter 48
Mu Yulu was indeed very fast at cooking. Although Qi Zhiqi was helping her prepare the dishes, she didn't even realize what ingredients she had prepared before a whole table of dishes was ready.
Qi Zhi Qiu couldn't help but exclaim, "Miss Mu, your speed in serving dishes is almost on par with Chef Yang of our Tianxia Diyi Lou restaurant! You're amazing!"
Qi Zhizhi was also a little curious: "Chef Yang has to cook many dishes at the restaurant every day, which is how he developed his speed in serving dishes. I never expected that Miss Mu's skills would be so proficient."
Mu Yulu quickly explained, "Because I have high standards for food, the dishes prepared by our family's chef never suit my taste, so I cook for myself every meal. I've gotten better at it as I've done it more."
Qi Zhizhi and his sister nodded thoughtfully.
Mu Yulu secretly breathed a sigh of relief. If she hadn't explained it that way, Qi Zhizhi might have mistakenly thought that everyone in the Mu family was abusing her and forcing her to cook for the whole family.
She took Qi Zhi Qiu's hand and led her to the table. "Didn't you want to try my cooking? If we delay any longer, the food will get cold and lose its flavor."
The three of them sat down at the table together. Before Mu Yulu and Qi Zhizhi could even pick up their chopsticks, Qi Zhiqi took the lead and picked up a piece of mutton soup.
After taking a bite, she quickly picked up several pieces of meat and threw them into Qi Zhizhi's bowl. "Brother, you have to try this! This mutton soup is so delicious! It's so fresh and rich, and it doesn't have any gamey smell at all!"
Qi Zhizhi took a bite, savored it carefully, and then silently finished off all the pieces of meat in the bowl in one go.
He asked Mu Yulu, "How come this mutton is so fresh? How did you cook it?"
Mu Yulu explained very seriously: "This mutton is nothing special, but I happened to stew a pot of chicken soup this morning, so I used the chicken soup to simmer the mutton."
"I was planning to make mushroom soup tomorrow, so I prepared diced bamboo shoots, diced shiitake mushrooms, and diced yam in advance. I just put them together with the mutton to simmer."
"These are all readily available ingredients, but when put together, they make an excellent accompaniment to cooking yokan (sweet bean jelly). Without chicken broth and these diced mushrooms, the mutton wouldn't taste so delicious."
While she was explaining, Qi Zhi Qiu had already finished a large bowl of mutton soup: "Sister Mu, you are amazing."
She hiccuped as she said to Qi Zhizhi, "If you ask me, Sister Mu's cooking skills are already on par with Chef Yang upstairs, and I always feel that there's a flavor in her dishes that Chef Yang can't replicate."
Qi Zhizhi gently tapped her head with the handle of his fan. "This bowl of mutton soup has almost filled you up. Don't you want to save some room to try other dishes?"
Mu Yulu picked up a piece of pig's trotter and put it into Qi Zhiqi's bowl. "Yes, yes, try this pig's trotter. I removed the big bones and simmered it in chicken broth."
Qi Zhi Qiu was enjoying his meal so much that he didn't care about his image. He opened his mouth wide, took a big bite, and then exaggeratedly exclaimed "Wow!" praising Mu Yu Lu to the skies: "So pork can taste this good without all those weird seasonings!"
She said to Qi Zhizhi with delight, "Brother, this bite of pig's trotter made me feel the purity of a pig."
Mu Yulu laughed so hard she almost fell over.
In both her past and present lives, she had never heard anyone praise her cooking skills like this. Tonight, Qi Zhi Qiu had praised her to the skies, and she was so happy that she could hardly stop smiling.
However, the next second, when she heard Qi Zhi Qiu sigh that such a good snack would be perfect with drinks, and that it would be great if it were Tianxia Chun from the No. 1 Restaurant in the world, Mu Yu Lu's smile instantly froze on her face.
Tianxia Chun is the secret recipe Fenjiu of Tianxia Diyi Lou, and it is also one of the obsessions of Mu Yulu in her previous life.
When Qi Zhi Qiu asked her if she could drink, she shook her head absentmindedly.
But in her past life, she was a heavy drinker, and no one knew this except for Mu Qinhan from her past life.
Before marrying Mu Qinhan, Mu Yulu did not drink alcohol at all; she actually didn't like the taste of alcohol.
However, after entering the Mu Prince's mansion, Mu Qinhan neglected her in a corner of the mansion, making it difficult for her to even see him. Later, so many things happened that she couldn't sleep night after night and learned to drown her sorrows in alcohol.
Only alcohol could temporarily pull her away from her painful situation. When she was drunk, she seemed to enter another world, a world without Mu Qinhan and without all these troubles.
She could temporarily forget all her troubles, as if the things that caused her pain had never happened. She could drift off to sleep in a daze, and in her dreams she was no longer a sinner despised by others.
But drowning one's sorrows in alcohol only makes them worse; such a state is only temporary, and even the most beautiful dream will eventually end.
After waking up from a hangover, she only felt more pain, so she needed more alcohol to numb herself.
Mu Yulu thus developed an alcohol addiction.
In her past life, her favorite wine was Tianxia Chun from Tianxia Diyi Lou. This wine was refreshing and did not burn her throat, but it had a strong aftereffect. Just a small jar was enough to knock a person out.
Mu Yulu needed this kind of strong liquor that would make her fall asleep immediately after drinking it.
Ever since Mu Qinhan married Liu Wenshuang into the royal palace, Mu Yulu has become somewhat unrestrained. She gradually realized that no matter what she did, Mu Qinhan would not even glance at her, let alone fall in love with her. So she began to drink heavily without any restraint and even put the bills for her drinking on the Mu royal palace's head.
Originally, Mu Qinhan didn't bother with her at all. No matter how much she drank, she couldn't possibly bankrupt the Mu Royal Mansion by herself. Moreover, after drinking, she could sleep peacefully for a whole day and wouldn't cause him any more trouble, which was not necessarily a bad thing for him.
Mu Yulu thought to herself with a self-deprecating smile that Mu Qinhan's indulgence in her drinking, regardless of how much she drank, was probably the only thing he ever did.
Looking back now, Mu Qinhan probably wished she would get drunk and die quickly, so that he would be rid of a big problem.
Unfortunately, the fact that the concubine in the Prince's mansion was a drunkard was later spread by someone, who even embellished the story and described Mu Yulu's crazy behavior after getting drunk, which caused a lot of discussion. For a time, people in the capital used her as a topic of conversation and a joke.
Mu Yulu has once again become a stain on the Mu family's reputation.
Out of consideration for her reputation, Mu Qinhan began to force her to give up drinking.
Mu Yulu had long been addicted to alcohol, and it was very difficult to ask her to quit in a short period of time, so her process of quitting drinking was very painful.
At first, Mu Qinhan simply forbade her from using the name of the Mu Royal Mansion to buy wine on credit at the World's Number One Restaurant. He also hid all the wine in the Royal Mansion and forbade Mu Yulu from stepping into the kitchen again.
However, Mu Yulu's nose was even more sensitive than a dog's, and she could always find wine to drink in every corner of the Prince's mansion.
Later, Mu Qinhan discovered that hiding wine was ineffective against Mu Yulu, so he simply locked Mu Yulu in her small courtyard and assigned two guards to monitor her at the gate.
Without alcohol, Mu Yulu felt as miserable as a fish exiled to the desert, craving a drink every day.
After a few days, she actually took advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention and climbed over the wall out of the yard, sneaked into the kitchen and drank heavily. When people found her, she had already drunk two jars of wine and threw herself into a water vat, so drunk that she didn't know what the world was like.
Enraged, Mu Qinhan took her back to the courtyard, tied her up, and punished her by not allowing her to eat for three days.
Three days later, he did not untie her. He simply ordered someone to bring her some food and told her that she would be free when she could quit drinking.
For the next month, she was tied up in the yard and had to eat, drink, and relieve herself in the same spot. During that month, she lost ten pounds and was so thin that she was unrecognizable when she was released.
This is a memory that still chills Mu Yulu to the bone when she recalls it. During the time she was forced to quit drinking, she thought she was in hell on earth, but little did she know that even more terrifying imprisonment awaited her.
During the three years she was imprisoned in a dark room, she constantly longed for that taste of Tianxia Chun.
If you give her a jar of wine, she can fall into a deep sleep and briefly escape reality, leaving this cramped, dark, and foul-smelling room.
But until Mu Qinhan threw a white silk ribbon at her and ordered her to commit suicide, she never got to taste the flavor of spring again.
Before she died, she was thinking that if she had known she would be tortured to death by Mu Qinhan, she would have preferred to have just drunk herself to death in Tianxia Chunli.
When the tear fell onto the stone table with a soft thud, the three people in front of the table were startled.
Qi Zhi Qiu chewed more slowly.
Qi Zhizhi also stopped what he was doing, turned his head and stared at her intently.
Before they could ask any questions, Mu Yulu wiped away her tears and explained, "I'm just so touched."
Qi Zhi Qiu was even more puzzled: "What are you moved about?"
Mu Yulu held her hand affectionately, "Meeting you today, I have finally met a kindred spirit who understands me."
Of course, that was all she could say; she couldn't very well tell them that the tears she shed today were all the water that got into her brain in her past life.
“You have no idea, I cook for these people in the manor every day, but they don’t know how to appreciate food at all.” Mu Yulu wiped away another tear. “But you can actually taste the purity of a pig. You are the one who truly understands me. You are the real gourmet.”
Qi Zhi Qiu was also deeply moved: "My brother always says that I'm like a wild boar that can't eat fine food. No matter what I eat, I swallow it down in two bites and can't taste the flavor at all. Without you, who will consider me a gourmet!"
Qi Zhizhi stood to the side, speechless, and twitched the corner of his mouth.
Mu Yulu seized the opportunity to say, "Actually, I've always had a dream. I've practiced my cooking skills for many years, hoping that one day more people can taste my cooking. If everyone can enjoy the food, I'll be satisfied."
Qi Zhi Qiu nodded, then said to Qi Zhi Zhi, "I remember Chef Yang said something similar."
At this point, her eyes suddenly lit up: "Since Sister Mu has this idea, why not come to our restaurant to cook?"
The more she talked, the more she felt this idea was feasible: "If you could come to the restaurant to cook, not only would more people be able to taste your culinary skills, but you could also help us attract more customers. It's a win-win situation!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
