Chapter 252
Talking to smart people is always easy. Yu Xunge nodded, "Exactly!"
This was just a guess, but Zhao Shuying felt it was the closest to the truth.
The two of them exchanged their thoughts and future plans under the tree.
Meanwhile, Tu Lan and Liang Yuchuan exchanged glances, and the latter pulled out her battered game console, asking Tu Lan, "Wanna play a round?"
Tu Lan thought to herself, "Can I play games with your sister Liang Yuchuan?"
Yu Xunge replied, "If I say no, are you just going to drop it?"
Tu Lan said, "Of course! I'm your little one; even the Holy Grail can't compete with you!"
Yu Xunge replied, "…Fine, but if you lose, don’t expect me to help you get revenge."
Tu Lan declared, "Just wait! I’ll help you bully her!"
While Yu Xunge and Zhao Shuying were still deep in conversation, they turned around to see Liang Yuchuan and Tu Lan had already tossed aside the game console and were engaged in a real-life brawl, both hurling insults at each other about being noobs.
They watched for a few seconds before silently turning back, pretending they hadn’t seen anything.
Yu Xunge asked, "Everything really okay?"
Zhao Shuying replied, "Yeah, no one would be foolish enough to defect to another race."
Though she said that, the worry etched on Zhao Shuying's brow was unmistakable.
Clearly, she had noticed some troubling signs.
This piqued Yu Xunge's curiosity. What kind of identity and promises could have caused the talents from Dinghai to waver after just over twenty years?
With over two hundred seventy years of imprisonment ahead, how would they endure? They had to be careful to preserve their lives. No wonder so few from the other races reached the top, and once they did, they often forgot their original selves.
Zhao Shuying asked, "What are your plans for the next reincarnation?"
Yu Xunge had already thought it through: "I’ll follow the oak owl for one reincarnation, then break away to forge my own path."
That was the surface plan, but she couldn’t share her true intentions with Zhao Shuying. She intended to seize every opportunity in each reincarnation to pull off a big escape.
Sigh, completing tasks to earn skills was just too slow; why not just take what she needed?
After parting ways with Zhao Shuying and the others, Yu Xunge traveled with Tu Lan for half a year, concluding this reincarnation.
However, in her fifth reincarnation, she found herself as a kitchen assistant, specifically cooking for Song Guili and Li Zhou. When she came to her senses, she heard someone calling her name—"Qinggua" (meaning "cucumber").
Yu Xunge lazily got up and glanced at the oak owl's talent—"Kitchen Assistant," S-rank!
Ignoring the cramped space, she spread her wings and flew low, exclaiming, "I’m here! What do you need, Uncle?"
No matter what year it was, this time she was determined to grow old in this kitchen!
The kitchen assistant was generous, allowing Yu Xunge to observe and learn his cooking techniques, but he never let her touch Song Guili's meals. Her tasks were limited to washing and chopping vegetables. Since this small kitchen only catered to Song Guili and Li Zhou, the workload was minimal. If she weren’t the kitchen assistant's niece, she wouldn’t have even gotten this job.
Yu Xunge wasn’t upset; being an apprentice meant learning the craft, and she could use the ingredients freely.
In the third year, the kitchen assistant began to loosen his grip. Sometimes, when he took a break and someone relayed that Li Zhou was hungry, he would ask her to cook for him.
After getting a good grasp of the environment, Yu Xunge let Tu Lan out, disguising her as a tiny snake that hung from her ear.
Li Zhou had a special recipe, and every time Yu Xunge cooked for him, she would quietly make a portion for Tu Lan as well.
Today’s dish resembled tempura, with fried fruit and vegetable slices. What made it special was the crispy coating, made from dozens of dried fruit powders and spices. It was said that Song Guili had specially sourced this recipe for Li Zhou, and the kitchen assistant had spent years improving it with ingredients from Senhai.
When she heard the kitchen assistant mention this, she felt a pang of guilt and couldn’t bring herself to look at Tu Lan.
Yu Xunge asked, "Is there anything different?"
Tu Lan smacked her lips, "There is a bit of a difference. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s really delicious? It’s just that it feels like something’s missing, like when you love spicy food but eat a non-spicy dish that’s still good."
That could be a matter of attributes; Li Zhou was fire-element, while Tu Lan was ice-element. This recipe was specifically designed for fire-type dragons, so while Tu Lan, also a dragon, would enjoy it, the elemental mismatch was an issue.
As Yu Xunge pondered how to adjust the ingredients, she heard Tu Lan sigh, "It’s okay, you don’t have to specially research recipes for me. I’m not like Li Zhou; I’m not that picky. Just give me some leftovers, and I’d be really happy… No! I’m not choked up; you heard wrong! I… I definitely didn’t complain or feel sad…"
Yu Xunge thought, "…………"
With Tu Lan saying that, how could she slack off? Yu Xunge settled into the small kitchen, focusing on dragon cuisine.
Seeing her dedication to dragon dishes, the kitchen assistant became more at ease and gradually began teaching her Li Zhou’s recipes. After observing her for two years, he entrusted all of Li Zhou’s meals to her.
At the end of each month, Yu Xunge would sneak out to assassinate various other races for practice and to steal moon sand.
Once Tu Lan figured out the kitchen assistant's daily routine, she became bolder. When it was just the two of them in the kitchen, she would play games or tinker with the mahjong machine. After getting into engineering, she vowed to create a mahjong machine that would never have a shortage of players!
Yu Xunge didn’t seek out Zhao Shuying and the others, but she had vaguely heard that many oak owls had defected, splitting into two factions and forming two organizations.
What a lively scene…
With two months left until the war ended, Yu Xunge killed the kitchen assistant and stole all his treasured recipes, defecting.
When she awoke in her next reincarnation, her identity was still unremarkable, and her divine gifts and luck weren’t great either. This time, she found herself in the territory of Feng Tang. After spending some time gathering intel, she "borrowed" some good equipment to establish connections and squeezed herself into the kitchen of the Ten Thousand Owls' leader.
She had hoped to work in the kitchen that specifically cooked for Feng Tang, but after some investigation, she discovered that Feng Tang didn’t have a kitchen; he only ate meals prepared by his daughter.
Her previous experience with the kitchen assistant had shown her that oak owls were quite skilled in cooking, and many of their ingredients were unique. Their cooking methods sometimes resembled potion-making, filled with artistry.
She settled into the kitchen to practice the recipes she had forcibly memorized at the end of her last reincarnation, while also continuing to learn culinary skills from the chefs there.
In the years that followed, she occasionally took Tu Lan to the battlefield for training, sometimes returning to the kitchen. Whenever she sensed something was off psychologically, she would defect again, hiding with Tu Lan. Each time a reincarnation was nearing its end, she would pull off a big score, stealing skills or recipes from the treasury or kitchen.
Every time she went to battle, she would try to find a divine skill similar to "Battle Review" and use "Reverse Moment" to switch it out.
Yu Xunge had lost count of how many reincarnations she had gone through.
All she knew was that her "Furious Moon" had accumulated 85,800g of moon sand. Each time she fed the "Furious Moon" moon sand, she gained 5 points of essence, and now her essence had reached 12,582 points!
Tu Lan’s essence also reached 3,085 points. If it weren’t for Yu Xunge using her essence to give Tu Lan a boost every time she collected moon sand, that number could have doubled. Unfortunately, despite Yu Xunge’s repeated insistence, Tu Lan remained steadfast.
Sadly, since last month, she hadn’t been able to steal any moon sand. She didn’t know if "Fate Unpunctual" had been drained or if it was being protected by the oak owls. The "Furious Moon" had also shown the suffix "Upgrading" for quite some time, with the remaining time being garbled, but thankfully, the skill was still usable.
This 85,800g of moon sand was what remained after deducting the 10,000g needed for upgrades. She could take it out from the "Furious Moon" at any time, but for now, it could only be carried over in the "Furious Moon" during each reincarnation.
Sitting in the big tree, Yu Xunge used her "Master of Fishing" skill to check the time for the first time, exclaiming, "We’ve been here for 277 years."
She hadn’t used a translator in a long time; the oak owl’s common language had become as fluent to her as a second mother tongue.
Moreover, while she and Tu Lan were in hiding, she would teach Tu Lan Chinese in her spare time, and Tu Lan taught her the dragon language. Now, they could chat completely without a translator, and she could even write some commonly used dragon characters and certain dragon magic runes.
Over the years, her alchemy skills hadn’t progressed much; after all, this was Senhai’s territory, and the origins of alchemical knowledge lay in Zelan. Good alchemists rarely went to battle. She had read Hufflepuff’s notes countless times, and now she could brew "Golden Killer" and "Spring Never Late" with her eyes closed.
However, her cooking had improved significantly. Not only was she now exceptionally skilled at making dragon cuisine, but she had also learned over 5,000 recipes since entering the tower. More importantly, she could now create dishes that scored over 95 points, and there were a hundred dishes she could make that scored over 80 points!
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