There was too much meat to stew at once, so Yu Sheng processed it into several dishes with different cooking methods.
First a stranger, then an acquaintance, and on the third encounter, add scallions, ginger, and cooking wine—ancient humans in the early stages of civilization probably explored and tried the gifts of nature according to this process.
Yu Sheng hummed a little tune, cut the largest part of the meat into large pieces, blanched them in boiling water to remove the blood foam, then placed star anise, fennel, cloves, cinnamon, and other stewing spices in a casserole, added the meat, enough water, salt, soy sauce, and cooking wine to remove the gamey taste, and then slowly stewed it on the stove.
While the meat was stewing, he stir-fried the remaining meat with chili and garlic scapes into two dishes. He tasted them a little and felt that they were delicious, not tough or raw, and the meat slices were tender and smooth, but he couldn't tell what kind of meat it was specifically. In terms of texture, it was a bit like very tender beef.
As for the rest, he planned to process it into cured meat for storage after confirming that there was no problem with this batch… or, marinate it and then dehydrate it in an air fryer to make dried salted meat? He hadn't done it before, so he didn't know if it would work…
All kinds of ideas swirled in Yu Sheng's mind. He felt like a brave scientist, exploring possibilities in a field that no one had ever set foot in before.
So he explored in the kitchen for nearly two hours. After a lot of hustle and bustle, he finally opened the door and then carried the cups, plates, bowls, and the casserole of stewed meat to the dining room table, trip by trip.
Irene in the oil painting watched with a horrified expression as Yu Sheng bustled about. Her face showed two contradictory expressions at the same time: "Forget it, I'm tired, let him be" and "You can't, you damn well can't." After a long while, she finally couldn't hold it in anymore and said, "You're not really going to eat it, are you? This is something brought out of an Otherworld! Don't eat yourself to death!"
Yu Sheng looked up at Irene. "What if I told you that I've already eaten it twice in 'that place'?"
The contradictory expressions on Irene's face instantly disappeared, leaving only horror. "…Huh?!"
"See, I'm still alive and kicking now, so it should be fine. It would be a pity to throw away this hard-won trophy," Yu Sheng said as if it were a matter of course. "Do you know about hunting? This is my prey—sooner or later, I'll get the whole thing back and let it know who's at the top of the food chain!"
Irene didn't respond. Yu Sheng looked at the doll's dumbfounded expression and, out of curiosity, asked again, "But speaking of which, has no one really 'tasted' the 'entities' in the Otherworlds? Didn't you say they come in all shapes and sizes? There should be no shortage of things that look edible."
"Who would try that!" Irene looked frantic. "Who knows what strange properties they might have? Being poisonous is the best-case scenario. How can you put something like that in your mouth! And you've eaten it twice… you really ate it twice?"
"Yeah, but the first two times were sashimi. The situation was quite urgent at the time, and there was no time to process it. It was the kind of emergency where if you didn't eat it quickly, you wouldn't have the life to eat it." Yu Sheng said casually as he sat down opposite Irene, casually picking up a piece of meat with his chopsticks and throwing it into his mouth, eating with great relish.
Irene was stunned as she listened. "Then… what was your reaction after you ate it then?"
"I died after eating it," Yu Sheng said frankly.
"Then you still…" Irene subconsciously shouted, then she felt that something was not right—but she didn't know about Yu Sheng's "death and resurrection," so she just thought he was teasing her and glared at him angrily. "I'm being serious with you!"
Yu Sheng grinned and laughed at the exasperated doll in the oil painting.
He found that he was starting to enjoy bickering with this doll.
Anyway, she couldn't jump out of the painting and give him a headbutt.
He still didn't explain his "death and resurrection" to Irene. On the one hand, Irene couldn't perceive his death process at this stage, so explaining it would just seem like he was fooling her. On the other hand, he also had too many conjectures about the changes in his body that needed to be confirmed. He hoped to discuss them with Irene after he had figured out some more things.
But Irene didn't know how many chaotic thoughts were behind Yu Sheng's teasing smile. She just couldn't help but look at the sumptuous meal on the table again, and then stared blankly at Yu Sheng's chewing motion.
It looked… quite appetizing, and after processing, the color was no different from ordinary meat. The original strange appearance was completely gone.
"…Is it delicious?"
The doll in the painting finally couldn't hold it in and asked, pretending to be indifferent.
Yu Sheng immediately laughed, as if he had expected this. He casually picked up the empty bowl and plate that had been placed on the table earlier, served Irene a portion of rice, vegetables, and meat soup, and placed it in front of the oil painting.
"I didn't say I wanted any…" Irene mumbled.
Yu Sheng said casually, "Anyway, you can't really eat it, so you don't have to worry about the ingredients of these things, right?"
Irene thought for a moment and felt that it made sense. "Is, is that so?"
So she became frank again, presenting a state of being in a memorial portrait in front of the bowl and chopsticks that Yu Sheng had placed for her.
Halfway through the meal, their topic inevitably returned to the previous discussion about "professionals."
"Actually, there's another possibility why no one has come to you yet," Irene said as she hugged her teddy bear and sat close to the edge of the frame, thinking. "That is, some organization or official personnel have actually noticed the abnormality here, but they judged from a professional point of view that they couldn't act immediately, or they haven't accurately located the connection point and related information of the Otherworld yet, so they can only arrange for surveillance first."
"Surveillance?"
"That's right. Maybe there's a bunch of plainclothes officers staking out your house right now. After all, you came back from the Otherworld on your own before anyone could rescue you. Whether it's because of your strength or luck, anyway, the people who specialize in dealing with this kind of thing didn't have time to act, so they probably didn't have time to locate you either. Naturally, they can only arrange for surveillance around here first… You can pay attention to whether there are any strange faces in this neighborhood these two days. Maybe they are plainclothes agents, plainclothes detectives, plainclothes investigators or something. It's just a matter of paying attention, and it won't delay you from looking for small ads on the nearby telephone poles…"
Yu Sheng ignored her remarks about "small ads on telephone poles" and looked up at the window.
Irene said it simply, pay attention to whether there are any strange faces in this neighborhood—how would he know which ones were strange faces! He had only been here for two months, and he had been cooped up at home for almost the entire first month. Plus, he was a little face-blind. In his eyes, half the people in this place were strange faces!
"Do you think the guy selling jianbing at the intersection looks like a plainclothes officer?" After staring suspiciously out the window for a long time, Yu Sheng muttered to Irene.
"I don't know, I can't see."
"Oh, right, I forgot," Yu Sheng realized, quickly got up, picked up Irene's frame, and placed it in front of the window facing outside. "It's that one over there…"
"Doesn't look like it."
"So sure?"
"Nonsense. He makes a set with sausage and egg in fifty seconds. If he were a real plainclothes officer, he probably wouldn't even be able to brush the oil properly in fifty seconds."
"…That's true. What about the guy putting on phone screens next to him?"
"Doesn't look like it either—his hands and feet are too nimble."
"Oh… hey, what about…"
"Stop looking. It's useless for you to just be suspicious. And if he's a professional stalker, you definitely won't be able to tell," Irene interrupted Yu Sheng. "If you have the time to guess blindly, you might as well go out and walk around these two days. You've been stained with the aura of an Otherworld. You'll definitely be spotted by those professionals at a glance when you get close."
"…Hey, that's true."
Yu Sheng sighed. He couldn't refute her, so he turned back to prepare to clear the bowls and chopsticks on the dining table.
But as soon as he turned his head, he heard Irene shouting from behind, "Put me back first! I'm still on the window!"
Yu Sheng sighed helplessly again. He turned around, moved Irene from the windowsill, and muttered, "Tsk, so troublesome."
"Then you should get me a body as soon as possible. Then I can run around on my own," Irene in the oil painting raised her eyelids and looked at Yu Sheng, who was putting her on the dining table. Then she added, "I think I've gotten to know you a little better today, so I'm asking again…"
Hearing this, the corner of Yu Sheng's mouth couldn't help but twitch.
When Irene had discussed the "escape plan" with him before, she had indeed said that they were not familiar enough, so the cooperation in this area would be discussed after they were more familiar. But he didn't expect this doll's standard for "familiarity" to be so flexible.
"We'll talk about it later. I have a lot of things to deal with right now. At least after I'm done with this period…"
"Yeah, alright," Irene was easy to persuade. She just felt a little disappointed for a moment before nodding. "Then don't forget!"
Then she was quiet for a while. Seeing Yu Sheng clear the bowls and chopsticks on the table, she started to ramble again, "What are you going to do next? Are you planning to go out and look for telephone poles?"
"You're not over the telephone poles, are you?" Yu Sheng immediately glared at her. "I'm going upstairs to sleep now! After all this, I'm so tired I could die!"
Irene said "oh" and pointed at the TV opposite the frame.
"Then can you fix the TV first? It suddenly has no signal, and I can't watch anything…"
Yu Sheng: "…"
A moment later, he let out a particularly heavy sigh.
After such a short time with this blabbermouth, he was already starting to miss his carefree and happy single life.