Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: Vanilla's Transformation

While Zhong Di marinated the cleaned little fish with cooking wine and ginger, he mixed up the coating in another bowl.

The batter was simple: corn flour, an egg, and a little bean flour. He lifted the fish out, tossed them in the prepared mixture, and they were ready for frying.

Normally, he would have added salt and ground chiles too, so they could be eaten straight after frying. But Zhong Di did not plan to stop there. He wanted to make a sauce as well and combine the two, which would make the dish far more appetizing.

Sizzle.

Frying the fish did not take long, especially these tiny ones. On top of that, they would be cooked a second time in the wok, so the timing had to be even tighter.

It was enough to fry the coating until it turned a crisp golden brown.

He lifted out the fried fish to drain off the oil, and then it was time to make the sauce.

He added minced pickled chilies, scallions, ginger, and garlic, stir-fried them until fragrant, then added the fish, seasonings, and water. He let it reduce over high heat, plated it, and finally drizzled hot oil over the top. That was it, done and dusted.

After frying the little fish, he also stir-fried some river snails, steamed a crab, cooked a few vegetable dishes, simmered a soup, and boiled some noodles.

The meal was centered on river delicacies, with vegetables as a supporting act and hand-pulled noodles as the staple.

On a rainy day, a bowl of steaming noodle soup was pure bliss.

Before long, a hot meal had settled comfortably in his stomach. Zhong Di patted his belly in satisfaction and went to sleep. Sleeping on a rainy day felt wonderful.

The temperature was just right, and he listened quietly to the sound of raindrops striking the ground.

Tick, tock, patter, rush, whistle.

All the sounds of nature lulled Zhong Di to sleep very quickly.

When he woke, it was already afternoon. The rain had stopped, and the sun had come out.

Perhaps because he had slept so soundly, he had slept for four or five hours straight. Normally, when he napped at noon, it was no more than two hours; sleep any longer and he would feel exhausted.

But today was different. After waking, he felt completely refreshed, every trace of fatigue washed away. In fact, he did not even feel tired at all.

After stepping outside, Zhong Di saw that his parents were all still working. Why did every one of them seem so eager to work? If they had no money right now, then working hard to earn some would make sense. But now...

The money he was earning was supposed to make his parents’ lives better. Normal labor was fine.

But when he counted their working hours for the week, Zhong Di felt they were pushing themselves too hard.

Under ordinary circumstances, farm work meant at least ten hours a day. Here, aside from rainy days when they did not work, they were laboring every single day. That added up to at least seventy hours a week.

At that point, even so-called nine-to-nine, six-days-a-week slogging was hardly worse than this.

By regulation, a workweek should not exceed forty-five hours. This was well over the limit, so their working hours had to be cut back.

He ought to urge them to relax a little, not let work occupy their entire lives. There had to be room for living, too. That sounded perfectly reasonable, did it not?

Hm?

Just then, Zhong Di spotted a mushroom growing in a clump of grass. He had no idea when it had appeared.

Mushrooms, it seemed, loved damp weather. As soon as it rained and the air turned humid, they sprang up with ease.

So Zhong Di happily dragged the others along and had them gather mushrooms with him. As the saying went, these wild mushrooms, once dried, would be used to entertain guests.

By the time the sun began to sink, the few of them had happily gathered all the mushrooms into one place. And there really were quite a lot. It was almost like he had become one of those little girls picking mushrooms.

No, that was not right.

"Dad, Mom, Sis, stay for dinner tonight. These mushrooms are fresh, so let’s make a chicken and mushroom stew. We can stew an old hen."

Zhong Di looked at the sky and figured he might as well ask his parents to stay for a meal. They already had a vehicle, and his older sister could drive his parents back afterward. No problem at all.

"You child, why do you have to eat chicken every day? And an old hen, at that. Wouldn’t it be better to keep it for eggs and sell them?"

Di Chunhua, upon hearing this, could not help complaining. Why was he slaughtering another chicken? Setting aside the fact that a hen was valuable, it laid eggs day after day. Do you know how much those eggs could be sold for?

That was like cutting down the goose that laid golden eggs. How could that be okay?

"Mom, chickens are raised to be eaten. It’s fine."

Fortunately, his mother was slowly getting used to it and did not resist much. The chicken really was delicious. Just thinking about it made her mouth water. Recently, her son had been taking the two of them here and there to eat this and that, and their tastes had become more and more spoiled.

No wonder people said it was easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but hard to go from extravagance back to frugality. She was only now truly feeling the truth of that.

Smack!

Zhong Di slapped his leg and killed a mosquito, then went back to handling the free-range chicken.

As he worked, he suddenly realized something was off. Under normal circumstances, with the arrival of the solar term that marked the end of summer, should there not be more and more mosquitoes?

Why did it feel as though there were fewer of them these past few days? Even just now, there had only been one mosquito buzzing around him.

"Shao Hong, have you noticed there aren’t many mosquitoes lately?" Zhong Di called back to him.

Shao Hong was washing the mushrooms. These would be used in the soup. In the northwest, mushrooms were not like those in the tropical rainforest, where one had to distinguish poisonous from edible. Most mushrooms here could be eaten.

The wild ones, especially, would burst out of the ground after a rain like spring bamboo shoots. In recent years, there had been far fewer of them. Twenty or thirty years ago, when the groundwater level was still high, there used to be a lot more after rain.

Any woodland belt with plenty of decaying leaves could produce these mushrooms.

"You noticed it too? I was just about to tell you. It’s only our orchard that has fewer mosquitoes. Earlier, when I went to the well house to flush out fertilizer, I was almost bitten to death. But the moment I came back, the mosquitoes practically vanished."

Shao Hong thought it over and explained this to Zhong Di, and he too found it a little strange.

"Yeah, I think it might have something to do with the mosquito-repelling herbs and mint we planted."

Zhong Di thought of the mosquito-repelling herbs he had bought before, along with some other perennial aromatic herbs. That was probably the reason. Otherwise it could not be explained.

"That can’t be right. There’s no way the effect is that good!" Shao Hong instinctively voiced his doubt. It was not a matter of believing it or not; it was that it simply did not seem possible.

Even if such herbs did repel mosquitoes, the effect should only apply to the nearby area. At most, mosquitoes would avoid landing on them or keep a little distance from those plants.

But it should not be enough to affect the entire orchard, should it? Even the mosquito repellents sold on the market only work around the person using them.

"My chicken’s done; only the innards are left. I’ll keep the hearts and livers, and deal with the rest later for feeding Yu Sheng. I’m going to try something first."

Since they had already noticed the issue, they might as well test it right away. After briefly telling Shao Hong about the unfinished parts, Zhong Di ran over to where the mosquito-repelling herbs were planted.

The herbs were concentrated around the Herb Garden and the backdrop wall, though some had also been planted along other field ridges. Still, most of them were gathered in the front half of the orchard, while the back half had none.

Back then, the plan had been to wait until they had multiplied enough before transplanting them.

Among all those herbs, the mosquito-repelling herb and the mint had been planted in the greatest numbers. If anything was driving the mosquitoes away, it was very likely these two plants.

Zhong Di understood what Shao Hong meant about the effect, but with the Wild Sand Immortal Sprouts applied, things might not remain the same. That was another reason he wanted to test it.

What if these mosquito-repelling herbs had mutated, and what they had acquired was not a better taste, but a stronger scent instead? That was quite possible.