Chapter 374: The Most Luxurious Creative Team
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
He had never seen someone burn their bridges that quickly before. These two were professionals at it!
“I haven’t had enough of it for lunch. Let me come over to have some for dinner too, please?” Nan Jingheng moved his face close to them. He really wanted to have some clean baby lobsters!
“It’s not good for you to have so many baby lobsters. They contain a lot of bacteria and parasites, and there’s even a chance of you contracting muscular lysis,” Wei Zilin said expressionlessly.
Nan Jingheng was shocked. They had always enjoyed baby lobsters when everyone got together for a meal. Why had Wei Zilin not mentioned this before? “Aren’t you having baby lobsters tonight?”
“It’s okay to have it once in a while. You just had unhygienic ones for lunch, and now, you want baby lobsters again for dinner. What if you overeat?” Wei Zilin glanced at him. Nan Jingheng vaguely detected the coldness in his tone and could not help but rub his arms together to get a little bit warmer.
“Big Brother Zilin, you can’t do this to me. Is this because I ordered baby lobsters for lunch when you couldn’t have any? Sis-in-law, do let me have some,” Nan Jingheng turned to Xu Moyan for permission instead.
Xu Moyan was tickled by him and kept laughing. “Sure. Do you have anything to do later? You can either come directly to our place or come over later tonight.”
“I’ll go over later tonight. I need to deliver the recording for post-production and give it a boost first,” Nan Jingheng said.
The young master of Nan Yin was even taking care of this small matter himself. One could see that he was really putting a lot of effort into this project.
Xu Moyan turned to Zhezi and said, “Are you free tonight? We want to thank you for your help today. Come over to our place for dinner too.”
Wei Zilin did not say a word. At the moment, he was feeling especially happy about Xu Moyan referring to their house as ‘our place’.
Even if she had listened to his songs while growing up, he was nevertheless still an outsider.
“She’s right. Come along for dinner. We really need to thank you for today. I’ll treat you to another meal some other time. It will be different from the meal sis-in-law is thanking you with as the meal later will be a gesture of my own sincerity,” said Nan Jingheng.
“Sure. I still have some recordings to work on, but I’ll go over later tonight,” Zhezi accepted the invitation readily.
“It’s settled then. I’ll give you a call and pick you up when I’m heading over. You won’t know where to go, anyway,” Nan Jingheng patted Zhezi on the shoulders as he said.
Everyone agreed on the plan as the four of them split up to go their own separate ways.
Xu Moyan brought along Wei Zilin to the wet market as the supermarket did not sell live baby lobsters. She bought quite a lot of food with enough snacks for the three men to enjoy with a beer, which included duck’s neck, wings, and intestines. She wanted to braise them in spice.
She had tried it before as Xu Moyan had taken the time to experiment on it. The result, according to Zheng Yuntong, was that it tasted better than the Distorted Mirror brand of braised food. They even tasted better than those popular delivery brands of braised, spicy food.
If Xu Moyan one day got tired of working in the advertisement industry, she was fully capable of opening a restaurant selling braised food. It would no doubt become well-known in no time at all.
She later bought some beancurd, seaweed strips, sea cucumber, cockles, and some seasoning before returning home with Wei Zilin.
Aunt Liu had not left the house yet, so she helped out Xu Moyan in sorting out the ingredients.
After cleaning everything, Xu Moyan took out her phone. It has been quite a while since she had uploaded videos of her making dishes.
Coincidentally, the dishes she was preparing today were very commonly ordered via delivery. After preparing all the necessary ingredients and spices, it was actually quite simple to make and could easily be done at home. Thus, she decided to record the process for the dishes today.
She washed the parts of the duck with water and quickly cooked them in boiled water before scooping them out. Then, she washed them again with water. After this, she fried dried chili, ginger slices, and onions until fragrant before adding water, cooking wine, dark soy sauce, and soy sauce. She cooked them until a wonderful smell came from the broth before adding licorice, nutmeg, orange peel, bay leaves, star anise, and cinnamon.
Xu Moyan gave some consideration to Zhezi’s voice and did not add in too much chili, unlike certain food deliveries that made it so spicy that it was hard to enjoy the food. She made it just nice enough that it tasted good but was not too spicy.
When the fragrance of the food got pungent, she added the duck neck and duck wings to the broth and covered the pot. After this, she turned to work on frying the beancurd.
The duck intestines were added into the pot only after the duck neck and duck wings were fully cooked. This was because the duck intestines would turn hard if cooked for too long. She later turned off the fire and left the ingredients inside to soak up the broth.
Xu Moyan soaked the seaweed to make sure they were cleaned and later washed the sea cucumber numerous times.
She sliced onions, garlic, and ginger to be fried in hot oil before adding pepper and dried chili. Even though the ventilator fan was turned on to full power, it still could not get rid of the spicy smell permeating through the kitchen. Once everything was fried until fragrant, she added some Shi County bean paste and Thirteen Spice. Xu Moyan continued frying everything together until it smelled good. Then, she added some water and put in the sea cucumber before allowing it to simmer until it absorbed the flavors. After this, she scooped the sea cucumber out and placed it aside before continuing to boil the broth until it reduced. This would eventually become the stock.
She would add the baby lobsters into it later when she started to cook them. Since the stock had the flavor of the sea cucumber in it, it would make the baby lobsters taste even better.
As Nan Jingheng and Zhezi had not yet arrived, Xu Moyan was not too anxious about preparing the baby lobsters. The sea cucumber and various duck portions were suitable to be eaten cool, so she had prepared those first.
She took out the seaweed strips from the water and added vinegar, cooking wine, sugar, salt, chicken stock powder, and white sesame. Then, she mixed them up and soaked them in the stock for flavoring.
As for the dried chili and pepper that had been fried in hot oil, they had done the job of creating a spicy oil base. Xu Moyan added vinegar, pickled pepper juice, sugar, salt, hot peppers, and red chili into it and turned it into a salad dressing. She cooked the cockles and soaked them in the stock as well, before later placing it into the fridge together with the seaweed to serve as a cold appetizer.
She scooped out the duck portions that were to be cooled down and later placed them into the fridge as well before going on to clean up the baby lobsters with the help of Aunt Liu. They used water to continuously wash and soak the baby lobsters, which were all at their last gasp. Both she and Aunt Liu had put on plastic gloves and were brushing down the baby lobsters in detail. They washed them again in water, as the water that was used to soak the baby lobsters now appeared cleaner than during the previous soak. This time, there were just some vague dirty substances left in the water.
When they did this a third time, the water used to soak the baby lobsters was now completely clean.
It took a tremendous amount of effort. After working so hard on the baby lobsters, they did not even notice that it was now close to 6 pm. Both Xu Moyan and Aunt Liu were aching slightly at the waist from all the tedious work.
Since Aunt Liu had finished most of her work, she left first.
When she got to the door, Aunt Liu saw Nan Jingheng and Zhezi arriving together.
Nan Jingheng shouted out excitedly the moment he walked through the door and took off his shoes.
He was still in the living when he craned his neck toward the kitchen and called out loudly, “Sis-in-law, I can smell them! They smell really good!”
Xu Moyan came out when she could spare the time and saw Wei Zilin welcoming them into the house. She smiled and said, “Everything else is suitable to be eaten after cooling down, so I prepared them first in the afternoon. Only the baby lobsters are left. I was waiting for you to arrive before I started cooking them. It will be quick. Just give me half an hour.”
Nan Jingheng pointed to a case of beer on the floor. “There’s no rush. We brought this along. We’re going to have a good time drinking tonight.”
Xu Moyan laughed in agreement and returned to the kitchen.
She fried some onions, ginger, and garlic again until fragrant before adding pepper and chili to them.
Baby lobsters needed to be done hot and spicy as they had a thick shell that the flavour needed to penetrate.
Even though she had added a lot of chilies, in fact, not much of the flavor could reach the flesh. This was why she was not stingy with the chili and added a lot of it to the baby lobsters. She cooked it in a similar way as the sea cucumber and added some baby lobster paste too before she continued to fry everything until a pungent fragrance emerged. She added the remaining stock and some water before placing the baby lobsters into the pan.
When the baby lobsters were cooked, she took out all the food items that were in the fridge and placed all the cold appetizers on the dinner table. “The baby lobsters will be done soon. You can have these with your beer first.”
“We’ll wait for you, sis-in-law,” Nan Jingheng said with a wide smile on his face.
Xu Moyan said to Zhezi, “I didn’t make them too spicy because of your voice. The baby lobsters might be slightly spicier than these though.”
Zhezi looked at all the food Xu Moyan made and said to her, “Don’t mind me. I have these quite often. Sis-in-law, your cooking really does smell better than what is sold out there.”
Xu Moyan did not attempt to be humble. “Taste it. They taste better than the deliveries too.”
With that, she walked into the kitchen and took out the baby lobsters.
Xu Moyan did not drink much that night, while Nan Jingheng and Zhezi were absolute gentlemen. Nan Jingheng might enjoy creating a ruckus, but he would never pressure a woman to drink. He was fine with any drink that Xu Moyan chose, be it beer, juice or water. Her choice of drink did not matter to him.
Xu Moyan did have some beer, and since Nan Jingheng and Zhezi did not coerce her to drink more, she took her time enjoying it. Occasionally when the four of them clinked their glasses, she would also chug her beer in one go.
On the contrary, Wei Zilin and Nan Jingheng tried to convince her not to join in and to just drink half a glass of beer.
…
Xu Moyan thought that Nan Jingheng was really the little prince of competence. After all, his work was handled with complete efficiency.
The song had only just been recorded, but it was released online in just three days.
The official Weibo for Massacre OL, “Big news, the new theme song for Massacre OL is out now! In conjunction with the newly introduced story within the game as well as the sub-game, we have added Qing Siyu as a new NPC and introduced the theme song for Qi Shaofeng and Qing Siyu. Composer: Zhezi, Lyricist: Xining, Singers: Yu Linling and Silent Words. Postproduction: Luo Pingsheng. URL Link. We’ll be releasing the music video based on the game’s storyline in a few days. Stay tuned for it.”
This Weibo post exploded with comments the moment it was uploaded.
It was not just because the pair of CP, Qi Shaofeng and Qing Siyu, were voiced by current ‘it’ couple Yu Linling and Silent Words, and that they had even sung a duet for the theme song, but also because the most prestigious creative team had been put together to create this song.
As for Luo Pingsheng, his name spoke for itself. He was a special effects expert whose skills were on par with his Hollywood counterparts. Luo Pingsheng’s team was the one behind the special effects for the film, Massacre, all those years again. Rumor has it that most of the special effects in Massacre OL were also done by Luo Pingsheng’s team.
