Chapter 169: Chicken Killing War
Aunt Xie lowered her voice, casting a wary glance around the plot to make sure no one else was within earshot. Even though everyone bartered on the side, a military compound required a certain level of discretion in word and deed.
“If you ever need extra firewood, just head down to the base of the mountain to gather it,” Aunt Xie advised, sharing a bit more of her local wisdom.
Wanyan was deeply grateful for her warmth. Without these neighborhood tips, she would have been left to figure everything out by trial and error. “Thank you, Auntie. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I’m actually heading out to the village tomorrow. Would you like to tag along?” Aunt Xie asked. She planned to trade some items with the locals, as her family still needed to secure their winter stockpile of coarse grains.
Wanyan didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I’d love to go.” She wanted to map out the route so it would be easier to discreetly bring out supplies from her space in the future.
Besides, she truly appreciated the food in this era. It was fresh, entirely free of additives, and packed with flavor—a stark contrast to the bland, mass-produced green vegetables sold in the big city supermarkets of her previous life.
“Great. I’ll swing by your place after lunch tomorrow,” Aunt Xie said.
Wanyan nodded, and once her cabbage seeds were safely nestled in the dirt, she headed home to start prepping for the housewarming feast. With twenty-one people arriving, the portions needed to be massive enough to guarantee everyone left full. While her pocket dimension was overflowing with luxury ingredients, she chose to keep the menu grounded—just a notch above what a standard household might serve, ensuring it didn’t cross the line into suspicious extravagance.
Since a decade of children would be running around, the food also needed to be easy for little hands to eat. Wanyan quickly finalized the menu in her head: steamed fish, rich braised pork, silky steamed egg custard, stir-fried seasonal greens, and a crisp, cold cucumber salad. For the star of the table, she would use the two pheasants to simmer a rich, golden soup, serving the tender poached meat alongside a savory dipping sauce.
One soup, four meats, and two sides, she calculated. As long as I use the oversized serving platters, it will be more than enough.
To round out the meal, she planned to make traditional corn tortillas and sweet potato cakes. The main staple for the adults would be large, fluffy white flour buns to satisfy the soldiers’ immense appetites. Realizing her pantry didn’t have enough flour, she ducked into her bedroom and pulled an extra sack from her space before anyone could drop by.
For the children, she decided to simmer a large pot of savory lean meat porridge. Personally, she wasn’t a fan of the steamed buns—she found them entirely too dry and preferred noodles, porridge, or rice anyway. The porridge would keep both her and the kids happy.
There was just one glaring problem: Sheng Wanyan had no idea how to slaughter a chicken, and Gu Tingxiao was stuck at the barracks until evening drills concluded.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she grabbed a kitchen knife and a shallow basin and marched resolutely out to the backyard coop. She blinked, staring at the two pheasants happily scratching and fluttering around the enclosure. Wanyan tried to give herself a mental pep talk, but after a long, silent standoff… she realized she simply couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Wanyan, are you home? Open up.”
At the sound of Aunt Xie’s booming voice, Wanyan’s eyes lit up with pure relief. She instinctively clutched the heavy kitchen knife and jogged out to unbolt the main gate.
Aunt Xie took one look at the young woman rushing toward her with a gleaming blade and gasped, taking a synchronized three steps back to stare at her warily. Wanyan quickly tucked the knife behind her back, her cheeks burning.
“Merciful heavens, child! What are you doing brandishing a knife like that?”
“Auntie, I was just… trying to kill a chicken,” Wanyan mumbled.
Aunt Xie let out a long breath, her heart settling back into her chest. The sheer look of desperate resolve on Wanyan’s face a second ago hadn’t looked like someone preparing to cook dinner; it looked like someone marching off to war.
“But… I don’t actually know how,” Wanyan added, looking up at her with wide, pleading eyes.
Aunt Xie stared at her in dead silence, wondering if she had suddenly gone deaf. Wanyan delivered the confession with complete innocence, waiting like a lost child.
So you brought out the weapon just to look at it? Aunt Xie thought, thoroughly amused. In this day and age, she had never met a grown woman who didn’t know how to slaughter a chicken. In the countryside, if something was edible, you knew how to clean and dress it down to the bone.
Aunt Xie’s gaze dropped from Wanyan’s helpless face to the kitchen knife, and then to the smooth, pale hand gripping the handle. Wanyan’s hands were remarkably beautiful—porcelain-white and flawless, entirely unlike the dry, rough, calloused hands of the compound wives who performed manual labor every single day.
The mental image of those delicate, ladylike hands hack-sawing through a bloody chicken neck gave Aunt Xie a sudden wave of goosebumps. She quickly reached out and took the weapon. “Give me that. I’ll handle it.”
Stepping into the courtyard, Aunt Xie took a curious look around; it was her first time visiting the property since the newlyweds had moved in. A brand-new women’s bicycle stood neatly in the front yard, and a sturdy clothesline stretched across the brick path, holding a fresh load of laundry. Wanyan had wisely gathered their undergarments earlier to spare herself any awkwardness.
But the moment Aunt Xie rounded the corner into the backyard, her eyes widened in absolute astonishment. “Wanyan… what on earth is that bamboo structure over there?”
“Oh, that’s our kitchen, Auntie.”
“What?!” Aunt Xie barked, wondering if the northern wind was playing tricks on her ears. Who built an entire kitchen out in the backyard?
“Come inside, I’ll show you,” Wanyan smiled.
Aunt Xie followed her into the enclosure, still gripping the kitchen knife. The moment she stepped over the threshold and saw the immaculately organized workspace—especially the custom vegetable sink—she was utterly transfixed.
It was magnificent. With a built-in drainage line, a woman would never have to heave heavy, sloshing buckets of dirty wastewater across the yard to dump them out.
“This… this is incredibly convenient,” Aunt Xie marveled, her eyes sweeping over the masonry. “Was this your idea, child?”
Wanyan gave a modest nod. Aunt Xie stared at her, her face a portrait of disbelief. How did a city girl’s brain come up with something so brilliant?
“How exactly did he build it?” Aunt Xie pressed, her domestic instincts instantly rearing up. The single most exhausting part of running a household was the endless washing; walking back and forth to haul water from the well was pure, backbreaking labor.
“If you’d like one, Auntie, I can easily have Tingxiao help build a duplicate frame for your yard,” Wanyan offered. “We would just need to knock a small, neat hole through your brick perimeter wall to run the bamboo drainage pipe outside.”
Wanyan began breaking down the basic physics of the plumbing, but Aunt Xie merely stared at her, entirely out of her depth. “Alright, stop, stop. I don’t understand a lick of that technical talk. I’ll just have my Old Xie come over and learn the mechanics directly from your man.”
Wanyan agreed with a smile. Projects like this were always easier for the men to coordinate.
Aunt Xie completed her tour, thoroughly impressed by the long, enclosed corridor connecting the structures. The walkway was a straightforward piece of carpentry that any capable man could put together if he actually applied himself, but most husbands were simply too lazy to bother. In her own home, her husband had built a walkway, but he hadn’t bothered to insulate the sides with thick, woven bamboo netting to block the wind. In the entire residential quarter, only Deputy Regimental Commander Gu doted on his wife to such an extraordinary extent. He might look like a block of ice on the training grounds, but at home, he cherished his bride fiercely.
Tour finished, Aunt Xie marched back to the coop to harvest their dinner. Spotting the aluminum basin resting flat in the dirt right outside the wire, she looked at Wanyan with a puzzled frown. “Why did you set the basin right here?”
Wanyan blinked, confused by the question. “To catch the blood when we kill the chicken.”
“Right here? In front of the coop?”
Wanyan nodded. Where else would they do it?
Aunt Xie looked at the two pheasants pacing inside the wire, horrified by the prospect of executing one right in front of its living companion. Captain Gu’s wife was surprisingly brutal.
“Wanyan, listen to me—never slaughter an animal right in front of its own flock!” Aunt Xie chided gently. “It’s an easy way to cause a riot.”
After all, animals carried instincts and emotions too. If a bird witnessed its companion being slaughtered right before its eyes today, trying to catch that remaining pheasant next week would be an absolute nightmare.
Wanyan knit her brows, processing the logic with a straight face. Did a cook really need to accommodate a pheasant’s psychological well-being before making soup? Had the world always been this complex?
