Chapter 10: Magical Fried Shrimp
Just as Lu Yunxi was spiraling into confusion over her system’s insight, the village chief finally finished his speech.
“Look at this poor child from the Liu family! She was only going to get weaker day by day until she died. We had no choice but to send her away to keep her alive!” The village chief gestured toward the bed where Liu Baozhu lay unconscious. “Originally, I hid this truth from you all to spare you the heartache. But without knowing the stakes, I was terrified someone else would be like Aunt Liu and secretly hide their child at home!”
The gathered villagers peered over and saw that Baozhu was indeed so weak her breathing had nearly stopped. The color drained from their faces.
Aunt Liu stood frozen in a daze, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “It was me… I was the one who was killing Baozhu…”
Doctor Sun nodded somberly. “It’s the absolute truth. I spent years trying to find a medical cure for this condition, but I never succeeded. In the end, exiling them was our only recourse.”
Many of the onlookers had relatives who had been sent away over the years, and a heavy, sorrowful blanket fell over the crowd.
“Then… Village Chief, Doctor Sun, does this mean even your own children can never return to the village?”
The village chief closed his eyes, looking profoundly exhausted. “Yes. They can never come back.”
The villagers took it upon themselves to personally escort Liu Baozhu and Aunt Liu to the town.
A few days later, the neighbors who had accompanied them returned with wonderful news.
“Not long after Baozhu arrived in town, her health magically started to pivot! By the time we left, she was already energetic enough to walk around the markets!”
“Aunt Liu was so overjoyed she decided to settle down in town permanently. Oh, and she sent back a bounty of dried fruits that you can only buy in the city. She insisted we give them to the village chief and Doctor Sun as a token of her deepest apologies!”
Yunxi managed to snag a small handful of the dried fruit, which appeared to be preserved plums. The flesh was perfectly sweet and sour, making for a delicious treat.
However, the fleeting joy of the plum meat didn’t last long. Before she knew it, her world turned upside down. Her parents had somehow found out that she had secretly plotted to hide Second Brother Liu within the village boundaries!
“Xi’er, I know your intentions were pure, but before you take action, you must learn to think things through,” her mother chided gently. “Some situations appear one way on the surface, but the reality is entirely different. If you had acted on your impulses, knocked Liu Er unconscious, and forced him to stay, what do you think would have happened to him by now?”
“If you had actually kept Liu Er here, his family would be so furious they’d beat you black and blue!” her father added, his face exceptionally stern. Then, he shifted gears. “You made a reckless mistake that almost cost someone their life, so you must be punished. Do you accept this?”
Yunxi fell silent, staring at the floor. After a long pause, she nodded. “I accept it.”
When it came to Brother Liu, she really had been on the verge of intervening. If Liu Er hadn’t chosen to leave on his own accord, and if she hadn’t been inadvertently stopped by the village chief’s conversation, she likely would have hidden him away in secret.
Ever since she had reincarnated into this ancient world, she had indulged in a lazy, passive existence. For the first time, a alarm bell went off in her head.
She couldn’t afford to assume she was superior to the ancients just because she possessed modern knowledge. For instance, could she explain the village’s geographical anomaly with modern science? No. Yet, she had almost caused irreversible harm to someone else just because she wanted to play the hero.
I can’t let the peacefulness of this village dull my instincts.
Yunxi strictly warned herself, entirely missing the subtle, knowing glint that flashed between her parents’ eyes.
“Good! Starting today, your morning training is extended to two full hours!” her father commanded, without a hint of compromise.
Before she could even process the despair, her mother layered it on. “And in the afternoons, you will study cooking, embroidery, and basic medicine under me.”
Yunxi’s face instantly twisted into a grimace.
She had spent months successfully chipping away at her grueling schedule, and now she was right back to being booked solid from sunrise to sunset! She opened her mouth to bargain, but her mother cut her off before she could utter a word.
“These are skills you have to master eventually. We are simply bringing your lessons forward. Besides, the punishment only lasts for one month. Are you saying you intend to go back on your word?”
Yunxi blinked. This was the first time she had ever seen her gentle mother look so unyielding.
After a long standoff, she deflated and closed her eyes. “I accept the punishment.”
Deep down, she knew her parents were using this mishap as a clever excuse to fast-track her education, but she was genuinely grateful. Thank goodness the village chief had stopped her from making a catastrophic blunder!
Accepting her penance gracefully to sober her impulsive ego, Yunxi plunged into a grueling routine. Between her father’s drills and her mother’s lessons, she spent six hours every single day in intensive training.
The grueling schedule did wonders for her temperament; she became significantly more grounded.
As she deeply pined for the lazy, carefree days of her recent past, she made a solemn vow to herself: if she ever encountered an apparent injustice in the future, she would investigate every angle from the inside out before rushing in blindly to cause trouble.
One month later.
The soul-crushing punishment finally came to an end, and Yunxi let out a massive sigh of relief.
She happily sprinted back into the arms of her beloved, lazy lifestyle. Whenever her basic morning drills were over, she would flop onto the lush grass in front of her house and completely tune out the world.
“Xiaoxi! Xiaoxi!” a familiar voice called out.
Holding a long blade of grass between her teeth, Yunxi lazily cracked an eye open to look at the intruder. It was Li Daya, sprinting toward her like a hyperactive puppy.
“What’s the rush?”
“Xiaoxi, let’s go down to the stream and catch some shrimp!” Daya pleaded, hovering over her with wide, expectant eyes.
“Why the sudden urge to hunt shrimp?” Yunxi turned over and sat up, her curiosity slightly piqued.
“Oh my gosh, do you have any idea how amazing they taste?!” Daya clutched her cheeks, looking entirely lost in a trance. “Grandma made fried shrimp for me yesterday, and they were the most delicious thing ever!” She paused to quickly wipe away a stray line of drool that was threatening to escape. “Xiaoxi, come with us! If we team up, we can catch way more!”
Looking at her friend’s comically greedy expression, Yunxi felt a sudden, familiar itch in her own stomach.
She had been dying to eat some actual meat for what felt like ages!
After her parents had shifted into acting like normal human beings, their daily meals had admittedly become much more varied, but they were still entirely vegetarian. Nobody in the village sold pork, and her father—despite being the only hunter around—had been preoccupied with other matters and hadn’t set foot on the mountain once.
The two girls strolled down to the stream together.
Daya wasted no time rolling up her sleeves and tugging her pant legs above her knees before splashing directly into the water.
“Xiaoxi, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get down here!” Daya yelled, waving her arms around vigorously to wave her over.
Even though Daya was only five years old like her, the stream running past their village was exceptionally shallow. Even if they waded all the way out into the middle of the current, the water barely rose past their small feet. Because of this, none of the parents ever worried when the village children went down to play by the water.
The two of them spent the entire afternoon by the creek, and by the time they wrapped up, a respectable cluster of shrimp was sloshing around at the bottom of each bucket. They parted ways and headed home, each proudly carrying their own harvest.
That very evening, Lu Yunxi finally got to taste the legendary fried shrimp.
“Mm!”
The moment she took her first bite, she was utterly blown away by the crisp, golden shell and the tender, chewy meat inside.
“Mom, this is incredible!!”
Every single dish her mother made was fantastic, but these fried shrimp easily ranked among the absolute best things she had ever tasted.
On a whim, she quietly activated her Appraisal technique.
[Fried Shrimp (Rare)]: Consuming this dish permanently increases Agility by 3 points.
Staring at the translucent text prompt, Yunxi froze mid-chew.
While the food her mother cooked in the past usually offered basic status effects like health replenishment, this was the absolute first time she had ever seen a dish grant a permanent attribute increase!
Suddenly, she noticed something else. The text displaying the words “Fried Shrimp” was glowing in a distinct shade of bright blue.
Before this, the descriptions attached to her mother’s cooking had always been displayed in basic green text. Is there a rarity tier system at play here?
