Speaking of this matter, Nan Zhu’s face immediately sank. “Old Fifteen, if you keep talking nonsense, don’t blame me for turning hostile.”
Yu Qing knew he had casually hit a sore spot, feeling slightly guilty. He laughed dryly, “Just an example, just an example.”
Nan Zhu snorted, “Don’t be stupid. Once we start cooking meat here, the aroma will float everywhere.”
Yu Qing: “During the cooking period, having the aroma of meat is normal. I smelled it earlier, it’s fine.”
Hearing him say this, Nan Zhu also felt a bit greedy. He hmmed, “I’ll give it a try then.”
Stewing wild game was Linglong Temple’s specialty. When they caught some wild game in the mountains, the flavour of that pot was simply superb. After they left the mountains, they hadn’t tasted it for a long time.
Mu Aotie was slightly worried, “Where would there be wild game here? Could it be someone’s pet?”
Nan Zhu spat, “Whosever pet it is, who told them not to keep a good eye on it. After eating, bury the bones somewhere, no one will know. Right, the bones can also let Big Head have a taste. That coarse grain steamed at noon was so hard it numbed the tongue. We must change our appetite.”
In a world filled with famine, this kind of atmosphere naturally existed. If someone’s dog ran to someone else’s house, there was a saying: close the door and beat the dog!
Yu Qing nodded. He meant the same thing. They needed to change their appetite. That noon meal had been bothering him until now.
Actually, eating coarse grain was fine. They could eat it too. The key was that the cook was hired from who knows where, and the food was truly terrible. The natural flavour should be better than that processed stuff. No matter how poor Linglong Temple was, the three senior brothers had never gone hungry. In the short term, they couldn’t eat with the same relish as the other toiling masses.
Unfortunately, as servants they couldn’t freely enter and exit the Wen residence. They couldn’t even go out to change their appetite.
Yu Qing was alright. He hadn’t eaten much and brought it back. Nan and Mu lived with a group of people. Bringing it back was hard to deal with, so they forced it all down their throats. Now that a delicious meal had voluntarily come to their door, their thoughts quickly unified.
People are like this. When they truly encounter something they want to eat, they are at their most undignified. Even an emperor would roll up his sleeves to chop firewood and light the fire.
When it came to wild game, the three senior brothers were all old hands at this. No more words were said. Nan Zhu and Mu Aotie quickly left again.
The two had only come back to ask about the situation. They couldn’t stay long. There was still work to do.
Yu Qing shouted towards the backs of the two leaving, “I’ll slaughter and clean it first. Bring your ingredients when you come. Try to come earlier.”
Nan Zhu waved his hand with his back to him. After both went out the door, they closed it behind them.
The two jogged back. When they reached the entrance of the West Miscellaneous Courtyard, they saw a group of servants running out again.
Someone even waved at them, “Don’t stand there dumbfounded, hurry up.”
The two were baffled and immediately followed. Nan Zhu asked the person beside him, “Weren’t we going to work? What’s the rush?”
That person said, “I don’t know. They just told all of us in the West Miscellaneous Courtyard to assemble at the drying yard.”
Unable to find out why, the two senior brothers had to go with the flow.
After nearly a hundred people assembled at the drying yard, Feng Changdian, the Feng steward who managed the entire West Miscellaneous Courtyard, accompanied a man and a woman in appearing.
The man had sword-like eyebrows and star-like eyes, handsome and elegant, dressed in white with a sword at his waist.
The woman had large, sparkling eyes, a perky nose, a few freckles on her face, wearing a pink dress and long skirt. She looked clever and cute, though her hairstyle clearly marked her as a maid.
Despite this, Feng Changdian, one of the Wen family’s black-clad level stewards, seemed to occasionally slightly bow and be polite before this maid.
“Is everyone here?” Feng Changdian asked Liu Gui, who stood at the front of the crowd.
It was quite obvious that Liu Gui was rather favoured by Steward Feng in the West Miscellaneous Courtyard.
Liu Gui immediately said, “There might still be some who haven’t been notified in time. We are currently counting.”
Feng Changdian waved his hand, “Forget it. Inform each other once you see them.” He then turned to ask the pink-clad maid beside him, “Xiao Hong, will you speak, or shall I?”
The maid called Xiao Hong said, “Steward Feng, these are your people. It’s better if you speak.”
Feng Changdian nodded, then faced the crowd again, “You can all temporarily put aside your work. Go find a puppy. It’s not exactly a puppy, but it looks like one. Its fur colour appears grey, but is actually light purple. I must specially remind you, that is the Third Miss’s spiritual pet. Whoever finds it will be heavily rewarded.”
The moment these words came out, Nan Zhu and Mu Aotie, separated by people, looked at each other. They both guessed what Old Fifteen was planning to stew in the iron pot.
Although the two still didn’t know who this Third Miss was, could someone who could raise a spiritual pet be an ordinary person?
The two discovered that Old Fifteen was a bit blind. He could mistake a spiritual pet for a wild beast. What were those two eyeballs of his for? If he ate it, the price would be steep.
What made the two break into a cold sweat was not knowing whether Old Fifteen had already slaughtered that little creature.
The two vaguely remembered Yu Qing’s parting words, saying something about slaughtering and cleaning it first. Just thinking about it made them shudder.
The two didn’t know if the little creature’s life was still intact. If it had already been killed, they needed to quickly notify Old Fifteen to destroy the evidence. Otherwise, once discovered, things would get big. It was only their first day after infiltrating the Wen residence!
The two hoped they could still save the dog from the knife. However, Feng Changdian was still speaking, making the two rather anxious.
“Spread out and search. Search carefully everywhere you can go. Every nook and cranny must not be missed. Sift through everything like a sieve for me. Did you all hear that?”
“Heard it.”
Liu Gui took the lead in responding, and the servants followed with loud agreement.
Feng Changdian waved his hand, “Go, hurry up.”
A group of servants scattered with a clamour.
With no one else around, Feng Changdian turned back to politely ask the maid, “Have the other places all been notified?”
In terms of status, he as a steward was directly under the Wen residence’s housekeeper. However, there was still a difference between servants and personal maids. Personal maids were directly under the discipline of their respective masters. They were not for servant stewards to manage.
People by the master’s side, people who regularly dealt with the master, even someone of Steward Feng’s status had to be polite to them. Moreover, the master this maid served was not ordinary.
Xiao Hong nodded, “We notified along the way. Greetings were given everywhere.”
Feng Changdian gestured with his hand, “Don’t stand here in the sun. Wait in the pavilion. I’ll have people inform the other places to notify you here once they have news.”
The man and woman nodded and followed him…
In the small courtyard of the storage room, the puppy had already run back out and jumped into the washed clean pot to play.
The rust in the pot had been scrubbed completely clean, polished until shiny. The bottom was conical and round. The puppy splashed around in the pot, following the iron pot in circles. Soaked by the water in the pot, the puppy itself seemed quite happy.
Yu Qing circled around the small courtyard, unable to find a stove. In the end, he had to dig out a few floor tiles from the corner, preparing to build a makeshift stove.
Just as he was stacking bricks, the courtyard door creaked open, pushed directly without any intention of knocking.
Yu Qing turned back to look and saw Nan Zhu and Mu Aotie flash in one after another, quickly bolting the door behind them.
The two senior brothers’ gazes had already fixed directly on the puppy playing in the pot.
Seeing the little creature was still alive, the two could be said to have heaved a heavy sigh of relief.
Nan Zhu took a single stride to the little creature’s side.
The puppy was so frightened it immediately tried to run. The pot bottom was too slippery, and it tumbled and rolled. After standing up, it fiercely barked “ao ao” at Nan Zhu.
Nan Zhu moved extremely fast, grabbing it and pinching its mouth shut to prevent it from making noise, afraid of being heard by the people searching outside. At the same time, he quickly examined its teeth, claws, and fur colour, discovering it was indeed what they were looking for.
Yu Qing hadn’t had time to ask why they had returned. Seeing them like this, he stood up and asked suspiciously, “What are you doing?”
Nan Zhu wanted to spit in his face. He lifted the thing in his hand and asked, “This is wild game? This is clearly a spiritual pet, alright?”
Spiritual pet? Yu Qing was suspicious. “What spiritual pet or not? How can you tell this is a spiritual pet?”
Nan Zhu: “Its fur is purple. Are you blind?”
Yu Qing retorted, “Purple fur means it’s a spiritual pet?”
Nan Zhu was speechless. Actually, if no one had said so, none of the three senior brothers would have recognised it. Not one of them had that knowledge.
Mu Aotie spoke honestly, “This is the spiritual pet raised by the Wen residence’s Third Miss. Now everyone outside has been mobilised to search for it. It can’t be eaten.”
“Uh…” Yu Qing was stunned and retorted, “What’s the situation with this Third Miss?”
Nan Zhu: “We’re not clear either. Someone who can raise a spiritual pet, you can imagine.”
He looked at the washed clean pot at his feet. Ho, a stove was already being built over there. He couldn’t help but feel fortunate, “Good thing we came in time. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened. Alright, I’m taking this thing.” With that, he turned and left, directly running out the door.
Yu Qing was puzzled, “Why is he so eager?”
Mu Aotie: “Whoever finds this spiritual pet will be heavily rewarded.”
Yu Qing suddenly realised and was also speechless. He gritted his teeth, “Old Seven really is something. I was clearly the one who found it, alright? Yet he ran off to claim the credit!”
Mu Aotie neither confirmed nor denied, turning to leave.
With only himself left in the small courtyard, Yu Qing looked at the washed clean pot and that half-built makeshift stove. So it was all for nothing…
“Oh my, Zilong, how did you get so wet? Where did you go to play in the water?”
In the pavilion, Xiao Hong took the puppy from Nan Zhu’s hands and quickly placed it on the stone platform to help wipe it dry.
Nan Zhu stood on the steps with an ingratiating smile, but temporarily no one paid him any mind.
The man with sword-like eyebrows and star-like eyes said, “It’s fine if it sneaked out to play in water. What I’m most afraid of is it running out to eat random things.”
Xiao Hong wiped the puppy while asking, “Why?”
The sword-browed man said, “What a spiritual pet will look like when it takes human form in the future has a great deal to do with its growth experiences. One takes on the colour of one’s company. To give an example, someone who grew up with a group of foot-rubbing men from childhood will easily become a foot-rubbing man when grown. A spiritual pet must develop a good temperament from childhood. The more otherworldly and refined, the better it will look when it takes form in the future. So try not to let it touch those crude foods. Otherwise, if it accumulates too many impurities, its future transformation will also be very painful.”