Chapter 16: Culinary Culture Shock and a Phoenix’s Fury

Even the most exquisite plating couldn’t bridge the chasm between their dietary cultures.

Su Liyue and Ye Xingchen chewed their bread with an almost mechanical uniformity, a sensation more disheartening than the time he’d found sweet braised pork in Shanghainese cuisine.

At least then, he’d had the freedom of rice!

Now, even the most basic carbohydrate freedom had been cruelly snatched away.

“Qingqing,”

She suddenly leaned closer to Mu Wanqing, her eyes glinting with a mischievous light.

“Given the chance, I’ll take you to feast on some truly delicious delights. Things like spicy crayfish, charcoal-grilled lamb skewers, nine-grid hotpot, Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, and…”

The more Su Liyue spoke, the more invigorated she became.

“Gulp.”

Two distinct gulps echoed in unison.

Ye Xingchen’s Adam’s apple and Su Liyue’s throat bobbed simultaneously.

Even the dry, hard bread before them seemed to suddenly gleam with an enticing sheen.

“R-really?”

As she listened to Yueyue enumerate an array of delicacies she had never heard of, Mu Wanqing’s already beautiful eyes instantly shone bright enough to serve as magic lamps.

“Of course!” Su Liyue declared decisively, only to suddenly meet the increasingly wide phoenix eyes of Jiuwu on her shoulder.

Those golden vertical pupils were fixed intently on her opening and closing lips.

“You… dare speak of eating chickens in this one’s presence?!”

The very air seemed to solidify in that instant.

“Cough, cough, cough!” Su Liyue halted abruptly, having completely forgotten about the ‘of course’ (TL Note: A playful phonetic corruption of ‘chicken’ (鸡, jī), used in Chinese internet slang, often associated with a viral meme) present.

So, her feigned embarrassed finger suddenly pointed towards the ceiling:

“No! You absolutely misheard! I said I was going to eat ‘kun’!”

“…?”

“You know… the ‘kun’ who can sing, dance, and rap!” She forcefully made a basketball gesture, her heart silently thanking the cultural heritage of Earth’s netizens.

Ye Xingchen, for his part, silently buried his face in his palms.

This wave, oh, this wave was simply ‘You Are Too Beautiful, Chicken’ (TL Note: A popular internet meme and song associated with Chinese idol Cai Xukun, humorously used here to refer to the absurdity of the situation) in an alternate world.

“Kun?!” The phoenix crown feathers on little phoenix Jiuwu’s head suddenly flared open.

“Could esteemed guest possibly be referring to the ‘kun’ between the cosmos, heaven, and earth, the ‘qiankun’ (TL Note: ‘Qiankun’ refers to heaven and earth, representing the universe in ancient Chinese philosophy)?”

“Ahahaha… Yes, yes, yes, that’s the ‘kun’!” Su Liyue gave a dry laugh and a thumbs-up, thinking, ‘This alternate world’s phoenix actually has quite strong reading comprehension.

“Pfft—”

Not far away, Ye Xingchen bit down hard on his bread, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

His entire face was flushed crimson from trying to hold back his laughter, making him look as if he had been struck by a petrification spell, much to the confusion of the surrounding students.

Meanwhile, Mu Wanqing glanced left and right, her small face etched with bewilderment:

“So? What secret code are you two speaking?”

“Be good, I’ll tell you when I read you a bedtime story tonight.”

Su Liyue ruffled her hair, then sternly composed her face.

“Now, hurry up and eat.”

Catching a glimpse of Jiuwu still watching her with suspicious eyes, she quickly lowered her head and continued to eat her meal, hoping to dispel their doubts.

‘One more look, and it wouldn’t be an explosion; they would surely be stirring, practically on the verge of leaping up right there and then!’

Afterward, Su Liyue gulped down half a glass of juice, finally managing to suppress her recent amusement.

She sighed, poking at her tray:

“Sigh~ I wonder when I’ll finally get to eat mashed potatoes and roasted cod…”

“Yueyue seems particularly fixated on those two things~” Mu Wanqing mumbled, her cheeks puffed out like a little hamster as she nibbled her bread.

“It can’t be helped,” Su Liyue said, elegantly cutting her steak.

“I simply can’t bring myself to love eating bread with jam.

What’s worse is… the academy only serves cod out of fear of fish bones! They don’t even have octopus; it’s practically inhumane!”

“Octopus?!” Mu Wanqing and Jiuwu exclaimed in unison.

“Mhm~ It’s a seafood with eight tentacles, chewy and refreshing…”

The expressions of the girl and the beast gradually turned to horror.

A slimy abyssal monster, coiled on forbidden ancient texts, simultaneously surfaced in both their minds.

“W-wait! Yueyue isn’t talking about…”

“Tossed with dressing, it’s absolutely delicious,” Su Liyue added with a beaming smile.

“Ugh!!!” Jiuwu suddenly retched, unable to bear it any longer, and promptly dove back into their contracted space.

Ye Xingchen, holding back his laughter nearby, squeezed so hard that the fork in his hand bent.

“Yueyue… isn’t your diet… a little too advanced?”

“Too advanced? You just haven’t tried it!

Like cold jellyfish salad! Those crispy jellyfish strips, tossed with aromatic vinegar and chili oil, crunching with every bite…”

“W-wait! What kind of terrifying ingredient is jellyfish now?”

“Uh…” Su Liyue blinked.

“Roughly like a dried water-elemental slime? Translucent, jelly-like texture, electrified, and as for tentacles… a conservative estimate would be an octopus Plus version?”

Snap.

The bread in Mu Wanqing’s hand dropped onto her plate.

“T-tentacles more numerous than an octopus’s… an electrified slime?! Yueyue, tell me honestly! Did your family abuse you before?! How could they make you eat such bizarre things?”

Not far from the table, Ye Xingchen was on the verge of exploding with suppressed laughter.

And Jiuwu, who had just poked their head out, hearing the words ‘electrified slime’, instantly transformed into a streak of red light and retreated back into their contracted space.

“Uh… it wasn’t my family forcing me to eat it. Where I’m from, street vendors sell this kind of thing all the time?” Su Liyue explained.

Mu Wanqing’s expression gradually froze.

‘Street vendors?!’

A terrifying image immediately materialized in her mind:

In a marketplace of some alternate world, vendors enthusiastically hawked:

“Fresh electrified slime! Sliced and tossed on the spot! Second portion half price!”

Long queues stretched before the stalls, with men, women, old, and young, each holding a bowl of cold tentacles…

“…Yueyue.”

Mu Wanqing’s voice wavered.

“Are the normal standards in your hometown… perhaps governed by some friendly treaty with the Abyssal Plane?” She swallowed with difficulty.

“How could that be?” Su Liyue looked utterly innocent.

Mu Wanqing, however, had already plunged into a terrifying storm of associations.

Spicy crayfish → some kind of irritable mini land dragon hatchling, grabbed by its tail and tossed into a hot oil wok by humans, still breathing fire just before death…

Charcoal-grilled lamb skewers → pitch-black abyssal charcoal, its surface flickering with suspicious purple sparks, causing smoke to emanate from one’s ears upon consumption…

Nine-grid hotpot → nine burning magic arrays, with strange, continuously tumbling chunks of meat floating in the center, requiring diners to chant spells to retrieve their food…

As for Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs…

“Wait! You don’t mean to say that in your place, they specifically built a lake just to raise some kind of demonic beast with huge pincers, do they?!”

Su Liyue blinked her eyes:

“Uh… something like that? But they don’t breathe fire; at most, they pinch your fingers.”

“P-pinch fingers?! Wouldn’t that be even more dangerous than the armored scorpions in the academy’s back mountains?!” Mu Wanqing gasped, drawing a sharp breath.

“Don’t worry~ We always get them drunk before we eat them…” Su Liyue said with a beaming smile.

“Get them drunk?! You actually give alcoholic beverages to demonic beasts?!”

Not far away, Ye Xingchen finally couldn’t hold it in anymore, and he let out a ‘pfft,’ spraying a mouthful of juice.