2. I'm here. How nice.
The world's living resources are very rich, as long as the people willing to work are very well fed, but the food is not so sophisticated, especially in such a caravan, usually we eat two kinds of food, one is from the black wheat ground into powder baked out black bread, mixed with a little salt, eat very rough, but chew carefully will find wheat grain is very sweet, each black bread will be made into a face basin so big. The book that you want to read is almost all there, and it is much more stable than the usual novel sites.] Such bread can be made and stored for months without going bad. The other is a large, hard cake made using barley ground into flour and spread out on a hot stone slab. Such a cake must be mixed up with a hammer, put into a large bowl and topped with a large spoonful of thick dried beef and wild vegetable soup. It would fill me up nicely. Occasionally we came late with meat from fresh beasts hunted by the adventurous group, but that was rare, and with a large caravan of over 600 men, one or two goats or white deer were not enough to share among a dozen men.
The guinea pigs are the best in early spring. They have been in their holes all winter and eat only grass seeds and roots. tasty, let's catch a few back later and stew them with yams."
The young orcs are usually very wary of humans, and almost all of them are considered to be a cunning and mean bunch, so it is not easy to gain the trust of an orc, even in these peaceful times. A big reason why I was able to become friends with Kuz was because of old Kulu; Kuz was old Kulu's own grandson and old Kulu was very close to me. The second reason is that I am a child, which is not dangerous for Kuzi, who is only 12 years old, and he can approach me without any qualms. He asked me all sorts of questions to satisfy his curiosity. Old Kulu taught me the orc language to facilitate communication, and when it was just me and Kuz we spoke in orc. The third is that I can also make some delicious soups. This is actually a bit of a long shot.
On this trade trip to the Kingdom of Stann, Lepas had gone to great lengths to bring Kulu in as the caravan's pharmacist, instead of hiring other human pharmacists, because the trip would take him through the Pai Plateau and the New Siacis Mountains, where many of the herbs and vegetation were unfamiliar to human pharmacists, and only Old Kulu, an experienced The only one who knew the herbs well was the experienced orc medicine man, and so the caravan had a slightly mysterious orc medicine man on board. He was treated with respect by the caravan, which was an important factor in my being saved and taken in by the caravan.
One day after I had recovered from my injuries, Old Kulu discovered that I could remember the entire process clearly when he was boiling the medicine, what herbs to put in each step, how much to put in, and at what heat to pour out the juice. I have to say this was no difficulty for me coming from a chef's background, isn't this just cooking? At that time I was physically like a child under 5 years old, but I was mentally mature]. At that time, I had to help Kulu with his medicine. The people in the caravan would often get sick because of the water, and every time Kulu would pick some local herbs to make the juice, and I was the little helper.
Gradually Kulu realised that I had a much better understanding and learning ability than the others, as it was essential to understand the properties of the herbs at the very least when boiling them. I spent the next 10 months learning the orcish language and studying herbalism under the supervision of Kulu, who had picked the herbs from his pile. At that time, I could recite the names of hundreds of herbs fluently in Orcish, but I could not even say a greeting like "hello" coherently in Orcish.
The best way to learn a language is to communicate in it more often. In this way I gradually began to get to know Kurtz better. Kurtz was a werewolf child of more human blood, almost human except for a pair of furry pointed ears and a strong chest covered in thick hair. But he still bared his teeth when he was angry, showing his canine teeth to show his anger, and I was always reminded of the white husky dog that the owner had upstairs in the dormitory building. Kurtz loved sport, a boy who had an inexhaustible amount of strength and could run all over the mountain just to chase a chicken. The most common type of pheasant in the Nueva Sierras is the grey-spotted pheasant with a white background, which is usually not much bigger than a pigeon and can only glide for short distances in the valleys, but is alert and will fly away when it sees danger. However, the meat is very tender and tasty.
On one occasion Kurtz caught some Yachis chickens and went so far as to get a brazier and skewer them together and put them on the fire. The campfire soon burnt the feathers and the chickens turned black and the smell of burning feathers was everywhere in the camp, and to be honest it smelt awful. Once the chicken was cooked and the black crust of bird feathers removed with the skin, the not very large chicken was left even smaller and tasted a little bitter with the smell of burnt bird feathers. The simplicity and kindness of the beasts is innate, and after the chicken was cooked, even if there wasn't even enough for Kurtz himself, he would now give the roasted chicken to old Kulu first, and then surprisingly, he gave one to me as well. To be honest, it was something I didn't really like when I smelt that mushy, weird smell. But the caravan would only serve dried beef broth almost once every five days, and the rest of the time it was dried vegetables and wild vegetable soup with wheat cakes or black bread. It's rare to have chicken that's been baked to a crisp at this time of year. I reconfirm that this is for me?
Kurtz grinned and nodded, showing a mouthful of straight white teeth as he tore into the rest of the chicken on the brazier so hard it burned his teeth and blew out his breath. At that moment I felt like an innocent child too, and it was a rare blessing to have such a pure, white friendship in such a strange world, even the pain of my burning body didn't hurt so much.
I sat next to Kurtz, leaning my shoulder against his, holding the hot roast chicken in my hand, and said, "Next time you catch one of these, I'll cook it for you, I've found a better way to cook it."
"Yeah!" Kurtz agreed vaguely, still concentrating on paying for the two roast chickens.
I was lying on the back of a thunder rhinoceros humping Kulu's herbs and other supplies, taking a nap, when I was pulled awake in a daze, and I caught a glimpse of Kurtz proudly holding up a brazier with 7.8 chickens on it, and said in clumsy Imperial, "We'll eat together!"
For me, this was the first meal I had cooked in this world and it meant a lot. There was no better way for me to cook these chickens, there weren't any more seasonings or ingredients here, and I learned that even the Steward of Leipas had never eaten fried chicken wings, as the means of cooking on this magical world is very simple, one is to boil them in soup, or else fry them. The people here like to stew animal fat into a thick soup, and if the soup is too fatty, they put as much wheatbread in it as possible to make it greasy and warm, but rarely do they put seasonings and spices into the food, only salt at best. I thought there were no peppers, jalapenos, star anise or chillies in this new world, but after a year of studying herbalism with Old Kulu, I realised that they all existed, and that these spices were common herbs and not unusual. It probably wouldn't have occurred to Old Kulu that my ability to study herbalism so diligently was based on the fact that I had the heart of a chef. Originally I was asked to study herbalism so that I could help him with his decoctions and gradually I was able to follow his his with a small pillbox on my back and go to some safe places around the camp to collect herbs, whereas my first role in studying herbalism was in always studying the commonalities between these plants and the plants of my world to try to discover those remembered flavours.
"Yeah, I'll take care of these chickens while you go and find some more chestnuts. Kurtz, you're a good hunter!" I praised Kurtz as I took the chickens. Chestnuts are also found in this magical world, and in Orcish the word "chestnut" is called "tree rice". Chestnuts have always been eaten as food, and the whole southern slopes of the New Ciachis Mountains are covered with them, as well as with apple and autumn pear trees. Old Kulu told me that in the winter time eating only wheat cakes and broth would slowly make you sick, and that only by eating these frozen fruits would you receive the blessing of the King of the Beast Gods, who blesses the Pai plateau.
For over a year lying on the back of a thunder rhinoceros spine following the caravan all the way across the New Siacis Mountains, his body has nevertheless grown stronger. Although the pain is unbearable from the fire poison that scorches his body every day. But the symptoms were slowly abating and I found myself jumping up and down on the back of the four-metre high thunder rhinoceros with ease. Although I was often teased by Kurtz for my clumsy movements, I knew that at the same age the little children of my old world would be drinking yoghurt and playing in the yard on their children's bikes by this time. But at six years old I was already being asked by Leipas's steward to help old Kulu brew herbs every day and to deliver them to the sick in the caravan, giving instructions on how to take them and other chores.
It was not difficult for me to handle the chickens, although I was small. I threw the chickens into a pot filled with hot water and had to take them out immediately. With the chicken's claws in my hands, I quickly removed the feathers from the chicken, and a fat, oily chicken was laid out on the wooden table. Even the old kuru, who was frying medicine not far away, looked over and wondered why I had to scald the chicken before plucking the feathers, wouldn't it be better to just burn them off? With a small knife, I cut open the chicken, took out the guts and threw them into a wooden barrel. The giblets are even more delicious to the orcs and should never be discarded. The chicken is chopped into chunks and thrown into a saucepan, sprinkled with a handful of prepared spices and salt, and left for Kurtz to retrieve the chestnuts.
Kurtz bent down with half a bag of chestnuts and lifted the leather curtain to get in and said, "Giga, this soup smells good."
"You'll have it later, now peel the chestnuts with me."
In the tent, a half-grown orc child and a human child chatted and laughed as they peeled chestnuts next to a smoky tile pot. There is no word for stew in the Orc or Imperial languages, they call the food cooked in these pots soup. The aroma of the cooked chestnut chicken stew was so rich that Kurtz, despite his mouth watering and throat swallowing, waited for me to announce that it was ready to eat and we offered the first bowl of meat to Old Kulu.
After he tasted it, his dry, dull eyes looked at me for a long time before he said to me lightly, "I know you are a different kind of boy, and this soup is delicious. With this delicious soup, you too can live well in a human city in the future. But I still hope that you and Kuz's friendship will continue and help each other on the road ahead."
"I will, Grandpa!"
"I will, Sensei!" Kurtz and I said respectfully.
Yes, that was the third point of being able to be friends with Cuz, because I would make some delicious soup. Eight fatty mountain chickens and half a bag of chestnuts stewed the entire length of a large tureen, and Kurtz, with a piece of black bread in his hand, bigger than his head, and a large soup spoon in his other hand, ate it sparingly, not afraid of the heat, and even swallowed the bones.
Anyone who can cook well must know how to eat, at least I think so. Many chefs are fat because they are natural eaters, people who want to make delicious food and are interested in doing so. I think I was persistent enough in this respect that the first thing I did in this life was not to think of learning about the other mysteries of the world, but to think of eating first. For this reason, when the old kuru taught me herbalism I accepted it gladly, so that I would know what I could and could not eat. I don't know what he would have thought if he had known that the original reason I had worked so hard to learn herbalism was so that I wouldn't starve to death when I wandered.
Slowly, I don't know when I started to realise how important herbalism was to me. And Old Kru, my orc initiation teacher, began to teach a new discipline, that of potions. Kurtz was very excited to hear that I was going to study potions with Old Kru and that night we sat on the back of a thunder rhinoceros and talked about how he had a dream of becoming a hunter and if it hadn't been for my accidental rescue, he would have been the one to learn the names of the herbs from Old Kru. Kuzi said to me: It's good to have you here!