Ch60.2 - Before Winter (Part Two)

Editor: Alysia

Besides, these days, even if the cooking machine was available to use, everyone ate their own nasty cooked food. When they saw Cui QiChao personally cooking sweet potatoes and preparing food for them, they couldn’t help but gather and discuss nervously. 

“This can’t be……the meal given to us before we are decapitated, right?”

“Sister, winter is coming soon. Winter here lasts for a long while. And we had once wasted food…”

“My God, the farming work is almost all completed. People traditionally butcher their cattle before winter. The animals have just been butchered. Is it time to murder us now?”

“If I knew this would happen, I would have rather died under K921. At least I’d die a hero!” 

“What are you talking about?” Cui QiChao emerged from the door with a straight face and a platter of candied sweet potatoes in his hand. The orange sweet potato chunks were coated in a layer of crystal thin sugar, with threads of sugar running through the middle. The sweet and greasy aroma could be vaguely smelled.

“Nothing, nothing.” The serfs dared not tell the truth and quickly lowered their heads.

Although this was a reward, Cui QiChao didn’t show any good face. There was only a bowl in front of the interstellar serfs. He took a wooden spoon in his hand and scooped the candied sweet potatoes into their bowl, one scoop for each person.

Cui Xiaojiang and the others held sweet potatoes in their hands, lowered their heads and looked each other in the eyes to communicate. What should they do? Should they eat or not eat?

At this point, Cui Hu appeared and forked a block of shredded sweet potato from the large bowl. It was best to eat the candied sweet potatoes while they were still warm. When he picked up the sweet potatoes, sugar threads like cobwebs formed. They were crystal transparent, and once cooled, one wouldn’t be able to stretch these sugar thread filaments.

Cui QiChao made candied sweet potatoes because it was a dish with flare and the materials used were simple, congruent to their current interstellar primitive lives.

The most crucial aspect of producing candied sweet potatoes was controlling the heat when boiling the sugar. This was a talent Cui QiChao excelled in. The sugar silk was so fine, and the crystals could be seen with the naked eye. If the diners were more detail-oriented, they would notice that the sugar syrup was uniformly coated and tasted just right.

There was a thin, crisp, and sweet icing outside and a soft, waxy, and tart-tasting sweet potato inside. This completely stimulated their taste buds, which had seldom tasted a flavorful taste. Cui Hu exclaimed very loudly, “How blessed am I!” 

Cui XiaoJiang couldn’t tell the reason why Cui Hu said that because of he wanted to flatter Cui QiChao or because Cui Hu had a distorted mentality. In any case, this should not be their last meal. They knew that they had to eat the candied sweet potatoes while it was hot and they forked it quickly.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

With Cui QiChao’s talent for farming, even the sweet potatoes that were reserved for sowing wouldn’t taste bad. The sweet potatoes were sweet and delicious. Then, a layer of sugar coating was hung on top of it. They bit through the sweet coating and they could taste the hot sweet potatoes that were cooked soft and mushy.

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Cui Ting: “…”

She lowered her head as well. The old saying was correct: she should not speak during mealtimes or during times when others were sleeping. 

Cui QiChao also used a cooking machine to make a handful of sweet potato leaves. He specifically chose the tender leaves and picked the old stems out. Then, he stir-fried them with olive oil and salt. Water was seemingly gushing out from the sweet potato leaves to the green stems that were attached. They were stir-fried until the delicate leaves were crisp, tender, and aromatic. They tasted tender, refreshing and appetizing. If the candied sweet potatoes tasted a little cloying, this dish should solve the problem.

In an instant, there was only the sound of interstellar serfs chewing with their heads buried.

Cui QiChao’s interests were aroused by Cui Ting’s words. He sat aside and didn’t stop eating. While doing so, he sorted out the sweet potatoes. He said, “The lettuce grows rapidly, but the lettuce didn’t have an easy life. Before sowing them, they were soaked for 48 hours. Each mu was watered with enough water and fertilizer. It took a long time for me to collect domestic garbage, plant ash and so on.”

Everyone: “…” 

How stressful…

Cui QiChao continued to exert pressure. He just wanted to make these executioners realize their mistakes. “Those lettuce have entered the reproductive growth period. I spent time affixing them with twigs and I was beginning to pick out the moss. When the lettuce were sown, the agricultural machines had not been put into use, and all of them were sown manually, one by one, and I covered each of them with scoops and scoops of soil…”

“Please stop talking,” Cui Ting, the person with the glibbest tongue in the group, felt that her scalp was becoming numb. “We know we’re wrong. We’ve been correcting our mistakes all this time, and we know that it’s not easy to grow food. In the future, we must respect every crop. If I deliberately kill another crop again, I’m not human.”

Cui QiChao glanced at her, “I hope you really know your mistakes and are willing to correct them.” 

“I’ll correct them, I’ll correct them.” Cui Ting sweated wildly. It was not easy for them to eat a good meal. Yet, during the meal, they had to be educated by Cui QiChao. As soon as his eyes swept over, it was as if the group of them were attending class. They couldn’t swallow down these sweet and delicious dishes.

First, he reformed them through labor. Now, they were having education classes. Cui Ting felt that she had been brainwashed because she began to question why she had pressed their aircraft on the lettuce field back then, rather than complain about being detained.

Maybe in a few days, her mental state would be comparable to Cui Hu’s.

. 

Cui QiChao collected most of the vegetables in the fields, including the vegetable species native to the planet. Cui QiChao also collected a big batch of fruits and would distinguish their characteristics and taste them individually.

There was a ripe vine type plant that contained a lot of water and sugar. Cui QiChao tried to squeeze a small amount of juice from it to boil it. Sure enough, he had gotten a sweetener: sugar.

However, the sugar made from this plant was not red or white in color, but blue.

Furthermore, Cui QiChao’s gaze was drawn to the berries he obtained from the bushes. They were the size of a palm and were purplish red in color. This plant had the ability to absorb water. Its roots were incredibly well-developed. The berries were incredibly tasty without being specially cultivated, and the berries frequently attracted birds to steal them to eat. Fortunately, the robot was capable of driving the birds away continually. 

After an examination, he found that the berries were rich in antioxidants and they were quite nutritious. Cui QiChao called it purple fruit.

Cui QiChao undoubtedly and steadfastly led people to densely vegetated areas in search of sugar vines and purple fruits, collecting them in enormous amounts.

Sugar vines may be casually stored. However, he should use caution when transporting purple fruits. He didn’t bring any containers with him. Therefore, he constructed baskets out of trees and vines on the spot, and cushioned them with leaves to avoid crushing them while transporting them back. Then, he loaded the baskets with purple fruits.

The sugar vines filled the entire storehouse. They also moved a dozen baskets of purple fruits back. The manpower was divided into two groups and they started to complete the work they were respectively assigned. 

Some of them squeezed out the sugar, while some of them washed the fruits. Since they had so many fruits, it would take some time for them to finish washing it.

Because there were so many sundries inside the space station, the work was done outside the space station. They began working outside in the open air. The pots were entirely created by themselves. They erected a stove and placed a large pot on it to cook.

They used the method for making brown sugar to convert the sugar vine into light blue sugar cubes. When using sugar cubes, one could simply place a block into the pot, add water, and boil it into a paste. Then, to create jam, they tossed the purple fruit that was made into paste in the pot and cooked it over low heat until the fruit was mushy, the skin of the fruit split, and the juice gushed out. They cooked and blended the jam at the same time.

Because the fruit itself was sweet and the sugar was also sweet, Cui QiChao added little sour flavorings to mellow the taste. The sour flavorings happened to be extracted from the immature sour plants found by Cui QiChao previously. 

As he continued to whisk, the sugar water and fruit mixture thickened into a thick sauce. An enormous pot of blue and purple syrup was formed, and the syrup appeared magically beautiful. The delicious and greasy aroma permeated the air, enticing all kinds of animals to come over to them. Even the little animals digging around in the ground were attracted to come to the space station.

It would be fine for them to use the robots to shoo away the birds, but the robots were useless when dealing with these kind of animals. Cui Hu knocked these animals with a wooden stick. XiaoBai was the final line of defense, standing on guard in front of the pot. It would rapidly stretch out its claw and press down on anyone who got too close.

At this point, they also face another issue that they had to tackle. There were insufficient containers. As a result, they could only scavenge waste from the outside to find some containers. However, these containers must be sealed. After cleaning, they inserted the jam and vacuum-sealed it. Then, the five containers containing the jam were thrown into a half-man high bucket to be stored.

The whole space station was now full, and all the available space was stacked full with materials, jam, sweet potatoes, lettuces, salt, sugar, bacon, cans they exchanged previously…and so on. 

Cui QiChao even planned to dig a cellar outside. The cellar could be used to store things such as lettuces and sweet potatoes.

The construction of the cellar also required technology. If the temperature of the cellar was high, the sweet potatoes would sprout. When the temperature of the cellar was low, the vegetables may be frozen. The humidity would further affect the storage. Hence, making a cellar was not just digging a hole.

They chose a slightly higher terrain to dig a cellar in order to avoid ponding. The soil here was rather suitable and dry. The cellar should be equipped with a temperature detector and a dehumidifier. When winter arrives, it should be filled with hay to allow the temperature to remain the same.

Cui QiChao was supervising the cellar. A beta serf suddenly reported that when he and another companion were burning plant ash in a faraway place, they found a life capsule with a male alpha in it. 

“Male alpha?” Cui QiChao said immediately, “Release him to the wild, alphas eat a lot.”

It was almost winter now, and there was nothing to do except eat and consume food.

“…” Several other alphas, particularly Cui XiaoJiang, began to sweat. Phew! Would Cui QiChao have shot them with the antimatter bullet if they hadn’t smashed the lettuce fields at the crucial moment?

It seemed that they had guessed the partial truth when they said the candied sweet potatoes were their last meal. 

One beta quickly replied. The beta rapidly climbed out of the cellar and shouted, “Ah Zhou, Bro said to release that guy to the wild!!”

Ah Zhou, who was a distance away, made a hand gesture. However, he lowered his head for a while and immediately reported, “This man fainted! He seems to be injured!!”

The beta turned around and reported, “Bro Chao, the alpha fainted and seemed to be injured. He will die if we immediately release him into the wild.”

Cui QiChao’s eyes were suddenly covered with a layer of sadness, “Sigh…” 

T/N: Sorry for the late chapter update! I was out all day so I can’t post the chap on time.

I wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas!