Before Bai Yang could find anything useful at home, his stomach started protesting with a growl. Only then did he realize he hadn't eaten since getting up. He didn't even know where the instant noodles had gone.
"It's already three in the afternoon!"
He pulled out his phone and checked the time. Bai Yang grinned. No wonder his stomach was growling.
He knew his cooking skills were still at the beginner stage: good enough to make food edible, but not tasty. There was no point trying to cook something himself. The best way he could think of to deal with his hunger was instant noodles...
"Damn, I'm out. I remember buying a whole box from Number Ten just last month." He opened the drawer and stared in dismay.
Then he started calculating. His mother got off work at five, and probably wouldn't get home before five-thirty. If she cooked, dinner might not be ready until seven. By then, he'd probably be too hungry to move. As for his father, not only did he get off work at six, his cooking was even worse than Bai Yang's.
"Well, looks like I'll have to go out and grab a bite. But I'm running low on pocket money..."
Bai Yang scratched his head, torn.
As he agonized over it, an idea suddenly popped into his head. Wasn't there something delicious to eat "next door"?
Tiger meat, no less. He'd lived this long and never once tasted it...
Once the thought took hold, he couldn't shake it. He felt restless, pacing around the living room a few times before gritting his teeth and stamping his foot. He was going for it!
He dashed into the kitchen and picked up a frying pan, testing its weight before nodding. He found a nylon cord and tied the pan behind his back, then grabbed a stainless steel pot lid and his mother's boning knife, the one she usually used to chop ribs. Fully "armed," he took a deep breath.
Here goes...
Whoosh! He vanished from his kitchen in an instant.
He'd tied the frying pan to his back and brought the stainless steel lid to guard against arrows in the jungle. And the boning knife, of course, was for cutting off a piece of tiger meat to eat. He had considered dragging the tiger over and dealing with it at home, but it was so huge that even though the spacious living room could just about fit it, it would probably crush who knew how many things. And if he got blood all over the place, his mother would beat him to death when she got home...
Bai Yang's mother was fierce. She was the dean of student affairs at one of the city's top universities—just ask yourself if you'd be scared. Unfortunately for Bai Yang, he attended the very university where she worked. He'd been on his best behavior throughout his time there. Don't be fooled by the fact that she was his own mother; at school, she treated everyone the same, no matter who they were. Then again, Bai Yang was lucky. With his lazy nature, he probably wouldn't have graduated otherwise. After all, he was her own flesh and blood...
As for his father, he'd set up a furniture factory. Bai Yang had never had the slightest interest in learning the details, but considering his father had paid in full for the family's three-bedroom apartment—130 square meters, and worth over a million yuan—business must have been doing pretty well. Without parents like that, Bai Yang wouldn't have had the chance to lounge around at home doing nothing. He'd have been hustled off to find a job!
He cautiously appeared "over there" and carefully listened for any movement. Nothing dangerous seemed to be happening, so he ran a few steps to the dead tiger and examined the beast up close.
Bai Yang had seen tigers at the zoo, but compared to the dead tiger in front of him, those zoo animals were garbage. In terms of size, they were like little cats.
They said a dead tiger still had the might of a living one. Standing three meters away from the carcass, Bai Yang knew perfectly well that it was dead as could be, but after hesitating again and again, he still couldn't bring himself to approach.
"Come on... You can do this. You're not scared. This dead cat's already croaked. Just chop it!"
After repeatedly psyching himself up, he still approached with extreme caution, ready to run at any moment, afraid the dead tiger might get back up and pounce on him.
At last, he reached the tiger's side. He kicked it and immediately took a step back. Nothing happened. Good, now he felt better.
"Hey, you little punk. Weren't you so fierce before? You nearly scared the piss out of me. Go on, try acting tough now!"
Bai Yang swaggered around in front of the dead tiger. If it so much as twitched, he'd bolt in a heartbeat. That was the mindset of an ordinary person. He'd grown up in a modern city and never had any special training. What did anyone expect—him to swagger around, defying heaven, earth, and everything in between? Even a special forces soldier would probably be brought to his knees by this tiger, let alone a half-useless urban couch potato like him.
"Damn, it's huge. If I took it to the market and sold it, I wonder how much I'd get. It must be worth as much as three fat pigs. And this tiger skin, especially if I got it off in one piece—people would fight to pay a million for it..."
He muttered to himself, but Bai Yang knew that if he dared take this thing over to sell, the next day his parents would be bringing him meals in prison. It wasn't that he lacked a spirit of adventure or the guts of a young man. He had food and clothes, and his life was going fine. Why risk it? A wise man didn't stand beneath a crumbling wall—that was how you stayed alive!
"In the eyes of certain people, this tiger must be worth tens of millions. This is such a damn waste..."
Grinding his teeth in frustration, Bai Yang brought the knife down. The boning knife clacked as he chopped, and after working himself breathless, he finally cut off one of the tiger's front legs. Good grief, it was almost as big as a cow's leg. And that bone was unbelievably hard. If the knife hadn't been decent quality, he would've chipped the blade.
"This leg alone should be enough to eat for a few days."
He hefted the tiger leg. It had to weigh at least thirty pounds. He had no idea how the thing had grown so big.
With the goods in hand, he was about to head back when he suddenly gave a lecherous grin. What was the most valuable thing on a tiger? Of course, that one thing. Heh heh...
Good grief, Bai Yang worked away for another ten whole minutes before finally removing that thing from the tiger's belly. It was about two feet long and as thick as a child's arm...
"Now that's good stuff. Soak it in liquor, and that'll..." Bai Yang lowered his head to look at a certain part of himself, then stopped himself from imagining it. He was still young, full of vim and vigor. He didn't need it... But who would complain about getting even more potent, right?
"Back home to cook some meat..."
Once back home, he went to the kitchen and used the various knives there to process the tiger leg. He peeled off the hide, chopped off the paws, and tossed aside the parts with obvious identifying features, sending them "over there." Nature would wipe away the evidence.
Then he got back to work, chopping the rest into a few pieces with the boning knife and putting them in the freezer for another day. He set aside a three-pound piece of meat and a section of tiger bone, rinsed them clean, and tossed them into a pot.
"Sigh... How do you stew tiger meat again?"
He didn't know, but he didn't dwell on it. When in doubt, ask Baidu; there'd always be an answer. He searched and found the simplest method was to stew it plain. Great, that was easy. He filled the pot halfway with water, added some ginger, garlic, and salt, then thought it over and tossed in a few dried chilies. He covered the pot and turned on the heat. Once it came to a boil, he skimmed off the scum, then turned the heat down and let it simmer...
"Tiger meat, my god! I'm in for a feast!" Bai Yang watched the pot steaming and nearly drooled. He knew it probably wouldn't taste very good, but he couldn't help sniffing it.
It was supposed to stew for an hour, but after ten minutes he was already impatient. Then he spotted the tiger penis nearby and slapped his forehead. Right, he'd forgotten about this.
"Tiger penis wine, tiger penis wine. How do you make it...?"
He searched online. The simplest way was to toss it straight into high-proof liquor, seal it, and let it steep for a while. There were better ways to prepare it that would bring out its value, but Bai Yang couldn't be bothered and decisively gave up on those methods.
He opened his wallet and painfully took out three hundred-yuan bills before heading out. After walking half a street, he finally found a place that sold liquor by the jar. He haggled for a while, then walked away carrying a twenty-jin jar of fifty-two-proof liquor for 250 yuan. He took the jar too.
When he got back, he dropped the cleaned tiger penis into the jar, covered it with dozens of layers of plastic wrap, tied it tightly with a length of string to seal it, and stowed it under his bedroom bed. Done!
"I wonder if drinking this after it's steeped will help me grow a second time."
After all that fuss, he remembered the pot simmering in the kitchen and slapped his forehead before hurrying over.
He sniffed a few times and closed his eyes. Bai Yang murmured, "This smell... It's so unusual. I only added a little ginger, garlic, and salt, but even though it's meat, why does it have a faint sweet fragrance? It smells so good."
The aroma was so unusual that Bai Yang couldn't resist tasting it. The time seemed about right, so he turned off the heat, got a big bowl, and ladled himself a generous serving of soup. He also fished out a few pieces of meat that had stewed until they turned milky white. He put the lid back on the pot and left it for his parents. Parents might not always be reliable, but a son should know how to repay them for raising him.
He carried a big bowl of tiger meat soup into the living room and let it cool for a while. When it seemed about the right temperature, he took a sip with a spoon and closed his eyes, savoring the taste...
"I guess I really don't have the makings of a food critic. This stuff doesn't seem all that different from chicken soup."
He shook his head, then slurped down the entire big bowl of soup in a few gulps. He wolfed down the tiger meat, rubbed his belly, and sighed. There was nothing like being full...
"I can get over there, but what's the principle behind it? I mean, I'm not wearing some ancestral jade pendant, I wasn't struck by lightning, I didn't get a high fever or get hit by a car, and there wasn't some electronic voice that mysteriously appeared in my head. So how did I suddenly gain the ability to travel freely between here and there? And what kind of place is over there? Judging by the sun in the sky and that tiger, it's definitely not Earth. The sun on Earth isn't that huge or that color, and there aren't tigers that big either. Who shot the tiger? I'd better find a way to bring some useful things over and figure out what's going on there. The place I ended up is near a vast forest, full of poisonous insects and ferocious beasts. What should I bring to keep myself safe? Damn, why is it still so hot this late in the afternoon..."
Full and comfortable, Bai Yang slouched on the sofa in Uncle Ge's pose, staring at the ceiling and turning over all sorts of random thoughts. He touched his forehead and found his hand covered in sweat.
"Wait, that's not right. Why is it getting hotter and hotter? Damn, I've got a nosebleed..." Two streams of hot blood flowed from Bai Yang's nostrils, and he couldn't stop them. His whole body was hot, and he felt unbearably flushed...
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