Dinner Table Chatter

"And there's also the Lich King Arthas!" Yang Zhen'er carefully carried over the carved Lich King Arthas, squinting as she said, "But it's a bit small, not as big as Nana's Saber. If you put the two together, it feels like Saber will cleave them in two with one sword..."

"Then you can join this eight-armed man and Gold Glitter, all three of you attack together!" Tang Baona giggled, clearly feeling most proud of her family's Saber wooden sculpture, which was the largest and strongest in combat.

"Hey, look how capable you are! The Meow King can summon helpers, a million zombies are pressing in! Gold Glitter is an air force, he can fly! And this one, eight arms, hands all over, hehe..." Yang Zhen'er waved the eight-armed wooden carving around.

Tang Baoting looked at the two of them and shook her head helplessly. "How old are you both? Don't act like kindergarten kids!!"

Hearing Tang Baona and Yang Zhen'er playing around, Xiang Kun almost burst out laughing. He could almost see the two mischievous kids having a showdown with Ultraman and Transformers dolls.

Moreover, he could sense Tang Baona and Yang Zhen'er's admiration and joy through the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Wooden Carving. Through the Canary Wooden Carving and Arthas Wooden Carving with which he had established Super-Sensory Link, he could accurately determine their location in the living room. In addition, with other sensory information such as sound and smell, he could feel as if he were "watching" the group playfully from the sidelines, even without turning around.

Tang Baoting's fiancé Gao Yao, had been playing on his phone after greeting Xiang Kun upon entering the house, but upon seeing the wood carvings, he suddenly became interested and came over to examine them closely.

"Brother-in-law, don't you play World of Warcraft too? What do you think of Chef Xiang's carving?" Yang Zhen'er asked, holding up the wooden carving of Arthas in front of Gao Yao.

"Wow! I haven't even called him brother-in-law yet, and you're already calling him that!" Tang Baona said reproachfully.

"I'm just good with words! It was bound to happen sooner or later anyway, right, Sister Tingting?" Yang Zhen'er said with a smile.

"Be careful, don't break Xiang Kun's wood carving." Tang Baoting rolled her eyes at her.

"It's alright, I'll pay for it if it's broken." With that, Yang Zhen'er called out to the kitchen, "Carpenter Xiang! Sell me the Wu Miao Wang wood carving! Name your price! I promise I won't haggle!"

"Not for sale!" Xiang Kun's voice came through the hum of the range hood.

"Wood carvings are works of art, and those who make wood carvings aren't just carpenters," Gao Yao said softly, then carefully took the Arthas wood carving from Yang Zhen'er's hands, praising, "It's really well carved, with details, very nice."

"Brother-in-law, do you also do wood carving?" Tang Baona asked curiously. Although she had just scolded Yang Zhen'er, she was now joining in the conversation.

"I don't play with them, but they are indeed very well carved," Gao Yao said.

Tang Baoting suddenly asked curiously, "Nana, why isn't the birdcage closed? Isn't Xiang Kun afraid the bird will fly away?"

Tang Baona immediately went to the birdcage as if presenting a treasure, saying, "Sister, this is no ordinary bird. Let me introduce it to you. This is our divine bird, Prince 'Gold Glitter'! It's intelligent and can understand human speech!"

"Gold Glitter? Why did Xiang Kun give this bird such a corny name..." Tang Baoting casually remarked.

Yang Zhen'er laughed so hard she almost choked on her own saliva.

Tang Baona's face darkened slightly, but she didn't explain further. Instead, she said to Gold Glitter, who was resting on the crossbar in the birdcage, "Shanshan, can you do me a favor? Sing us a song, come on, stand on my back."

Tang Baona tried to imitate Xiang Kun's actions when he teased Gold Glitter last time, but Gold Glitter slowly moved a little further in on the horizontal bar and didn't even glance at her.

Yang Zhen'er suggested from the side, "Lure it with food! It'll really love the taste if there's food!"

No matter how much the two tried to get it out of the cage, Gold Glitter wouldn't budge. It had even moved to the very back of the cage, and only after a long while did it let out two short chirps.

Xiang Kun brought out a dish of food and said to Tang Baona with a smile, "Would you like me to translate what it's saying?"

"No! Need! It!" Having experienced it before, Tang Baona knew exactly what Xiang Kun would say.

After all the dishes were served, the three girls all took out their phones and started taking pictures in perfect unison. Yang Zhen'er even went out of her way to turn on a few more lights.

"The taste is really good! No wonder Zhen'er called you Chef Xiang and told me that your dishes are no worse than those in restaurants. It's rare that he wasn't exaggerating! It's really good!" Tang Baoting said with some amazement after tasting two pieces of dry-pot rabbit meat.

Based on the information and data he had collected, Xiang Kun judged that although there was an element of polite flattery in her words, the truth was quite high. At least judging from her reaction, she genuinely thought it was delicious. It seemed that her taste was similar to Yang Zhen'er's, preferring slightly stronger flavors.

That's strange. Isn't she Tang Baona's older sister? They're a family, so their tastes should be pretty similar.

Tang Baoting's boyfriend, Gao Yao, is clearly a rather introverted person. If someone asks him something, he will immediately stop and answer, but he rarely initiates conversations. He's basically like Xiang Kun; when he's with people he doesn't know well, he's quite reserved and tries to keep a low profile, not taking the initiative to show off, or rather, he's too lazy to do so. However, if others pay attention to him, he will try his best to be friendly and not want to spoil the atmosphere.

In terms of taste, he is quite similar to Yang Zhen'er and Tang Baoting. Indeed, even by the standards of the city's relatively mild taste, Tang Baona's taste is on the milder side.

"Xiang Kun, weren't you and Chang Bin's college classmates? You studied computer science, so why do you know how to do wood carving?" Halfway through the meal, Tang Baoting suddenly changed the subject and started asking about wood carving.

Xiang Kun had some idea why Tang Baoting had asked to come over for dinner today. It was probably because of what had happened today. Tang Baona's maternal grandfather and second uncle were still a little worried about the wood carving and him, but they probably knew Tang Baona's personality well and didn't dare to interfere directly, so they sent her sister to "investigate".

"I taught myself after I started working. I'm a homebody, you know, I don't like outdoor activities, I just like things I can figure out by myself," Xiang Kun said.

Tang Baoting laughed, "What nonsense! Your carving is excellent! Even my grandfather praised your work! By the way, Nana probably mentioned my second uncle's matter to you today, right? My second uncle... he's usually quite reliable, but sometimes he can be a bit sensitive. He happened to have been drinking that day and had a dream about your wood carving, so he thought it was related to it and sent it to someone to have it checked..."

Xiang Kun quickly said, "No, no, my wood carving does have some problems. Some of the designs are unreasonable, and it does look a bit strange. After all, it was a design I came up with on a whim. So I asked Nana to bring the wood carving back. I plan to fix it, and then I'll take the canary wood carving to the old man for his appraisal first."

Gao Yao whispered, "Actually, the design is quite reasonable. You can see the skeletal structure and connection points. It's not easy for eight arms to connect so naturally to the torso..." On the way here, he had also played with the wood carving for a while, and was thinking about whether he should learn to make wood carvings for fun.

Tang Baoting glanced at her boyfriend, then continued speaking to Xiang Kun, "By the way, how did you come up with the idea of sculpting such a figure? Have you seen similar figures before?"

Xiang Kun could naturally sense the probing tone and knew that this was one of Tang Baoting's main purposes for coming tonight. So, he showed a slightly embarrassed expression and said, "It's like this, my original idea was actually to carve an eight-armed monk, because I've seen quite a few Buddha statues and Guanyin statues with many arms in the temple, and I thought a multi-armed monk would be more powerful. But when I was carving the ordination scars for him, I didn't do a good job, so I just carved the eyes instead."

Yang Zhen'er couldn't help but laugh, "It's a good thing you didn't say you were carving a spider and ended up carving this on a whim..."

After finishing their meal and chatting for a while, around eight o'clock, Tang Baona and the other three prepared to leave. Tang Baona naturally left the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Wooden Carving behind, but took the canary-shaped wooden carving with her.

Before leaving, Yang Zhen'er insisted on buying Xiang Kun's Wu Miao Wang wood carving, offering a very generous price of 8888 yuan. However, Xiang Kun "disdainfully" refused, saying that the price was only enough to buy her Frostmourne sword.

On the way back, Yang Zhen'er drove while complaining indignantly, "Nana! Your family's carpenter is so biased! The wood carving you bought for your grandfather only cost 5,000 yuan, but I offered over 8,000 yuan, and he told me I could only buy a small wooden sword! That sword is too small, what am I supposed to do with it, clean my ears?"

While playing with the wooden carving of "Gold Glitter," Tang Baona laughed and said, "Are your ear canals that big? He clearly means he's not selling it. Didn't he promise you he'd make you a custom-made birthday present?"

Yang Zhen'er muttered, "My birthday is still a long way off!"

Gao Yao, who was playing on her phone in the back seat, whispered, "8,000 is indeed too expensive. If it were around 2,000, I'd also like to have him carve one."

Tang Baoting glanced at her boyfriend with a hint of helplessness, then asked Tang Baona, "Xiang Kun looks quite big, and I heard he works out often? Why did he only eat so little for dinner?"

"Oh, he's always like this, eating small meals frequently. I guess he already had a nutritious meal before we arrived," Tang Baona explained on Xiang Kun's behalf.

"He never goes to work, so how do they cover their expenses?" Tang Baoting asked.

"He does take on some software outsourcing work, and after working for so many years, he has quite a bit of savings. Plus, he saved the Zhang family's two children before, and they gave him 200,000 yuan as a reward, right?" Tang Baona said.

Gao Yao, sitting in the back seat, whispered again, "Skilled programmers find jobs easily, don't worry." Then she continued playing on her phone without looking up, seemingly not expecting any response.

Tang Baoting didn't know how to respond to her boyfriend's words, so she simply ignored them and then asked the girl in the seat in front of her:

"Hasn't Xiang Kun moved into that house a long time ago? Why hasn't he added any furniture? At least he should have a sofa and a TV or something, right?"

"I'm too lazy to bother. Anyway, they don't usually entertain guests. Besides Zhen'er and me, Lao Xia used to come too, but usually there aren't any other guests," Tang Baona said. "Sis, want to come to my house? Let's play some cards with brother-in-law! Playing with Xiang Kun is no fun, especially when Lao Xia is there too. It makes Zhen'er and me feel like there's something wrong with our intelligence."

Yang Zhen'er echoed, "Yes, yes, just like the carpenter and Lao Xia, they're all cheat codes!"

Tang Baoting shook her head, glanced at her boyfriend who was chatting with someone in a QQ group on his phone, and said, "Gao Yao has been playing that World of Warcraft Classic server lately, and he has to go back to raid at 9 o'clock."

Many readers mentioned that they were a bit confused by the part about the protagonist's analytical abilities in the previous chapter. I went back and reread it, and there were indeed some issues. It wasn't that there were problems with the plot or the analysis itself, but rather that the writing was rather dry and not interesting enough. That's the real problem, and I'll pay attention to that in future chapters.

Thank you to readers Man Chang Chang Shi, One Regret for the Rest of My Life, and Ke La Song Mu Su for their generous donations.