Reaching the Peak of Life

After Li Jiama left, Liu Chang'an's mood for hotpot remained unaffected, and he kept eating.

Seeing that Liu Chang'an was not so upset that he had lost his appetite for hotpot, Li Hongfang breathed a sigh of relief. She prepared to continue serving the Sect Master, picking up ingredients and cooking them in the pot.

Hotpot on a cold night, a steaming copper pot, brightly burning charcoal—such a wonderful scene was not something Li Hongfang wanted Li Jiama to ruin.

"Have some yourself. I'll finish the barbecue first." A server brought over a freshly grilled small squid, and Liu Chang'an gestured for Li Hongfang to eat while saying, "Do you know what era the earliest copper hotpot appeared in?"

Li Hongfang's field of study was, after all, related to history. "I know a little about this kind of historical common knowledge. I'd guess there were similar ways of eating as early as the Bronze Age. But if we're talking about physical evidence, the copper hotpot excavated from the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in the Western Han Dynasty a few years ago is the oldest surviving example."

Liu Chang'an smiled. When it came to eating hotpot, Marquis of Haihun Liu He was still the most professional.

The copper hotpot unearthed from the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun was not all that different from modern charcoal-heated copper hotpots. Compartmentalized copper hotpots appeared during the Three Kingdoms period, with different seasonings in each section.

The most dedicated copper-hotpot enthusiast was Liu He, while the person who had made the biggest spectacle of hotpot was Jiaqing. Jiaqing once held a hotpot banquet using more than fifteen hundred hotpots, including silver ones.

In fact, Jiaqing's numbers would not amount to much today. While some hotpot restaurants might not be able to provide