A Bigger Share of the Soup, Dragoncry Charcoal Is Costly

At the manor's southeastern corner, there was an empty plot of land. On all four sides were large reservoirs, and in the middle stood a massive red-bronze Great Ding.

The Essence Food was cooked... right here. As soon as Pang Long announced that they would be cooking Essence Food, everyone was immediately energized.

More than a dozen people came together to the cauldron.

"Remove the lid!"

Pang Long gave the order.

Li Xian and the other guards climbed a wooden ladder to the top of the cauldron. It stood a full zhang high, and its body was extraordinarily heavy.

The cauldron had four ears, and the rim was wide enough for several people to stand on.

Once they had steadied themselves, Li Xian bent down, gripped the lid with both hands, and looked at the others.

After exchanging glances, everyone nodded and began to exert their strength together.

"Rumble..."

The lid shifted a little, and its heavy sound echoed all around.

There were five people working to lift the lid, including Li Xian. Even with all five of them working together, they could barely raise it a little.

Its weight was truly astonishing.

"Inner Qi can be treated as a kind of force. If you send out your Inner Qi and wrap it around a heavy object, then lift it, you can save a great deal of strength."

"But this thing is huge and heavy, and my Inner Qi can't wrap around it. Lifting it is incredibly difficult."

Li Xian gritted his teeth and put all his strength into raising the lid another three inches.

The lid was square. Seeing how hard they were struggling, Pang Long shouted, "Bring me a rope!"

As soon as he spoke, a guard threw a yellow rope over with all his might. Pang Long reached out and caught it, swung it like a whip, and flung it at the lid.

With a snap, the rope wound around the lid. Pang Long flicked his wrist again and pulled it back.

The rope formed a knot in midair, binding the lid securely.

"Fine work!"

Li Xian praised him.

Pang Long smiled, then passed the rope to the other guards and said, "Pull hard. Work together to remove the lid."

It was just like a tug-of-war. Li Xian and the others were lifting from atop the cauldron, while more than a dozen guards pulled from below.

Working together, they exerted every ounce of strength and only just managed to remove the lid.

It crashed onto the snowy ground, making the earth tremble three times.

Li Xian's hands and feet were trembling a little, a normal result of exhausting himself.

"Just opening the cauldron is already this much trouble."

"When I was a servant, I never had a chance to get near any of this."

A feeling stirred in him. The last time they had cooked Essence Food, Li Xian had waited outside the manor, hauling water back and forth.

Times had changed. This time, he could finally get a share of the soup.

"Be careful."

"This is Dragoncry Charcoal. A piece is only the size of your palm, but it costs one tael of silver."

"If you damage it, the manor rules say the cost will be deducted from your wages. Handle it gently."

After opening the cauldron, they laid out the charcoal.

They placed the charcoal at the bottom of the Great Ding. This Dragoncry Charcoal was cylindrical, with hundreds of tiny holes in its surface.

A single piece could burn for a long time, and its heat was extremely intense, with a penetrating force. It was a commonly used fuel for cooking Essence Food.

When it burned, it made a "whoosh, whoosh" sound, like a giant dragon breathing fire. That was how it got its name: Dragoncry Charcoal.

"One tael of charcoal costs one tael of gold."

Li Xian clicked his tongue.

It seemed that anything related to Madam Wen was exorbitantly expensive. He had gained a deeper understanding of the phrase "money flows like water."

About a thousand pieces of charcoal were arranged in a shape that was broad at the bottom and pointed at the top. Then Pang Long started the fire.

The flames roared, scorching the air until it warped. The fire from the Dragoncry Charcoal was extremely unusual, its flames pale yellow with a hint of purple. Though they burned fiercely, they clung tightly to the cauldron's sides.

At a glance, it looked as if the cauldron had been covered in a pattern of flames.

Once that was done, Li Xian and the others had finally finished their work. Pang Long went straight to the Inner Court. When he returned, he was carrying four pieces of meat.

The meat was an unusual grayish-brown color.

One piece was large and three were small. The largest was about the size of three fists, while the small ones were about the size of a little finger joint.

When the cauldron had grown scorching hot, Pang Long tossed the meat inside. A "sizzle" rang out.

Green smoke rose from the cauldron. Li Xian sniffed, and the fumes stung his nose.

"Don't breathe it in!"

"This stuff is poisonous."

Pang Long warned him. Li Xian was startled and immediately retreated three steps, away from the blazing Great Ding.

"Commander Pang, was that Snow Demon Monkey meat you just put in?" Li Xian asked curiously.

"Exactly." Pang Long nodded.

"The Snow Demon Monkey is bigger than that. Why not cook all of it?" Li Xian asked.

"It can't be cooked." Pang Long pointed at the Dragoncry Charcoal and said, "Everything has to be judged by its cost."

"By rights, the Snow Demon Monkey's entire body can barely be considered Essence Food, but... the only meat truly suitable for stewing is the patch at the back of its neck."

"I just put all of it in."

"Commander Pang, please explain." Li Xian was eager to learn. He felt that Pang Long still hadn't explained what he meant by "cost," so he humbly asked for more details.

Pang Long didn't understand this himself, but he had heard Madam Wen talk about it. Now, he simply repeated what she had said: "As long as you're willing to put in the effort, the flesh of demons can always be purged of its poison, cooked into Essence Food, and consumed."

"It all comes down to whether it's worth it. Snow Demon Monkeys like this one come out in winter and lie dormant in summer. They like to eat people's livers and gallbladders, and their whereabouts are hard to predict. Of their flesh, the patch at the back of the neck has the least poison."

"Boil it for two days and one night, and all the poison can be removed."

"However, the poison in the other parts increases many times over. It takes six days and six nights to remove it before they can be eaten as Essence Food."

"That makes it a poor bargain. Burning Dragoncry Charcoal for six days and six nights would cost more than ten thousand taels."

"And the Snow Demon Monkey isn't especially precious as Essence Food. Its effects are limited, so there's no need to spend a fortune on it."

Li Xian silently committed this to memory. So even martial artists cared about cost and value for money.

He looked at the copper cauldron blazing over the fire and silently estimated that this batch of Essence Food would cost over a thousand taels of silver.

Martial artists, martial artists who had undergone Bone Recasting... the expense involved was truly beyond imagining.

"I'm only a mere guard right now..."

"From the looks of it, I'm still a world away from reaching the First Martial Realm's Essence Consumption."

This distance couldn't be made up through hard training alone.

It required opportunity, luck... and all sorts of things. Li Xian felt like someone sitting at the bottom of a well, gazing at the vast blue sky above. Yet the well was a thousand zhang deep, and trying to become the frog that climbed out of it was no easier than reaching the heavens.

After the fire had burned for half an hour, Pang Long began directing the servants to shovel, sift, and carry snow.

The sifted snowflakes were crystal clear. When they were poured into the Great Ding, they hissed and melted into water. As more melted, the water gathered into a scalding broth.

It boiled over the fierce flames and was consumed at an extremely rapid rate. To keep it from drying out, they had to keep sifting snow, carrying it, and pouring it in.

They had to replenish the water constantly, maintaining a dynamic balance so that the cauldron stayed at a boil.

The steam that evaporated carried away the poison from the flesh.

With snow lying everywhere, they might as well make use of it.

Whenever they cooked an Essence Treasure, water was the biggest consumable.

They needed to pour in a constant, plentiful supply of water, without stopping for even a moment. Otherwise, the Essence Food would burn dry and lose its efficacy, wasting all their hard work this time.

A huge sum of silver would go down the drain.

There were many water sources around One Accord Manor. Within three li, there were several mountain lakes, watercourses, and streams.

These were all factors Madam Wen had carefully considered before establishing the manor.

"Hauling water takes a long time, and accidents can easily happen along the way, leaving the water supply insufficient and causing the whole effort to fail."

"Cooking Essence Food in snowy weather can greatly reduce the amount of water needed."

"But it increases the amount of charcoal used."

"That means higher costs and greater efficiency. Conversely, in the heat of summer, cooking Essence Food saves on charcoal, but requires more water. That means lower costs and lower efficiency."

"Both have their pros and cons. It all depends on how you choose."

Li Xian pondered the rules by which the manor operated.

Perhaps one day, he might be able to manage a manor himself.

That was still a long way off, but it couldn't hurt to learn in advance.