茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter 68: Spicy Rabbit Meat

The last time Xiang Kun cooked with rabbit meat, he was playing around, and didn’t care much about how it tasted or if it was even edible.

But this time, he focused his attention on the dishes’ flavors.

He wanted to make a delicious spicy rabbit dish to return the favor for the snacks that Liu Shiling and her mother brought over.

After preparing various seasonings, Xiang Kun divided the rabbit into four sections. This was supposed to be an experiment and a summary, to adjust the flavor, so he couldn’t guarantee success on the first try.

After his mutation, he hadn’t specifically trained his taste buds and he didn’t need to eat like others, so his sense of taste didn’t change much after the mutation, but at least it didn’t degrade.

But the olfactory and taste systems often work together, especially when tasting food.

Given that his brain’s ability to distinguish and process sensory information has greatly increased, he can now provide more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the taste perception, even if his taste buds aren’t much better than a regular person’s.

Moreover, without the interference of appetite, his analysis of flavors would also be more objective and accurate.

“Hmm, the flavor of the cooking wine feels a bit too prominent, did I add too much? Or, should I take it out?”

“It’s a bit bland, I should add more garlic and soy sauce.”

“It seems a bit overcooked, did the meat get old?”

“Hmm, Little Fat Girl and her people seem to be from Hunan and Chu region, I can add more dry chili.”

Xiang Kun originally just wanted to replicate the spicy rabbit recipe he noted down from the internet.

However, as he cooked and concentrated on preparing this dish, making modifications and tweaks to the flavor, he had strayed far from the original recipe, regarding both the quantities of various ingredients as well as cooking procedures.

Even the rabbit meat, which was originally divided into four parts, had to be further subdivided into more pieces for him to continue experimenting with taste adjustments.

By the time Xiang Kun was finally satisfied with the final product, he glanced at his phone and it was already 2:43 in the morning. Unknowingly, six hours had passed.

Looking at the spicy rabbit meat in the trash can, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but smile bitterly. Same old problem. Once I get engrossed with something and if it doesn’t work out well, I feel uneasy all over, unable to forget it.

With his current abilities, if he was willing to put in the time, becoming a top chef wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

But a chef who doesn’t eat? That would indeed be very eccentric.

After tidying up the kitchen and recording the recipe of the spicy rabbit dish that tasted best to him on the computer, Xiang Kun temporarily put this aside.

For this Blood-drinking Period, Xiang Kun’s training plan was mostly geared towards his cognitive and learning abilities.

His first method was reading books.

He had initially prepared a reading list for himself, but after chatting with Xia Libing, she recommended a dozen books on neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and clinical medicine at his request.

So, Xiang Kun downloaded or bought PDF versions of these nineteen books online for free or at a cost. This included the thick volume of ‘Shen Yucun Psychiatry’ – a book thick enough to block a knife — that Xia Libing brought to the café during their first meeting.

Xiang Kun’s middle finger was on the pagedown key, and he read at the quickest speed he could manage.

Every three pages, he would stop, close his eyes, and recall the content, repeating it in his mind.

In other words, during the reading process, he not only had to understand the contents, but he also had to remember everything.

Even though his memory had been greatly enhanced after mutation, it was far from being able to remember everything he read.

He was specifically training for this now, hoping that a significant improvement would be seen in the next mutation, helping him improve the efficiency of knowledge acquisition.

If he was merely trying to enhance his speed of memorizing written information, it wouldn’t be that difficult. He believed that after over 30 hours of specific training in a Blood-drinking Period, there should be a noticeable improvement after mutation.

But the problem was, he wasn’t preparing for a routine examination, rather he was trying to enhance his learning ability and practical applicability in the future.

So when taking notes on what he was reading, he needed to understand that content first. Or one could say, as he understood the material, he would remember it. This level of difficulty was much higher.

Of course, some professional books require certain prerequisite knowledge to understand, not just intelligence. If he wanted to fully understand them, he might even need to know other related disciplines.

Hence, Xiang Kun’s “understanding” was based on his existing knowledge. Using his far superior information comprehension, analysis, and calculation abilities, along with his powerful abstract thinking, he would establish a network of knowledge in his mind.

For the parts he didn’t understand during his first reading, he would memorize them first and seek explanations and supplementations from other professional books, the internet, or Xia Libing. Therefore, it was necessary to fully memorize all the content.

This method also allowed him to simplify the targeted training mode, set a measuring standard, and improve the efficiency of acquiring knowledge. After all, he did not have a formal educational background; he did not progress step by step in a particular professional field or discipline.

He himself didn’t know what content would be helpful to him. It was like looking for a few specific people in a vast sea of strangers, but he had no idea what they looked like, their unique qualities, or even if they existed.

After acquiring adequate basic knowledge, his sweeping and jigsaw puzzle-like study method would help him determine what kind of knowledge he needed.

After reading and memorizing the first 30 pages of each book, Xiang Kun would calculate the average time required to read three pages, and then set a reading and memorizing speed for the rest of the book, based on that time reduced by 10%.

If it took him more than the set standard time to read three pages, he would stab his thigh with the Swiss army knife in his left hand. He would also stab himself if he couldn’t completely remember the content after reading three pages.

He used this method to make his body understand that this was an extremely important ability that needed to be prominently improved during the next mutation!

Of course, before the next mutation, he was not sure whether this method of forcing his body would help the mutation and evolution of his brain thinking.

Even if it didn’t help, it didn’t matter—he considered it practice for his body’s recovery ability.

Moreover, Xiang Kun found that even though the feelings of pain did not decrease significantly each time he injured himself, his ability to resist the impacts of pain had strengthened.

Even if the pain was intense, he could keep his composure without it disrupting his calculations and analyses.

After sunrise, his mental alertness, memory, and healing abilities decreased to some extent, so Xiang Kun accordingly lowered his reading and memory speed requirements.

At 11:00 AM, the alarm Xiang Kun set on his phone went off. He had ended nearly eight hours of reading and memory training. He’d finished over half of the books that Xia Libing had recommended to him although there was still much content he had not fully understood, which he would need to supplement later through other books and the internet.

He went to the kitchen and took out the remains of the rabbit. After several attempts the previous night, he had reconfirmed the recipe, defrosted the remaining rabbit, and cut and marinated it.

Next, he would prepare Spicy Rabbit Meat, Xiang Kun Style, according to the new recipe he established the previous night.

He finished cooking within the set time. However, the amount of rabbit meat was a bit too much. The plate that Little Fatty Girl brought over to hold the cake the night before was too small to hold all of it, so he had to use a large soup bowl instead.

At 11:45, Xiang Kun heard the door of the elevator open and the crisp voice of Little Fat Girl Liu Shiling.

He first went out with the plate that held the cake from the night before, stopping Liu Shiling and her mom to return the plate and asked them to wait a bit.

Ten seconds later, when Little Fat Girl and her mom saw Xiang Kun coming out with a big bowl of rabbit meat, they were stunned.

“What’s this delicious dish?” Little Fat Girl asked curiously, stretching her neck.

Xiang Kun signaled Shiling’s mom to open the door, and he helped them carry the food inside—since the bowl was quite hot. As they walked, he said, “It’s Spicy Rabbit Meat. I made it myself. I’m not sure if it suits your tastes. Try it and let me know.”

Little Fatty Girl walked beside Xiang Kun, lost in thought for a moment, and then frowned, “But rabbits are so cute…”

But before Xiang Kun could say anything, her brow relaxed again, “It smells so good!” Then she hopped into her house with Xiang Kun.

While Shiling’s Mum was thanking Xiang Kun for the food and wanting to invite him for lunch, he naturally declined, claiming that he had already eaten and left.

Before he left, Little Fatty Girl couldn’t wait for her mother to prepare the meal, and was already munching on a rabbit leg with her mouth full of oil.

He was quite confident in his Spicy Rabbit Meat.

Xiang Kun didn’t go back after leaving Little Fatty Girl’s house. Instead, he walked out of the community, hailed a cab, and headed to where he and Tang Baona had agreed to meet on WeChat. The three women were having lunch there.

Today, they were going to ride horses at a horse farm in a neighboring city. Yang Zhen’er would be driving them there..