Chapter 28: The 28th Day of Livestream Selling
The one even happier than Lord Arland from the Rift Forest seeing fried chicken again was, of course, His Highness Reinhardt from Yasa.
Before this, he had been sitting beside the giant observation window filled with drifting nebulae—on the bridge’s main control chair. His mental power moved as easily as his own limbs, connecting effortlessly with the warship’s core and calling up the data on various star systems for this Watcher mission that the Alliance had sent into the database.
A clear star map spread out before the entire bridge crew like mercury spilling across the floor. More than a dozen newly emerging star systems flashed one after another in orderly scattered positions.
Detailed scan data from the reconnaissance ships scrolled beside each planet: atmospheric composition, geological structure, mental power readings, biological signals… as well as the rough electromagnetic radiation scattered across the planets’ surfaces and the faint clusters of light.
There were too many emerging civilizations, and they were distributed unevenly. The protection-zone barriers had already been raised, but the Watcher Fleet jointly formed by the five major star systems was destined to spread out and rotate shifts.
What Reinhardt and his staff were doing was analyzing which star system Lin Zhao was most likely to be in.
For example, Kaman and a beastman planet could be ruled out first.
The former was because Reinhardt clearly knew that Kaman and the planet Lin Zhao lived on were not the same. As for the latter… Lin Zhao’s mental power did not look like the kind that would turn into a small animal.
Mm. The Goddess of Disaster looked as though it was holding a serious and proper meeting today too, but in reality, it was not discussing anything serious.
Of course, for Yasa people, this matter might indeed count as serious business. There was no serious business more serious than finding one’s destined person, although His Highness Reinhardt was still being stubborn and refused to admit it.
He felt he was only protecting someone he rather admired, an interesting soul.
Carlos: Heh, you had better be.
Then Lin Zhao’s special livestream notification rang out in the spacious bridge. Why were they so certain it was Lin Zhao?
Because on Reinhardt’s side, only livestream notifications could bypass the meeting do-not-disturb block. Even ordinary communications from his imperial brother, Emperor Anderich, and his second imperial sister, Grand Duchess Elowen, could not. Of course, if there were a special crisis or emergency situation, those could still come through.
In short, Carlos and Astoria, the inspector of the Second Legion, exchanged a knowing look.
Which was more likely: something happened to the empire, or the pigeon streamer finally went live?
Of course it was the latter.
And it was indeed the latter.
Thus, the meeting, which had not been doing anything serious in the first place, was changed on the spot into everyone watching the livestream together. The grand excuse was: collecting more possible information in order to effectively help them make a judgment.
As a result, the opening delivered a critical hit.
At least, to Reinhardt, it was an irresistible critical hit.
He said he missed me—
His Highness Reinhardt’s dead-man face, which seemed carved from glacier ice, was practically covered in that worthless sentence.
“…Do you not know what polite words are?” What Carlos truly wanted to ask was: our royal family is so rich, why didn’t they buy you some brains?
But Reinhardt turned a deaf ear and controlled his mental power again, making the screen repeat Lin Zhao’s words once more.
He said he missed me.
Carlos understood. It was not that he did not know what the other person meant. He was simply deceiving himself.
He thought he thought of him.
It sounded like a tongue twister, but in any case, that was the meaning.
And the livestream audience Lin Zhao truly wanted to take care of was undoubtedly the children of Kaman.
Why had he chosen to fry fries right at the beginning?
Because this was his and his cousin’s favorite childhood dish.
Fine, the two of them still liked it quite a lot now. Back when Dr. Lin had still been a master’s student, he had once eaten fries in the laboratory, which led his junior schoolmates afterward to always devoutly buy a quartet meal before starting experiments in order to ensure success.
In short, this was one “home-cooked dish” that would definitely appear on the Lin family’s dinner table every year. It was also the dish Lin Zhao was best at after living and working alone in Yongji for so many years.
He and his aunt each made one portion in front of the camera.
Aunt Lin, wearing an “I Am the Kitchen God” apron, belonged to the traditional faction. She heated oil in a pot, and with a shua-la— sound, the potato strips coated in white starch were instantly wrapped in golden hot oil. She held long metal chopsticks and gently moved them back and forth in the rolling oil, allowing every fry to stretch out.
She even thoughtfully added, “The oil temperature can’t be too high at this time, because this is the first fry. You need to cook the inside of the potato through.”
Lin Zhao, wearing a sweater and a black apron, stood to the side and waited at ease. When 1114, acting as control room operator, asked, “Aren’t you going to start?” he only shook his head.
The fries on Auntie’s side had already begun sinking and floating in the warm oil at 160 degrees. Their color gradually shifted from milky white to pale yellow, moisture quietly evaporating, and their edges curling slightly. When Aunt Lin quickly lifted them out with a skimmer and spread them on an iron rack, the potato strips were still dripping oil, somewhat soft and collapsed, not yet fully set.
Auntie slapped her much taller nephew once, and only then did Lin Zhao begin moving. His steps were much simpler. While tearing open a bag of frozen fries taken from his own supermarket, he started preheating the air fryer beside him.
200 degrees. 5 minutes. After preheating was done, the fries could be poured all at once into the frying basket already lined with special oil-absorbing paper. Still set to 200 degrees, 15 to 20 minutes. Press the button, and that was it.
Aunt Lin’s side had also cooled down enough. The oil pot was turned to high heat, and the potato strips were poured into the oil again. Along with a rain-like sound of frying,* the rich and domineering fragrance of fries was suddenly awakened.
The fries rolled and expanded in the boiling oil. Their color deepened at a visible speed, from pale yellow to golden, then to an enticing oily shine tinged with caramel. The skin of the potato strips visibly tightened and solidified, until the edges began curling slightly, and then they could be scooped out.
The golden fries piled up like a small mountain in the wire basket, still making tiny zi-zi bubbles.
Just looking at them made one’s appetite stir.
Lin Zhao did not stand on ceremony either. He immediately began crunching away. Fries fresh out of the pot were very hot, but they were absolutely a delicacy of the mortal world. The shell was crispy, the inside soft and fluffy, and the distinctive sweetness of potato melted together with the saltiness of sprinkled salt in his mouth. There could be no existence more delicious than this.
However, Lin Zhao did not forget the purpose of this livestream.
While announcing the benefit of opening a food lucky bag every ten minutes, he also began explaining the working principle of an air fryer.
“An air fryer uses very little oil. To put its working principle simply, it’s a super powerful heated hair dryer. If you still don’t understand,” or to be precise, if they did not even have hair dryers, “then it means making hot air circulate at an extremely fast speed inside a small sealed space, thus producing the Maillard reaction.”
“Don’t worry about what the Maillard reaction is. In short, the final result is making food achieve an effect similar to deep-frying.”
At just the right time, the air fryer had already been running for about 10 minutes. Lin Zhao skillfully pulled out the frying basket and shook the fries inside hard, helping them change direction so they could heat more evenly afterward. At this point, the fries had already formed a golden crispy shell, so he showed it to the camera.
“If you don’t have an air fryer on hand, and you don’t have oil either, but you still want to eat fried food, I happen to have a few immature ideas I’d like to share with everyone. It doesn’t have to be fries. You can also coat and fry everything.”
Battered fried skewers were also one of the traditional children’s dishes on the Lin family’s New Year’s Eve dinner table. This kind of fried skewer was less common in the South, at least not in Jiangzuo. Lin Zhao’s father had accidentally seen it when traveling to the North for work, and after coming back, enthusiastically insisted on making it for his son. After that, it became a fixed family item.
Aunt Lin also demonstrated from the side, from fried chicken cutlets to fried mushrooms, eggplant, and cauliflower. Sticky flour batter could coat everything. It was a little like tempura, yet not entirely the same.
As she put these vegetable skewers into the pot and listened to the crisp and urgent shua-la sound, she used her eyes to remind her nephew, who had started slacking off again.
Lin Zhao really was not good at livestreaming, nor was he very used to talking to the camera. Most of the time, he would choose to leave it in idle play, but today clearly would not do.
1114 projected a simple diagram for its host into the air, one it had only temporarily generated that afternoon, allowing everyone in the livestream room to clearly see the detailed explanation.
Lin Zhao said, “This is the solution. Using a combination of a drone, thruster, or explosion-proof shield with a military mess tin, you can also modify an air fryer.”
During the period when Lin Zhao helped Mechanic and Elowen pass messages back and forth, although he had not deliberately looked at the content, some of the relatively simple and easy-to-understand knowledge had still entered his brain in a vicious way.
In the past, he had at least been a technical shut-in. After gaining a clearer understanding of Kaman’s abnormal industrial development, quite a few strange ideas had truly appeared in his mind.
One of them was how to convert military use to civilian use, so that the children of Kaman could eat normal food.
A modified air fryer was a relatively perfect cooking tool he could think of.
“Remove the fan unit from a drone, then find a discarded military compressed gas cylinder—please make sure the air inside has been completely emptied before use, and that it has been carefully cleaned. Add a resistive heating wire under the fan, and a portable air fryer will be ready.”
Paired with the images 1114 projected, Lin Zhao began teaching the people of Kaman how to hand-make an air fryer. He even specifically said that children should not casually try this. This kind of thing should be left to adults.
Lin Zhao’s understanding of weapons was that of an ordinary military enthusiast, but when it came to kitchenware, he truly understood it thoroughly.
He might not necessarily be able to turn kitchenware into weapons, but as for how to temporarily turn certain weapons commonly found everywhere in Kaman into kitchenware, he did have quite a few insights.
The principles behind the thruster and explosion-proof shield were similar. After this explanation, the people of Kaman, who had originally only been looking forward to joining the lucky draw and winning fried fries or battered skewers, were truly tempted.
There was no need to mention someone like Mechanic. Even Gray, who often lived outdoors, felt that he might not be incapable of trying it.
Cunningham was undoubtedly the happiest among them, because she saw the enormous profit potential of air fryers, and also because Lin Zhao had indeed featured items from his supermarket on camera.
She had even asked Gray to buy these semi-finished fries before. They were now frozen in her natural ice cellar.
She immediately called her subordinates over to start experimenting. They placed it outside in the most conspicuous and easily visible area, preparing to attract another portion of hungry customers for their business.
Whether the people of Kaman loved eating them was still hard to say, but the nature elves of Farlris were already almost unable to hold themselves back.
Because they had no idea how long they had been smelling the scent of these fried fries.
As everyone knew, one of the most delicious parts of fries and other fried foods actually came from this extremely appetite-gravitational, tempting smell. It was a complex and hard-to-describe feeling of deliciousness.
What everyone did not know was that the smell of fries actually directly stimulated appetite and could greatly highlight sensory appeal.
Originally, at the banquet, the nature elves who revered nature ate very lightly, mostly raw and vegetarian foods. At most, things were lightly steamed or slowly boiled. In short, whatever was most convenient for absorbing magical elements from plants was how they ate.
They were like most people whose Engel coefficient had already proven their material civilization was greatly satisfied: they always felt that spiritual civilization was more worth pursuing.
When they heard that Arland, the dark elf with the greatest magical talent who had also been designated as the blessed one of the Goddess of Light, had recently shut himself away to research some fried chicken, they thought he had simply gone mad.
They could not understand what Arland was doing, nor did they look favorably upon his sudden pursuit of food.
In fact, if they had not already known in advance that the Church of Light had heard a genuine divine oracle some time ago—which was also the true purpose of their trip—and if they themselves were not now hearing a voice from beyond the heavens beside the statue of the Goddess of Light, they would not have given this matter a single glance at all.
But…
How could this smell be so mouthwatering?
Although up to now, they still had not seen what kind of divine delicacy this was.
Mm, just like last time, most people in Farlris could only hear the sound, not see the image. Because the stable channel 1114 found was actually the channel Farlris’s gods had truly used in the past to deliver divine oracles. It was just that now, the gods were long gone, and the channel could still be barely used after some patching.
As long as there was a statue of the Goddess of Light, one could hear the “divine oracle.”
Just like what most Western fantasy novels always loved to write: believers could not see the god, but they could hear Their voice, feel the warmth of Their palm, the burn of Their light…
And this smell that was very hard to resist.
It made the beautifully plated cold dishes specially prepared by the Church of Light for today’s banquet taste like wax.
Most importantly, from the high tower where the dark elf Arland was, there came an even stronger, even more stimulating smell.
While the other elves were still being reserved, he, who deeply understood that slow hands had no reason, had already placed an order and was happily eating.
There was no need to doubt it. This smell was definitely being deliberately spread by Arland, who was deeply versed in magic. Nature elves looked down on the “barbarism” of dark elves, but dark elves also looked down on their pretentious king-of-posers act.
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