The lonely foodie

"Tuk tuk... tuk tuk..."

Someone knocked the brass ring on the rich door.

"Who?"

Long Qi's voice quickly came from inside the door, with a resounding huh.

In this situation, everyone is so hungry that their chests stick to their backs, but those who are still panting are busy with food and clothing, digging tree roots, grabbing wild vegetables, digging Guanyin soil... who has time to visit? ?

Long Qi just went to the designated grain store yesterday with his certificate of good citizenship and household registration booklet, and brought back a bag of "Gonghe noodles."

"Gonghe noodles" is a kind of grain and non-grain product that appeared two years after the fall of the city. It is composed of bran, wheat bran and ground bean cakes, and even mixed with stones and soil.

"This fucking deserves to be called Chishi?" Long Qi stared at the small bag of things that were neither black nor yellow, and spat.

Long Qi is the guard of... the owner of the most prestigious restaurant "Tanranju" in this city. In peaceful times, people would look down on things like "Republic Noodles", but now it's different... .

At this moment, while Long Qi was complaining about this shit that no fucking dog would eat, he slurped up the bowl of "Gonghe Noodles" and drank it all.

After drinking, lie down on the small bamboo bed in the concierge, and try to avoid all consuming activities, so that the bowl of food that is neither fragrant nor smelly can stay in the stomach for a while.

Long Qi couldn't sleep, and stared at the courtyard where he had lived most of his life with a pair of big bull's eyes.

In the courtyard, flowers bloom in all seasons, wintersweet in winter and lotus in summer.

A small piece of land is surrounded by a wooden fence in the north of the courtyard. The young master used to plant a garden full of roses here. The young master said that this is called a perfume rose. Whenever the flowers bloom, the fragrance is tangy. It is so precious. Western perfume is not as good as the taste.

Now the wintersweet is gone, the lotus is gone, the perfume rose has been trampled, burned, and died cleanly, leaving only a big sycamore standing alone between the sky and the earth.

It was midsummer, but the cicadas on the tree were caught by gauze nets, and there was not a single one left.

"Tuk-tuk..." There was another knock on the door.

Long Qi's memories were interrupted again, he was disturbed, and before the door was opened, the scolding came out first, "Fuck it..." After seeing the person standing outside the door, A pair of bull's eyes widened, and his voice immediately became crying, "Big...big...big..."

"Eldest Young Master." The person outside the door waited for a long time, sighed, and finished speaking for him.

"I thought...you..." Long Qi cried even harder, pulled up his tattered cuffs and wiped his face, the dust on his face was messed up, as if he was about to perform on stage.

"I'm not dead." After the man finished speaking, he stretched out his hand and gently pushed Long Qi, who was blocking the door, before he leaned forward and slipped into the room through the gap.

The movement of bending over pulled the wound on his back for a while, and Qu Mobai, the young master of the Qu family, frowned slightly.

Qu Zhai is a good house. It was built in the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. It is an exquisite dwelling with white tiles and white walls. A stream flows not far from the house. People sitting in the courtyard can hear the rush of the stream in the distance and see the bamboo. Shadow rustle.

It's just that the courtyard has just been swept away, and all the tables, chairs, screens, mirrors, and beds in the room have been removed, and everything that can't be moved is set on fire.

The stone walls engraved with the characters of blessing, gourds, round fans, swords, lotuses and other dark patterns of the Eight Immortals were scorched black from the smoke.

It was just at dusk, and after the sun fell silent, the sky and the earth were lonely. Qu Mobai stood tall and tall, standing in the desolate courtyard, making this evening even more desolate.

"Eldest Young Master." Long Qi called out standing behind him, "They...why did they let you back?"

Qu Mobai was silent for a long while, then slowly opened his mouth, as if answering, but also as if talking to himself, his voice was not as clear as usual, with a sick hoarseness, "I promise to make them a pot of water for eight yuan at noon tomorrow "."

Long Qi opened his mouth, choked twice in his throat, but couldn't say what he wanted to say, and finally turned into a long sigh.

He knew that the "they" that the young master said were the invaders, the bastards who burned, killed, looted, raped/prostituted/women, and ruined their family.

But he couldn't figure out why the young master would agree to cook for those bastards, and what he cooked was their Tianranju's signature dish—Shuibakuai!

Two years ago, not long after the war broke out, the young master became an underground party. In the first year, he sent a message to his family, saying that he was going to blow up the enemy's information department. is dead.

The master is even more stubborn, not only unwilling to surrender, but also openly helping the victims with the food stored at home.

The chamber of commerce couldn't bear the pressure, so it found an excuse to label the old man a "profiteer". The old man in his 60s, with his hair shaved and a big cardboard with "profiteer" written on his back, exhausted his last strength to get rid of the traitor. He broke free, threw himself into the moat, and was instantly swallowed by the rolling river.

The master of Tianranju lived his whole life in a strong manner, and his death was also bright and aboveboard.

On the night when he went there, the moat was dotted with dots, and those people he had rescued burned paper to pray for him. They had no money to buy paper money from the underworld, so they used old newspapers, old books and old books to burn.

In the era of war, even the king of Hades in the underworld may have to be more accommodating for this.

After the master died, the wife was sick and went there last month. She didn't have money for the funeral, so she wrapped her up in a mat and buried her in a shallow pit on the hillside behind the house.

How many families were destroyed in the war?

For this, the Eldest Young Master hated and hurt to the extreme, and would rather die than bow to the invaders.

Five days ago, in the lobby of Tianranju, the invader put a sharp knife on the young master's neck. The sharp point of the knife cut his fair skin, and blood gushed out immediately, dripping on the dusty terrazzo floor, smashing A few blood drops, large and small, came out.

"Tianranju serves the imperial army. I will reward you greatly, otherwise...kill me!" The invader grimaced and squeezed threatening words through his teeth.

The young master's voice was always gentle and calm, Long Qi had never seen him lose his composure, but at the age of 27, he possessed the calm and calmness of Qian Fan.

"Kill it." He said gently and calmly, his voice was flat, but there was a decisive chill in his eyes.

The gust of wind before the rainstorm swept open the eight wooden doors that were half-hidden, and for a while there was a strong gust of wind inside the house, making the coarse cloth gown on the young master's body rattle.

They didn't kill the young master immediately, and they didn't let him leave so easily.

The back of the knife was drawn towards his back, and the gown was cut, exposing bright red flesh and blood. Long Qi counted, and only by the third blow, the young master's back was covered in blood and flesh, and there was not an inch of intact skin to be seen.

But his back is still firm.

Those who wanted to see him kneeling begging for mercy were insulted and kicked his knee sockets with boots as hard as iron, forcing him to stagger to his knees, but he soon held on to the door frame and stood up firmly, steadfastly Staring at the lifeless sky before the storm.

"Kill!" the young master roared, "Have a good time."

Long Qi was pinned down by seven or eight traitors, he couldn't move, he wanted to yell, but the young master's eyes made him unable to speak, Long Qi knew that the young master wanted him to live well, he wanted to give birth, Even if you live to die.

At the end of the confrontation, the invaders threw the bloody young man into the car and drove away in the dust. The thick smoke caused the survivors to burst into tears.

I don't know whether he is crying for the fall of the third-generation successor of Tianranju, a person like a jade carving, the kind-hearted young master of the Qu family like a Bodhisattva, or his own hopeless future.

Now that the young master is back, he told Long Qi to make a table of "water eight yuan" for the bad guys. Long Qi didn't understand, but he knew that something unusual must have happened during the days when the young master disappeared.

Tianranju, which has been closed for nearly half a year, has reopened. Master Qu is going to throw a banquet and cook Tianranju's signature dish, "water eight yuan" for the invaders.

The door was crowded with onlookers.Qu Mobai and Long Qi walked over one after the other, and the noisy crowd fell silent instantly.

"Alas! No matter how upright a person is, he still wants to live. It is better to live than to die." Someone in the crowd sighed.

Several people followed suit, Long Qi glanced piercingly, and several people immediately silenced, not daring to speak any more.

Qu Mobai stretched out his hand to push the grilled door leaf, wearing a round and smooth green and white jade finger on his thumb, he paused in the air before pushing open the half-hidden door.

The lobby was in a mess. There was a thick layer of ash on the table and dried blood on the floor. There was a smell of dust and blood in the air, which was not the smell that should appear in a natural residence.

Qu Mobai turned his head and said to Long Qi, "Master Qi, there are no servants in the store now, please help clean the lobby."

"Alright, young master." Long Qi responded, "I'll go clean right now."

As soon as the words were finished, two men in military uniforms walked in carrying a bamboo basket.

"Where is Eldest Young Master Qu?" the taller one shouted.

Long Qi raised his eyes and took a look, he was a countryman in dog fur, lowered his eyes, ignored him, Long Qi looked down on traitors.

"I'm fucking asking you something." The person shouting raised his foot and kicked Long Qi.

Long Qi dodges neatly, his right leg leaves the ground, the thousand-ply-soled rough cloth shoe lands on the man's instep, and the heel of his heel pushes slightly, the man howls in pain.

Qu Mobai stood at the door of the kitchen and watched the scene silently with the blue curtain behind him. When the traitor was so painful that his forehead was sweating, one of the soldiers pulled out the gun from his waist before asking, " Have the food been brought?"

"Hey, it turns out that Young Master Qu is here." The soldier who fought with Long Qi immediately put on a flattering smile, and pointed to the basket at his feet, "The ingredients are here, Master Qu."

"Bring it into the kitchen." Qu Mobai put down the curtain and walked into the kitchen.

When I just came in, the stove has been cleaned up, the pots and pans to be used have been cleaned, and the water is filtered in a dustpan.

The two soldiers put down the ingredients and asked, "Master Qu, the imperial army asked us to help you. Let's start. Tell us what to do."

Qu Mobai lifted up his robe, squatted down in front of the frame, rummaged through it casually, picked up a few prickly ash with his jade-like fingertips, and sniffed it at the tip of his nose, "The prickly ash is from Hanyuan."

"Hey, Master! Master Qu!" The soldier said anxiously, "It's good to find peppercorns in the city now, how rare are these things? Take these two tender roosters as an example, they have searched all over the place." It took half a city to find it."

Qu Mobai frowned slightly, and after a while, he said calmly, "It doesn't matter if you don't have any, but the ingredients are wrong, and the taste of the ingredients is naturally very different. If the imperial army is not satisfied, I will honestly say that the ingredients are wrong."

Hearing what he said, the soldier's legs were so frightened, "Well, Master Qu, you are the master! I still have to listen to you." After speaking, he pulled his colleague who was standing next to him and went out.

After the two soldiers left, the room returned to tranquility.