Chapter 319 – The Deceased’s Agitation
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” Lorna said faintly as soon as she entered, filling the dark room with a terrifying atmosphere. A female ghost appearing at the door and saying she had been waiting for you was the epitome of horror.
“Sister, don’t scare me,” I said, carefully examining Lorna’s face. Thankfully, there were no signs of mutation. The three extra eyes she had last time were gone. If I ignored her semi-transparent soul, she looked like just a very cute little girl.
“I have something I want to ask you… Wait!” Just as Lorna was about to ask a question, she suddenly seemed to discover something. She floated in front of me, sniffing the air incessantly, “You have a very familiar scent on you. Where have you been?!”
“What a sensitive nose, are you a puppy?” I felt awkward. I couldn’t possibly tell her that I had just visited her tomb, seen her remains, and confirmed that the deceased was stable and had died peacefully.
Besides, it wasn’t peaceful at all. She clearly died violently, and her remains were incomplete. There was also a Black Silk Monster lurking in her tomb. So, what should I tell her?
“Ahem, it’s a long story. Come, sit down first, and we’ll talk while we eat,” I said with a smile, gesturing for Lorna to sit. The atmosphere was too heavy and serious, and I didn’t know what to say. Let me organize my thoughts first.
“Oh,” Lorna said blankly, allowing me to pull her onto a chair. Then she suddenly reacted, “No! I’m not here to eat. I’m here to ask some questions about my life.”
It seemed she had clearly realized that she was dead and had recalled some things. She became pensive, and her reactions slowed down as a result.
“Miss Lorna, we just returned from investigating your matter. We’ve been busy all day, and it’s so late. You have to let us cook first, right?” I argued reasonably.
“Oh, oh~ Okay,” Lorna meekly sat down to wait when she heard that we hadn’t eaten after a whole day of work.
Actually, she didn’t understand. Although we were busy all day, the villagers had treated us to a big meal at noon, and we were full. Even though we returned after dinner time, we only started feeling hungry now, which was perfect timing for dinner.
Moreover, Jayad was the one who was truly hungry. As for me, I had been in a state of hunger all day, and the large bag of dry rations I brought was already eaten like snacks along the way.
Although this era had butter and baking technology, as I had seen earlier, commoners couldn’t afford it or were unwilling to spend their money. The black bread was mixed with a lot of coarse grains and bran.
Even when I bought the best ones at the market, the texture was as hard as compressed biscuits. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the more advanced white bread, cream bread, queen’s bread, or cakes.
Anyway, it all tasted the same once it entered my mouth. I could gnaw on black bread like snacks or biscuits. After two escapes, my shock made me even hungrier, so I ate all the thinly sliced black bread along the way.
So, it was Jayad who was truly hungry and needed dinner. He sat down on a chair and weakly said to Lorna, “Today, we almost died investigating your matter. We encountered various monsters, like black mud, crawling monsters with visible brains, and ghouls.”
“Ah? Is it… that dangerous?” Lorna was somewhat at a loss. She had intended to question us aggressively, but she didn’t dare to bring it up when she heard Jayad’s complaint. She obediently sat in her seat and listened to Jayad recount their adventure today.
However, Jayad only described the specific dangers they encountered during their adventure. He needed someone to vent to, as he had been holding it all in. As for specific intelligence, I would sort it out slowly and see what I could tell her.
Lorna listened with a pounding heart. Both in life and death, she had never seen such terrifying and seemingly unsolvable monsters. She felt it was a miracle that this brother and sister could return alive.
“Then… whose tomb was such a dangerous place?” Lorna asked fearfully.
“Uh, well, it’s the tomb of the Oliver family,” Jayad said awkwardly. He couldn’t possibly say it was her tomb, could he?
“Oliver? That name sounds familiar,” Lorna mused, confused.
“Uh, Oliver is also a relatively common surname. Perhaps you’ve heard it before,” Jayad quickly tried to smooth things over.
“No, this must be a very important name to me. Oliver, a common surname? Ah! That sounds like my mother’s surname!” Lorna suddenly recalled.
As I was stewing the dish, I covered my forehead. She gave herself away after just two sentences. Jayad really doesn’t know how to talk! If Lorna lost control again, I wouldn’t have any sedatives to give her. The last bottle had already been consumed by myself.
“Dinner is ready! Let’s eat first, and then we can talk about anything!” I forcefully placed a large pot of stew on the table. The aroma that wafted out when I opened the lid immediately attracted Lorna’s attention.
“What is this?” Lorna asked suspiciously, looking at the strangely shaped meat dish with a bowl I had served her. But it smelled so good that she couldn’t resist picking up her fork.
“It’s meat, just eat it,” I said nonchalantly, trying to get off the hook. If she knew the truth, she might not dare to eat it.
“Let me try, hmm? What is this round thing? Wooah! Delicious!” Lorna picked up a piece of intestine with her fork and put it in her mouth, then cried out in delight. With a fork and spoon, she quickly ate the meat in her bowl.
“Mmm! This is delicious, and this is delicious too! Why is this meat so tender! It’s not tough at all, and the texture is so wonderful! I’ve never tasted anything like it before,” Lorna exclaimed repeatedly.
“You’ve been a ghost for so long without eating, you’ve probably forgotten the taste from when you were alive? So, you find it novel. It’s actually nothing special,” I said.
“Ah, is that so? Then I really must have been dead for a long time. But I don’t think I ever ate meat like this when I was alive,” Lorna said, still somewhat in doubt, but she was already captivated by the delicious food and couldn’t think of anything else.
That’s right, these were all offal, meaning internal organs. Recently, when I was looking for ingredients in the market that could satisfy my appetite and my demand for deliciousness, but weren’t too expensive, this was the answer I found.
The understanding of cooking in Europe was still at a very primitive stage. Even though the Iberian Peninsula was considered a relatively skilled Western country in terms of cooking, it was still the same.
For example, they completely didn’t know how to cook offal. It wasn’t that they considered offal filthy; after all, people were starving, so how could they care about whether the ingredients were clean? It was purely their lack of culinary skill that made the resulting taste unbearable.
Since spices were expensive and exclusive to nobles, and spices were more expensive than beef, nobles wouldn’t waste spices on these offal. Why not cook steak with that effort?
However, commoners couldn’t afford spices, let alone seasonings. They didn’t even have soy sauce or salt. How could offal taste good?
