With only flowers, plants, and trees around and no one else, Qin Huai squatted down and opened the game panel to check the task.
1. [Taste of Memory]: Decades of time felt like a fleeting moment for Bi Fang, but for humans, it was a distant past. Liu Tao’s appearance had long been a blur in Luo Jun’s memory, and no matter how lifelike the painter’s rendition, Luo Jun couldn’t recall the image of his wife. However, he vaguely remembered a special-tasting dumpling Liu Tao made for him, though he could no longer remember the style or flavor of the dumpling. Players, please create a dumpling that matches the taste in Luo Jun’s memory to complete his forgotten flavor.
Task Reward: [A Memory of Luo Jun] (Choose: Yes/No)
Qin Huai felt like scratching his head; this time, he really wanted to scratch his head.
No wonder they say the needs of the elderly and children are the hardest to satisfy. Chen Huixi has an abstract wish, and Luo Jun’s memory flavor is high difficulty.
Dumplings, an absolute pinnacle of Chinese pastry aesthetics, were a type of pastry Qin Huai absolutely couldn’t make.
Simply put, dumplings are a kind of realistically imitated fruit pastry.
Made from flour, they are steamed, with simple versions including basic fruits like peach, apple, pear, banana, and pomegranate.
These dumplings not only have the shape of fruit but also the flavor. A banana dumpling tastes like banana, an apple dumpling tastes like apple. You can taste what fruit it is just by looking.
At this point, someone might ask, if these fruits are basic versions, then what are the advanced and complex versions?
Answer: They can be anything you imagine.
The skill and imagination of the chef determine the limits of dumplings. As long as the level is there and they aren’t afraid of trouble, they can make fruit baskets, fruit boats, fruit platters, pandas playing with bamboo, two dragons playing with pearls, phoenixes spreading their wings, and snow falling on cold plums.
These are not pastries that are made, they’re pure artworks.
They’re artworks with color, aroma, and taste, edible, playable, and viewable.
Can Qin Huai make them?
He simply doesn’t shape pastries.
The Snack Encyclopedia didn’t teach him!
Was Liu Tao’s pastry skill really that high? Didn’t she only manage to brew D-grade for Dried Tangerine Peel Tea as a basic contestant before marriage? How come after marriage she seemed to have activated her governor and conception vessels, and her skills improved at a leap, even mastering dumplings.
Qin Huai wondered, isn’t this embarrassing for Fat Tiger?
Luo Jun saw Qin Huai’s face change between green and pale and impatiently asked, "What’s wrong?"
Qin Huai read the task details aloud.
Luo Jun: "What are dumplings?"
Qin Huai could only confusedly explain what dumplings were again to Luo Jun.
Only then did Luo Jun nod, indicating his understanding, and began supplying information points: "That thing, I do remember a little, but it wasn’t made by Liu Tao."
Could there be a mistake in the task details?
What a broken game system, not professional at all.
"Not made by Liu Tao, what do you mean?" Qin Huai quickly asked.
Luo Jun was reluctant to say, but for the sake of Qin Huai’s task, he dug into his memory and said: "Liu Tao was from Shu, sold to a theater troupe when she was young to travel around. After we married, Liu Tao said she wanted to go back home and have a look, just as Shanghai was unsafe at that time, bombarding outside the concession every day, and the concession was crowded like throwing dumplings in."
"So I went with her to Shu and lived there for a few years."
"The food there was too spicy, I couldn’t get used to it at all, ate so much I wanted to breathe fire every day. I didn’t like the dishes that weren’t spicy either, but the Wu Family Restaurant’s food was okay, I was too lazy to go out, so it was mostly Liu Tao who went out to buy."
"I don’t know where she found a pastry shop to buy the so-called... dumplings you mentioned, but it wasn’t as exaggerated as you said. Eating apples tasted like apples, eating tangerines tasted like tangerines. It was just a nice-looking dessert, the carrot one I remember kind of tasted like carrot, but I don’t like carrots."
Luo Jun finished speaking.
Qin Huai became even more silent.
Great, now it’s not even about dumplings.
Although the difficulty level had decreased, the strategy direction became even more elusive, and with Luo Jun’s words, his task combined all the difficulties of children and elders.
"So do you have any..."
"Don’t ask me, I don’t remember," Luo Jun said bluntly, "but I can tell you what I don’t like eating."
"I don’t like eating carrots, mushrooms, celery, and onions. Tell your canteen cook to reduce those damn carrot stir-fry, celery stir-fry, and onion stir-fry. Why are they so obsessed with stir-fried meat?"
"Do you just love eating in our canteen?" Qin Huai asked a soul question.
Luo Jun chose silence and said nothing.
The two had already been sitting in this quiet corner for a while.
"I’ll take you back," Qin Huai felt their proper conversation was done and it was time to leave.
He wanted to drop by the neighborhood office to ask if Chen Huihong had any wishes to be fulfilled, to see if he could get a side quest from there.
Although Chen Huihong had woken up, who knows? Maybe he could pull a Qu Jing’s dream or a memory of Luo Jun from Chen Huihong?
"If you have things to do, go ahead, I’ll sit here for a while longer," Luo Jun said.
Qin Huai wasn’t comfortable leaving Luo Jun alone outside, although the place was close to Building A, any tumble or bump for someone like Luo Jun was as good as reincarnating early.
So, Qin Huai sat with Luo Jun for a while longer.
"The painter you found last time, was the draft from yesterday the final version?" Luo Jun started to chat casually.
"It doesn’t have to be," Qin Huai replied since Luo Jun had sufficient funding, edits were welcome.
Bingbingzi’s fourth version of the draft seemed quite close to Liu Tao’s appearance to Qin Huai, bearing a seven or eight out of ten likeness, albeit lacking the essence.
But capturing the essence in a painting was unrealistic since Bingbingzi had drawn purely based on Qin Huai’s verbal descriptions, never seeing Liu Tao in person. Achieving such likeness was already quite good in Qin Huai’s view.
Once Luo Jun was satisfied with the draft, Bingbingzi would refine it into a final version with seven or eight more detailed pictures that could resemble photos for Luo Jun to hang at home.
"Revise it further," Luo Jun said without lifting his eyelids, "The eyes and brows still aren’t quite right, they differ from my memory."
"Tell that painter, if she does well, there’s an additional bonus," he added.
Qin Huai spoke up for Bingbingzi: Sure Boss, thank you Boss, I got it Boss, thanks for your hard work, Boss.
Luo Jun sat a while longer.
Qin Huai counted and found he had been bitten five times.
The good ecosystem also meant more mosquitoes and bugs, which explained why no one came here.
"Let’s go back," Luo Jun stood up, "Make that dumpling quickly, call Xiao Zhang when it’s ready."
"This is your side quest, and the reward is your memory," Qin Huai reminded him.
"I know," Luo Jun said impatiently, "I’m not really amnesiac, not so much that I’d forget what you just read to me."
"You might as well look sooner, you can’t stop anyway, might as well do it early so I can eat something good earlier."
If you love drinking Dried Tangerine Peel Tea, just say it, no need for so many excuses.
Qin Huai sent Luo Jun back, returned to the cafeteria, and on the way, sent a WeChat message to Chen Huihong.
Qin Huai: Sister Hong, do you have any side quests you want to complete lately, could you possibly release one for me?
Chen Huihong: Release.
Chen Huihong: Chen Huihong releases a side quest for Qin Huai.
Chen Huihong: Was there one?
Qin Huai: Sister Hong, could you help me phrase it differently to ask Huihui?