Cooking Chestnuts

In the evening, Liu Xiaolan and Mu Yuchen just came back from the city after picking up the last things she ordered in the blacksmith's shop a few days before.

During their time inside the city, they also stopped by Liujia's Wood Workshop and talked a little with Liu Jiahao. Starting from tomorrow, Liu Xiaolan will take Mu Yuchen to the city with their chestnuts to start selling.

The only issue that she hasn't thought of before is the fact that they need to go to the city early in the morning. Unfortunately though, Zou Xinghe would usually only take their family's ox cart to the city in the middle of the day, so it's too late for them.

The only option left for them is to walk on the road alone, while Mu Yuchen will need to hold all their chestnuts during the time they move to the city each morning.

Liu Xiaolan looked at her new cooking utensils and said, "Little fool, go and bring me a few buckets of water."

Originally, she planned to prepare all the food early in the morning before taking it to the city to sell. But if they need to walk to the city in the morning, she would need to wake up in the middle of the night to cook her chestnuts.

Instead, Liu Xiaolan decided to boil the chestnuts today and get rid of their bitter shell, while in the morning she would just fry them a little with some salt or sugar.

Mu Yuchen quickly run for some water towards the river and soon they could start.

"Little fool, you need to make a cut on all of them before we can boil them. It will help us with taking the shell off later on, and if you didn't cut them, they could even explode…"

Liu Xiaolan thought about it and decided to leave one uncut chestnuts in each of her pots. After all, she didn't really have much experience in cooking chestnuts, so might as well wait until the chestnut's shell explodes so she can be sure when they are ready.

Once they were boiled, Liu Xiaolan took the lead in taking of the shell from the chestnuts. "Look, little fool. This all needs to be taken off, otherwise they will turn bitter and won't be eatable…"

After another hour, they were finally done. Liu Xiaolan couldn't help but sigh, even with Mu Yuchen's inhuman speed it still took them a whole hour to get them all clean. It's truly a long and boring job, hopefully she can quickly earn enough money to stop doing it…

"Let's go to sleep early today. We need to wake up in the morning and go to the city…" Liu Xiaolan was a little worried that she might oversleep, so she added, "You are usually waking up earlier than me. Make sure to wake me up as well in the morning…"

Early in the morning, while it was still dark outside Mu Yuchen woke up and slowly got out of the bed making sure not to wake up Liu Xiaolan.

He went outside to start a small fire, before picking a bucket and going for some fresh water so they can wash themselves early.

Once he came back, he stirred Liu Xiaolan gently, "Lady, you asked me to wake you up…"

"Not yet, another 5 more minutes…" She muttered with closed eyes.

Mu Yuchen looked outside and saw that it was still dark, so he just let her be for another few minutes. But after another 10 minutes passed and Liu Xiaolan still didn't want to stop sleeping, he pushed down her quilt and picked her up.

"Ahh, little fool, what are you doing?" Liu Xiaolan opened her eyes in shock.

"Lady asked me to wake her up, so that we can go to the city early today…" Mu Yuchen said while looking at her pitfully. He slowly walked towards a pot with hot water and said, "Lady, we should wash quickly…"

Liu Xiaolan got down from his embrace and sighed. Well, it's true that they need to go out early. At least it seems that her little fool thought a little before waking her up, so they don't need to waste more time on running to the river right now.

"Little fool, bring the sacks with boiled chestnuts from yesterday here. I'm going to quickly fry them with some salt, so they're ready to be sold once we're in the city…" She said.

Mu Yuchen went to their home's underground room and brought out 2 sacks full of clean chestnuts without any shells.

Liu Xiaolan felt that today's job should be easy, but with the lack of modern cooking tools, it still took her almost an hour to fry all of the chestnuts she prepared for today.

Looking up to the sky, she noticed that the night was over and the sun came out. "Little fool, pack all that we need to take with us and let's go. It will take us quite some time to walk to the city on foot…"

Mu Yuchen quickly took all their remaining possessions and hid them inside their dark room before he picked up the sacks and followed a step after her.

Liu Xiaolan walked past the homes of villagers and sighed. Well, at least at this time of the day only a few villagers aren't sleeping, and the Liu family for sure should still be in their beds. It would be really bad if she had to lose some time now because of arguing with them for no reason…

Mu Yuchen was holding the sacks for over 4 hours on the road. At some point of their journey Liu Xiaolan felt bad and wanted to take over holding them, but her little fool didn't agree.

Well, perhaps she was worrying a little too much, because once they finally made it to Shenyang, she looked much worse than Mu Yuchen did. It seems that even if he had to run back to the village right now, he wouldn't feel anything at all.