Chapter 91: Field Training – Ginger, Get Daze!
Crowds searched for her thousands of times, suddenly turning back, that person was there in the dim light.
Xiang Chuan’s mood at this moment could only be described by this poem. Thinking carefully, she had indeed seen this flower in the plaza near the school gate, but she hadn’t walked over to look closely. No, even if she had looked, she probably wouldn’t have recognized it… How could a normal 21st Century urban corporate slave think that someone would plant ginger seeds in a park!
Her mind kept frantically complaining about modern people, but her hands didn’t stop. She rolled up her sleeves, eager to try the flower cluster in front of her.
Since she had seen it, she might as well dig some up to take back.
“Don’t just stand there, come help me quickly!” Xiang Chuan turned her head and shouted, then began to dig the soil.
This sight really scared the five people. Even Nancy, who had grown up eating, drinking, and living on construction sites, was quite frightened by this primitive digging behavior.
“What are you doing? If you want the flower, just pinch off the upper half directly. This will get your hands dirty.” Ainuo had a face full of black lines as he picked a ginger flower from nearby, examined it in his hand, but couldn’t see anything special about it. This wildflower wasn’t even worth planting in his family’s small garden. What was so magical about it?
“I don’t want that flower, I want the root… No, it seems ginger flower also… Better to dig the whole thing out!” Xiang Chuan said, her hands not stopping. In a moment, she dug up a ginger flower with its roots. She joyfully cleared the soil from the root, but after cleaning off the mud, the exposed root block was much smaller than imagined.
She looked doubtfully at the root block in her hand. It shouldn’t be like this; ginger roots should be very large… Could it be that ginger mutated over the two thousand years?
Seeing Xiang Chuan’s puzzled expression, Ainuo and Ouyang Yating quickly stopped Chou Manman and Liang Gong, these two honest kids who were really preparing to go up and help dig the flower roots. Their own club president still didn’t understand the situation, so better not to blindly follow.
Xiang Chuan frowned at the ginger block, broke off a piece, then forcefully snapped the ginger block in two, scaring everyone.
The broken-open root block revealed a yellow interior, with a faintly pungent smell. Xiang Chuan was used to it, but for modern people encountering this smell for the first time, it was really too alien.
“What is this smell…” Ouyang Yating smelled the faint pungent taste in the air, somewhat unadapted, and took two steps back. Just as she was about to speak and tell Xiang Chuan to quickly throw away this thing, Xiang Chuan’s next action made her and the other four people’s jaws drop: she directly licked the broken surface of the root block!
“Xiang Chuan!?”
“What are you doing! Spit it out quickly!”
Chou Manman and Ainuo, the closest to her, rushed up quickly and knocked the root block out of her hand. Xiang Chuan, startled, quickly spat out the ginger juice in her mouth and looked at them in surprise: “What’s wrong with you guys?”
“What’s wrong with you!” Chou Manman gripped her shoulders and shook her back and forth. “Even if you can’t enter the kitchen to make food, you can’t just casually pick up plant roots covered in soil to eat!”
The others also looked at her with expressions of not wanting to watch, making Xiang Chuan’s forehead covered in black lines. She pressed down Chou Manman’s hands and helplessly explained: “I’m not craving this flower; I was just confirming if this is the seasoning I’ve been looking for.”
“Seasoning?”
Everyone looked at each other. This wildflower’s roots? Seasoning? Modern people with poor natural common sense found it hard to equate ornamental plants with seasonings.
“So, the result?” Ouyang Yating became interested. Mainly, the pepper had given her quite an impact before, and now hearing there might be a new seasoning, she couldn’t help but feel curious.
“Hmm… The taste isn’t completely the same, but it’s about seventy to eighty percent similar…” Xiang Chuan picked up the root block that had been slapped to the ground by the two, looked it over left and right. “In terms of taste, it should be usable as a substitute, but something this small won’t keep up with the consumption…”
As she spoke, she looked at the flower cluster in front of her. Ginger flower was really pretty, red and red, with a bit of the feeling of watching an iron tree bloom. Although what was dug up didn’t seem to be the essential ginger from 21st Century dining tables, something was better than nothing. She stretched lazily and said: “Alright, let’s all dig together. But first, if you don’t help, when we get back, I won’t give that person meat to eat.”
Meat? The five seized the key word. This thing was related to meat? Such a stimulating taste mixed into meat… Everyone suddenly couldn’t imagine that scene. But out of curiosity, they still tried to help. The reason it’s “tried” is because having modern people who never get their hands dirty dig soil was an eight-hundred-year rarity. Everyone trembled a bit inserting their fingers into the soil, nervously imitating Xiang Chuan’s actions, digging around the roots of the ginger flowers bit by bit, pulling up stalk after stalk of ginger flower intact from the ground with roots.
Spring soil was relatively moist, making it easy to dig, the only downside being that the soil stuck more easily to everyone’s clothes. After digging about thirty stalks, the six people’s sleeves and pant legs were basically all covered in soil. The five besides Xiang Chuan all had some excitement on their faces to varying degrees; after all, it was their first time playing with mud. Nancy was more familiar with building materials due to her family’s occupation, but directly contacting soil like this was still a first. The sticky soil on her hands brought an indescribable freshness.
“Then what? Do we just carry them back?” Ainuo asked. “We should be able to call your transport robot from here, but if it comes from the air, it might turn into a moving target.”
Indeed, a transport robot descending from the sky would be too conspicuous in the forest no matter what.
The discussion resulted in having Nancy and Liang Gong go back to bring the transport robot. Originally, Nancy planned to go alone, but Ouyang Yating and Ainuo worried about something happening on the road (after all, they had kidnapped people from Class Ten), so they had Liang Gong go along too.
The remaining four just stayed in place with nothing to do. Xiang Chuan plopped down on the grassland, thinking that having the insect repellent chip was great—no need to worry about something suddenly crawling onto her legs or pants while sitting on the grass…
“Xiang Chuan, there are some small ginger flowers here that haven’t bloomed yet. Should we pick some to plant back home?” Chou Manman wandered around and saw a small cluster of grass shorter than ginger flower by the flower cluster, with somewhat similar leaves.
“Hmm?” Xiang Chuan stood up and went over to look. “It’s not impossible. It seems my home doesn’t have this kind of flower.”
The Xiang Family was in the Villa Area, and ginger flower was basically a wildflower. If wildflowers could still be seen in the Villa Area, some high-status madams would probably not be happy, so ginger flower and such common flowers were basically nowhere to be seen in the Villa Area.
So the two started digging soil again. This time, Ainuo and Ouyang Yating were unwilling to join; they already had enough soil on them, any more would exceed their tolerance.
“Wow, this root block is so big. Xiang Chuan, you can plant so many ginger flowers when you get back… Xiang Chuan?” Chou Manman, who was a step faster, dug one out first. She proudly showed it to Xiang Chuan, but Xiang Chuan froze upon seeing what was in her hand, leaving Chou Manman very puzzled.
“This… this is it…!” Xiang Chuan excitedly grabbed the root block Chou Manman handed over, quickly shook off the soil, revealing a ginger block even larger than her two palms. She impatiently wiped her hand simply, broke off a small piece of ginger, and the pungent aroma flew out with the ginger juice. She stuck out her tongue to lick it—yes, it was this familiar taste!
“Quick!” Xiang Chuan waved at Ainuo and Ouyang Yating, who were staring dumbfounded at them. “Come dig all these out quickly! These are what I’ve been looking for!”
The two exchanged a glance and helplessly joined the digging army again.
Ten minutes later, when Liang Gong and Nancy pulled the hovering transport robot over, they saw four people with even more soil on them, and a pile of ginger on the ground.
