Chapter 144: Outdoor Study Ends
Regarding her own father’s ideas, Xiang Chuan, as the daughter, naturally had no objections. After all, whether her father’s Group could last long was related to the economic freedom of everyone at home. In the end, they couldn’t let her mom support so many people, right? Apart from the Twelfth Fleet, the Cultural Affairs Bureaus of other fleets were all for show—this common knowledge Xiang Chuan at least knew. A department with little profit, even if it was their TOP, how much money could there be? Unless the Third Fleet could turn things around from being salted fish and transform into an entertainment fleet, it was better to forget about relying on her mom’s salary to support the whole family.
So this matter was agreed upon just like that, and Xiang Weiguo also began preparing the materials. The board of directors and shareholders still understood the interests between various Groups. The current difficulty lay in how to convince them to accept the 20% revenue share that Xiang Chuan was determined not to lower.
—What a joke! Not to mention tofu, with a Geegle search on the profits of various major soy sauce brands in the 21st Century, plenty of data could be found—the profits were right there! Why not make money if there’s money to be made!
Xiang Chuan hummed a little tune as she ran back to her room to take a shower. Lin Minzhi also went to the entertainment room to binge-watch together. Xiang Weiguo and secretary Xiao Ye were left pondering the arguments to use for convincing the board of directors and shareholders after the soy sauce was ready in a month.
With soy milk and tofu as these two “byproducts,” the results report for the outdoor study naturally didn’t need to wait until the soy sauce jars were opened. So over the next few days, the A Bite of China Club members helped Xiang Chuan start writing the report.
Although Xiang Chuan had written summaries and reports no less than eighty times during her corporate slave days, she had never even encountered academic-style reports during university—not even her graduation thesis quite met the requirements. But after so many years since graduation, who still remembered how to write a graduation thesis…!
When Xiang Chuan received the report requirements sent by homeroom teacher Zhu Bingwen, she was dumbfounded. It even required writing an ingredient list and an element table? How many elements were there in the modern era? It seemed like it had been mentioned in class. After leaving Earth, some elements not found on Earth had been recorded during resource collection on various planets, so modern elements far outnumbered those from the Earth era. How was she supposed to handle this?
Of course, by getting someone to help. Xiang Chuan directly handed this task to Liang Gong, who had some interest in biology, and then under the guidance of top students Yating and Ainuo, she wrote the results report step by step like a toddler learning to walk.
“So ancient times already had AI to help organize information and generate template texts, why in the modern era do we have to do this routine report thing by hand instead!” Xiang Chuan scrunched up her face, staring at the light screen as she wrote the report full of words she recognized individually but couldn’t understand when put together, and couldn’t help complaining.
“Who knows, probably to make it seem more sincere? You have a typo here.” Ainuo sipped the soy milk Xiang Chuan had made out of boredom these past two days and casually pointed out a misspelling on Xiang Chuan’s light screen.
Formalism is harmful! Xiang Chuan fiercely corrected the typos while criticizing some unacceptable ancient dregs, wondering why this thing hadn’t disappeared along with the culture buried in the Dark Virus Crisis.
On Saturday evening, Xiang Chuan finally finished this report that had nearly taken half her life under the supervision of the two top students. After integrating Liang Gong’s organized element composition analysis and sending it to homeroom teacher Zhu Bingwen, the week-long outdoor study finally came to an end.
This also meant that the stayover life of Yating, Ainuo, and Liang Gong at the Xiang Family Mansion was about to end. The three of them usually stayed together with Xiang Chuan at school anyway, so they didn’t feel much, but it made Xiang Xue and Lin Ming a bit reluctant. The three often chatted with these two kids in the entertainment room, and now the kids called out “Sister Yating” and “Brother Ainuo” so smoothly that it made Xiang Chuan a bit jealous. At the dining table, she said it was better for the three to go back soon, otherwise her position as the eldest sister at home would be divided up by these guys. Yating and Ainuo rolled their eyes upon hearing this.
Though she said that with her mouth, Xiang Chuan was also a bit reluctant about life under the same roof with her club members, so on Sunday evening she personally cooked a grand feast, stuffing the three so full they could barely walk out of the Xiang Family Mansion gate.
On Monday morning, after Xiang Chuan entered the classroom with freshly made buns, as expected, she was surrounded by the classmates.
The reason was that the farewell banquet she made for Yating and the others on Sunday was too luxurious, making Xiang Xue unable to resist starting a live stream. That night, it made the viewers drool, especially the pan-fried tofu, Mapo Tofu (simplified version), and various other tofu dishes the crowd hadn’t seen before, which whetted the viewers’ appetites. So the Class Eight members, being close by, surrounded Xiang Chuan to ask about tofu.
Mainly, even with the paving of soy milk, the Class Eight folks still found it hard to associate that milky-white soft object with beans. They had seen beans before—when Xiang Chuan had the delivery help pack that box of beans to take home, everyone crowded around to observe. The beans stored in the warehouse felt hard, and some freshly harvested ones felt a bit softer, but far from the softness of the tofu seen in the live stream room.
What exactly was this magical technology…!
It completely ignited the curiosity of the Class Eight students.
Then Xiang Chuan, who had always taken a “know it but not why” attitude toward cooking, was in trouble.
The principle of tofu manufacturing? The chemical reaction of adding coagulant? The secret of the texture?
Who knows! Why expect a liberal arts graduate foodie to know so much! Rather, it would be truly outrageous if protagonists of those transmigration novels who didn’t graduate in food chemistry could spout chapter and verse!
Luckily, she had a universal excuse: “I’m not clear on the principle either; I just followed the information and did it.”
—Just blame everything on information turbulence! Resolutely not admit she’s the stupid one!
Seeing her dazed expression, the Class Eight classmates calmed down too: Right, almost forgot that this classmate of ours is a science dummy. Asking her to give a theoretical explanation was indeed too much.
So they shifted their target to Yating and the other two, who were eating buns at their respective seats and watching the show.
The A Bite of China Club President and members had a very magical extreme contrast. The president was incredibly quick to pick up ancient food production at a glance, while the knowledgeable, prestigious family background Yating and Ainuo were clumsier than each other with their hands. Liang Gong could only beat them at piping flowers; when it came to ingredient processing, they were all the same. But in academics, these three clumsy-handed members not only took the top three spots in the class but even squeezed into the top twenty of the grade in the monthly exam, once making the homeroom teachers of Class One and Class Two—full of top students—suspect if there was a malfunction in the enrollment and class assignment system that let such excellent students slip through.
Although Ainuo was a bit short-tempered when tutoring Xiang Chuan, he was usually very patient when helping classmates with homework. Regarding tofu, he had participated in writing Xiang Chuan’s report and looked at some materials Xiang Chuan shared in the club group, so he had some understanding of “adding coagulant” and “fermentation.”
After he organized his thoughts and gave a simple explanation, everyone suddenly understood: So food processing can be done by inducing bacteria! Ancient people really knew how to use their brains!
Xiang Chuan bit into the simplified Mapo Tofu bun she tried making today, drank milk, and from her seat listened distantly to Ainuo’s voice intermittently explaining. When she heard the word “fermentation,” a flash of inspiration hit her. She looked at the milk in her hand, and a new intention formed in her mind.
But this flash of inspiration couldn’t be implemented today. When club activities started in the afternoon, the transport robot delivered the soy sauce glass jars from the Xiang Family Mansion warehouse to the A Bite of China Club club activity room. Xiang Chuan directed Little Star Two to place the glass jars on the rooftop. Before leaving school last Friday, the four had cleaned the rooftop and set up a simple retractable shed. This time, Xiang Chuan specially bought a few semi-automatic stirrers. Before rest time arrived, she hurriedly directed Little Star One and Little Star Two to stir the fermenting soy sauce in the jars. The three downstairs tallied the ingredient consumption in the warehouse from the past week and updated the menu.
“Put tofu dishes on hold first. The bean stock at the president’s home is probably only enough for the club to use for one or two months. If all used up, it won’t be convenient for the president to make new bean or tofu dishes.”
“I think soy milk can go on, soy pulp cake too, or directly sell soy milk. A one-to-one soy milk blend can halve soy milk consumption, so it can last longer.”
Watching Ainuo and Yating seriously discuss the new foods to add, Xiang Chuan happily took it easy, simply taking out a bun, holding a cup of fruit milk, sitting nearby to watch the show. If it was cooking, running business, or writing (non-professional) summaries, she could say a thing or two, but when it came to club operations or even finances, she chose to toss the problem to the obviously more capable other two in her club, rather than struggle bitterly with a bunch of numbers herself without knowledge in that area.
After finalizing the menu, club activity rest time officially began. Suddenly, procurement personnel from various clubs swarmed in. If not for Little Star One maintaining order, that expensive-looking gate might have collapsed.
“What a pity. If you had made this soy sauce earlier, Xiang Chuan, we’d have good stuff to eat for the school anniversary activities at month’s end.” The Class President arrived on time at his usual seat, casually opened the light screen to continue reading, and saw Xiang Chuan looking at him incredulously.
“School anniversary?” Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes, thinking: Was there such a thing?
“Teacher Zhu mentioned it at the beginning of the month’s class meeting. Didn’t you pay attention?” Ainuo didn’t forget to jab at his club president.
“Uh…” Xiang Chuan thought it over but couldn’t recall, quickly opening the school program page. Sure enough, the most prominent spot on the official website had changed to the school anniversary announcement banner. Clicking in, she finally understood what it was.
Simply put, it was organizing stalls for the school anniversary together with first year high school students from other schools, with activities conducted by class units. Exchanges between schools were activities the principals especially emphasized. Only on days like this did first year high school students have a chance to expand their social circles, and competitive schools saw it as an annual contest to compare activity organization abilities between the two schools.
Xiang Chuan naturally didn’t bother getting involved, leaving it to the school. Since it was a cooperative school anniversary, the formal work would definitely wait until the other side arrived to finalize.
