Chapter 33

Chapter 33

But Shen Dongqing felt like he was forgetting something. What was it?

Shen Dongqing pondered for a moment, then caught sight of his phone nearby and smacked his thigh in realization. Wasn't he supposed to stream himself making beef jerky for his fans?

But because of the person he'd encountered on the stairs, his attention had been diverted, and cutting the beef had been so tiring that he'd completely forgotten all about it.

Shen Dongqing looked at the beef that was already marinating. When he'd been cutting the meat, he'd felt like he was going too slow and wished he could finish faster. But now, Shen Dongqing felt like he'd been way too quick—he'd processed all the beef so fast that he didn't have suitable ingredients left to film a proper segment for the stream.

Shen Dongqing quietly opened the system mall. The beef he'd wanted to buy before but couldn't bring himself to buy—now he really had no choice but to buy it.

Shen Dongqing didn't plan to buy too much—just one piece to use as the ingredient for his stream. The only catch was that this meat was for his own consumption only, because if the quality gap was too noticeable and he sent it to fans, it might cause misunderstandings among fans.

With the meat purchased, Shen Dongqing also bought the other seasonings. Looking at the Fame Points he'd spent, Shen Dongqing's heart ached a little—over eight hundred Fame Points down the drain. He hoped it would be worth every point.

But once the beef arrived, Shen Dongqing took a whiff and found that this beef was truly something special. It had a unique aroma, and upon closer inspection, even had a faint hint of milky sweetness, making a raw bite seem pretty tempting.

Shen Dongqing rested for a while, waiting for the soreness in his arms to ease up before going live.

"Surprise! The streamer just streamed yesterday, and he's already live again today?!"

"What? He streamed yesterday? How did I not know about that?"

"The person above didn't see the streamer's announcement from the day before? It was a food safety stream done in collaboration with the officials, but it was on the official account."

"I watched yesterday's stream too. The streamer shared a lot of tips for judging ingredients. Today I used the tips he taught to pick out some beef, and it turned out delicious when I cooked it. Even my mom was impressed with my meat-picking skills."

"Wait a second, this title—has the streamer gone from being an outdoor streamer to a food streamer?"

"Suddenly remembering yesterday, the streamer was kind of a food streamer, in a way, except he was only talking about ingredients."

"Don't even bring that up. I'd finally managed to forget about it. After watching that stream, I don't dare eat out anymore. I can't even imagine how dirty some restaurant kitchens are."

Seeing the fans chatting away excitedly, Shen Dongqing cleared his throat to grab everyone's attention.

"You all saw the title. Today I'm here to teach you how to make some delicious beef jerky." Shen Dongqing said. "First, for the beef, hind leg meat is the best choice. Don't go with beef brisket or rib meat—too fatty, the texture turns out soft and mushy, and it spoils easily."

Shen Dongqing didn't plan any fancy showmanship. He just wanted to share as much knowledge as he could with his fans, hoping they could recreate his beef jerky exactly.

So for the rest of the tutorial, after explaining which meat to choose, Shen Dongqing also told his fans how to pick the beef, and even went into great detail on how to trim the fat and sinew from the hind leg meat.

"Everyone remember, this fat absolutely has to be trimmed off. Don't take shortcuts. If any is left, the beef jerky might develop a rancid smell if stored for a bit longer, and the whole batch is ruined."

"And the sinew—try to get rid of all of it. Otherwise, once the jerky is done, one bite and the beef will be too tough to chew."

Shen Dongqing demonstrated while he spoke, trimming every bit of fat and sinew off the whole piece of beef with ease. He made it look effortless, but the fans watching felt the pressure.

"The streamer makes it look so easy. If I hadn't just cut some beef today, I'd think I could do it too."

"Can't you? Isn't it pretty simple?"

"Has the person above never cut beef before? That layer of sinew is super hard to cut—it's soft, slippery, and thin. Getting it off is a nightmare."

"Streamer, streamer, is there a simpler method? I can barely chop vegetables without cutting myself. If I have to do all this, there's no way I can learn this beef jerky recipe."

"A fan asked if there's a simpler way—the answer is yes. You can ask the butcher to trim it for you, and the little bit of sinew left for you to handle yourself will be much easier." Shen Dongqing replied.

The fans perked up when they heard Shen Dongqing say there was a simple trick, only to go silent when he told them to get outside help.

"Such an absurd method, but it somehow makes sense."

"Will the butcher actually do it?"

"I'll go ask next time. If the butcher at my place isn't busy, he'll even help cut the meat."

"But if the butcher is busy, he might not get it fully clean, so you should still learn a bit on your own."

Seeing how eager his fans were, Shen Dongqing felt gratified and began explaining the remaining steps in even greater detail—how big to cut the beef strips, how much seasoning per pound of beef, giving the ratios so precisely it was like hand-holding.

"The streamer's recipe is insanely detailed. It reminds me of cooking videos I've watched before—'a pinch,' 'some,' 'a handful'—who knows how much that actually is, right? I even paused the video to count how many peppercorns they added, and I still screwed it up."

"Class rep, write down the seasoning ratios! I'm already heading out to buy some beef. I'm ready to show off my skills."

"Hehe, I already got the meat. The supermarket was pretty quiet, and the butcher already processed the beef for me. Just need to cut it and marinate it."

"Damn, the butcher I went to is busy. The butcher agreed to trim the sinew, but he's still weighing meat for other customers. I'm gonna go buy the seasonings now, and I'll check on the meat when I get back."

"Whoa, aren't you afraid the butcher will swap your meat?"

"The butcher knows my mom. If I find out he swapped my meat, I'll have my mom deal with him."

"Will your mom really be that effective?"

"My mom leads the biggest square dance group near the market. If he scams me, my mom will spread the word, and he can kiss his business goodbye."

"666, your mom's a total boss."

Shen Dongqing saw this comment and silently gave it a thumbs-up in his head. That fan's mom was truly something else—the butcher wouldn't dare scam her of all people. Did he want to stay in business or what?

Once the beef was cut and marinated. Since he was using all-natural ingredients to add aroma to the meat, the meat needed to marinate longer, so Shen Dongqing moved on to making rock sugar pear.

This was much faster. He peeled and cored the pears, but didn't cut them into small pieces. While smaller pieces would stew faster, they didn't look as good.

Now that he was a Master Chef, the food he made had to look, smell, and taste perfect.

"But for those of you who aren't good at coring, you don't have to do it my way. Just peel and cut along the edges." Shen Dongqing made sure to remind his fans.

With the pears stewing, Shen Dongqing looked at the big pot in front of him and suddenly felt that getting the big cookware wasn't so bad after all.

When he first got these kitchen tools, he thought they were too big and considered swapping them for single-serving cookware. But now, he figured bigger was better.

Big can do what small does, but small can never do what big does. If this were a regular-sized pot, he had no idea how long it would take to stew all these pears.

"Wait, stewing this many pears—can the streamer even finish them all?"

One fan noticed something was up. If he were just teaching them how to make rock sugar pear, three pears would be more than enough. But now, with this many pears, could one person really eat all of them?

"The streamer just put beef into the fridge, and it looked like there were two big bowls of marinated beef in there. Can he really finish that much beef jerky by himself?"

"Beef jerky can be stored for a long time, and it's a pain to make, so making a big batch at once is pretty normal."

"But that's way too much. Eating that much beef jerky by yourself, wouldn't you get sick of it?"

"Wait, what are you trying to say exactly?"

"Nothing much, just... I want to help the streamer share the load."

"Speaking of which, I want to help share the load too."

"Count me in!"

Seeing this comment, Shen Dongqing felt quite helpless. He'd planned to wait until the beef jerky was fully done, then announce a giveaway, but now it looked like he couldn't put it off any longer.

"I've made so much beef jerky, there's no way I can eat it all by myself. Even if I gave some to friends, there'd still be too much. Since we've come this far, can you guess what I'm going to do?" Shen Dongqing said.

Shen Dongqing was pretty obvious about it, and many fans figured it out—a giveaway for followers.

"Got it, he's just practicing his cooking skills."

"Or maybe he's planning to sell it."

"Oh, he just loves cooking. Got a cooking itch today?"

"Keep it up and I'm not giving anything away." Shen Dongqing rolled his eyes. Before the hint, they were all begging for one; after, they were just messing with him.

The comments immediately stopped joking and turned into everyone begging to win.

This was Shen Dongqing's first giveaway, and he wasn't too familiar with how it worked, but he managed to figure it out in the end.

He had a good amount of jerky, so he drew fifty winners. Though compared to his fan count, fifty was a drop in the bucket. He didn't have much of a choice. If he wanted to make more, he'd need some help.

"If you win, send me your address and I'll ship it express," Shen Dongqing reminded.

"What about the rock sugar pears?"

"The rock sugar pears aren't part of the giveaway. They're only good fresh and can't be shipped," Shen Dongqing shook his head.

The viewers knew they couldn't be shipped anyway; they were just testing the waters. After getting the reply, they dropped it and watched him tend the fire for a bit before he got ready to study for his driving test.

"The beef needs to marinate for another five or six hours, and the pears need a bit more time. I'm going to study for my driving test. You guys want to watch with me, or should I close the stream and come back when I season the beef?"

Shen Dongqing asked that, but the fans were oddly focused on him studying for the test.

"Wait, he asked about driving schools a few days ago. If I remember right, he's done a ton since then, and now he's already signed up?"

"This guy's got some serious drive."

"Which driving school did you go to? You recommend it?"

"I went with Ping'an Driving School, but I've only signed up so far. The instructor just told me to go study the videos, so I can't recommend it yet. If I'm going to recommend it, I'd at least wait until I get my license first," Shen Dongqing replied.

"Ping'an Driving School, huh. But be careful during your test—I had someone deliberately cut me off and almost failed."

Reading this comment, Shen Dongqing remembered the conversation he'd overheard between driving school students yesterday. This kind of thing seemed pretty common.

But as the comments dove into their own frustrating test experiences, with no one answering his question about closing the stream, Shen Dongqing sighed helplessly.

Fine, he thought, keeping the stream open as a chat room for fans wasn't a bad idea. He could even learn a thing or two from their experiences.

When Shen Dongqing had taken his driving test, everything went smoothly—he passed everything on the first try. His instructor even said he drove steady and was lucky. At the time, he hadn't thought much of it, but now, seeing all the experiences fans shared, he realized he'd been really lucky.

No scooters suddenly darting out, no old folks riding against traffic, no one deliberately cutting him off.

"Those are all outside problems. Let me share one of my own—never keep long bangs. Last time I had bangs, and since they were in my eyes, I flicked my head, and they said I looked down at the gear shift and failed."

"Reminds me of a friend. After the test, she got out and just needed to close the door. But since the safety officer was her instructor, she saw him blinking hard and thought she'd messed up. She ended up failing because she didn't close the door within ten seconds."

"Wait, wasn't the instructor trying to hint at something?"

"My friend asked later—the instructor had sand in his eye and wasn't hinting at all."

"So many wild ways to fail."

Shen Dongqing nodded silently. He never imagined there were so many ridiculous ways to fail.

But these failure stories were too entertaining and kept distracting him from studying. Shen Dongqing told the fans he was logging off and closed the stream to focus on studying.

As he was studying, Shen Dongqing suddenly caught a faint smell of smoke, like something was on fire.

Could his stew pot be burning?!

Shen Dongqing thought it unlikely—he'd put plenty of water in the pot and wasn't using high heat—but what if?

He got up and went to check the kitchen, but as soon as he stepped out of the bedroom, he knew something was off. The smell wasn't coming from the kitchen—it was from the balcony.

Shen Dongqing walked to the balcony, where the smell was stronger. He looked down and saw clothes hanging outside on the floor below were on fire.

The apartment below seemed empty. Shen Dongqing went to the bathroom, filled a small bucket of water, and quickly poured it down through the window. Luckily, the fire had just started when he caught the smell, and it was put out right away.

With the fire out, Shen Dongqing breathed a sigh of relief and carefully looked for where the clothes had caught fire.

Even in this heat, clothes wouldn't just catch fire for no reason.

After a moment, he found a cigarette butt. Could this have been thrown from upstairs?

Shen Dongqing immediately called the police. This was no small thing—carelessly tossing a cigarette butt that caused a fire could've led to a major disaster if he hadn't noticed in time.

The police arrived quickly after the call, and it turned out to be someone Shen Dongqing knew.

"Officer Zhao, long time no see." Shen Dongqing greeted with a smile.

"Yeah, it's been a while this time." Zhao Rong looked at Shen Dongqing, a bit pleased. It was rare for Shen Dongqing to go this long without showing up at the station.

What Zhao Rong didn't know was that although Shen Dongqing hadn't been to the station, he'd managed to shut down a bunch of restaurants over the past few days, with some owners facing fines or even being forced to switch careers.

Since Shen Dongqing had pointed out the suspicious cigarette butt early on, and knocking on the downstairs door got no answer, Zhao Rong and his team went up to the rooftop terrace first, where they collected a few footprints.

Meanwhile, they managed to contact the downstairs tenant, who rushed back when they heard the news and let Zhao Rong and the others in to get the cigarette butt.

"Don't worry, tossing a cigarette butt from a height and causing a fire is no small thing. We'll find the person and make sure they pay for your losses," Zhao Rong reassured.

The tenant was a young woman who smiled at the reassurance, but a hint of unease lingered in her eyes.

...

Shen Dongqing didn't get involved in what came next. The pears had been stewing for nearly forty minutes, and even with the kitchen and living room in between, the sweet smell had already drifted into the bedroom.

Shen Dongqing rushed to the kitchen, turned off the heat, and lifted the lid. A light, sweet aroma hit him.

He eagerly scooped out a pear, blew on it, and took a bite.

The pear had softened from the long stewing, melting almost as soon as it hit his tongue. Shen Dongqing hadn't added too much rock sugar, so it was sweet without being cloying.

Of course, the pears themselves were top-notch. As he ate, Shen Dongqing suddenly felt that his past dislike of pears was definitely because the pears he'd had before just weren't good.

He ate without paying attention, and before he knew it, the whole bowl of rock sugar pear was gone.

Whether it was his imagination or the pear soup working fast, when Shen Dongqing spoke again, he felt the slight discomfort in his throat was gone.

Shen Dongqing felt that in the future, when he needed something, he should still go to the system mall to buy it. Compared to products in the real world, the quality of items supplied by the system mall's hosts was much better.

Once the stewed pear was ready, Shen Dongqing found a large pot that was easy to carry, set aside a portion for himself, and then headed out carrying the pot.

Shen Dongqing's first thought was to ride a shared e-bike to deliver the food, but after looking at the size of the pot he was carrying and the limited space on the front of the shared e-bike, there was no way it would fit, so he just called a cab instead.

"Are you sure you'll be right back?" the taxi driver asked, frowning when he heard his request.

"Yeah, I'm just dropping something off," Shen Dongqing nodded.

Dropping something off?

The driver looked at the large pot Shen Dongqing was holding, puzzled for a moment, but didn't give it much thought and headed straight for the police station. On the way, Shen Dongqing glanced at the time—there was still a while to go—and since the driver's driving skills weren't great, he just closed his eyes and dozed off.

The driver had driven many passengers, but one carrying a pot was still pretty rare. While waiting at a red light, he couldn't help bringing it up in the driver group chat.

"What? Carrying a pot, a pretty big one? What kind of pot?" someone asked.

The driver glanced at Shen Dongqing, saw he was still resting with his eyes closed, and took out his phone to snap a photo of the pot.

"Just like this."

Seeing the pot, the group chat blew up—after all, taxi driving was boring, and they always had to find some fun to pass the time.

"That's way too big. Did he have that pot custom-made?"

"That's a pressure cooker, right? Looks brand new."

Shen Dongqing would have preferred a different pot, but with a whole pot of soup, he didn't have anything else suitable—the pressure cooker was the only convenient option.

"Did the passenger say where he was headed?" the person who asked earlier chimed in again.

"To the police station. Said he's dropping something off," the driver replied, and seeing the light turn green, hit the gas.

It wasn't until the next red light that he had the chance to check the replies, and when he saw the messages on his phone, he froze.

"Holy crap, pressure cooker, police station—you better be careful. Pressure cookers can be turned into bombs. This guy isn't planning to blow up the police station, is he?"

"No way, who would be that bold? Maybe he's a cop's relative bringing some soup?"

"A pot that big? Nobody normal uses a pressure cooker that large. It's hard to even buy one—might be custom-made. Are you saying he's delivering soup or a bomb?"

"You should call the cops first, just to be safe."

"Hey Ke, you should secretly call the cops. Better safe than sorry—just in case something really happens."

"Yeah, it sounds crazy, but Ningchuan's had a lot of cases lately. Forget the past—just a few days ago, a husband killed his wife for the insurance money, and before that, a robber-murderer actually livestreamed to make money. Who'd have believed that before it happened!"

Driver Ke read these messages and felt a chill run down his spine. He carefully glanced at Shen Dongqing in the rearview mirror, and at that exact moment, Shen Dongqing opened his eyes to check where they were and caught the driver staring at him.

If he remembered correctly, that guy had secretly taken a photo of him earlier!

Shen Dongqing remembered that clearly. So now the driver was watching him again—what was his deal?

Shen Dongqing immediately became alert. He glanced at the driver, then pretended to casually look away, and started mentally going through the photos of wanted criminals in his memory to compare.

In his memory, Shen Dongqing's expression was almost cold and indifferent.

But after scanning his memory, Shen Dongqing found that the driver didn't seem to be a problem.

However, while he was recalling, the driver seemed to glance at him a few more times—what did that mean?

While Shen Dongqing was thinking, the driver felt every hair on his body stand on end, his heart pounding with fear.

He also felt like he could smell a weird smell coming from Shen Dongqing—something sweet, but with a slight metallic or fishy undertone.

The driver's gaze uncontrollably fell on Shen Dongqing, and he suddenly noticed the stains on the soles of Shen Dongqing's shoes. His breathing nearly stopped.

Was that blood?

It sure looked like blood.

The driver couldn't be sure, but he also couldn't take a photo to have others help him judge—he could tell that Shen Dongqing had noticed him watching. If that pressure cooker really was a bomb and he exposed Shen Dongqing, wouldn't the guy just blow it up right there in the car?

The driver's hands were trembling, so much so that the green light ahead had been on for a while and he didn't react, only moving when the cars behind him honked nonstop.

But he was so flustered that the car lurched as he started, making Shen Dongqing feel a bit carsick.

"Driver, drive a little steadier," Shen Dongqing reminded him.

"You, you get carsick?" the driver replied after a moment.

"A little," Shen Dongqing said, glancing at the driver, then looking down at his own pot—if this driver was up to something, he'd need to figure out a way to fight back.

The pot lid would be a usable weapon, but the only issue was that opening it would take some time. Rather than the lid, he might be better off looking for something else to use.

Shen Dongqing's gaze swept across the car, and the driver noticed, and his panic grew.

"Then—then just close your eyes and rest for a bit. We're almost at the station," the driver said.

"It's fine. If we're almost there, I don't need to rest. Just keep driving like this," Shen Dongqing said, keeping his guard up.

"Alright, alright," the driver said, grabbing his phone from the side, holding the steering wheel with one hand while shakily sending a message to the group asking them to call the police for him—he'd already been made by the other guy and couldn't call himself.

The group had been anxiously waiting for his message, and when they saw it, they panicked too. Seeing the police station address the driver sent, they called the police station directly.

"What? Someone's using a pressure cooker to make a homemade bomb and on his way to our police station?"