Chapter 66: Chapter 65: Making Tofu on a Snowy Day, the Tofu Is as White as Snow

Luo Feifei had acquired the Divination Technique just a few months ago, around the time she started having nightmares.

The nightmares consisted of only a few fragments, each lasting no more than a minute, but they appeared frequently in her dreams.

To her surprise, the scene was identical every time. And when she had these dreams, the sense of realism—the physical sensation of being torn apart, of her body exploding—was as if she were actually there. It felt like it was really happening.

Luo Feifei would jolt awake from these nightmares each time, drenched in a cold sweat. She couldn’t help but wonder, ’Is this the future? Or my past life?’

After the first nightmare, a Divination Technique had suddenly appeared in her mind. She sometimes wondered if perhaps the "her" from the dream had sent it across time and space.

The whole thing was so unbelievable that she didn’t tell anyone except her mother.

Since she was still very young, her mother not only took care of her day-to-day life but was also her manager. But her mother didn’t believe her at all. She just assumed Luo Feifei was stressed from work and school and even took her on a vacation to relax.

After that, Luo Feifei never brought it up with her mother again.

...

This recent super-blizzard had come so suddenly, and since the south had no experience dealing with such cold, it caused disasters in many areas. The news reported that some elderly people, as well as cattle and sheep, had died.

In Li Xiang’s hometown county, the top leader was furious. Someone had told him about how Li Xiang’s earlier warning had been dismissed and how he had been reprimanded for it.

The top leader gave the Meteorological Bureau, the Disaster Reduction Office, and the personnel from the department that had reprimanded Li Xiang a harsh dressing-down.

"What the hell are you people paid for? You’re less competent than some kid, a complete amateur! If you get the chance, you’d better humble yourselves and learn a thing or two from him."

The subordinates were left speechless. ’It’s not our fault,’ they thought. ’Out of all the provinces in the south, not a single one predicted it accurately. We’re just a small county; it’s understandable that our capabilities are limited.’

’We’re being completely scapegoated.’

One of them finally mustered the courage to speak up. "Maybe that Li Xiang kid just made a lucky guess. He was just being an alarmist and happened to be right by chance."

Someone else immediately chimed in, "Exactly! If he’s really so capable, let’s see him make another prediction."

The top leader fell silent for a moment, then nodded. That did make sense. A single success really didn’t prove anything.

...

Too bad for them, they had no idea that Li Xiang had already decided he would never again issue a warning so readily. ’Why go looking for trouble?’

If anything important came up, he’d at most mention it privately in his fan group.

At that moment, Li Xiang was at home grinding soybeans. He was going to make tofu.

He was idle on this snowy day anyway, so why not make some tofu? For one, he could eat it himself; for another, he could record a video to get some views and donations.

After soaking overnight and absorbing plenty of water, the soybeans had become plump and soft. Li Xiang’s family had a stone mill, one his grandparents had acquired back when they were young. It was an antique; most families rarely used them anymore because they were exhausting and inefficient.

Grinding soybeans for milk is a wet-milling process. A bucket of soaked soybeans is scooped up with water and slowly "fed" into the eye of the mill. The slurry slowly trickles out from below, and the whole process often takes forty to fifty minutes.

This time, Li Xiang had soaked about eleven pounds of dried beans. His grandmother said that would yield roughly twenty-two to forty-four pounds of firm tofu, or fifty to sixty-six pounds of silken tofu.

Making tofu is a craft that requires both skill and brawn. His grandmother, Third Granny, and Cai’Er all came over to help. Cai’Er was in charge of filming.

Cai’Er had only come over to help after finishing two practice tests early that morning. There were a few problems on the tests she couldn’t solve, but Li Xiang explained them to her with such clarity that she had a "Eureka!" moment.

In truth, Li Xiang felt he hadn’t even been this sharp back in high school. It was mainly because now, as a Tier One Transcendent, his mind was incredibly clear and his Spiritual acuity was high, so solving the problems felt like child’s play.

He figured that if he were to take the college entrance exams now, getting into Tsinghua and Peking University would be a sure thing. But with the Apocalypse on its way, there was no way he could go back to school, not at his age.

The ground soymilk slurry needed to be filtered. Li Xiang’s family used a large filter bag woven from multiple layers of cotton gauze. It was very sturdy and had four "ears," or loops, and a matching cross-shaped wooden frame.

They hung the wooden frame from a roof beam with rope, adjusting it to the right height. Then they shook the filter bag open, hooked its four "ears" onto the four ends of the frame, and placed a large wooden basin underneath. Now they could start ladling the soymilk slurry into the filter.

The wooden basin was massive. In ancient times, when people abandoned infants—like Tang Monk’s mother, for example—they would place the baby in a large basin like this one, push it into a river, and let it float downstream. These basins were great, just a bit heavy—incredibly so. But they were very buoyant, and a child could sit in one on the river, which is why they were also called "river-riding basins."

That’s why Tang Monk’s name was Jiang Liu’Er.

Making tofu and boiling maltose both involve this filtering step, and in large quantities. That’s why in the old days, every rural household had one of these large filter bags and wooden basins, which they would bring out and use a few times every New Year.

His grandmother and Third Granny commented that it felt like the New Year celebration already. It was just good to have the house so full of life and activity.

The filtered soymilk was transferred to a large iron wok and brought to a rolling boil over a high flame. At this point, the fresh soymilk could be ladled out to drink.

Li Xiang prepared a serving of sweet soymilk for his grandmother, Third Granny, Jiang Cai’Er, and himself. The homemade soymilk had a wonderfully rich, beany aroma and an incredibly smooth texture.

Outside, the world was a blanket of white snow, but drinking a steaming bowl of fresh, hot-off-the-stove soymilk in the new kitchen warmed them to the core.

They drank it sweet, well, to add a little sweetness to life.

Sweet things just make people happy.

The rest of the soymilk was left to cook down. Once it had reduced enough, it would be transferred back into the "river-riding basin" to begin the "curdling" process.

In the countryside, this "reducing" process didn’t involve measuring solid content or following any technical specifications. It all came down to the cook’s experience.

Both his grandmother and Third Granny were seasoned experts. Li Xiang was a bit less experienced, but after learning from them this time, he’d be able to do it on his own. It was a way of passing down traditional folk culture, he supposed.

Learning to make tofu would be a way to find some joy amidst the suffering in the sunless, subterranean world to come. Times might be tough, but you still had to face them with optimism.