Chapter Forty-One: An Unfavorable Start

Li Can silently made a note of the "cousin" matter in his heart.

With a clatter, he pulled down the rolling shutter and headed into the kitchen.

“The bone broth and the secret sauce are sold out. I need to prepare more,” he said to himself. Since he didn’t know if those two dishes would be popular, last night he had only used a quarter of the ingredients and hid the remaining three-quarters at the bottom of the freezer. All day, whenever Su Rui tried to open the freezer, he stepped in first, never letting the ingredients be exposed.

In truth, if the color of the monster meat was just a little more normal, it wouldn’t be so much trouble.

“I need to figure out a way to deal with this problem. Otherwise, in the long run, Su Rui will start to suspect something,” he thought.

Following last night’s method, he began simmering the bone meat soup and the secret sauce again, using up all the remaining ingredients.

“With this much, it should last a day or two… right?” Li Can felt a bit anxious.

The success with monster meat had undoubtedly given him an unmatched specialty, a dish no one else could ever replicate—not even if they figured out the cooking technique. However, to maintain this exclusive skill, he needed a steady supply of ingredients!

Li Can was prepared to keep dealing with monsters, but Liu Huadong’s experience had shown him that monsters were masters of disguise and concealment. They could be landlords, ordinary office workers, or even vagrants—finding them among so many people was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

As for whether Liu Huadong’s cousin was a monster… there was no way to be certain.

Li Can had quietly gathered information about Liu Huadong over the past couple of days. According to Su Rui, Liu Huadong was apparently a local, born right here on the old street. All the neighbors knew him; he was honest, helpful, and a good landlord.

Hearing this only made Li Can more confused.

Born? A local? Nonsense!

He had dissected a monster corpse before and knew they had no gender differentiation—so the idea of being “born” didn’t make sense. And since they fed on humans, if a monster had lived here all these years, the old street couldn’t possibly have remained so peaceful, with no reports of unnatural deaths.

Unless Liu Huadong, to hide his existence, had starved himself for over thirty years, and just when he finally couldn’t resist the urge to eat, he got caught by Li Can himself—

The thought made Li Can want to laugh. If that was truly the case, then Liu Huadong’s luck was truly remarkable, using all his fortune to walk straight to his own end—without fail.

Spot on, not a single mistake.

“I still need to look for clues,” Li Can murmured, patting his pocket where Liu Huadong’s house key was still tucked away. “But it’s not even eleven yet, and there are still restaurants and barbecue stalls open on the street. I’ll have to wait until around two before I set out.”

He shook his head in resignation and muttered, “The bone broth needs to simmer on low heat until morning, and before turning off the stove, I have to be sure to fish out the strange-shaped bones and throw them away before Su Rui sees them. That means another night of lost sleep.”

With a sigh, he poured the freshly made secret sauce into a bowl to cool, then took out ten catties of sorghum liquor and five catties of waxberries he’d prepared in advance.

There are many types of plum wine, depending on the main ingredient used—green plums, red plums, white plums and so on. Waxberries are a type of red plum, and the wine brewed from them is the darkest, a deep red. In contrast, green plums and white plums yield a much paler color, which wouldn’t help conceal the monster eyeballs.

However, most commercial plum wines are made with green plums, with a crisp and tart flavor; white plums are more expensive and rare.

Li Can took out a brand-new glass jar, fifty centimeters tall and twenty in diameter—slender and elegant, giving an impression of refinement.

Broadly, there are three ways to make fruit wine: brewing, distillation, and blending. Li Can was no professional brewer and only knew the simplest blending method.

He washed the jar several times, then sterilized it with boiling water, finishing by drying it with a kitchen towel.

Once the jar was ready, it was time to start the actual process. Normally, fresh waxberries should be soaked in saltwater to flush out any tiny insects from their crevices, then rinsed clean and left to dry overnight. But Li Can skipped all that, switching to “foolproof mode” and washing them with white liquor. Several washes would not only remove any insects but also save the drying step—time and effort saved, though admittedly a bit wasteful.

During cleaning, he also removed the stems and leaves, as they would affect the taste.

Once the waxberries were clean, Li Can began to fill the jar, alternating layers of fruit and rock sugar until it was full. Of course, he made a small change: when adding the sugar, he placed a monster eyeball in the middle to ensure that, once the sugar melted, the waxberries above and below would conceal the eyeball from view.

Five catties of fruit and sugar filled most of the jar, with four eyeballs scattered from top to bottom.

Finally, he poured in the liquor to the brim and sealed the jar tightly.

Because Li Can wasn’t much of a drinker, he used a lot of sugar. The resulting plum wine would be very sweet, with almost no alcoholic taste—unlikely to appeal to connoisseurs, but delicious and easy to drink. In summer, you could add ice, mix it with yogurt, cola, or juice—the flavor would be exotic, reminiscent of a cocktail. A small glass before bed would help you sleep.

But this bottle of “Death Plum Wine” was something else entirely—who knew what it would taste like in the end.

After tidying up the kitchen, Li Can checked the time. It was exactly 2 a.m.

He hurried upstairs, changed into dark clothes and sneakers, grabbed a flashlight, made sure his phone was on silent, and walked out of the restaurant without hesitation.

The rolling shutter rattled down behind him—though there was a pot of soup still simmering on the stove, he locked up to avoid any unwelcome intrusions.

There was no moon tonight, and the old streetlights looked lonely in the darkness. From a distant intersection, the sounds of dice and clinking glasses drifted over—clearly, someone was enjoying a late-night drinking session.

Li Can steadied himself and crossed the street to the sidewalk opposite. The iron fence dividing the road from the old residential block was tall—at least two meters, with sharp spikes on top.

He ambled forward, feigning nonchalance. Making sure no one was watching, he bent his knees and leapt, gripping the upper rail of the fence and vaulting over with ease—a nimble monkey.

“This feels…,” Li Can grinned. But before his feet even touched the ground, there was a ripping sound—his brand-new gray T-shirt had caught on a spike and tore, leaving only the collar hanging by a useless strip of cloth.

A cold breeze swept across his back, sending shivers down his spine. Now he was left with nothing but a makeshift bib!

“Damn it…” he muttered, his eyelids drooping. The sense of accomplishment he’d just felt ebbed away, replaced by a stream of silent curses.

“Tonight I have to find something useful—otherwise this ruined shirt was all for nothing!”

With a wry grimace, he strode off toward the old building covered in “climbing vines” not far away.

In daylight, the vines looked pleasing enough, but at night, they exuded an eerie and sinister air…

(To be continued…)

PS: The third chapter is done for today! Good night, everyone.