After returning from her rotation, Rong Cheng had a long leave period. She used this time to help Sang Ye fire various ceramic vessels, including plans for several enamel pots and clay pots.
Enamel pots, with their glazed coating, have excellent sealing and moisture-retention properties, locking in original flavors and nutrients. They are perfect for stewing until food is soft and tender, and they don't absorb odors; plus, they are versatile—good for braising, simmering, stewing, frying, and boiling. However, they are heavy and not easy to carry; one has to consider the weight for daily use.
Clay pots are lightweight and heat up quickly, making them the best choice for soups, clay-pot rice, and hot pot. Their downsides are that they easily absorb flavors and are difficult to scrub free of residual food odors.
Each tool has its own specific use, and they were far superior to the "outsider-made" budget versions currently in the kitchen.
The outdoor roasted duck oven came in handy. By sealing the ventilation gaps specifically left for airflow, it could be transformed into a kiln. Of course, once used as a kiln, it could no longer serve as an oven; while the glazes used were non-toxic, the environment wasn't suitable for food. Sang Ye planned to have the robots build another dedicated duck oven slightly further away. The demand for duck wasn't massive yet—mostly just for her and Wu Jianing—so a second temporary one was sufficient.
Sang Ye pulled up her terminal and asked Rong Cheng to help make several gadgets she had seen in the archives. A square griddle with ridges, perfect for searing steaks, a shallow frying pan with a bit of depth for tossing pasta or searing foie gras, a Yukihira pot, which has very thin walls. It is common in Japanese cuisine, it conducts heat rapidly and is ideal for deep-frying tempura, shrimp cakes, or making miso soup. It’s perfect for single-serving meals.
She also made a dozen roasted milk cups with built-in filters to catch the solids while pouring out the fragrant milk and hanging mesh filters for deep-frying, allowing items to be lifted out directly.
Standard tableware went without saying; Sang Ye wasn't formal with her Junior Sister. They fired a huge stack of flat plates, fish platters, stem bowls, gourd-shaped bowls, long spoons, and colanders. They used a pale cream glaze for a clean, elegant look that didn't distract from the food. Each item was made in dozens; once fired, they were placed in the kitchen's transparent cabinets, serving as beautiful decorations.
The success rate for pottery is usually low because any slight mistake during shaping or firing can cause the pieces to crack or collapse. But Rong Cheng was an expert. Any piece that left her hands was flawless. She had even fired sky-blue "ice-crackle" glaze in the past that future generations found impossible to replicate, simply because her control over fire was effortless and her precision with temperatures was absolute.
The kiln was relatively small, holding only about 20 pieces at a time to ensure enough space for air to circulate, as the cooperation between air and molecules is what truly forms the ceramic. Rong Cheng looked relaxed; with a flick of her finger, flames rose within the kiln. She managed everything—which pieces needed the core temperature of the furnace and which needed the edge of the flames.
As she controlled the fire, she boastfully told Sang Ye about a time she was trapped in royal ruins; she had used her fire-manipulation art to ignite a tiny flame beside every Sentinel to light their path and sense their positions, keeping them burning for an entire week without interruption. Sang Ye could feel that Rong Cheng’s military life, even in exile, brought her great joy; she truly loved the life she led now.
While waiting for the vessels to take shape, Sang Ye and Rong Cheng started making creative ceramics, each one more fanciful than the last. Plates shaped like bread, decorated with pretzel knots, apple-shaped bowls with handles, baguette-shaped drink stirrers and sticks, shallow bowls that looked like the starry sky, inlaid with moons and stars, irregular, scalloped cups, stemmed glasses with little rabbits or bears holding up the cup, spoons shaped like various animals and honey jars and lard jars, making thirty or forty items in total.
Under the good weather traded from Lin Changli for sweet crawfish, there was a gentle breeze. The sun had lost its fierce edge, leaving only a comfortable warmth. During this period, Wu Jianing only reported for lunch, taking back dinner for her family of three afterward. Of course, Wu Huansheng paid for it. She and Mu An would be resting at the base for about two months. She transferred 30,000 star-credits to Sang Ye's account for their two months of meals, even though the parents only ate one dinner a day. The wealthy were indeed generous.
Jianing was fascinated by the pottery. With her hands covered in wet clay, she spun the wheel to create shapes. Being young, her fine motor skills weren't fully developed, but she managed to spin a curved shape—though it ended up looking like a "giant pancake plate." No matter; Sang Ye assisted her in refining it, attaching two large ears to the rim. Once it was ready for color, she used pale pink and light gold to paint adorable eyes and a nose. It was a golden pig bowl with giant ears—the "Wu Jianing Special Edition."
People always have the most energy when up to mischief. Sang Ye suppressed a grin as she tricked Jianing into attaching the ears herself. The pieces were then placed in a fume hood to air-dry completely before glazing, ensuring the color would be even and reducing the chance of cracks during firing.
One could never trust the raw color of a glaze; during firing, chemical restructuring causes the colors to deepen by several shades. Chasing immediate beauty would lead to disaster. Glazing these ceramics took nearly a week, followed by drying and then the final firing.
The firing process wasn't long, but cooling required nearly twelve hours. Rapid cooling was forbidden, as it would cause the porcelain to shatter, wasting all the previous effort. Some "underglaze" colors emitted an unpleasant smell during high-heat firing. Since the kiln's ventilation couldn't be turned up too high, Sang Ye installed two large exhaust fans under the shed to whisk the odors away.
Sang Ye didn't idle during this time either. She seemed to have inexhaustible energy and now had an extra pair of hands to order around. She dug up all the empty ground between the kitchen and the West Building and planted kumquat and persimmon trees, along with a ring of hydrangeas along the walls.
Lin Changli, having returned to the base, stood on the roof and silently watched the two women, the robots, and the child busy themselves, turning the empty wasteland into a lush green garden. Although a faint, strange smell occasionally drifted on the wind, it was masked by the fresh scent of kumquats.
The woman working on the grass had her hair in a high ponytail; her red hair shone like fire in the sunlight, brilliant and dazzling. She was like a glowing little sun, so bright it hurt to look at, yet he was unwilling to turn away.
Sang Ye’s back stiffened. Her mental power keenly detected someone watching her—a feeling like needles against her skin. She whipped her head up to look. On the three-story building, a figure leaned against the railing. Water was dripping from him as if he had just been fished out of the Tide Sea. The sunlight hit his face—warm and bright—yet it couldn't dry the deep gloom surrounding him.
His face was still strikingly beautiful, but there was a rare sense of vulnerability in his eyes. Seeing that Sang Ye had discovered him, Lin Changli jumped down casually. Water dripped from him, quickly forming a small puddle where he stood.
Sang Ye looked him up and down. "Where... did you come from?"
Lin Changli didn't answer, just staring at her fixedly for a while, as if dazed or lost in thought. Sang Ye waited, but when he didn't speak and his mental state seemed poor, she exchanged a look with Rong Cheng and prepared to step forward to check on him.
"Is there food?" Lin Changli seemed to snap back to reality. He took a step back, widening the distance between them, whether to hide his state or because he truly wanted to ask. Seeing Sang Ye’s suspicious look, he added, "Something sweet."
Sang Ye retracted her hand and nodded, gesturing for him to go to the kitchen first. Once he left, she took off her farming gear—apron, gloves, and hat—only to have her arm grabbed by Rong Cheng. She looked back in confusion and met Rong Cheng’s excited expression.
"Your master chef knives!" Rong Cheng reminded her.
Sang Ye remembered. When they first started the pottery, Sang Ye had asked Rong Cheng to forge a set of knives for her, just like the ones she used back in Shifang Grotto. She wanted to forge them while Rong Cheng was still at the base. Although she knew the base had a processing plant, she didn't dare use it for fear of ruining her spiritual materials.
But Rong Cheng had hit a snag. It wasn't the materials or the effort—it was that she literally couldn't do it. Sang Ye had the raw materials in her storage ring: Snowfield Cold Iron, which takes a thousand years to form a small chunk and is rarely usable by cultivators due to its extreme cold, and Tengshe Bone, the remains of a divine beast.
A Three-legged Golden Crow's flames cannot smelt Snowfield Cold Iron or Tengshe Bone. The set of knives her Master had forged for her back home had been made by the Phoenix Clan. As fellow divine beasts, there is a hierarchy of bloodline power. Only an ancient divine beast like the Phoenix, born at the dawn of creation, has the power to shake the laws of nature and melt the ice of the snowfields. Human technology might reach the required temperature, but it cannot dissolve the inherent mental energy, which is why the Interstellar world is still plagued by mental riots today.
At the time, Sang Ye had been frustrated, dejectedly squeezing the clay she was shaping into a Parasol Tree cup, thinking she would never be able to forge those knives in this world.
Now, Rong Cheng stood beside her, covered in mud and dust from the gardening, looking at her with surprise. "Don't you know?"
"?" Sang Ye gave her a puzzled look. "Is there something I should know?"
"Marshal Lin’s spiritual form... is a Phoenix."
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