The Game of Life

Jiang Feng fell asleep harboring a deep resentment toward the game.

Early the next morning, Jiang Feng went downstairs to buy some steamed buns from the bakery at the entrance of the residential complex for breakfast. On the way, he bumped into Chen Xiuxiu and Pan Ling, who were returning from buying groceries, each carrying several bags of vegetables-it looked like they were planning to cook for themselves.

“Jiang Feng, come eat at our place today!” Pan Ling invited. “Xiuxiu and I watched cooking videos all of last night, and we’ve just bought some fresh mutton. I’ll stew mutton soup for you!”

Jiang Feng: …

Should he tell them cooking isn’t as easy as they think, let alone mutton soup, which is a recipe for disaster?

Forget it, as long as they’re happy.

“Sure,” Jiang Feng said.

Checking WeChat groups in the morning, he saw that Uncle Four’s beef stewed with potatoes had not done well the previous day, leaving leftovers. Today he had bought another three pounds of beef to continue stewing. Jiang Feng felt it would be better not to mooch a meal this time.

“Pan Pan, I think braised mutton would be better,” Chen Xiuxiu said hesitantly.

“Wouldn’t mutton soup be too gamey?”

“Not at all, didn’t the video tutorial yesterday teach us how to make a mutton soup that isn’t gamey? Don’t worry, even the mutton seller said this is grassland lamb; it won’tbe gamey,” Pan Ling said confidently.

“You can do it, I’m going to have breakfast,” Jiang Feng encouraged insincerely.

Mutton soup can be a nice snack, but there are only a few who can make it completely free of gamey taste. These are closely guarded family secrets, and unless the quality of the mutton is exceptionally good, even Sir can’t manage to make a mutton soup that’s not gamey. Pan Ling was so confident after just watching a video tutorial…

Forget it, the mutton soup she made would be a lesson in humility for him.

The bun shop at the entrance of the residential complex had been open for nearly twenty years, as old as the neighborhood itself. The original owner had retired due to age, and now his daughter had taken over. Actually, her skills were not as good as his, but the residents were accustomed to eating their buns in the morning, and because the buns were clean, they were willing to accept them even if the taste was not as good as the original.

Now, with the New Year fast approaching, the prices of vegetables and meat were climbing day by day, and consequently, the price of the buns was also rising. Just now, Jiang Feng had asked the owner and learned that today was the last day of sales; in the afternoon, they would pack up and return to the countryside for the New Year.

Well, tomorrow’s breakfast was up in the air again.

After breakfast, Jiang Feng took a stroll around the neighborhood. There weren’t many people around; most had gone back to the countryside for the New Year. The few elderly who chose not to return were now engaged in the fierce battle of New Year shopping, having left early in the morning and not returning until late at night, laden with their spoils of war.

After wandering for more than an hour, Jiang Feng saw that it was almost ten o’clock, so he didn’t go home but directly to Chen Xiuxiu’s place. These two, who hardly ever cooked, must be in a state of chaos trying to make a meal out of the blue; Chen Xiuxiu’s kitchen was probably a disaster area by now.

Indeed, as soon as Chen Xiuxiu opened the door for Jiang Feng, even before he walked in, he was hit by a suffocating gamey smell.

It was a familiar aroma, characteristic of local lamb, heavy and intense.

Jiang Jiankang also wasn’t great at cooking lamb dishes, and consequently, Mrs. Wang Xiulian wasn’ t good at picking mutton either. When Jiang Feng was still in elementary school, Mrs. Wang Xiulian had been swindled by a mutton seller into buying local lamb mistaking it for grassland lamb. The taste of that braised mutton was etched into Jiang Feng’s memory; it had no other flavor, just the gamey taste!

With Pan Ling cooking mutton soup, it was sure to unleash all the gammess of the lamb.

Rich, lingering, and even with all the windows in Chen Xiuxiu’s home wide open, the aroma stubbornly refused to dissipate.

Chen Xiuxiu looked like she had lost all hope in life. After opening the door, she escaped to the balcony, unwilling to get close to the kitchen. Jiang Feng was also curious to see how Pan Ling managed to stew the soup to such a state and held his breath as he peeked into the kitchen.

The kitchen was an utter mess, as tragic as the ridiculous pictures online. The mutton soup was still bubbling on the stove, with the burner on high, the lid on, and the soup dangerously splashing over.

Pan Ling still held her phone, utterly baffled by the lamb soup tutorial video. “You can turn off the heat now, your soup has completely splattered out,” Jiang Feng advised as a friendly reminder.

“That won’t do, the soup is too gamey, and I haven’t removed the gamey taste yet. This step isn’t wrong, so why does mine smell so bad?” Pan Ling said.

The smell in the kitchen was truly overpowering, like stepping into a sheep pen. Jiang Feng had no idea how Pan Ling could stand it-perhaps the fact that she brewed it herself somehow filtered out the smell, leaving her selectively anosmic. But Jiang Feng couldn’t bear it. The lamb soup was ruined; he stepped forward to turn off the stove.

“Adding anything now is useless. You’re using local lamb, which naturally has a strong gamey taste. Even if you completely remove the blood vessels, you might not get rid of the smell. Just pour it out,” Jiang Feng said.

“Local lamb, great, the shopkeeper conned me again!” Pan Ling fumed, blaming the failure of her lamb soup completely on the meat.

Jiang Feng saw the scraps of meat that Pan Ling had cut off and discarded on the chopping board. He picked them up, looked at them, and sighed.

“The lamb you bought is water-injected, and you didn’t even cut it properly, failing to remove the blood. This soup…” Jiang Feng sighed again, utterly exasperated, looking at the lamb soup in the pot covered with scum, “might as well pour it down the toilet. Do you guys have any perfume to spray in there afterward?”

Pan Ling wasn’t ready to give up since she was the one who made the soup. Clinging to the slim hope that it might just smell bad but taste fine, she scooped up a small spoonful to taste.

After a mouthful of lamb soup, Pan Ling’s face turned green as she silently took the pot to pour it out.

Pan Ling had turned Chen Xiuxiu’s kitchen into something resembling a bioweapons lab. Cooking there was out of the question. Whatever they made would end up tainted with the smell of lamb. The three of them had to move to Jiang Feng’s kitchen and start lunch from scratch.

Pan Ling and Chen Xiuxiu really didn’t know how to shop for groceries. Despite going early, the produce they bought was still not fresh. These two girls were quite something else-buying garlic and ginger but not green onions, getting a bottle of steamed soy sauce without buying any fish, instead, they grabbed a pound of prawns.

When asked why, Pan Ling confidently responded, “I’m making lamb soup, and Xiuxiu is cooking garlic prawns.”

Jiang Feng felt that if Sir hadn’t called her back from the countryside, the two of them would have poisoned themselves with their own cooking.

They couldn’t even make scrambled eggs with tomatoes, yet dared to attempt lamb soup and garlic prawns—it was more audacious than Jiang Feng attempting to cook kung pao chicken without having perfected his knifework back in the day.

Jiang Feng had never cooked prawns before.

Zet City was not near the sea, making seafood excessively expensive. When Jiang Feng first started university and heard a classmate from a coastal area say that abalone could be cooked for just 30 yuan a plate, her jaw nearly dropped.

But expensive prawns, once bought, had to be cooked. Jiang Feng watched the video on Pan Ling’s phone twice, noting that it didn’t show how to devein the prawns at all. Moreover, it was an edited video with nice music, but many key steps were missing, and Jiang Feng could tell through the screen that the prawns were overcooked in the final product.

With no other choice, Jiang Feng called Sir for advice.

After getting an earful from Sir while being scolded, she followed his instructions on deveining the prawns. After a series of clumsy maneuvers, a grotesque version of garlic prawns finally emerged from the pot.

On the other end, Sir put down the phone, turned to Jiang Weiming with a smile, and complained, “This little rascal, barely able to walk before wanting to fly, has his eyes set on the ocean’s catch without even fully understanding what grows on land.”

“All right, you’re so pleased you can’t hide it, so stop showing off in front of this old man,” Jiang Weiming laughed, “Day after tomorrow is Little New Year. Should we wait for a few nephews to return before butchering the pig?

“They’ll definitely come back early. We’ll need to prepare breakfast for them, Sir replied, “The night of Little New Year, we’ll slaughter Sanhua and start with the blood sausages.”

“Sanhua? Sanhua might not have enough meat. I think Erhua is pretty good-it has a nice thick layer of fat that can render at least 10 pounds of lard,” Jiang Weiming favored Erhua.

“Erhua won’t do; it just eats and lazes around. That much fat isn’t good for cooking ‘butchering day dishes.’ Sanhua is better-its hind leg is firm, suitable to cure into ham. We’ll slaughter Erhua around Dragon Boat Festival, let it move around more. Otherwise, the meat will lack firmness,” Sir murmured,