Chapter 39 Truffle

  The time in the alchemy pot passed faster than outside, and Xiao Ping hurriedly left the alchemy pot to find that he had only dozed off. The world outside was already in the afternoon of the second day. There were four missed calls on his phone, all from Pierre. Xiao Ping knew that the Frenchman was so anxious to call him for only one thing, so he hastily washed his face at the fastest speed and rushed to the Lafayette Western Restaurant without even having breakfast.

  He rushed to Raffles at top speed and as soon as he entered the door, he shouted loudly: "Pierre, Pierre, where is my truffle?"

  Xiao Ping's boisterous behavior made several waiters glare at him, fortunately the restaurant had not yet started business, otherwise they would have definitely kicked Xiao Ping out.

  "My dear friend, you've arrived so quickly!" Pierre exclaimed, emerging from the kitchen to give Xiao Ping a warm hug.

  In normal times, Xiao Ping would never hug a man, but now he was eager to see Song Luo, so Pierre succeeded.

  The Frenchman brought Xiao Ping to the back kitchen, carefully took out a tightly wrapped box and said: "This is the ingredient with the taste of heaven, one of the three great treasures of fine cuisine - truffles!"

  Xiao Ping was also excited by Pierre's words, eager to see what this legendary delicacy looked like. However, when Pierre opened the box, Xiao Ping was immediately stunned and subconsciously blurted out: "Isn't this a potato?"

  The box was divided into two parts, each containing several pieces of something similar to plant tubers, which looked very much like potatoes. The difference between the two "potatoes" was that one was darker in color and the other was lighter, and in Xiao Ping's eyes, it was just a matter of black potatoes and white potatoes.

  "Nonsense!" Hearing Xiao Ping insult the precious truffle, Pierre also got angry and couldn't help but say loudly: "This is real Italian white truffle and French black truffle! How can potatoes be compared to truffles? Come smell this aroma, it's so intoxicating!"

  Xiao Ping leaned in to take a sniff, but didn't think the truffle smelled as great as Pierre said it did. Instead, he detected a whiff of natural gas. But Xiao Ping didn't care about the smell of the truffle; as long as it was valuable, that's all that mattered. Wisely, he chose not to argue with Pierre over the truffle's aroma and simply weighed it and paid up.

  The price of black truffles is $500 per kilogram, and white truffles are as high as $2,000 per kilogram. The ten or so truffles in the box weighed just over three kilograms, but cost Xiao Ping more than 200,000 yuan. This price was indeed not cheap. However, Xiao Ping felt that the more expensive the truffles were, the better, as he would make more money himself in the future, so when paying Pierre, he was quite generous.

  Before leaving with Song Le, Xiao Ping suddenly remembered something and booked a dinner table for Pierre. He had promised to invite Song Le to dinner at Raffles and didn't want to leave her with the impression that he was unreliable.

  Knowing that Xiao Ping was inviting a young girl to dinner, Pierre's French romantic nature also burst out, and he patted his chest to guarantee a memorable dinner for Xiao Ping.

  Xiao Ping called Song Lei after leaving the Raffles restaurant, inviting her to dinner that night. Song Lei's enthusiasm seemed not very high, but after a slight hesitation, she accepted Xiao Ping's invitation. Xiao Ping was in a hurry to rush back to the hotel to deal with the truffles and didn't notice Song Lei's hesitation, so he just said a few words before hanging up the phone.

  After returning to the hotel, Xiao Ping hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and began to carefully process the truffles. He found two clean containers, tore the white and black truffles into small pieces as much as possible, put them in separate containers, and then added water mixed with spiritual liquid for soaking.

  After deciding to cultivate truffles, Xiao Ping learned a lot about this ingredient online. Now he knows that truffles are actually a type of fungus, just like mushrooms, and they also reproduce through spores. Xiao Ping pointed out that buying mature fresh truffles is in order to obtain truffle spores for reproduction. As for the problem of truffles not being able to be cultivated artificially, Xiao Ping is not worried, with the Lian Yao Hu (a magical artifact) he has, how could he fail to cultivate truffles?

  After soaking for several hours, the effect of the spiritual liquid began to appear, and there were many black dots the size of sesame seeds in the container, which was the truffle spores developing into truffle seedlings. Cultivating truffle seedlings is undoubtedly one step closer to success, and it also made Xiao Ping very happy - not only did he not waste money buying truffles, but he also gained an extra way to make money.

  Xiao Ping brought the container with the truffle spores into the Lian Yao Hu space, dug open the soil under the oak tree to a depth of over ten centimeters, exposing the oak roots. Then he evenly sprinkled the truffle spores on the oak roots and carefully covered the soil back up.

  In the natural environment, truffles are parasitic on the roots of broad-leaved trees such as oak. Xiao Ping simulated the growth environment of truffles and added the magical environment of the Lianyou Hu space, believing that it would not take long for the planted truffles to be harvested.

  After finishing these tasks, Xiao Ping tidied up and went to Nanda to pick up Song Lei for dinner.

  After meeting Song Le, Xiao Ping found that she was preoccupied with a heavy heart and often wandered off in thought. Even when they were having dinner at the Raffles restaurant, which Song Le had been yearning for, the petite and fiery chili pepper seemed somewhat distracted. There were several times when Xiao Ping spoke to her but got no response, leaving Xiao Ping himself feeling dispirited, and eventually losing interest in talking altogether.

  This meal was eaten to the extreme dullness, but after dinner, Ping still sent Song Lei back to the south gate with great elegance and politely bid her farewell. It wasn't until then that the careless Song Lei realized the atmosphere was off and apologized sincerely to Xiao Ping: "Sorry, I've been in a bad mood these past few days, don't mind me!"

  Xiao Ping suddenly enlightened: "It doesn't matter, every month there are always a few days like this, I can understand."

  "Not at all!" Song Le gave Xiao Ping a sideways glance and said: "It's just that something's going on at home, it's so annoying!"

  Song Lei didn't say what happened at home, and Xiao Ping didn't ask either. The two of them tacitly avoided discussing the issue again. After a while, Song Lei asked in a low voice, "Then... will you come to the provincial city again in the future?"

  "Of course!" Xiao Ping said with great enthusiasm: "The focus of my career is developing in this direction, and I will come often in the future!"

  Song Lei was amused by Xiao Ping's appearance and couldn't help but glance at him sideways, saying: "You're just here in the provincial city to sell vegetables, what's with the serious tone? You sound better than you sing!"

  Xiao Ping said solemnly: "Selling vegetables is my career!"

  "Go, go, I wish your career will be booming every day." After talking to Xiao Ping for a while, Song Lei's mood improved a lot. She smiled and said to him: "It was my fault today, next time you come to the provincial city, give me a call and I'll treat you to dinner as an apology."

  Xiao Ping smiled and said: "How can we let a beauty pay the bill? Next time I'll treat you, we'll be in touch by phone then."

  "Alright... goodbye." Song Lei reluctantly bid farewell to Xiao Ping, then walked into the campus with a light and quick pace, her mood seemingly much improved.

  Xiao Ping watched Song Le's captivating back view slowly disappear into the distance, then turned and left the Nan Da campus gate. However, he also didn't notice that his conversation with Song Le just now was seen by Tang Jiaqiang who happened to be passing by.

  Watching Xiao Ping get into the taxi, Tang Jiaqiang, who was hiding in the dark, gritted his teeth and muttered to himself: "How can they still be together? Doesn't she even listen to her elders' words? No way, I'll have to find her uncle again!"

  Horizontal line

  These past few days, Hai Ma caught a cold, so the updates have been a bit late, please forgive me for that. However, the update quantity won't decrease and there definitely won't be any skipped chapters, don't worry about that. Lastly... continued vote and collection requests.