Kingdom of Corrosion
Chapter 815 - 365 Castle Defense Battle

Chapter 815: Chapter 365 Castle Defense Battle

Lin Wu raised his hand to go first, "Tomato stew with eggs." Tomato and eggs are delicious when fried, so someone derived the stewed version. The stewed eggs were barely edible, but the fatal flaw was adding both salt and sugar at the same time.

Snow Egg stood up to explain, "In my hometown, when people had internal heat, they would eat tea oil stewed eggs, salty, with salt added."

Su Shi, "In my hometown, for warding off the cold, we have rice wine stewed eggs with rock sugar, sweet."

Stone asked in front of the small blackboard, "Couldn’t you two have discussed this beforehand?"

The two said in unison, "I thought he knew."

Stone wrote it down.

Su Shi raised his hand, "I propose shrimp crackers with seaweed soup."

Lin Meng protested, "I object, that was an accident, it’s actually just seaweed soup."

Stone replied, "Objection overruled, the cracker soup is really indescribable." He wrote it down.

Shana, "I propose the troops’ hotpot with chicken giblets."

At this, everyone felt queasy, and Maya sighed as well. Stone defended himself, "Can we talk sense here? We’ve never slaughtered chickens, how would I know a gizzard still harbors stuff inside?" As the chickens were roosters—too many roosters are bad for unity—they had no choice but to eat them with tears.

Lin Wu, "This dish has two more reasons to make the list, other than the gizzards. One, you killed the rooster with a gun. Two, the intestines weren’t cleaned properly."

Stone, "Intestines taste better when they’re a bit smelly. Just like some people enjoy fugu, the flavor is all in the fugu’s toxin."

Lin Wu asked, "You did it on purpose?"

Stone pondered for a second and answered, "No. OK, it’s on the list."

After that, each person recommended a dish; many had already forgotten the trauma these dishes caused, but the painful memories came flooding back with laughter as they were mentioned.

Eight dishes total, with the Double Lin Group only contributing one seaweed cracker soup. The dual engineers Su Shi and Snow Egg contributed three, and the other two teams each had two.

The fiercest competition was between the giblets hotpot, tomato stew with eggs, and from Little Knife and Shana, the black sesame rice balls.

Discussing this culinary wreck, the main cause was Shana’s cleverness backfiring. Remembering the ingredients from the rice ball packaging, she visualized the process in her mind and began. The final result was a sticky rice sesame paste.

It wasn’t that this creation was inedible, but Little Knife, trying to fix it, remembered a sticky rice dish she’d eaten before. So, using the sticky rice sesame paste as a base, she enveloped pickled vegetables and other canned condiments and drizzled everyone’s favorite chili sauce on top, finally shaping the end product into rice ball-sized pieces to steam.

That bite was a mix of sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and spicy; none knew what they’d just eaten. It wasn’t so bad to spit out, but they didn’t, solely to avoid wasting food. Swallowing it felt like an injustice to their stomachs. Compared to other culinary disasters that flopped outright, this dish left everyone speechlessly baffled.

Little Knife’s defense was, "But we worked very hard too." After saying that, she and Shana burst into laughter. Indeed, they had labored over it for more than two hours, brainstorming on how to salvage their work, which was precisely why they ended up pushing an otherwise edible dish further into the abyss. One dared to dream, the other dared to execute, and six dared to eat.

The reason the Double Lin Group encountered only one mishap was Lin Wu’s adherence to the principle of laziness: simplicity is beauty. All their dishes were seasoned only with salt and MSG. Steam instead of boil, boil instead of fry. No dish exceeding three ingredients. Faced with the tyranny of the Great Devil, how could Lin Meng dare disobey? In the end, they realized the Great Devil was actually right.

Next was the voting phase.

Shana was the first to take the stage, "Every meal, we spend at least two hours, we admit some food is not tasty, but everyone has seen our sincerity. In the following months, we will strive to improve our cooking skills. And I have already proposed to Stone to set up a training room, Little Knife and I will study hard, and try to improve every day."

This speech won applause from everyone. Mistakes aren’t scary, failing to correct them is. Bad people aren’t scary, uncontrolled bad people are.

Representing the Stone Ma team, Stone took the stage, "Whether it’s delicious or not, I’m very happy to have come this far with everyone. Even the most unpalatable food to me is full of happiness, thank you, everyone."

Politician-level concept switching, but still, he earned applause for implicitly acknowledging the unpalatable taste.

Su Xue Team’s Su Shi represented them on stage, "I apologize to everyone here, our food was indeed not tasty. But I can assure everyone that every ingredient was washed very cleanly." This was a jab at Stone’s gizzard incident, the only dish that was utterly inedible.

Amid applause, Su Shi stepped down, and Stone gestured at him, "You got it."

Finally, Double Lin took the stage together, and Lin Wu said, "Everyone knows the kitchen affairs are Lin Meng’s responsibility. If we really lose, it will be Lin Meng’s job to dig up worms."

Boos erupted, such a shameless method of canvassing votes wasn’t appreciated.

Lin Meng candidly spoke, "It’s okay if everyone truly chooses us, I will accept it. Lin Wu is just speaking nonsense; he will definitely help when the time comes... at the very least, he will send Wai to help."

Stone dissatisfied, "Lin Wu, you’re a real dog."

Lin Wu questioned, "What?"

"Nothing, nothing, you’re super cool." Stone nearly forgot Lin Wu had votes.

From the looks of it now, Double Lin was definitely safe, because no one would aid Lin Wu in bullying Lin Meng. Besides, they enjoyed their two to six hours of daily recreational activities at Lin Meng’s safe house. It seemed inappropriate to let Lin Meng freeze while digging for worms as they enjoyed themselves in his house. If it were just Lin Wu alone, based solely on his shameless attitude, it had to be him by hook or by crook.