Chapter 35: A False Alarm

Chapter 35: A False Alarm

“Young Master Li! Young Master Li!”

“Li, are you alright?”

Uncle Wu Furong and his nephew, seeing Li Qi sitting on the bench like a wooden statue, sweat pouring down his face and his expression filled with astonishment, were both very surprised.

Wait—wait a minute. Why should I be scared? It’s just a piece of paper. If I’m to be afraid, I need to understand it first before fearing anything.

Suddenly, Li Qi took a sharp breath, sprang up from the bench in an instant, grabbed Uncle Wu’s sleeve, and asked, “Uncle Wu, where—where did this paper come from?”

Wu Furong was slightly stunned but quickly replied, “I wrote it myself.”

“You wrote it?”

Li Qi looked more closely and saw that it was indeed in Wu Furong’s handwriting. Deeply puzzled, he asked again, “What do you mean by writing these things?”

“Ah!” Wu Furong sighed heavily. “Young Master Li, this is what I wanted to tell you just now.”

Li Qi was stunned. “Tell me what?”

“After you left this morning, people from the residences of high-ranking officials came here one after another to buy stinky tofu,” Wu Furong said with a sigh.

“Buy stinky tofu?”

Li Qi blinked in disbelief. “Are you saying they all came just to buy stinky tofu?”

Wu Furong nodded. “Of course. What else do you think it was for?”

Damn! That scared me to death!

Li Qi exhaled a long breath. Earlier, he had been terribly frightened. In his experience, whenever those treacherous officials came knocking, it was never good news—usually death was certain, or at least exile to the frontier.

But he never expected these big sharks to come just to buy stinky tofu.

“Uncle Wu, you’re something else. If they want to buy, just sell it to them. Why scare me with this? You know I’m timid—I get weak in the knees even when I see court officers,” Li Qi shivered, clutching the white paper tightly, then suddenly his face turned serious. “By the way, you didn’t make them line up, did you?”

Li Qi timid? Wu Furong really didn’t know that. He tugged at the corners of his mouth and said, “I don’t have that kind of courage. But—”

“But what?” Li Qi asked anxiously.

“But—we don’t have any stinky tofu to sell them,” Wu Furong said.

That was indeed a crucial problem.

Li Qi furrowed his brows. “When did they come?”

Wu Furong answered, “Some came at noon, some in the afternoon. You don’t know, these high officials buy in large quantities. Yesterday, Uncle Zhang only delivered less than two hundred portions in total. Even if I wanted to sell to them, there’s no stinky tofu left.”

That made sense.

Li Qi nodded, then asked, “So what did you say to them?”

Wu Furong answered honestly, “Their masters are all high-ranking officials; we dare not offend any of them. So I didn’t refuse outright, only said we’d send it to their residences tomorrow.”

Li Qi frowned. “Tomorrow? At what time?”

“At dusk! Young Master Li, since you weren’t here, I had to stall as best I could,” Wu Furong replied.

Dusk was between five and seven in the evening.

Li Qi asked again, “Uncle Wu, have you calculated how much stinky tofu they need in total?”

Wu Furong said, “About four hundred portions.”

“Four hundred portions?”

Li Qi frowned again. There were just over twenty households listed on the paper, yet they needed so much stinky tofu. Damn, these officials really love to talk big without pain.

This was the capital city, filled with countless officials, and of course they wouldn’t stick to the rule of one portion per person.

“Li, what are we going to do?” Wu Xiaoliu saw worry clouding Li Qi’s face and felt even more anxious.

“What to do?” Li Qi snorted irritably. “We can only deliver exactly what they want.”

In Li Qi’s era—one that revered freedom and equality—those officials were already so arrogant. In this feudal and slave-class era, if you don’t comply, well, you’re definitely asking for trouble.

“But how can we suddenly produce so much stinky tofu?” Wu Furong fretted.

“By the way, has Uncle Zhang arrived yet?” Li Qi asked suddenly.

“Not yet,” Wu Furong shook his head.

Li Qi took a deep breath and calculated in his mind before saying, “Uncle Zhang will deliver nearly three hundred portions soon. I’ll ask him to send three hundred more overnight. Then we’ll take out four hundred portions from those and leave the rest to sell tomorrow.”

“If that’s the case, we won’t be able to sell much tomorrow. Young Master Li, you don’t know, those who didn’t get stinky tofu today are already quite resentful,” Wu Furong worried.

“There’s nothing I can do. Better to offend them than those high officials,” Li Qi sighed and explained, “Uncle Wu, you don’t know, making stinky tofu takes a lot of time. First, you have to grind high-quality soybeans into tofu, then let it cool for several days until it becomes dried tofu, only then can it be placed in the jars.

I arranged with Uncle Zhang several days in advance to prepare the tofu, let it dry, and then deliver it to me once it turned into dried tofu.

Although I prepared in advance, it’s actually not much different from making it fresh each day. Asking him to send a thousand blocks early is quite risky, and the fried tofu will definitely taste worse.”

This was no exaggeration.

He recalled that after making a contract with Madam Qin, he wasted a few days at home before starting to sell stinky tofu.

It wasn’t intentional; he simply had no choice. No matter how urgent, the tofu had to dry first. But he had calculated the timing carefully; otherwise, he wouldn’t have promised just fifteen days. That timeframe was carefully considered to satisfy Madam Qin and give Uncle Zhang enough time to dry the tofu.

Unfortunately, no matter how carefully Li Qi planned, he had overlooked these ravenous and cunning officials.

To minimize costs, Li Qi had arranged early with Uncle Zhang how much tofu to make overall, how many to make daily, and for how many days. When the stall opened, Uncle Zhang would deliver only the tofu made on the first day, and so on.

He did this to optimize the tofu’s taste in the shortest time. Timing is always key and the most skill-demanding aspect in cooking, and this “time” wasn’t just about the cooking fire.

Wu Furong was stunned for a moment, then sighed, “It seems there’s no other way.”

(End of chapter)