Chapter 226: Making Dumplings

It wasn’t just watery; it was also exceptionally sticky.

Being sticky was one thing—at worst, he could just add more flour.

However, because Lian Li’s hands were covered in too much dough, he lost his grip when he went to grab the flour to add more.

the small bag of flour smashed directly into the basin, flipping it over. The overly watery dough and the flour he hadn’t yet poured in were all dumped onto Lian Li.

In any case, while Yun Huizhou was outside washing the mutton, he heard Lian Li screaming in the kitchen.

“Yun Huizhou, help!”

Yun Huizhou thought something had happened to him and hurriedly dropped what he was doing to rush into the kitchen, only to see a man made of flour.

The South Island Master, who had been on a long break, also heard Lian Li’s cry and appeared in the kitchen in an instant.

Upon seeing Lian Li’s state in the kitchen, the already silent man became even more silent.

He raised his hand and gave a gentle wave. A strange wind rose in the kitchen, blowing all the flour on the floor into a pile in a corner without affecting anything else in the room.

After doing this, he turned and left, returning to his own room.

Yun Huizhou didn’t leave. He walked to Lian Li’s side, took the basin from his hands, and said, “Hurry up and take a bath and change your clothes. Just leave this to me.”

Lian Li also couldn’t stand having his face and body covered in flour, not to mention the watery dough from earlier sticking to him.

He nimbly handed everything over to Yun Huizhou, then filled two buckets with hot water and carried them toward his room.

After tidying up the kitchen a bit, Yun Huizhou walked to the corner and saw the half-bag of flour they had left. Fortunately, there was still half a bag.

Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be able to eat dumplings, and the filling would have to be boiled into meat soup instead.

He carried the half-bag of flour to the counter, poured it onto the cutting board in a pile, dug a hole in the peak, and then poured water inside.

He wasn’t very skilled at kneading dough either, but it wasn’t a big problem. Although he primarily practiced saber techniques, his palm techniques were—if not unrivaled under heaven—at least quite formidable.

However, he never expected that one day his palm techniques would be used to knead dough.

By the time Lian Li finished his bath, changed his clothes, and came over, the dough was already kneaded, and Yun Huizhou was attempting to roll out dumpling skins.

Lian Li walked over with an embarrassed expression and stood beside him. “I should have listened to your suggestion and just bought the dumpling skins.”

Yun Huizhou glanced at him, not blaming him, but said, “How could store-bought skins compare to dough kneaded with the palm techniques of a top martial artist like me? Aside from the three of us, I doubt anyone in this world has ever eaten such dumplings.”

As he spoke, he handed a rolled-out skin to Lian Li, gesturing for him to try wrapping a dumpling.

Lian Li brought the meat filling over, used his chopsticks to pick up a small piece of meat and placed it in the center of the skin, then tried to fold the edges together.

He was afraid he wouldn’t wrap it well and that the dumpling would fall apart when boiled, so he pinched the edges very hard, deforming them.

But the result was good; the closed edges merged together without a single gap.

Soon, a complete dumpling appeared in his hand. Although it wasn’t very good-looking, Lian Li felt it would definitely be delicious.

Yun Huizhou took a look and said, “If you can wrap it like that, it should be fine. Let’s wrap the dumplings first. I’ll roll the skins?”

Lian Li nodded, then glanced outside and said, “Let’s take it out and do it on the table, otherwise the two of us will have to stand here for a long time.”

“Alright.”

The two moved their base of operations from the kitchen to the courtyard, sitting on opposite sides to begin wrapping dumplings.

After all, it was Yun Huizhou’s first time rolling dumpling skins, so he wasn’t very practiced; he couldn’t roll them as fast as they were being wrapped.

Lian Li had no choice but to go get another rolling pin. Just as he brought it out, the South Island Master appeared again.

He stood by the table looking at the strangely shaped dumplings, dazed for a moment, and then sat down and reached out toward Lian Li.

Lian Li sensed that he was looking at the rolling pin in his hand, so he handed it over.

After taking the rolling pin, the South Island Master didn’t hesitate and began rolling dumpling skins along with Yun Huizhou.

This left Lian Li to wrap the dumplings alone.

The South Island Master’s technique for rolling skins was much more proficient than Yun Huizhou’s, and he rolled them much better.

The skins he produced were all perfectly round, and they felt uniform in the hand, unlike the ones Yun Huizhou rolled, which were thick in some places and thin in others.

However, Lian Li felt that no matter who rolled them, they would certainly be better than his own.

With the South Island Master joining in, their efficiency increased significantly.

In the end, all the skins were rolled, so the three of them wrapped the remaining dumplings together.

The dumplings Yun Huizhou wrapped were just like Lian Li’s—so ugly they were hard to look at.

On the other hand, the ones the South Island Master wrapped were exceptionally beautiful. Halfway through, the South Island Master even took out three copper coins and stuffed them into the dumplings.

Once the dumplings were finished, Yun Huizhou could finally continue his previous task: processing the mutton.

The South Island Master watched from the side for a moment, and after deciding that his two disciples were capable of handling these tasks, he returned to his room.

Lian Li peeked at his retreating back and whispered to Yun Huizhou, “Master must have been unable to watch any longer, which is why he came out to help.”

Yun Huizhou looked at the dumplings laid out to the side—half of them were bizarrely ugly, while the other half were exquisitely beautiful. He nodded seriously and said, “You’re right.”

The dumpling skins weren’t all used up. Lian Li took the remaining dough and rolled it out again, making it very thin and large.

Yun Huizhou didn’t know what he was doing, so he asked, “What are you making?”

“I’ll steam these later to wrap around roast meat. Then I’ll go wash some cabbage.” Lian Li held up a large, thin, and slightly torn skin to show Yun Huizhou.

Yun Huizhou glanced at it, then reached out and pinched the torn part together.

Lian Li saw that the place he pinched had turned into a little tuft, so he reached out to flatten it. “This is perfect.”

The two of them busied themselves in the kitchen for an entire day before they finally finished preparing all the ingredients.

This efficiency really couldn’t be called fast. Although Yun Huizhou usually knew how to cook, he rarely had the opportunity to actually work in a kitchen.

In the past, if he didn’t make it to a town in time while traveling, he would just eat dry rations in the wilderness or hunt some wild game to roast.

As for Lian Li, he was young when he fell ill in his previous life and hadn’t reached the age where he needed to cook; after he got sick, his family wouldn’t have let him cook for himself.

Since coming here, he had even fewer chances to do it himself.

The two of them were quite shocked that they had actually finished processing all the ingredients for the next day’s New Year’s Eve feast in one day.

On New Year’s Eve, when Lian Li ate dumplings, he kept picking the beautiful ones wrapped by the South Island Master.

He didn’t pick a single one of the dumplings wrapped by himself or Yun Huizhou.