A while back, An Luo had asked the Wizard Apprentice Alfonso, who handled procurement trips outside, to buy some finely sifted flour. He had originally planned to make some noodles himself.
To change things up a bit.
However, the flour sold outside was usually coarse, and the fine variety was more expensive. When Alfonso asked him what he needed it for, An Luo replied without batting an eye, “I want to run an experiment.”
He had seen a case in one of the popular science books distributed upon entering the Wizard Tower. It explained that flour of a certain concentration would explode upon contact with an open flame due to a normal elemental reaction—not some divine punishment as the ignorant masses claimed.
—So scientific.
The purpose of that popular science book was twofold: to provide basic education to new Wizard Apprentices entering the tower, and to thoroughly demean ordinary people, gradually instilling in the apprentices a deep-seated contempt for them.
It worked very well. Most Wizard Apprentices, after learning their first piece of Witchcraft, no longer considered ordinary folk as their own kind.
This was the perfect excuse.
“You’re really sure about doing this experiment?” Alfonso looked at An Luo in disbelief.
An Luo caught the unspoken part: What’s the point of messing with this?
An Luo nodded without shame. “Yes, I think there might be some Witchcraft secret hidden in it.”
Alfonso shrugged, clearly unimpressed, but he kindly warned, “The explosion is extremely violent. It’s easy to hurt yourself.”
An Luo: “It’s fine. I’ll be careful.”
Alfonso: “Alright, since you’re insistent, I’ll charge you a little less this time. But if you get injured, don’t say it has anything to do with me.”
An Luo: “Of course. Don’t worry.”
Even with the discount, Alfonso wouldn’t lose out.
Anyone who thought procurement Wizard Apprentices like Alfonso operated on normal buy-low-sell-high was sorely mistaken.
Typically, they would request an item, and the local nobles would supply it for free. Then Alfonso and his ilk would mark it up and sell it to the apprentices in the tower.
Most of the profits went to the Wizard Tower, with a small cut kept for themselves. They all made a fortune.
It was a dark food chain: commoners eaten by nobles, nobles eaten by Wizards, and Wizard Apprentices eating each other.
In any case, An Luo didn’t spend much and obtained a bag of fine flour.
For some reason, lately when he bought things, they felt cheaper, and Alfonso was more agreeable.
Especially this time with the flour—Alfonso even proactively lowered the price, saying it was so An Luo couldn’t blame him if he got hurt.
It sounded convincing, but it wasn’t.
Alfonso used to be the type who looked down his nose at everyone.
Injured or blown to bits, he wouldn’t have charged a penny less.
Lately, this guy had undergone a real personality change.
But An Luo had no interest in digging deeper.
Whatever. Cheaper was better, right?
What if he foolishly asked why the discount, and they jacked the price back up?
That would just invite trouble.
Kneading the dough was simple. After turning the flour into a dough ball, he began pulling noodles. An Luo wasn’t a skilled noodle master, but with extra time and care, he managed to produce some decent-looking strands.
They were a bit thick and not like the longevity noodles in his memory, but there was no helping it.
By the time Meieruita arrived, the bone broth was already simmering.
It smelled amazing.
An Luo deftly dropped the noodles into the pot.
Soon, he served up two steaming bowls.
He took a bite—tasted good, but it felt like it was missing green onions.
“Eat up.” He picked up his chopsticks. Meieruita was already quietly seated at the table.
An Luo: “Happy birthday.”
Besides longevity noodles, he needed a gift too. After thinking it over, An Luo figured Meieruita wouldn’t care for superficial stuff, so he catered to his interests: some plots and settings from the novel.
—The protagonist would definitely want this most!
“. . . Mm.”
Meieruita’s face showed no expression, not even a smile—calm to the point of coldness.
But An Luo didn’t mind. “Eat while it’s hot, or it’ll clump up and taste bad.”
“. . . You eat first.”
The steam from the noodle soup shrouded Meieruita’s brows and eyes in an ethereal haze. He lowered his head to look at the bowl. “I still have some calculations to finish.”
“Oh.” An Luo acknowledged and dug in.
Delicious!
For a fleeting moment, he felt like transmigrating into his own novel was all a dream. His phone alarm would go off by the pillow, he’d wake up, and see the familiar world again.
But that feeling vanished in an instant.
After An Luo finished half his bowl, Meieruita finally picked up his chopsticks. An Luo watched him eat with elegant poise—methodical, silent—not like his own slurping.
Maybe this was the difference between protagonist and ordinary person, he thought.
They usually chatted over meals, but this time the table was unusually quiet. Meieruita didn’t look up, and An Luo couldn’t read his expression. Assuming he was still mentally crunching formulas, An Luo left him be.
“Here, for you.”
An Luo had jotted down some key settings from the novel on paper, including inspiration for Meieruita to research space and time Witchcraft.
—Basically straight copied from relativity’s spacetime concepts. Zero originality.
Yes, all the theorems and truths in the book were copied by An Luo from textbooks and academic works.
He couldn’t make them up himself.
Since he barely understood them—only half-grasping the explanations—he’d made mistakes early on. Once he knew his limits, he stopped direct depictions and went indirect.
Lay out the theory and book explanation, then write “Meieruita understood it.”
Much better that way.
Meieruita reached out and took it. “What’s this?”
An Luo: “Birthday gift. Some important settings and inspirations to spark your research.”
“You’re the birthday star today—no cleaning up. Go work on your research.”
Normally, when they ate together, Meieruita handled clearing the table and washing dishes—a protagonist who had an eye for chores.
But today was special, so An Luo decided to do it himself.
Meieruita held the folded note, not opening it or doing anything else.
An Luo finished cleaning the table and was about to wash dishes when he remembered something. He opened the food cabinet and took out a piece of almond candy.
The stuff was outrageously expensive, and to An Luo’s taste, not even that good—nowhere near the one-cent fruit hard candies from modern corner stores. But it was the only candy he could get.
“Here, candy for you.” An Luo handed the milky-white almond candy to Meieruita.
Meieruita paused for a moment before taking it.
An Luo sensed that today, everything Meieruita did was a beat slow—not his usual sharp reactivity. He couldn’t help snickering inwardly. If Meieruita were a computer, most of his CPU was tied up in calculations now.
So this supercomputer, normally lightning-fast, started lagging.
Hahahahaha!
An Luo quickly washed the bowls and found Meieruita still at the table, staring at the candy in his hand like a glitching machine.
Too fun!
An Luo didn’t disturb him, lest he mess up the calculations.
He grabbed clean clothes and went to bathe. When he emerged, towel-drying his damp hair, Meieruita was at the desk.
But he wasn’t reading or writing—just staring blankly at the wood grain on the desk.
An Luo: “. . .”
He was about to burst out laughing!
If he had a phone, he’d snap pics of Meieruita’s sluggish, glitching black history moments.
No phone, so he ogled a bit more to commit it to memory for later reminiscing.
Perhaps An Luo’s gaze was too obvious. Meieruita turned, gray-green eyes shadowed under his brow, unreadable.
He said nothing, just stared at An Luo for a bit, then blinked—like snapping out of it—and whipped his head back.
Oh my, this was too cute.
An Luo was done for.
He couldn’t suppress his grin.
But he decided not to interrupt the calculations. He went to the fire to dry his hair.
An Luo’s hair had been the perfect length before, but now it was getting long. He wanted to cut it but feared a dog-chewed mess.
He pondered asking Meieruita in a few days.
Meieruita wasn’t a barber, but An Luo trusted his skills. Anything would be better than self-haircut.
The knight novels were the same old tropes. An Luo missed Don Quixote. Honestly, he thought Don Quixote was way better—worth rereading multiple times.
Some knight novels were flowery like poetry, others plain narration, but the plots were formulaic, characters interchangeable. Swap protagonists between books—no dissonance.
Recently, though, he’d scored a book of folk tales full of fairies, giants, nymphs, dwarves—super novel.
Gave him Grimm fairy tale vibes.
Only downside: packed with gore and steamy bits. Straight-up dark Grimm.
But An Luo recalled an article saying original Grimm tales weren’t for kids—they were adult evening stories by the hearth.
For leisure and… uh, titillating purposes.
Later versions got sanitized.
The story he was reading now resembled Sleeping Beauty, but instead of a prince’s kiss, a passing king spotted the lovely sleeping forest nymph and… well, she got pregnant. A year later, he returned, found her awake with the child, and happily took them to his castle.
Tons of detail.
He flipped pages. This one: a childless couple desperate for kids.
Sounded like Thumbelina, but diverged hard. A priest said their barrenness was due to lax Goddess worship—pray daily at church.
Then the priest “blessed” the wife hands-on. She got pregnant, they thanked him profusely, vowing deeper piety.
An Luo: “. . .”
I’m done.
Why can’t we have some wholesome stories?
An Luo wasn’t condemning erotica— it had its place. But not every book!
It’s like everyone knows bed frolics are fun, but you can’t do it all day!
What about real work?!
Even the fancy knight novels had unspeakable content. Now other books too?
When An Luo asked Alfonso to procure, the goods came straight from nobles—all deluxe editions.
He’d once requested commoner versions. Alfonso still delivered deluxe ones, waving it off: no extra charge.
(Free from the lords anyway—zero cost.)
An Luo: “. . .”
Not about money!
Shouldn’t these be whispered underground? Not sold openly in deluxe bindings at high prices!
Keep it quiet—is this something to brag about?
Yet the folk tales were so bizarre and eerie, An Luo was hooked—curious, tempted, embarrassed. He speed-read, skimming the naughty parts, focusing on plot.
