Since this was Wei Caiwei’s first time cooking, he couldn’t refuse to give her face.

Wang Daxia quickly picked up the iron cake—no, the mooncake—blew off the dust on the surface, and deliberately moved it to the back of his mouth, placing it on his hardest back molars to bite.

Still couldn’t bite through it. Wei Caiwei’s baked mooncakes were even harder than the spirited Wang Xiaoxia.

Wang Daxia couldn’t help but worry. His gaze fell on the eight “Flowers Blooming Under the Full Moon” mooncakes in the plate, remembering a story his teacher had told him in childhood about “using one’s spear to attack one’s shield.”

The only plan now was to attack shield with spear, fight poison with poison.

If I use a mooncake to knock another mooncake, I should be able to crack it open.

Caiwei just said the mooncakes had five-nut filling. No matter how hard the outer crust, the walnut kernels, peanuts, pine nuts, and sesame inside should definitely be chewable.

Wang Daxia almost wanted to applaud his own cleverness. He took a mooncake from the plate, placed it on the cutting board, picked up another mooncake, and smashed it down hard!

Bang! Wang Daxia’s palm went numb from the impact, but the two colliding mooncakes remained intact. The “good” character on the upper mooncake lost one horizontal stroke from the “zi” part, becoming “woman-already.” The “moon” character below lost two horizontal strokes.

Wang Daxia felt around the cutting board and found three horizontal strokes that had been knocked off the mooncakes—like three thin sticks. Even with this force, they were only knocked off, not shattered. Wang Daxia didn’t dare test them with his teeth and had to use his hands to forcefully snap the thin sticks in half.

Wei Caiwei claimed she used Ding Wu’s recipe to bake these mooncakes. Could this secret formula contain iron juice? This was way too hard! Was this baking mooncakes or forging swords?

However, humanity’s progression from primitive to civilized society came from excelling at making and using tools. When the striking method didn’t work, Wang Daxia picked up the sharp cleaver from the cutting board and swung it down to chop.

This time, he finally managed to cut (chop) the mooncake open!

From the cross-section, the mooncake indeed had five-nut filling, but the crust was really too thick—the filling in the middle was just a thin layer, which is why it couldn’t be bitten through.

Looking at the thickness and hardness of the crust, Wang Daxia’s teeth ached before he even ate it. He simply continued wielding the cleaver to chop the mooncake into small pieces for easier consumption.

After chopping up two mooncakes, the cleaver had several small nicks in it. Wang Daxia looked worriedly at the damaged blade, but then heard the sound of “Sharpen scissors, repair cleavers!” from outside.

Wang Daxia had found his savior. He quickly took the cleaver outside to have the traveling grinder smooth out the nicks.

By the time the grinder finished sharpening the cleaver, Wei Caiwei had also returned from washing vegetables at the Tianshui Lane well.

Wang Daxia held the newly sharpened, gleaming cleaver and said somewhat guiltily: “The cleaver was a bit dull, so I had it sharpened.”

“Thank you.” Wei Caiwei carried the vegetable basket inside. “The chicken soup is ready. I don’t know how to stir-fry, so we’ll just blanch these vegetables and mushrooms. I bought hot pot dipping sauce from a restaurant.”

Following her memories, Wei Caiwei tried to make hot pot like Ding Wu used to. She brought out a copper hot pot from the kitchen, placed some charcoal in the center, then poured the stewed chicken soup into the hot pot as the base. The cooked chicken wasn’t thrown away—she let it cool slightly, then shredded it by hand for a cold chicken salad.

The autumn air was crisp and cool breezes blew through the small courtyard. Eating hot pot wouldn’t feel too hot—this was the most comfortable weather of the year. The copper hot pot sat in the center, bubbling with golden chicken soup. Around it were arranged washed vegetables, plates of beef and mutton sliced by the butcher at the market, chicken shreds piled like a small mountain, and the five-nut mooncakes Wang Daxia had chopped up.

This Mid-Autumn Festival looked quite nice.

The two sat down. As the host, Wei Caiwei hoped her guest would eat well and heartily. Seeing too few mooncakes on the dessert plate, she said: “The mooncakes aren’t enough. Let me get another one.”

“Enough, enough!” Wang Daxia, worried she might break her teeth, quickly stopped her. “Mooncakes are sweet and rich—a little is plenty. Besides, we have a whole table of food.”

Wei Caiwei picked up a cut mooncake and pointed to the filling inside: “I love eating five-nut mooncakes most, but five-nut mooncakes have candied fruit strips. I hate the taste of those strips most. Ding Wu always used to pick out the candied strips for me. Later when he taught himself cooking, he started baking mooncakes himself, using only five nuts and rock sugar, no candied strips. I love his five-nut mooncakes most—I never buy them from pastry shops outside.”

“This year I tried making them myself. The first few always had broken crusts with filling leaking out, so I made the crust thicker to contain it.”

No wonder the crust is so thick!

Wang Daxia pretended to be very interested and asked: “Your filling is so special—five nuts without candied strips, I’ve never seen this before. What do you make the crust from?”

Wei Caiwei said: “Flour.”

Wang Daxia: “What else?”

Wei Caiwei said: “Of course you need to add some water and knead vigorously to work the water into the flour. The dough was so hard to knead evenly—a pampered young master like you who never touches spring water wouldn’t understand. Dry flour sticking to your hands is very hard to scrub off. I just washed it off my hands when I was cleaning the vegetables.”

Wang Daxia indeed didn’t understand, but he felt something was wrong with Wei Caiwei’s method.

But he didn’t dare ask further! Wei Caiwei was cooking for the first time—regardless of whether it tasted good or not, he should focus on encouragement.

Actually, every time Ding Wu made mooncake dough, he would add lard, pork fat, eggs, ground sugar powder, and yeast starter.

Whether making crispy peach pastries that crumbled with one bite or round mooncakes, his secret was adding lots of oil and lots of sugar. Since it was for personal consumption, cost wasn’t a concern—he’d add as much as possible.

Pastry shops had to control costs—they’d add as little as possible.

Wei Caiwei only ever ate them, thinking the crust was just flour mixed with water.

Without fats and fermented dough, rolled so thick, after high-temperature baking it could indeed be used as a weapon.

No wonder it damaged even the cleaver.

“Come, you’re the guest, you eat first.” Wei Caiwei placed a small piece of mooncake on Wang Daxia’s plate, watching him with anticipation.

In her previous life, Wei Caiwei had never cooked, so this was the first time in two lifetimes that Wang Daxia was eating pastry made by her own hands.

Wang Daxia had planned to pour a plate of mutton into the chicken soup hot pot, but Wei Caiwei was so enthusiastic he couldn’t refuse.

Wang Daxia had already tested the mooncakes’ hardness with the cleaver. Unless he had iron teeth and copper jaws, he absolutely couldn’t chew them.

However, how could such a small problem stump the clever Wang Daxia? He was the man who had consecutively destroyed two White Lotus Sect lairs and, at only fourteen years old, had been promoted three ranks to become the youngest Captain in the Embroidered Uniform Guard!

As they say, every object has its match—like salt water curdling tofu. No matter how hard the crust, soaking it in water would soften it!

Wang Daxia pretended to drink tea, taking a big mouthful of hot tea without swallowing, then put the chopped mooncake in his mouth. After holding it for a while and pressing the crust with his tongue, feeling it had been softened by the hot tea, he began to chew.

With this bite, he felt something hard prick his mouth, like developing a canker sore—it hurt somewhat. But what was this little pain? He was just hurting a bit, while Wei Caiwei would lose her confidence in cooking.

Endure it.

Wang Daxia continued chewing, but got pricked again, more painfully. And there was a fishy taste in his mouth, as if he were bleeding.

This crust must be made of iron—not only wouldn’t it soften when soaked, it was cutting his mouth.

Better to just swallow it directly. His stomach would definitely be able to digest it, so his mouth wouldn’t have to suffer.

Wang Daxia’s brain sometimes got stuck in one track. Last time eating on the pleasure boat, when he got a fishbone stuck in his throat, he had also stuffed rice balls in his mouth, trying to push the bone down with rice.

Just as Wang Daxia was about to swallow it with the tea, Wei Caiwei grabbed his throat with one hand: “Why is your mouth bleeding? Don’t swallow it, spit it out.”

Wei Caiwei had been watching Wang Daxia eat her handmade mooncakes with anticipation, but seeing two streams of blood flowing from the corners of his mouth—what kind of horrifying scene was this?

Wang Daxia spat out everything in his mouth. Under the autumn sun, they clearly saw a gleaming blade fragment among the five nuts!

Wei Caiwei quickly poured him clean water to rinse his mouth: “I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I accidentally got foreign objects mixed into the five-nut filling.”

Wang Daxia had been eating when blood appeared, and seeing the metal fragment, he immediately thought of the scene when he had wielded the cleaver to hack at the mooncakes.

“It’s not your fault, it’s my problem.” Though very embarrassed, Wang Daxia didn’t want Wei Caiwei to develop a psychological trauma about making mooncakes, so he quickly said: “When I was cutting the mooncakes with the cleaver earlier, I made several nicks in the blade without noticing that broken pieces had embedded in the five-nut filling.”

“Good thing I ate first, otherwise it would have been you who got hurt.”

Wei Caiwei was stunned: “So when you had the grinder sharpen the blade earlier, it wasn’t because the cleaver was dull, but because it was chipped?”

Wang Daxia nodded.

“Are my mooncakes really that hard?” Wei Caiwei picked up a whole mooncake and made as if to take a bite.

Disaster! Her teeth would break! “Stop!” Wang Daxia, quick-eyed and fast-handed, swatted the mooncake out of Wei Caiwei’s hand.

The mooncake flew out and hit the courtyard wall. The wall had been freshly plastered this year by Chen Jingji to quickly rent out this house. The mooncake struck it, knocking off a piece of wall plaster, then bounced back to the ground, making a shallow crater, and finally rolled to Wei Caiwei’s feet.

Wei Caiwei picked up the mooncake. After this ordeal, the five-nut mooncake was still almost perfectly intact, like a widow with a chastity memorial arch—steadfast and pure as jade.

Seeing Wei Caiwei’s disappointed and dejected expression, Wang Daxia comforted her: “It’s okay, your work wasn’t wasted. Though the five-nut mooncakes can’t be eaten, they can be used as hidden weapons for self-defense! Think about it—if bad people broke into your home, you could throw mooncakes at them. They’d think it was food and wouldn’t guard against or dodge it, then one mooncake could crack their heads open. Catch them off guard.”

Wei Caiwei looked at Wang Daxia: I know you’re trying hard to comfort me, but… saying such things, you’d really be better off keeping quiet.

Wang Daxia would never forget the Mid-Autumn Festival of the 39th year of Jiajing, because on this day when he ate with Wei Caiwei, he had two blade cuts in his mouth that were bleeding, so he couldn’t eat the scalding hot pot.

He could only drink bland, watery mung bean porridge for cooling and reducing internal heat, and eat unsalted, unseasoned chicken shreds, watching helplessly as Wei Caiwei sat across from him enjoying the chicken soup hot pot—eating mutton then beef, mushrooms then vegetables then taro slices, finally adding a small handful of noodles to the pot for a perfect finish.

Author’s Note: Caiwei: Got to teach him a lesson not to swallow things randomly—fish bones and blade fragments are both dangerous! Without Daxia there could be no Xiaoxia. If the skin doesn’t exist, how can the hair attach?