Chapter 147: Sorrowful and Soul-Breaking Fried Rice

[Loyalty 85% (Crab meat fried rice, and still simple/plain? Big boss, having fried rice is already enough, I'm not picky, I just want to be full! Please let me eat it quickly, I really only want crab meat fried rice, those crab meat balls aren't important, not important at all! So fragrant, so fragrant, I'm getting dizzy from the aroma! Sob, sob!)]

"The fried rice just came out of the wok, it's too hot, let it cool down a bit," Ye Da said with a smile. "The crab meat balls will be ready in no time, don't rush."

"Gurgle."

Zhang Ya secretly swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and only then said with a "calm expression", "I'm not rushing!"

"That's good."

Ye Da saw through her without exposing her, silently turning the remaining crab meat and seasonings into one tender, white crab meat ball after another.

Thanks to the ready-made crab meat and seasonings, making these crab meat balls was even simpler than the fried rice.

In about ten minutes, they were all done.

Ye Da arranged the round, tender white crab meat balls next to the brilliant orange-yellow crab meat fried rice, making the dish look incredibly tempting and delicious!

"Time to eat."

Ye Da pushed a large bamboo plate filled with food toward Zhang Ya and said, "Dig in!"

"Mm, thank you."

Zhang Ya's words remained few.

However, the excitement and eagerness in her eyes completely betrayed her!

Zhang Ya picked up the bamboo chopsticks, picked up a crab meat ball, and popped it into her mouth. The next second, her eyes widened, filled with pleasant surprise and sheer disbelief!

Delicious!

So delicious it makes you want to cry!

But I can't cry, I won't lose my dignity and shed tears just over some good food!

Ah!

How on earth did the bear-slaying boss pull this off?

These crab meat balls looked just like fish balls at a glance, but the moment they touched the tongue, they felt like tender tofu, possessing a texture of unbelievable tenderness and smoothness.

Clearly...

That crab meat had been as hard as a piece of cold rice cake before cooking.

Yet, after being cooked by Ye Da's skillful hands, the crab meat turned out astonishingly soft and tender. The moment you bit into it, the crab meat ball instantly dissolved into delicate strands of crab meat, and with a gentle chew, the springy and resilient texture of the crab returned.

Moreover, because Ye Da had shaped the crab meat into tightly packed balls, not a single drop of the delicious juices was lost; instead, they were locked within every single strand of meat. Every chew felt like eating a freshly harvested hairy crab from Yangcheng Lake, and the flavor was even better than the real thing!

And as she chewed, Zhang Ya was pleasantly surprised to discover hidden pockets of crab roe tucked inside the center of the crab meat balls.

The crab roe was encased within the core of the crab meat ball. The moment you bit through the ball and slowly reached the crab roe filling inside, the intensely rich flavor of the roe burst forth instantly, transitioning the fresh sweetness in your mouth into a deep, savory aroma.

Then, that rich aroma blended into the sweet, tender crab meat, perfectly fusing the intense fragrance of the crab roe with the clean sweetness of the meat. The flavors balanced each other out—neither too greasy nor too bland—complementing one another flawlessly!

Too delicious!!

Zhang Ya felt a wave of infinite emotion in her heart, but her hands did not slow down in the slightest.

Before she had even finished chewing the crab meat ball in her mouth, she couldn't help but scoop up a spoonful of the crab meat fried rice.

The orange-yellow crab roe sat atop the pale yellow bamboo spoon, emitting an enticing aroma.

It was an invincible scent born from the combination of rich crab roe fragrance and a hint of mild spiciness. Just a single whiff of it was enough to leave an unforgettable lingering fragrance in one's senses for three days!

This looked extremely delicious too!

If the balls made purely from crab meat were already this amazing, she couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of pleasant surprises a fried rice enhanced with chili peppers and egg yolks would bring!

Zhang Ya stuffed a full spoonful of fried rice into her mouth!

Oh my god!

How could such unimaginably delicious fried rice exist in this world?

At that instant, Zhang Ya suddenly recalled the movie *The God of Cookery* starring Stephen Chow, where the female food critic experienced that state of absolute ecstasy and floating-to-heaven euphoria after tasting Sorrow-Vanishing Rice!

Right now...

Zhang Ya was experiencing roughly that exact sensation. Every cell in her body seemed to explode from the sheer deliciousness of the crab meat fried rice, leaving room in her entire brain for nothing else except the taste of the dish.

The tender egg yolks coated the rice grains, which were cooked to a perfect firmness, while the rich aroma of the crab roe completely neutralized any fishy taste from the crocodile egg yolks, instantly elevating the deliciousness of the fried rice to an unprecedented height.

Furthermore, as you chewed the fried rice, you would occasionally bite into strands of crab meat.

Interspersed with chili peppers and other seasonings, every bite delivered a burst of freshness and spice that cut through the richness of the crab roe. The multi-layered textures overwhelmed Zhang Ya's palate, making it impossible to process them all at once!

Bite after bite.

Ball after ball!

At this moment, Zhang Ya had no idea that she had entered a state of complete flow.

She ate with reckless abandon, getting rice grains all over her face, her eyes and mouth consumed entirely by the crab meat fried rice, completely forgetting her earlier resolution to act like a lady.

She didn't even remember to look up and notice the sheer shock on the faces of the people around her!

"So fragrant!"

Until...

Chu Ping's voice exploded beside Zhang Ya's ear like a sudden thunderclap on a clear day, jarring her awake from the blissful culinary world of the Sorrow-Vanishing Rice!

"Chu... Chu Ping?"

Zhang Ya jerked her head up, only to realize that she had actually polished off an entire plate of crab meat fried rice, licking up even the shredded chili peppers and scraping the crab roe oil from the plate clean.

Seeing both Ye Da and Chu Ping staring at her face, she awkwardly wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, discovering several stray rice grains.

Yet, looking at the rice grains on the back of her hand, she couldn't bear to just flick them away.

So, she covered the back of her hand with her other hand, pretending nobody had seen anything.

Zhang Ya looked at Chu Ping, who looked like a shattered puppet as he wobbly sat up and twitched his nose continuously, and asked, "Are you... okay?"

"I thought I was a goner for sure," Chu Ping laughed heartily, instinctively trying to raise his hand to scratch the back of his head, only to find that his arm felt as if it were broken, dangling uselessly without the ability to be raised. "Who would have thought that Lord Lord would pull me back from the brink once again!"

"You could have rested a bit longer, why did you wake up?"

Seeing this, Ye Da countered with a question of his own.

Chu Ping, meanwhile, puckered his lips in the direction of the crab meat fried rice and said, "I was woken up by the aroma! In my dreams, I kept smelling this incredible fragrance, and my stomach was roaring with hunger—I wanted to eat it so badly that I just woke up!"

"Here... go ahead and eat."

Ye Da dished out a portion for Chu Ping as well.

Unable to lift his arms, Chu Ping didn't take the plate.

However, his blood-crusted eyes remained fixed straight upon the crab-roe fried rice handed over by Ye Da, completely unwilling to look away even for a second!

The fried rice, coated in egg yolks and crab roe, consisted of distinct, individual grains piled loosely into a small, delicious mountain, glittering like golden nuggets!

This must be golden fried rice!

Chu Ping was reminded of *Cooking Master Boy*, where the protagonist once prepared an exaggerated masterpiece of egg fried rice. Back when he watched the anime, he had scoffed, thinking no such exaggerated food could possibly exist in the real world.

Yet, here it was right before his eyes!

The crab meat fried rice piled up like gold right in front of him, this glittering golden fried rice—just smelling its scent was enough to hook a person's soul, let alone tasting what it must be like!