Favorite of the Beast-world: I Got Rich Through Farming-Chapter 357 - 238: Moldy Ham + Rainy Season Surprise

The rainy season came later this year, and it was colder, too, so every household had fired up their floor heating early to warm their feet.

Luckily, their warehouse was filled to the brim with firewood, enough to last for several rainy and cold seasons.

An Jin’s family had long since moved out of their small wooden cabin with its floor heating and into a large, five-story castle. The floor heating only covered the empty first floor, so the entire castle was heated unevenly.

So, she had preemptively installed pipes for floor heating in the remaining floors and also added two wood-burning fireplaces. Only then did the temperature start to rise.

Every year, when the rainy and cold seasons arrived, it was time to quickly work through the food stockpiled in the warehouse.

But for An Jin, with two top-tier Hunters like Ling Hong and Mi Yin around, there was never a shortage of food. On the contrary, they had to periodically clean out the food that had been forgotten in the corners of the warehouse for too long and had gone bad.

"Awhroo~" The Silver Wolf sniffed around the vast warehouse, his keen sense of smell able to detect spoiled food hidden anywhere.

’This food has to be dealt with as soon as possible. If any of it accidentally gets mixed in with their regular ingredients and cooked, it wouldn’t be a huge problem for us Beastmen with our strong bodies to eat a few bites of spoiled food, but if Jin’er accidentally ate some, she would definitely get sick.’

Because of his tragic past of going hungry as a child, Ling Hong would go out and catch a couple of prey whenever he had free time. He’d toss whatever they couldn’t finish into the warehouse. At the time, he had felt very satisfied doing it, but now that he had to clean it all up, he realized what a pain it was.

Smelling the faint scent of rot in the air, the Silver Wolf’s damp nose twitched nervously. He stretched out his front paws and dug furiously through the "little mountains" of various sizes for what felt like an eternity before he finally had the warehouse looking brand new again.

He bundled all the long-rotted food into a large Beast Skin Bag. The Silver Wolf easily snatched up the opening, which had been tied at all four corners, in his mouth and ran outside. The nearby forest would do. Hungry vultures and other scavengers would take care of this trash on their own.

After returning, the diligent and domestic Ling Hong picked up a broom and dustpan. He intended to give the warehouse a thorough cleaning inside and out, but he discovered one that had "slipped through the net."

The man took two steps forward and lifted the sack. Confusion appeared in his jade-green eyes.

"This is...?"

’I don’t remember stuffing this kind of weird food in here.’

An Jin had just returned from washing up, but she didn’t smell the usual aroma of breakfast wafting through the air. Out of the corner of her eye, she happened to spot Ling Hong running outside, shouldering a large sack.

She squinted, looking in his direction. The more she looked at the sack, the more familiar it seemed.

"Wait, that’s my ham!" she rushed forward to stop him. "It’s delicious, you can’t throw it away."

"It’s already gone bad. It’s not good for you, and it might give you worms." As he spoke, his eyes scanned the nearby trash heaps. He picked one far away and started to head over.

Luckily, Mi Yin swooped in to intercept. He gave a cold, deeply mocking smile and said, "If she wants it, give it to her. What are you doing, snatching Jin’er’s things?" With that, his long, black-and-red snake tail coiled around the sack on Ling Hong’s back and snatched it away.

The tip of his tail exerted a little pressure, prying it open for a look.

Damn. It was a huge ham, as thick as a person’s torso. Who knew how many years it had been sitting there; its rind was already black and hard, and it was covered in a thick layer of blackish-green mold.

Mi Yin’s expression immediately darkened.

He looked at her with a complicated expression. "...Have I... been letting you go hungry?" ’Although he hadn’t been very diligent about hunting, wasn’t the warehouse still stockpiled with food? Why would she eat this kind of moldy, rotten, spoiled food?’

’If other Beastmen found out they were letting their mate eat rotten food, they’d be cursed to death by every male in the entire Beast World.’

Seeing that both Ling Hong and Mi Yin had misunderstood, An Jin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. "I’m living perfectly well, why would I subject myself to eating spoiled food?"

"Trust me, this kind of ham is delicious. It has to grow mold on the surface to develop this flavor! I specially smoked and sealed it three years ago. If you don’t believe me, get closer and take a sniff. There’s not a hint of rot!"

For a naturally fermented ham that has undergone processes like curing and smoking, it’s completely normal for this kind of mold to grow. The mold helps the ham ferment. You just have to scrub this layer of mold off the surface, and it’s ready to be used.

Moreover, this mold breaks down many of the large-molecule substances in the ham. This allows the ham to be digested directly by the stomach and intestines, so you’re less likely to gain weight, and its unique, smoky flavor is also very popular.