'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 3: The Prophecy

Food Essentials

I entered the first building and the moment I entered it my nose began to tickle and I sneezed a couple of times to clear the airways. "My goodness...! What is this smell? It smells so spicy and pungent but at the same time it salivates me as well...!"

"This is one of the signature condiments that the citizens of Kitakata in Fukushima, Japan craves a lot. It is spicy if eaten by itself but it would be a delight when eaten with rice. Go on right ahead and check out the ingredients and the process."

Ceres was urging me to enter the building since I was stuck at the main doorway when the spiciness hit me right Smack in the face. I walked in and saw the list of ingredients they were written on a long list at the head of the table and I immediately wrote it down.

Ingredients for X.O Sauce:

12 pounds blended dry chilli

3 pounds blended garlic

3 pounds crushed unsalted Fermented brown soya beans

1 pound of crushed fried skinless groundnuts

3 pounds of sugar

1 pound salt

3 pounds of blended dried shrimps

10 pints of coconut oil

3 pints of tamarind juice

After taking down the notes I walked over to the preparations and saw the workers were all wearing face masks to either practise good food hygiene and handling or simply prevent them from drooling.

The prepared ingredients were cooked over in a huge wok and were fired by firewood. The area had bare windows to provide proper ventilation or else the workers would suffocate due to the smell of the cooking.

I saw the workers had done with one of the woks and was scooping them into clear glass bottles and were marked as XO Sauce and from what Ceres had mentioned earlier, it was a great food accompaniment for the Japanese community.

I wonder if it is true...!

After I had noted of the whole process and had managed to stagger out of the building, I was glad to able to breathe in the fresh air since I am bit used to the fumes of the spicy sauces that they were concocting...!

"Ceres, it seemed that there is always a coconut ingredient in each of their recipes of ingredients. Do you think it would be possible if I try to smuggle out a few pints or something from here?"

I was curious since there was an abundance of coconut juice, coconut milk and other coconut use here in this era. However, the reply I received from Ceres was like a damp towel and it made me feel a tad disappointed.

"No, you can't, Audemars. This is just an image projected from the records of your memories when you had travelled through the parallel universe and through different bodies and people. You can't do much except to record down the events that you might think it's important for you."

"Sigh... Its alright, Ceres. Thanks for your help. By the way, could there be a possibility that in my meditation, I would be able to transport to Burgh Island and pick up some coconuts from the trees and bring it back to the real world?"

"It's a negative, Audemars. You can't do that because your meditation is not a teleportation device at all. You could go back to the future or the past, but you could never be to a place that you had not travelled."

"Besides, as I said again, your meditation and also the subconscious state of mind is not for travelling from one point to the other."

"Sigh... Alright then. Let's visit these two more places then I would return back to the real world. The smelter here is still in its infancy stage, am I right so there is no point to enter and see what the two of them were doing."

I replied as I walked across the adjacent ground to the next two more buildings. Ceres just answered me affirmatively and nothing else was said after that.

The next production plant was simpler and I saw some worker worked on the machine which they called a slow blender and in them, I saw crushed deshelled monkey nuts. There were two machines and one was crushing the deshelled monkey nuts while the other was making it into a much smoother texture.

I saw two labels on some bottles and it marked as 'chunky' while the other was marked as 'creamy'. The ingredients were just monkey nuts, some sugar and some salt. That's it... That's all to it and the end result is 2 sets of monkey nuts spread that was named as peanut butter.

We had other fruit jams spread over at our town that was filled into bread and toasted. But here, they packaged the peanut butter into bottles and shipped it for sale and I saw there were a lot of main cities names and other satellite towns beneath each of the main cities.

It seemed that this corporation that the young boy and young man had successfully controlled the whole of Japan. Where is Japan, by the way? I think it would be best for me to read the history and its geographical location right after I had returned.

How I wished I could dab my finger subside the blending machine and taste like what the workers were doing right now...! From their crescent eyes, after they had dipped and spread some of the peanut butter inside their mouths, it sure tastes extremely delectable...!

"Sigh... This trip is making me hungry as I walked over to the lawn and came to the last building. I checked that I had about 5 products that would be beneficial to be worked on and the concept of having a single factory for a single product really enticed me to follow its example.

Last but not least, a sweet aroma finally hit me when I was nearing the last production plant and I saw there were several freshly toasted bread that was on the table. "This could not be a place to make bread, could it?" I thought to myself as I sauntered in.

The moment I walked in I saw several workers were holding to long paddle stirrers and were cooking something over a low fire. I peered over a saw some contents gently gurgling and I discovered that's where the sweet aroma was coming from. It looked like some kind of gooey jam and I searched for the ingredients at the linen leader's table.

Once again I discovered the coconut milk being mentioned here but I just took the list down. Somehow I do hope there would be a way for Marcel to contact the inhabitants at Burgh Island and get a whole load of coconuts back. No matter how we need to lay our hands on those coconuts...!

The item that the workers were making was similar to a bread spread and I saw some of the workers had tested the spread that had coagulated on the paddle of the stirrer onto some slices of bread.

From the looks of their delighted faces, it seemed to taste quite delish and the workers were young as some were about 8 years old. I guess this type of bread spread really targets the young...!

The ingredients that I had copied down was as follows :

10 eggs

1 pound sugar

Half cup freshly pressed screwpine juice

1 pint of coconut milk

From this amount of ingredients, it was being used to make a daily portion of 4 I think and this would be able to last a week or so. However, I do not notice any standing Icebox or any types of Ovens like the ones from Priestess Farah and Imelda.

"This is a different era, Audemars. There's no Priest or Priestess around in this era but there are dragons and other mythical beings with overpowering strength. If you happen to meet one head-on, I don't think you would be able to survive a single round...!"

"Eh...? Is that so? What do you mean by overpowered mythical beings? Are they like gnomes, giants and such?"

"No, Audemars... These beings were warriors and they have a single cause in their minds only. To annihilate the weak human beings and take over the lands. That what it seems at first."

"Oh... In that case, could we exit the images here and get out and return to the White Room? I would like to try to take back some encyclopedia for Heather to read."

"Alright, switching off the images and transporting you back to the realm in 3...2...1..." when Ceres had finished counting down, I entered the familiar vortex and appeared at the White Room where I plopped down on my sofa.

Since I had conjured up a hot and cold dispenser for my drinks, I was fortunate that the drinks were kept fresh all the time and I had a few drinks to clear my thirst as well as my airway since the last few production plants had somehow screwed up my nasal functions.

"Ahh... It is great to be back. Its been like an hour or so and there are about slightly less than 2 hours in the realm. Well, I can't be missing too long, innit? So I'd better take these 2 encyclopedias and head back to the real world then."

I spoke up to no one in particular as I huddled the books close to me and then went back to my real world as I ease off from my meditative state of mind.

=*=

It was close to evening time when I looked up at the sky and saw it was filled with hues of bluish-green, reddish-orange clouds.

I looked at my sides and found the three encyclopediae had been safely being brought back to the real world.

However, as I suspected, the books had a lot of empty pages inside which means that the information that lies inside and those that I had not known was erased off.

"Bah... What a bummer. These books ain't light and it almost weighs about 6 to 8 pounds each...! The information is only available in the realm and not here even though the books were intact when they were brought back here in the real world."

I flipped frantically through the books and found that almost half of the contents were missing since I do not have any knowledge on them. Too bad I can't 'cheat' my way through this at all and ends up with a clean slate after all.

"Hi dear... Woooo... You brought back the encyclopedia as mentioned, didn't you? It looked pretty heavy. But, eeehhh...?? Why are the pages empty, dear? Is the encyclopedia not completed or something?"

Heather was sitting cross-legged on the floor like me and was flipping page after page and saw it had no entries at all and not even a smudge of ink on the blank pages...!

I soon explained to Heather that information could not easily be read in the realm but when it comes to this era, only known information is recorded. There's no Bicycle in B reference of the encyclopedia. There are no Cars in the C reference too. What we now of date would be recorded inside it. What a sham...!

Heather looked a bit disappointed but when I held my journal in front of her, she was delighted to find out about these new recipes of food and non-food...!

"I will let you have the honour to take over these operations my dear. I don't have anyone else I could delegate so I put you in charge and then from there you just run the whole show and just get the advice here and then from the engineers."

"As for the methods of preparing them, I would be going back to the realm and see if I could dig up more information since the B reference that I brought back doesn't have anything on Blenders at all."

"There's so much information that I could get from there and what I would need would be going back in and enter another era that also makes certain beauty and health products."

"See these headings, that's the name of the products the I had taken originally from there. Besides, salt of Hartshorn is the name of baking powder that was not recorded here in the B reference as well."

You might find it useful and there's a lot more from where this information comes from."

"Dear... Does it mean you could see your other self doing all sort of things before? During the seance, it was said that you had travelled through different bodies and occupying their minds and souls and living their lives, am I right? So basically all of them were good in economic infrastructure? "

Heather asked me since she was interested to find out more of the hidden traits of her husband.

"I guess there's only 2 that I knew that uses the realm for economic purposes, the rest I think was only known for combat and for their personal use only."

"I haven't ventured in depth because I do not want to spend too much time there and forget about the time here in the real world. The best time for me to venture would be after supper where I would have about 3 hours here and 9 hours back in the realm."

"It would be quite a jolly experience if I could spend more time there when everyone is asleep."

Heather agreed at my suggestion as I could meditate while I sleep, that what she thought. Hahaha.