36: Chapter 36 The Prince Turned the Helipad into a Kitchen?!

Cen Ye sauntered out of the elevator, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, his right hand clutching the unfinished orange-flavored drink from the desert.

"How do we fix the base?"

He leaned against the corridor wall, the silver hoop on his left ear catching the light.

This was exactly what Li Li had been waiting for.

Being from Sichuan, Hotpot DNA was carved into his bones; the recipe for the base was on the tip of his tongue.

"How do you stir-fry an authentic Chongqing Hotpot base?"

Cen Ye took the cigarette out of his mouth and twirled it between his fingers.

"Melt the beef tallow, add the doubanjiang, stir-fry until the red oil comes out, add chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns, then add—"

He paused.

"What comes next?"

Li Li stared at him.

Cen Ye scratched his closely shaved sideburns.

"I usually just buy the ready-made stuff. The Mingyang brand, in the black bag."

"..."

"Or the Dezhuang one. They sell it at the supermarket."

"..."

"My mom has stir-fried it before. But she won't let me into the kitchen. She said I almost blew up her newly installed stove last time."

Li Li didn't say a word.

Calling a Sichuan native and expecting him to stir-fry a Hotpot base was like calling a Cantonese person and expecting them to slaughter a live chicken—theoretically proficient, but practically useless.

Cen Ye didn't feel awkward at all; he took a sip of his orange-flavored drink and gulped it all down.

"Don't look at me, I'm only responsible for eating. You can safely leave the eating part to me. I can give you the exact timing for dipping tripe down to the second—'seven up, eight down,' the classic technique."

"What I need right now is to stir-fry the base."

"Then I really can't help you."

Not a shred of psychological burden.

Li Li pulled out his phone and opened a search engine.

He typed in the keywords: Chongqing Hotpot base, homemade, recipe.

A bunch of posts popped up.

The third one looked the most reliable; a blogger named "Yuwei La Zao" had listed the ingredient list and the heat and timing for every step in detail.

Li Li took a screenshot.

Ingredient list—three jin of beef tallow. One jin of dried chili peppers (a mix of Erjingtiao and Bullet Head varieties). Half a jin of Sichuan peppercorns (Maowen Dahongpao). Pixian doubanjiang. Baijiu. Old ginger. Rock sugar. Star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, fennel seeds, black cardamom. Scallions. Onions.

The process wasn't complicated, just time-consuming.

First, render the beef tallow, then stir-fry the doubanjiang to release the red oil, then add the chili segments and Sichuan peppercorns, sauté with spices, and finally drizzle with baijiu to enhance the fragrance.

The key was the heat—high heat to extract the oil, medium heat to stir-fry until fragrant, and low heat to simmer thoroughly.

Li Li finished reading, saved it, and locked his screen.

"Let's go."

Cen Ye followed him. "Where to?"

"The lobby. To get things from the Hotel Manager."

"Get what?"

"Beef tallow, chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, baijiu, ginger, rock sugar, doubanjiang, spices, scallions, onions."

Cen Ye froze for half a second. "You recite that menu more fluently than you know my birthday."

The lobby of the Burj Al Arab.

The Hotel Manager was an Arab man in his early thirties with a well-groomed beard, a three-piece suit, and a tie clip featuring the Jumeirah Group's palm tree logo.

He was at the front desk handling check-ins.

Li Li walked over and spoke. In Arabic.

Fluent, standard, classical Arabic with the courtly accent of Abu Dhabi.

"Asalaamu alaikum. I need some ingredients."

The Hotel Manager looked up. The person was a young Asian man in a white T-shirt.

He spoke Arabic even more authentically than the manager himself.

"... Wa alaikum assalam. Please, go ahead."

Li Li pulled out his phone, translated the ingredient list from the screenshot into Arabic, and read it out item by item.

"Fifty kilograms of beef tallow—the pure beef fat kind, not vegetable margarine. Dried chili peppers, two types: one medium-spicy and fragrant, one high-spicy and short/thick. Sichuan peppercorns, Chinese varieties preferred if available. Baijiu, a high-proof grain spirit. Old ginger, rock sugar, star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, fennel seeds, black cardamom. Doubanjiang—the kind produced in Pixian, Chengdu. Scallions. Onions."

The Hotel Manager listened and took notes. He pointed at Li Li, then gestured toward the kitchen, making a "cooking?" sign.

Li Li nodded.

The Hotel Manager hesitated. The Burj Al Arab's kitchen had some regular spices in stock, but they didn't have Chinese-specific seasonings like doubanjiang, Sichuan peppercorns, or dried chili peppers in the cold storage.

Li Li had already thought of that. "Dragon Mart."

The Hotel Manager was taken aback.

"Dragon Mart." Li Li switched to English to add, "The Chinatown of Dubai. There are Chinese supermarkets there; all of these things can be found there."

The Hotel Manager nodded. "I will arrange for someone to go. Under wartime control, it might require—"

"In the name of Prince Fahd."

The Hotel Manager's spine straightened by two degrees. "I will arrange it immediately."

"Also, a large pot with a two-meter diameter and a matching natural gas stove; I need to make a lot of soup base. Two hundred individual induction cookers for the Hotpot, as well as the ingredients."

The Hotel Manager wasn't too surprised when he heard about the large pot, as Indians also liked using such large pots.

But when he heard the rest of the ingredient list—beef tripe, beef aorta, beef tendon, chicken feet... What on earth were these things???

Li Li turned and left after finishing. The whole thing took ten minutes.

Cen Ye leaned behind a lobby pillar, not understanding a single word of the whole conversation.

He only saw Li Li chat with the man for a few moments, after which the man's attitude changed from polite to respectful, and then he jogged off to make a call.

"What did they say?"

"They're helping me get the stuff."

"What language were you speaking?"

"Arabic."

"...You can speak Arabic too?"

"Basic skill."

Cen Ye rubbed his silver hoop. "Basic my foot. If you submitted this resume, wouldn't it scare HR to tears?"

Li Li had a live-streaming camera strapped to him. The whole process was on camera, and the comments section was exploding.

The audience hadn't understood a single word of his Arabic conversation just now, but judging by the Hotel Manager's reaction—this guy definitely wasn't speaking Mandarin.

Comments: [ What is he saying??? Can anyone who knows Arabic translate this!! ]

[ I've studied Arabic for four years, and he speaks it even more standardly than our foreign teachers... ]

[ Amateur exposure #N: This person is suspected to be a native Arabic speaker. ]

[ Brother Li, how many more skills do you have that you haven't shown yet? ]

Someone asked: What is he asking the hotel for? No one could answer.

Li Li returned to the camera and said in Chinese, "Tonight, let's make the Burj Al Arab rock."

Comments instantly: [ ??? ] [ What does "make it rock" mean? Having a rave at the Burj Al Arab? ] [ Is he planning to do a barbecue at a seven-star hotel... ] [ Brother Li, I beg you, stop causing trouble; my heart can't take it. ]

Li Li didn't explain. He locked his screen.

4:47 PM. The Hotel Manager personally went up to the twentieth floor and knocked on the door of room 2005.

"Mr. Li, all the ingredients and cookware you requested have arrived."

The speed was ridiculously fast. Under wartime control, the whole city was restricted, and procuring ingredients from Dragon Mart and transporting them back to the Burj Al Arab would normally take half a day.

But the power of the name Fahd had compressed the entire process to under two hours.

The Hotel Manager paused and added, "Also... Prince Fahd is very interested in your plans for tonight and has already arrived."

"Arrived? Where?"

"His Highness said you would know when you got there. Please follow me."

Li Li looked back into the room. Jiang Rumu was sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, holding a tablet and scrolling through Su Wantang's Weibo—counting bullets for him.

She looked up when she heard the noise. "The Prince?"

"Yeah. He wants to see how I make Hotpot."

Jiang Rumu placed the tablet face down on the sofa, stood up, and slipped on her canvas shoes. "I want to see too."

The two followed the Hotel Manager to the elevator lobby. The elevator doors opened. The Hotel Manager pressed a button.

Jiang Rumu glanced at the floor indicator—it wasn't going down. It was going up.

"Aren't we going to the kitchen?"

The Hotel Manager smiled. "No."

The numbers flickered. 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. They reached the top.

The elevator doors opened. Fahd was standing at the entrance.

He wore a white kandura robe, a red and white checkered keffiyeh on his head, and a Patek Philippe on his wrist, scrolling through his phone screen with one finger.

Seeing Li Li, he tucked his phone into his robe pocket and opened his arms. "Li!"

An Arab-style cheek kiss greeting. Once on the left, once on the right.

"Your Highness."

"Come on, I've got it all ready for you."

Fahd turned and pushed open the rooftop security door. The sea breeze poured in.

The salty, fishy scent of the Persian Gulf, wrapped in the late afternoon sunset, washed over them all at once.

The helipad of the Burj Al Arab. One of the most famous aerial platforms in the world.

Circular, over twenty meters in diameter, suspended at the top of the hotel, with sky on three sides and a vertical drop of over two hundred meters to the Persian Gulf beneath their feet.

Agassi and Federer had played tennis on it. Tiger Woods had swung a club on it.

At this moment—right in the center of the helipad, a pot. Not an ordinary pot. Two meters in diameter. Cast iron. Black. The thickness of the pot wall was visibly over two centimeters.

A custom industrial-grade gas stove was welded to the bottom, with four thick pipes connected to two side-by-side liquefied gas tanks.

Beside the pot, three stainless steel prep tables were lined up in a row.

The one on the left: fifty kilograms of beef tallow divided into four pieces, each huge. Beside them were old ginger, scallions, and onions, already chopped and portioned. Rock sugar was crushed into fragments and placed in a glass bowl.

The one in the middle: two types of dried chili peppers, one long and deep red, one short, thick, and round. A large bag of Sichuan peppercorns, full-grained and dark red in color. Star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, fennel seeds, and black cardamom were portioned into six small saucers.

The one on the right: a large box of Pixian doubanjiang. The labels were in Chinese. Ten bottles of Moutai.

All the ingredients were freshly bought from the Dragon Mart Chinese supermarket. The Prince's card swiped away without hesitation.

Directly in front of the pot were three folding chairs; Fahd's keffiyeh was draped over the armrest of the middle one—he had clearly been sitting there for a while.

Li Li stood at the edge of the helipad. Beneath his feet was the Persian Gulf. Above him was the Middle Eastern sky. In front of him was a giant cast-iron pot that could boil a whole cow.

Behind him, Jiang Rumu's footsteps stopped. Her high ponytail whipped in the sea breeze like a flag, and she stood frozen at the entrance of the helipad, staring at the pot.

Three seconds.

"Li Li." "Yeah." "That pot—" "Two meters." "You got the Prince to move a two-meter pot onto the helipad for you?"

Fahd chimed in from the side, his British accent tinged with amusement. "It wasn't moved. It was airlifted by helicopter."

Jiang Rumu didn't respond. She stared at the pot, then at Li Li's back.

The number of online viewers in the live stream jumped. Seventy-two million.

The comments section had exploded—[ ????? ] [ A helipad??? Stir-frying Hotpot base??? ] [ Is this something a human can do??? ] [ Brother Li, do you have some misunderstanding of the word "low-key"?? ]

Li Li ignored the comments. He walked to the prep table and picked up a piece of beef tallow. Twenty-five kilograms. Heavy.

He threw the beef tallow into the pot. There was a dull "thud." The bottom of the pot vibrated.

Fahd sat in a folding chair, crossing his legs, holding a cup of Arabic coffee. "Li, let's begin."

Li Li crouched down and turned on the gas valve. The flame shot up with a "whoosh." The blue flame licked the bottom of the pot. The beef tallow began to melt.