PFC Chapter 4221 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (28)
Chapter 4221 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (28)
Chapter 4221 A Guide to Wandering the Galaxy (Twenty-Eight)
The fire in the fireplace was no longer so fierce, and the charred marks in the stove were hidden in the dim light. The candles on the huge chandelier hanging in the center of the tavern flickered in the still air. The night outside the window had a faint blue hue, the dim light reflected from nearby planets.
Arrogance finished his day's work and took the last work boat back to the tavern. As soon as he opened the door, he found Greed still sitting behind the bar, even though Greed should have been resting long ago.
At this moment, dozens of glasses of various sizes were placed on the bar counter, some containing alcohol or beverages, and others empty. The bottles that were originally placed at the back as decorations had also been taken down and placed on the side of the bar counter.
"This better not be some kind of mysterious welcome ceremony." Arrogance walked over and sat down. He casually picked up a glass, noticed that the drink inside was blue, and then put it down with some disdain.
Greed glanced at him and said, "Don't overestimate yourself. This isn't for you."
"Then what are you doing?"
"I just wanted to taste it."
"what?"
"Can't you tell? I'm tasting each of these drinks one by one." Greed pointed to the glass in front of him, then picked up a bottle of wine from the side, poured it into a glass, tilted his head back and drank it down, then smacked his lips.
"Oh, damn, this is too spicy." Greed frowned and put the cup on the other side.
He glanced arrogantly at the bottle and said, "Because that's white tequila for mixing, it'd be strange if it wasn't strong. Didn't you have the Matador before? I think that's the best-tasting tequila cocktail I've ever had."
"Have I drunk it?" Greed asked after thinking for a moment.
"I drank it when I went on vacation to the West Coast before."
"Then I must have forgotten." After saying that, he put the bottle of wine he had tasted behind him and then picked up another bottle.
Arrogant glanced around; there were about 100 bottles of wine near the bar, with slightly different varieties. He had already put about half of them behind him, apparently having tasted them, while a large pile remained scattered around.
"Are you planning to export Earth's wine?" the arrogant man asked. He thought this because he had recently learned that there was basically no wine culture in the universe. Alcohol was prohibited in the territories of the three great empires. Although the prohibition was not very complete, people only dared to drink it secretly. If they were discovered, their whole family would be in trouble. Naturally, it was impossible for them to have developed so many varieties of wine like Earth.
However, with the three great empires' power waning, they have no choice but to compromise in this area, which naturally presents a good opportunity for Earth to export alcoholic beverages. Although Earth's production volume isn't great, they can still target the high-end market and make a considerable amount of money in the early stages.
“This isn’t a long-term business,” Arrogance said. “The brewing method is very simple. If it weren’t for the control of the three great empires, the aliens would definitely be able to brew much better wine. And if we loosen the restrictions now, it won’t be long before they can mix wines that suit their tastes, and human wines will just be something they try for the first time.”
“I have no intention of doing this business,” Greedy said, shaking his head. “Wine has a long shelf life and is more suitable for gifting than for large-scale export. Scarcity makes things valuable.”
"So what are you doing?"
"Didn't I say? I just wanted to try it."
"Did Strange run into some trouble at the Interplanetary Council? Bribing those officials with alcohol is a good idea, but I don't think you need to be so concerned about taste. Aliens' palates are quite different from ours, so it's hard to find something they like."
“Strange has no trouble.” Greed added two more ice cubes to his drink and said, “The Supreme Intelligence is completely powerless right now. The entire Council is his domain, and even the droids in the executive branch have to defer to him. What trouble could he possibly have?”
"So you want to increase the bar's revenue? Develop new cocktails? You really want to be a bartender?"
"Can't I just try it?"
"Let's not even talk about when you'll only ever do one thing. You've drunk all of these wines," the arrogance said. "In both our lifetimes combined, we've drunk almost every wine on Earth. What's the point of you trying this now?"
"Haven't you noticed that my memory of the wines I've tasted is a bit off?"
"What's the problem?" The arrogant man paused for a moment, then went to search through his previous memories. Sure enough, he discovered some issues.
Sensory memories are categorized separately; sight, touch, smell, and taste each have their own individual records. Arrogantly, he searched for the keyword "tequila."
Pride had never tried this kind of liquor before, because distilled spirits were too strong, even mixed drinks were quite potent. He wouldn't drink it unless absolutely necessary. However, he remembered that Greed and the others had drunk it when they went to a wedding on the West Coast; it seemed to be a tequila-flavored cocktail ordered in a bar in Los Angeles.
When you search for these keywords, the results don't bring up feelings about taste or anything like that. Instead, they bring up a whole bunch of keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with alcohol, such as "extraordinary dragon," "wedding gift," "Tony Stark," "sanatorium lawn," "license plate number," and "Shia Empire."
Arrogance glanced at it briefly and found that it was all long, detailed plans, marked in his memory as having been conceived while greedily drinking.
After searching for a long time, I finally found a comment among a bunch of irrelevant information: "There seems to be a bit too much ice." And that was it. I couldn't find any other memories about tequila, especially any reviews about its taste.
All highly distilled spirits have a spicy and pungent taste that you can remember after just one sip. Arrogance is certain that if Greed had paid even a fraction of attention to the spirit at the time, he wouldn't have been choked a second time today.
Arrogance flipped through the pages again and noticed that many of the foods he had only eaten with greed did not have much information about their taste. Some might have a few scattered notes like "too salty" or "too much oil," but they were not very specific. On the contrary, there was a long list of memories unrelated to food, which he could not finish flipping through in a short time.
Pride then went on to look at Greed's thoughts when he was cooking, after all, how could someone who is not passionate about the taste of food be passionate about cooking?
Then he discovered that greed couldn't really be called a passion for cooking; he was just keeping himself occupied while his mind was busy thinking about many things, and cooking was perfect for thinking. The time spent washing, chopping, and stir-frying was enough for him to bury half the life of the universe in the ground.
If we compare everyone in this world to a spider, some are like tarantulas, never weaving a web, just attacking without hesitation; some are highly venomous, striking only when they are deadly. Of course, most people diligently weave a web, waiting for their prey to come to them.
But they weave webs to eat, while greed is different. It eats to weave webs, and all its energy-gathering actions are aimed at weaving a larger web, squeezing every last drop of nutrients from its body in order to expand the spider web outwards.
It's not that he couldn't taste the flavor, but because the amount of information in these endlessly proliferating plans is so large, it almost completely fills up the threads of thought, leaving little room for the current real world.
What's peculiar is that most of this limited space is reserved for negative reviews. Someone might not remember something that tastes exceptionally good, but they'll definitely remember something that tastes terrible.
Arrogance repeatedly brought back memories of things like "white food is bad," "cold sandwiches are bad," "cookies with sauce are bad," and "these potato chips are awful."
Arrogance and suspicion were the safety protocols he had set up for himself to prevent accidentally eating poisoned food. Unfortunately, the white man's food was worse than poison, and his greedy memories were filled with similar warnings.
It's also possible that because there are so many warnings like this, greed forces people to cook for themselves to prevent these error messages from consuming too much of their mental energy.
In general, Greed is not a person who is very focused on the present moment. He has some dissociative fugue symptoms, which makes him have a weak sense of reality most of the time and lack of impression of many sensory experiences.
However, Pride flipped through the latest memories. Just now, Greed had truthfully recorded the taste of all the wines he had tasted. For example, the white tequila was marked as "This wine can really choke a person to death, drink it."
Although it's still a bit brief, at least there's a review. Of course, it's also possible that because the wine is indeed quite strong, he didn't notice any other flavors besides the strong taste, hence the shorter review, while some of the relatively better-tasting ones are longer.
Arrogance returned to reality, and he looked at Greed and asked, "Who won between the two of them?"
"What? Who?"
"Stark and Strange."
"What happened to them?"
Which of them cured you?
"What do you mean 'cured me'? I'm not sick." Greed paused for a moment before saying, "But if you mean to make me love life more..."
"That's right, that's exactly what I mean. Who is it?"
"Reed Richards."
"Um???"
“This is really interesting,” Greed stopped what he was doing, sat down opposite Pride, and said, “I feel like I’m looking in a mirror, seeing myself in someone else’s eyes. Even Anatoly back then never gave me this feeling.”
“He’s the complete opposite of you,” said Arrogantly, “but I don’t think Reed is much like you either.”
“Yes, because everyone’s path is different,” said Greed. “There are always divergent paths in the pursuit of truth, but if someone’s pace cannot keep up with mine, then I have no way of seeing what I am like as I run down this path.”
"So you saw it in Reed?"
"That's right. And I think they ran a little too fast."
“That’s quite rare,” Arrogance said with some surprise. “I thought you would never realize this.”
“I said, there has to be someone who runs at the same speed as me for me to be able to see him, but maybe because I run too fast, no one can catch up with me, so I have no way of knowing what I look like at that speed. But Reed Richards, he runs at the same speed as me, so I can see him.”
"You think this is wrong?"
"Of course. You can't call someone who travels at three times the speed of light an ordinary person, right?"
"You're not that slow."
Greed laughed and handed Pride a beer. They clinked glasses lightly, and Greed said, "This is my favorite beer."
Arrogance took a sip, frowned, and said, "As expected, we'll never be able to drink together."