Chapter 12 Menu

  Mu Yu Xin's reaction didn't surprise Tian Nuan Yu at all, because every customer who came to this store for the first time would have such a reaction after seeing the menu. She smiled and picked up her tea cup, taking a sip.

  "What's all this? What a mess!" Mu Yu Xing furrowed her brow, slamming the menu onto the table as she exclaimed.

  The menu read: Hell's Menu, First Layer: Tongue Removal, Second Layer: Scissors, Third Layer: Iron Tree... all the way to the 18th layer, where one page listed some dish names.

  Mu Yu Xing put down her teacup and smiled lightly, "Almost everyone who sees the menu for the first time has a reaction like yours. Actually, it's just that some of the dish names are intimidating."

  "What are all these things?" Mu Yu Xing stared at Tian Nuan Yu with wide eyes, although she was startled by the menu, but she felt novel and exciting.

  Tian Nuoyu asked slowly and unhurriedly: "Do you like spicy food?"

  "Not bad, exciting enough, not too shabby," Mu Yu Xin raised an eyebrow.

  She likes stimulating things, although the food she eats on weekdays is relatively light, but she often goes out to different restaurants to find "heavy flavors" to eat, chili peppers, curry, wasabi... She doesn't refuse any of these, and she feels that eating them is both stimulating and refreshing.

  "Are different peppers supposed to have different levels of spiciness?"

  "This is something everyone knows, many restaurants' menus aren't marked with mild spicy, medium spicy, extremely spicy?"

  "This is just a vague definition, have you ever heard of Weber or Skocpol?"

  Mu Yu Xing thought for two seconds and then said: "I know, American... right, he was the one who established the unit to measure the spiciness of chili peppers, that unit is called..."

  "Schwartz index," Tian Nuoyu smiled and said.

  Everyone knows that different peppers have different spicy flavors, but few people know that the spiciness of peppers also has units and standard values. Mu Yu Xing not only knew this, but also knew about Scoville, which showed that her knowledge was very broad. Tian Nuan Yu couldn't help but feel a little admiration for Mu Yu Xing in her heart.

  "Right, right, the higher the index value, the spicier it is. But what does this have to do with that?" Mu Yu Xing pointed at the menu on the table.

  Tian Nuoyu didn't answer directly but instead turned the conversation around: "Have you heard of the eighteen layers of hell?"

  "This is something everyone knows! Bad people will go to the 18th level of hell and suffer!"

  "Do you know what the eighteen layers of the eighteenth layer of hell are?" Tian Nuanyu asked with a smile.

  "The eighteenth floor is just from one to eighteen floors, don't each floor have a name?" Mu Yu Xing asked casually.

  She only likes vampires among all the monsters and ghosts, which is because she super loves the "Twilight" movie series, and has no interest in others.

  "Yes, each level has a name. The first level is called the Tongue-Pulling Hell, the second level is called the Scissor Hell, the third level is called the Iron Tree Hell, the fourth level is called the Evil Mirror Hell, the fifth level is called the Steamer Hell, the sixth level is called the Copper Column Hell, the seventh level is called the Knife Mountain Hell, the eighth level is called the Ice Mountain Hell, and the ninth level is called the Oil Cauldron Hell. This is the nine levels, also known as the Eastern Hell."

  "From the tenth to the eighteenth floor is called lower nine floors, also known as Western Hell, more cruel than upper nine floors. The tenth floor is called Ox Pit, the eleventh floor is called Stone Press, the twelfth floor is called Mortar, the thirteenth floor is called Blood Pool, the fourteenth floor is called Wrongful Death, the fifteenth floor is called Lingchi, the sixteenth floor is called Volcano, the seventeenth floor is called Stone Mill, and the last floor, the eighteenth floor, is called Knife Saw."

  Tian Nuoyu said as he flipped through the menu page by page, and it turned out that each layer written on the menu was actually the name of a hell. Mu Yu Xing listened with a frown, her face showing an expression of avoidance.

  Tian Nuoyu smiled and said, "Actually, this is just Yan Shu's special creation. He uses the names of each layer of hell to represent the degree of spiciness, that is, using the eighteen layers of hell to indicate the Scoville index value. Many Chinese people don't know about the Scoville index, but everyone knows about the eighteen layers of hell. Isn't it very original to use this in a menu?"

  "Oh, so that's how it is. It's really unusual and exciting," Mu Yu Xing said with a hint of excitement on her face.

  Tian Nuanyu saw Mu Yu's expression and smiled: "This restaurant is actually a spicy flavor house, but it should be the only one in this city."

  "Huh? Just because of the store name and menu?" Mu Yu Xin thought that this store was unusual and special after hearing Tian Nuan Yu's explanation, but she still wasn't entirely convinced that it was one-of-a-kind.

  "No, the store name and menu are just making it look different, its uniqueness is the spiciness of each dish."

  "There are many spicy restaurants now, and the dishes are very diverse. Many restaurants have their own signature dishes. What are the special dishes in this restaurant?" Mu Yu Xin has eaten at quite a few restaurants, she said while picking up the menu to take another look.

  Tian Nuoyu said slowly: "This restaurant's dishes are not many, there are only more than 20 dishes in total, most of which are home-cooked dishes. However, each dish can be cooked into 17 different flavors. You can taste 17 different spicy flavors. We just mentioned that the first to ninth layer is the upper nine layers, these nine spicy flavors are what we usually eat from slightly spicy to moderately spicy. The tenth to seventeenth layer is the lower nine layers, which is extremely spicy, but the spiciness here is many times more than what we usually eat."

  "The spicy ingredients here include fresh chili peppers, chili sauce and chili powder. The chili sauce and chili powder are secretly made by Mr. Yan, who mixed multiple types of chili peppers with some special ingredients after three years of experimentation and research. He has almost collected all varieties of chili peppers from around the world. The flavor you experience here is impossible to find in other restaurants."

  Mu Yu Xing flipped to a page with menu items, and saw that there were not many dishes on the menu, mostly vegetables, and meat dishes were just ordinary chicken, duck, fish, pork and beef, no seafood.

  Suddenly she thought of a question: "Why are there only seventeen flavors for each dish? Isn't it eighteen layers? What's the eighteenth layer?" Mu Yu Xing said as she flipped to the last page of the menu.