The Game of Life

When Jiang Feng returned home carrying a lively Da Hua lobster and a large bag of special water for lobster cultivation, Ji Xia had already left, not forgetting to take the two crab-stuffed oranges that had long since cooled down before she left.

The kitchen had been cleaned up. Wu Minqi was tidying up clothes, preparing for a shower. She was a little surprised to see Jiang Feng coming back with a lobster in his hand.

“A lobster?”

“My aunt gave it to me. It’s rare to find such a Da Hua lobster in the market, and even rarer to find one this size. My aunt told me to take it home and practice, but I’ve never cooked a sea lobster before and dare not practice with something so precious,” said Jiang Feng helplessly. “Let’s just keep it for now. Tomorrow I’ll consult someone in the kitchen to see who knows how to keep this thing alive without killing it.”

“But the pool on the balcony is full of crabs. It doesn’t seem good to put the lobster and the crabs together, one from the sea and the other from the lake,” Wu Minqi said, somewhat unsure. Seafood wasn’t her specialty.

“Put it in the bucket. I’ll take it directly to Taifeng Building tomorrow. If it can be kept alive, we’ll keep it, otherwise, we’ll just have to kill it,” replied Jiang Feng.

“That works, I’m going to take a shower. You can use the blue bucket on the balcony; it’s new and hasn’t been used,” Wu Minqi nodded, taking her clothes into the bathroom.

After Wu Minqi entered the bathroom to shower, Jiang Feng suddenly realized that his Minqi seemed to have returned to normal.

The discomforting sense of vigilance from before had disappeared.

Although he didn’t know why, it was good that things were back to normal. Taking advantage of Wu Minqi’s time in the bathroom, Jiang Feng settled the lobster and then sat on the sofa, unabashedly opening the attribute panel to check the recipes he had just obtained.

The recipes given by the game were for Suzhou-style mooncakes. It sounded like one recipe, but was actually two. The creator was Jiang Feng’s old acquaintance, Gu Li, the champion of the Good Taste culinary competition.

Speaking of Gu Li, Jiang Feng had lost touch with him after the Good Taste culinary competition. Jiang Feng was now in Beiping; Gu Li was in Hang City, with a thousand miles between the two cities. Jiang Feng wasn’t as well-informed as Pei Shenghua and the chefs he knew online were all from the capital circle.

Now that he thought about it, it seemed that he hadn’t heard anything about Gu Li since the Good Taste culinary competition ended.

However, Gu Li was a White Chef with a deep foundation, hardworking and diligent, having been mentored by a master chef. Destined for success later in life, he must have been doing well these days.

His future journey should not be too bumpy.

Jiang Feng had only glanced briefly and realized that both recipes were created by Gu Li, which surprised him a bit. After reminiscing about Gu Li’s astonishing performance at the Good Taste culinary competition, Jiang Feng began to examine the two recipes carefully.

[Suzhou-style Mooncake (Pork) B-grade]

Creator: Gu Li

Dish Details: Suzhou-style mooncakes are divided into sweet, salty, or based on cooking method, either baked or pan-fried. Salty mooncakes are mainly pan-fried, with varieties such as ham lard, scallion lard, fresh pork, and shrimp. The fresh pork mooncake belongs to the salty variety, and players can replace the filling with ham lard, scallion lard, shrimp, or other fillings for salty mooncakes as they wish, with no special attribute bonuses. (This recipe is an advanced recipe. Once the player meets the conditions, namely making this recipe more than 10,000 times, with over 100 A-grade products, the recipe will automatically advance. Advancement is automatic and does not require player action.)

Friendly Reminder: The player’s current White Chef culinary skills are far below the recipe’s level, with a 100% chance of failure.

[Suzhou-style Mooncake (Salt and Pepper) B-grade]

Creator: Gu Li

Dish Details: Suzhou-style mooncakes are divided into sweet, salty, or based on cooking method, either baked or pan-fried. The sweet mooncakes are mainly baked, with varieties such as rose, assorted nuts, salt and pepper, and red bean paste. The salt and pepper mooncake is a sweet variety, and players can replace the filling with rose, assorted nuts, red bean paste, or other varieties as they wish, with no special attribute bonuses. (This recipe is an advanced recipe. Once the player meets the conditions, namely making this recipe more than 10,000 times, with over 100 A-grade products, the recipe will automatically advance. Advancement is automatic and does not require player action.)

Friendly Reminder: The player’s current White Chef culinary skills are far below the recipe’s level, with a 100% chance of failure.

Advanced recipes?

Jiang Feng had had the game for quite a while, and this was the first time he had come across advanced recipes. A long time ago, when he received the recipe for “Clear Soup Willow Leaf Swallow Dish (Imitation)”, it was shown that the recipe could be improved, and now there was an advanced recipe. řäNȏʙƐⱾ

To understand it literally, this recipe would upgrade itself, advancing to an A-grade or S-grade, but what was the use of that?

Having had this game for so long, Jiang Feng had understood some principles about game recipes. Most of the recipes in the game, except for dishes like the “Clear Soup Willow Leaf Swallow Dish (Imitation)” or the “Pure Meat Wonton” which have a limited potential due to ingredients and cooking techniques, have a potential that keeps increasing with the culinary skills of the creator—especially those of famous dishes.

Take Cao Guixiang’s crab-stuffed oranges for example, although the recipe level is only C-grade, if Jiang Feng’s cooking skills are high enough, making an S-grade dish wouldn’t be a problem.

With that, regardless of the original rating of the recipe, it had no impact on Jiang Feng, not to mention that this dish itself had no attribute bonuses, and upgrading its level was completely pointless.

Or could it be that advancing a recipe actually meant upgrading it, transforming a relatively easy dish into a rare, high-difficulty dish? But the original recipe was for mooncakes, what more could you upgrade mooncakes to? Even higher difficulty Su-style mooncakes? Could Su-style mooncakes possibly come with their own bloom?

Although he couldn’t figure out what the Advanced Recipes truly meant, Jiang Feng’s desire to watch the tutorial video was growing.

His finger was even nearly clicking on the video.

His skills as a White Chef weren’t great, and he probably couldn’t pull noodles six times in a row anymore since he hadn’t practiced for a while. The only thing that Jiang Feng could present with confidence on the White Chef skills was mixing dough.

Jiang Jianguo had seen the dough Jiang Feng had mixed and even said it was good.

But if you had to compliment it, you could only say that Feng had really solid basic skills.

In the end, Jiang Feng still resisted the temptation to click on the tutorial video, after all, Wu Minqi was still showering in the bathroom. Wu Minqi could walk out at any moment, towel in hand, wiping her hair as she made her way to the living room.

That’s when she would find Jiang Feng sitting on the sofa in the living room, eyes intently staring at thin air, focused, contemplative, looking every bit like an emergency case who needed to call for medical help like a mental patient.

Even among the many talents of a psychiatric hospital, Jiang Feng’s symptoms could definitely be considered outstanding, much stronger than those mentioned in the jokes about picking peaches or fishing from the bed.

Jiang Feng was learning to cook by staring at the air!

Jiang Feng exited the recipe menu, scrolled through the attribute panel, and wanted to check how much longer the cooldown for Retrospection was.

He had already learned Crab-Stuffed Oranges, and his great-aunt had conveniently given him a flower lobster. Although it seemed this lobster was most likely going to be wasted, Jiang Feng felt this was some sort of sign from the universe.

A sign that it was time for him to learn the long-buried recipe in the cookbook, the one that’s been neglected to the point of nearly growing mold, the Steamed Lobster with Superior Soup.

He, Jiang Feng, was finally going to tackle Cantonese cuisine.

There were three days left for Retrospection’s cooldown. Jiang Feng planned to pick up noodle pulling again during these three days. While practicing noodle pulling, he would take the time to study the method of Steamed Lobster with Superior Soup several times over, to sufficiently build up his theoretical knowledge.

Times had changed. Back when Jiang Feng was practicing threading noodles, he had to do it sneakily if he wanted to consult Jiang Jianguo. Other than weekends, Jiang Jianguo didn’t have much time, busy at night making juice, fruit salad, all sorts of odd platters, nutritional sets, and fitness meals for his great-aunt, immensely fulfilling and busy, often having no time to guide Jiang Feng in noodle pulling.

As for asking Master Huang, well, Master Huang was far away in Alan City and couldn’t teach face-to-face. Teaching via WeChat was never as direct and clear as masterly personal instruction.

Jiang Feng’s journey in learning to pull noodles was fraught with difficulties.

But that was in the past.

Now, things were different; he had a disciple!

He had a disciple who could pull noodles eleven times.

Asking his disciple might sound embarrassing, but Jiang Feng knew well the meaning of “no shame in asking,” and he firmly believed that Xiaxia, with her little brain that didn’t even score 300 on her middle school exams, definitely wouldn’t notice that her master was consulting with his disciple.

At that time, he would simply need to imply to Xiaxia at the right moment that he wanted to have a little pop quiz during noodle pulling, casually ask a few questions related to noodle pulling knowledge and skills, and then have Xiaxia demonstrate it for him.

That way, a single observation of Xiaxia pulling noodles while answering questions would create a perfect teaching moment.

He really was an excellent master.

Jiang Feng couldn’t help but exclaim in his heart, where else could you find a master unashamed to learn from his disciple like him nowadays?

Xiaxia was indeed fortunate.

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