The Game of Life-Chapter 761 - 760 Three Grandmasters (5000 words)

Chapter 761 -760: Three Grandmasters (5000 words)

Chapter 761 -760: Three Grandmasters (5000 words)

Chef Arno left, arriving with a stern face and leaving with his face streaked with tears. Along the way, Jiang Feng managed to unearth all his past miseries, turning a super villain into a tragic one—it was a real loss for him.

But in Jiang Feng’s opinion, the real losers were the Jiang Family, as a mere rumor led to a two-month slump in Taifeng Building’s business; they were the true sufferers of the loss.

“Trouble comes from where you least expect it.”

After his long conversation with Chef Arno that definitely lasted more than twenty minutes, Jiang Feng didn’t return to his duties. With Sang Ming not daring to cancel Jiang Feng’s break, by the time Jiang Feng got back, the lunch service was already coming to an end, so he simply decided to not cook at all.

Not only did he not work, but he also had to eat lunch.

The lunch for today was prepared by Sun Maochai.

As a rule, the head chef is not supposed to take part in making the staff meal as the two old Sirs had never participated before. But Sun Maochai, for reasons unknown, was always eager to partake in this non-profit-driven task, even finding it novel and insisted on joining. Thus, everyone reluctantly agreed to let him.

The employee meal was as festive as if they were beating drums and gongs, with the whole Taifeng Building enveloped in a joy synonymous with receiving bonuses, salaries, red packets during the New Year, and even getting time off.

Of course, it was still an employee meal, so it’s unlikely that Sun Maochai would make luxurious dishes like Taishi Snake Soup, baked soup lobster, or bird’s nest stuffed with pigeon. He kept it to simple home cooking, with a focus on Cantonese cuisine, such as steamed turbot, shrimp dumplings, plain boiled shrimp, honey barbecued pork, beef with satay sauce, stuffed tofu, beef chow fun, baby bok choy in superior soup, pan-fried egg with minced pork, clay pot rice, radish and brisket bun, black bean sauce steamed ribs, and sweet and sour pork, for instance.

Possibly due to being his first time preparing the employee meal and lacking experience, Sun Maochai got carried away and made too much. With no lunch cooking to do, all of Sun Maochai’s reserved dishes were pushed to the evening. With free time and willingness to cook, he single-handedly turned the staff meal into a buffet experience.

In short, everyone was astounded, including the two old Sirs.

The most touched was Mr. Jiang Jiankang, who didn’t forget about his brothers who might have already had their lunch while he was eating.

Jiang Jiankang took a photo of a dish and posted it in the family group chat, tagging all members, urging those who hadn’t eaten to come and have lunch. Coincidentally, at that very moment, his aunt was working out at a gym in the nearby mall and Jianguo was on his way to bring his wife some food. Seeing the message, neither finished their current activities; they both zipped over so fast you’d think they had been waiting by the door.

Aside from Jiang Shoucheng and Jiang Zaidi, who were still at work, all of the Jiang Family members in Beiping showed up, with Jiang Junqing arriving so hurriedly she still held a pen in her hand.

Jiang Feng, Sun Maochai, and Wu Minqi sat together for the meal. The sweet and sour pork that Sun Maochai made for lunch was incredibly delicious, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. The sauce was particularly stunning, sweet and sour yet tasty, and slightly different from the ones Jiang Feng had tasted before.

It got to a point where Jiang Feng, who wasn’t particularly fond of sweet and sour dishes, found himself unable to stop eating it.

Ji Xia was in the same boat, with a fondness for sweet and sour flavors, similar to Jiang Jiankang. She loved both meat and the sweet-sour taste.

Ji Xia, Jiang Junlian, and Jiang Junqing sat at the same table. Ji Xia’s hearty eating, gobbling up the meat, made one can’t help but feel she and Jiang Junlian, Jiang Junqing seemed more like sisters.

“Why are you only eating the sweet and sour pork? That’s not good for you!” Jiang Junlian said as she took bites of boiled shrimp, honey barbecued pork, beef brisket, satay beef and, with not a vegetable in sight, had the nerve to criticize Ji Xia’s eating habits.

Jiang Feng couldn’t help but glance over at their table.

“Ah?” Ji Xia was also startled, holding the sweet and sour pork, unsure whether to eat it or not.

Jiang Junlian picked up some beef, boiled shrimp, and barbecued pork from her bowl and put them into Ji Xia’s bowl: “The way you’re eating is not right, you should try some other meats. If you keep on eating these sweet and sour flavors, you’ll soon get tired of it and can’t eat anymore. Trying something different can help you eat more.”

Ji Xia had an epiphany, expressing her newfound understanding, and began eating the beef.

Jiang Feng: …

This kind of useless knowledge doesn’t need to be spread everywhere.

Sun Maochai also noticed the conversation between the two girls nearby and couldn’t help but chuckle: “Is that chubby girl your sister?”

“Cousin, she’s a first-year high school student who came to Beiping for the summer,” Jiang Feng said.

“She’s quite an interesting kid,” Sun Maochai smiled, “just a bit on the plump side.”

Jiang Feng: …

You obviously haven’t seen my three cousins.

That said, Jiang Feng did think Jiang Zaidi seemed to have slimmed down recently. Apparently, he had been working out, and he looked like he could now take on ten people instead of eight.

“By the way, I heard that Chef Arno agreed to participate in the competition,” Sun Maochai added.

Jiang Feng nodded, “He said at noon that he would get in touch with the production team and ask them to prepare the competition format, which they will send to us later to see if it works.”

“Then you better prepare well, this is a great opportunity, both for your personal improvement and for enhancing the reputation of Taifeng Building,” Sun Maochai took a few bites of his food, “I heard from your grandfather that there is still a dish you haven’t learned.”

“Right.”

“Prepare to go to Yonghe House in a couple of days to learn from Master Peng, I’ll take care of the business in the restaurant, and we’ll temporarily take Chicken with Bean Flower and other dishes off the menu,” said Sun Maochai nonchalantly, “Seize this chance, and if you handle it well, you could truly make a name for yourself this year.”

Jiang Feng gave a wry smile. It didn’t really matter whether he would make a name for himself; as long as he didn’t get scolded into seclusion by Chef Arno like those young contestants on the variety show before.

Although Chef Arno’s demeanor at noon today was uncharacteristically amiable, Jiang Feng insisted on believing it was just an aftereffect of the pure meat dumplings, guessing that in a couple of days, once Chef Arno regained his senses, he would see Jiang Feng as an arch-nemesis to rigorously hammer down.

At this thought, Jiang Feng couldn’t help but shiver.

He could already hear Chef Arno yelling ‘shit’ in his head.

“I want to go home for a visit, too,” Wu Minqi suddenly said.

“Huh?” Jiang Feng was taken aback.

Wu Minqi pursed her lips, a gesture she subconsciously made whenever she was a little nervous or didn’t know how to organize her thoughts.

“Because the show is for restaurant teams, right? I want to compete too, but I don’t think my skills are up to it. I want to go home and have my dad ask my grandpa to train me for a while,” Wu Minqi said, “And while I’m at it, see if I can find the taste of that Sichuan dumpling dish I used to eat as a child.”

Jiang Feng thought that the training was just a pretext, and finding the taste of her childhood was the real goal.

Although his wife was about to run off because of the reality show, Jiang Feng still expressed his support, “Qiqi, when are you planning to go back?”

“In the next couple of days. I haven’t told my grandpa yet,” Wu Minqi said, “Oh and Fengfeng, if I go home to train, I probably won’t have time to text you during the day. I should be able to video call you after eleven at night. If you’re too sleepy and want to go to bed, just text me in advance, and I won’t call you that day.”

“And another thing, when you go to learn dishes from Master Peng, make sure to balance work and rest, don’t end up in the hospital from overexertion like last time. Always eat breakfast, and even if you can’t get up and cook yourself, at least buy a steamed bun downstairs, but don’t eat buns every day. I always feel like the buns from the shop downstairs might not be that clean,” Wu Minqi admonished.

“Mhm, mhm,” Jiang Feng nodded again and again.

Sun Maochai silently opened his phone and started scrolling through WeChat messages.

Strange, his wife hasn’t messaged him for several days. Why hasn’t she sent a message yet?

After lunch, Sun Maochai, as usual, went to the teahouse with the two elderly gentlemen for a happy tea time, having consumed a bowl of rice and ten pounds of dog food. Normally during this time, Wu Minqi would go to the cafe to sit or shop at the mall with Ji Yue. But with the reality show looming — even though the date wasn’t set, funding unclear, and team members unknown — Wu Minqi chose to abandon the cool air conditioning and enter the steamy kitchen.

Once she started practicing with purpose, Wu Minqi’s approach to practicing dishes became very clear.

She would review all the basics.

Starting with knife skills, she might spend a solid week practicing intensively, then another week focused on fire control, and finally one more week on seasoning. Wu Minqi practiced her cooking like solving a puzzle, meticulously refining each section to the best of her ability before trying to put all the pieces together.

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Jiang Feng, as always, was practicing his knife skills.

Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing, the two sisters, didn’t want to go home to do homework after lunch at Taifeng Building, so they pestered their mother with both soft and hard tactics, using the excuse that they really missed their brother. They hadn’t spent much time with their brother these days, hadn’t talked to him, and even hadn’t eaten his cooking. Now that they had the chance to see him, they wanted to spend more time with him.

Aunt, who had plans to go on a shopping spree with a few sisters-in-law, didn’t want to take the children or supervise their homework. So she went along with the flow and left her two mischief demon king daughters in the restaurant while she happily went shopping.

Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing, enduring the high temperature, squatted in the kitchen, eagerly assisting Jiang Feng, pointing out whatever was needed.

Especially Jiang Junlian, who was practically a worm in Jiang Feng’s stomach, having leveled up her skill of observing and understanding to perfection. Sometimes she knew what Jiang Feng needed without him having to move; a simple glance from him was all it took for Jiang Junlian to understand.

With such excellent helpers and followers around him, Jiang Feng cooked with ease, as if he had grown wings.

Jiang Feng finally understood why Jiang Chengde had people to massage him in the kitchen, others to run errands, yet still wanted his son to tend the fire, his son to chop, his son to marinate the meat. No professional servant could understand his heart as his own son did.

The younger cousin was the same.

Jiang Feng was making Ten Thousand Fortune Meat.

He had originally planned to level up his knife skills to grandmaster level, but various things kept coming up, preventing him from dedicating himself fully to practicing. Now, Jiang Feng felt that there shouldn’t be any more surprises, and the urgent task was to prepare for the reality-TV competition whose date of arrival was unknown.

Wu Minqi had even decided to ditch her boyfriend and return to her hometown for a retreat to study for the competition, so naturally, Jiang Feng also had to make sure the most basic preparations were in place, such as ensuring his attributes reached the level of three grandmasters.

Competitions are all about being all-rounded and diverse. If there was a clear weakness, it would simply be providing your opponent with a chance to attack and beat you.

Especially against an opponent like Chef Arno, more ferocious than a tiger and sharper than a starving wolf.

But for some reason, perhaps because he had two capable assistants on hand to pass things to him, offer compliments, and occasionally exclaim in admiration with encouragement, saying overblown praises like, “Wow, you’re so awesome, little brother!” “Little brother, I feel like you cut the meat better than last time.” – because of this, Jiang Feng felt particularly smooth cutting the Ten Thousand Fortune Meat today.

It couldn’t just be described as smooth, but rather extremely fluid.

Since Cao Guixiang’s version of the mini Ten Thousand Fortune Meat cut corners, and to make the dish’s buff even more effective meant Jiang Feng had to cut more corners, the knifework for this dish had always been the biggest challenge.

Jiang Feng felt that the size of the meat he was cutting was now the smallest he could manage; any smaller, and it wouldn’t be called cutting meat but rather micro sculpture.

In the past, to cut this meat, he had to be highly focused, almost wishing for a magnifying glass or microscope to watch carefully as he cut, afraid that a bit too much force would ruin everything, and he would have to start all over again.

It’s no exaggeration to say that by the time he had finished cutting a piece of meat, Jiang Feng had sweated enough to soak the back of his shirt.

Of course, that was mainly because the kitchen was just too hot.

But today was different. Today Jiang Feng felt he was sweating much less.

“Little brother, wipe your sweat.” After Jiang Feng finished cutting a piece of meat, Jiang Junlian diligently passed him a napkin to wipe his sweat.

Jiang Feng casually wiped the sweat from his forehead and continued to cut the second piece.

The third piece.

The fourth piece.

The fifth piece.

…

The eighth piece.

Jiang Feng cut meat portions for two servings at once.

This was an incredible feat; normally, cutting four pieces would leave him with neck pain, sore hands, shortness of breath, nervousness, a vacant expression, and a mental breakdown. After cutting four pieces, he would have to take a break to rotate his neck. Sometimes, he would even need to look into the distance and have a chat with others to relax before he could continue with the dish.

But today, he cut eight pieces in one go, with only a bit of neck stiffness, and although his hands were a bit sore, it wasn’t serious, and he wasn’t as mentally scattered, nowhere near a breakdown.

Jiang Feng even suspected he might have accidentally eaten braised pork.

This familiar feeling of a labor buff was truly nostalgic.

Since the last time he overindulged in braised pork and ended up in the hospital with overwork, he seldom ate it again; perhaps it scared him a bit. At most, he would eat it once a week and no more.

Jiang Feng took a breather and listened to Jiang Junqing and Jiang Junlian, the two sisters, praise the way he had just cut the meat as if they were performing a comic dialogue. Their back-and-forth made Jiang Feng feel that although his two younger cousins weren’t great with academics, they surely wouldn’t starve in the future. If nothing else, they could perform comic dialogues under the overpass.

Worst case, they could also do sales; with their ability to spin yarns, they outmatched average salespeople.

Jiang Feng continued making the Ten Thousand Fortune Meat.

The subsequent steps were much simpler compared to cutting meat; it was practically a breeze.

Jiang Feng easily whipped up two portions of Ten Thousand Fortune Meat with simple ingredients. By the time he finished cooking the meat, Wu Minqi was still calmly slicing daikon radishes. There were already more than half a basketful of daikon slices beside her, each uniformly thin and translucent; it was just uncertain whether Taifeng Building would need so many daikon slices tonight.

Even if they weren’t all used, it wouldn’t matter — Da Hua was quite fond of daikon, and, if need be, they could borrow Zhang Guanghang’s Bentley to take them to Li Mansion for Da Hua’s midnight snack.

Speaking of which, Jiang Feng realized it had been a long time since he last visited Da Hua at the Li Mansion. Officially, Da Hua was still his pet, but somehow, along the way, Chen Suhua ended up taking care of it.

He wondered whether Da Hua had gotten fatter and how much more plump it had become.

Caught up in his thoughts, Jiang Junlian had already swiftly served up the two portions of Ten Thousand Fortune Meat.

[Ten Thousand Fortune Meat S Grade]

A normal performance.

“Bro, can we eat now?” Jiang Junlian asked with a face full of anticipation, like a child who hadn’t eaten for three days, not at all like someone who had just had lunch two hours ago.

Jiang Feng nodded and walked over to Wu Minqi, wanting to ask if Qiqi was going to eat.

Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing were already each chomping away, emitting exaggerated but admiring “wow” sounds, overly theatrical but filled with praise.

Wu Minqi, engrossed in cutting radishes, declined on the spot.

Jiang Feng could only fold back and try to taste how well the Ten Thousand Fortune Meat turned out today.

“Bro, the meat you made today is so delicious, even better than the last time you made it. It’s just… it’s just… it’s really good!” Jiang Junlian was so excited that she couldn’t even find the words to describe it, clearly a sign she had been neglecting her Chinese essays for too long.

Jiang Junqing nodded frantically; this was her usual tactic.

Jiang Junlian was responsible for the praise, and she for the nods.

Jiang Feng laughed it off and didn’t mind, picking up a piece of Ten Thousand Fortune Meat and enveloping it in one bite.

Delicious.

Better than all the previous ones.

Jiang Feng was surprised. He suddenly realized that the reason Jiang Junlian couldn’t come up with adjectives was that she wasn’t talking nonsense; she was telling the truth. Because it was so real, she couldn’t find the embellishments common in idle chatter.

But… how could that be?

Jiang Feng was a bit perplexed. Logically, with only a few days between, the difference in the Ten Thousand Fortune Meat shouldn’t be so drastic, and even with a buff, today he had only cut the meat a tiny bit smaller than usual. The buff shouldn’t have been so noticeable.

Unless…

Jiang Feng suddenly realized something.

“Junqing, Junlian, you guys go ahead and finish the rest of the meat. I’ll step out for a moment.” Jiang Feng left them with these words and walked away.

He didn’t even stop by the upstairs bathroom but went straight into the changing room, which was empty.

Jiang Feng walked up to his locker, opened it, and reached in to activate his attribute panel like he was searching for something. Sure enough, he saw the three characters he had anticipated.

Knife Skills (Grandmaster Level): Your knifework is now comparable to a grandmaster, truly at the pinnacle of the pyramid. (604/1000w)

He had finally reached the grandmaster level in all three attributes.

The S+ grade for today’s chicken and bean curd wasn’t just because he was more than fully focused, nor was it because the broth he made yesterday was exceptionally outstanding — it was because all his attributes had reached grandmaster level.

He was finally a true grandmaster.

With no weak points, he was undeniably deserving.