The Game of Life-Chapter 783 - 782 Behind the Scenes

Chapter 783: Chapter 782: Behind the Scenes

Chapter 783 -782: Behind the Scenes

The program team’s phone number was in Sun Jikai’s contacts.

But he never imagined that one day he would dial this number—let alone to curse someone out and file a complaint. If it weren’t for the fact that Jubao Building no longer belonged to him, and he was no longer the young proprietor of Jubao Building but an employee of Taifeng Building—as well as representing Taifeng Building in the competition—he would have thought Jiang Feng was trying to kill him.

The screen of Sun Jikai’s phone had already switched to the contact list.

Yet his finger hesitated to press down.

“Go on and dial, if you don’t, they might have already gone to sleep,” urged Jiang Feng.

With a steely resolve, Sun Jikai pressed down.

Dialing…

“Hello, the number you have dialed is currently busy. Please try again later. Sorry, the subscriber you dialed is busy…”

A familiar voice came through the phone.

Sun Jikai looked relieved: “They’re on a call, probably other contestants have made complaints already, or else we could…”

“Let’s try again in two minutes,” Sun Maochai said, smiling cheerfully.

Sun Jikai: ?

And who was using this sole hotline at that moment? Clearly, it was Chef Arno.

As the most important contestant of the program and also being a financial backer, there’s no need to elaborate on Chef Arno’s importance. Just how important was he? If Chef Arno didn’t want to move, the game format would be seven against one. If he didn’t just want to stay put but also wanted a restaurant to accompany him, the format would be six against two. If Chef Arno didn’t want to be in the program, it would cease to exist.

To fully accommodate Chef Arno’s demands, a large part of the program team stayed in Beiping.

These days, they had been waiting for Chef Arno to swear at someone.

Because they themselves realized there was an issue with their competition rules—specifically, as soon as the scores were first announced on day one, they recognized there indeed was a problem.

Although there was an issue, the production team didn’t want to make changes. After all, it was precisely the flawed rules and the unfairness in the competition that spurred discussions among the viewers; with discussion comes dispute, with dispute comes conflict, with conflict comes dramatic moments, and with dramatic moments come the ratings.

From this, it’s not without reason that the program would get worse and worse.

Though the production team was mentally prepared to be scolded, when Chef Arno’s verbal projectiles actually came flying and exploded, the one who took the call still panicked.

He was a newcomer.

When Chef Arno became famous across America, he was just a regular fan who liked Chef Arno. Cherishing his admiration for Chef Arno, he entered this industry and through his own efforts, joined this production team.

At first, when he answered the call, he was a bit excited.

When he heard the familiar “shit,” he was even somewhat moved.

Then he dared not move.

“But… Master Arno, the competition rules were agreed upon beforehand and shown to you, and you agreed to them. If you need changes now, it’s honestly impossible. We also realize that the current rules have issues and are unfair to some restaurants, like how Taifeng Building is at the bottom, which we didn’t expect. But these are the facts as they stand; since the rules were established and everyone agreed, they must be adhered to,” the new staff explained in a soft voice.

The other end of the phone fell silent.

“What did you just say?” the voice was very calm and composed, as though from a reasonable person.

“I said that since the rules have already been established…”

“The line before that,” the voice remained calm and composed, still like a reasonable person.

“The line before… Taifeng Building is currently at the bottom, which we didn’t anticipate, but this…”

“FU**! Taifeng Building at the bottom? How dare you! You are such a bitch! What are you thinking?” Chef Arno opened his mouth and unleashed a torrent of swear words, his calm and composed demeanor completely gone, reverting to his irascible self, true to his origins, remembering his mission.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

The young man on the line was scared stiff.

The call was on speakerphone; everyone was scared stiff.

Somehow, although Chef Arno liked to swear, him swearing for an entire sentence was quite rare.

Clearly, the basic English expletives were not enough for Chef Arno; years of practicing other languages was all to expand his vocabulary. Thus, Chef Arno proceeded to curse in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese, going through all the similar expressions he knew, providing a vivid foreign language lesson to the young man on the line and anyone else listening.

The ones attending the lecture were dumbfounded, completely unsure which word from the young man on the line had triggered Chef Arno.

“But…” The young man thought he could still struggle a bit.

“But my ass, you still have the nerve to give me excuses. Don’t think I don’t know the little schemes you pull behind the scenes, with your shit-for-brains, I’m warning you, you take so much money, you better do things right. If there’s a problem, you better solve it. And this crap about adhering to the game rules once they’re established—bullshit! Did you make the rules? As if you’re even qualified!”

“But indeed, we…”

“Did you sign a contract?”

“We signed…”

“Does the contract state that the competition rules can’t be changed? Don’t bother looking, I’ll tell you, I checked at the time, and it wasn’t written!”

“Make the changes, change it until it’s fair and reasonable!”

“Shit!” Chef Arno hung up the phone.

Dead silence fell over the production team.

There were core members who came from the States, and also local staff hired from Beiping for language communication convenience after arriving here.

Everyone was silent, all eyes on the head of the production team.

The young man on the line was somewhat disillusioned, even turning a bit resentful towards Chef Arno, “Master Arno is being unreasonable. Even if there’s a problem with the competition, it’s down to the luck of the restaurants involved, how can they blame us entirely?”

The head of the production team was silent for a while, then looked up, “I recall the draw was computer-generated.”

“Right,” someone chimed in.

“There’s clearly an issue with the draw results, investigate—who was responsible for it?” A final verdict.

Just as Chef Arno had said, someone had been up to no good behind the scenes and he was well aware of exactly what was on their minds.

It wasn’t just Chef Arno who was very clear about it; there were others as well.

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Anyone with eyes could see that there was something wrong with the Taifeng Building’s lottery results. The two chefs with real skills had drawn the most unlucky dishes, and the chefs with mediocre abilities were only marginally better, while the weakest chef had drawn the best lot.

Even with bad luck, it couldn’t be this bad.

Before the competition started, the production team had spent a lot of time and manpower investigating the competitors’ information from various restaurants, including their signature dishes, the prices of the dishes, and their sales. It could be said that even if they didn’t understand the taste of these dishes, they were still very familiar with their popularity.

Under such circumstances, it would be very simple for someone to tamper with the results, making certain restaurants suffer in silence.

Especially when all the competing restaurants were oblivious to the situations of others, and once the results of the first week were out, nothing could be remedied. Even if it was an unfair loss, they would just have to accept it.

If it wasn’t for Bazhen Restaurant being disqualified from the competition for cheating and had to disclose their current status, Taifeng Building wouldn’t even have known how badly they were doing.

Very badly.

They didn’t even have a fraction of the points of the first-place winner.

As a veteran judge and competitor who had participated in a whole season of reality shows, and had cursed everyone from sponsors to directors to staff to rules to contestants, Chef Arno was well aware of the many tricks in these so-called fair and just reality shows.

So when a staff member let slip that Taifeng Building was ranking last in the current points race, something they hadn’t anticipated, Chef Arno knew someone had manipulated the competition.

Nine out of ten, it was tampering with the menu because it was just too easy to do.

Chef Arno could even think of the reason for the tampering.

Only two of the eight competing restaurants could advance, and unless the production team went crazy or he broke his hand or lost his taste, there was no way the top-tier restaurants wouldn’t advance. Since the top-tier restaurants were a sure thing, that left only one place open for the other seven restaurants.

Because it was the Chinese-American Kings of Cooking Competition, for various reasons, the final showdown had to be between two Chinese restaurants and two Western restaurants, and Peng Changping’s Chinese restaurant on the American side would certainly advance.

Peng Changping’s Chinese restaurant, where he used to be the head chef, was arguably the strongest in America. However, since Peng Changping’s retirement and subsequent disengagement from any restaurant affairs, the quality had actually declined quite a bit. If not for the fact that Peng Changping was still alive and his influence lingered, the title of America’s number one Chinese restaurant might have changed hands.

It could be said that this was a Chinese restaurant with a lot of hype.

A Chinese restaurant that had no chance of defeating the top-tier restaurant.

And as the reigning number one chef of Western cuisine, there was no Western restaurant in America that could rival Chef Arno.

For the competition, both the audience and the production team actually wanted to see Chef Arno win the championship, as only his victory would guarantee ratings.

The only variable on Chef Arno’s path to the championship was Taifeng Building.

With reputations casting long shadows, Jiang Feng had become notorious throughout Beiping and even the whole country in a short time because of his chicken tofu flower, and he was also seen as Peng Changping’s last disciple by others. Sun Maochai was recognized as the active number one in Chinese cuisine.

This double elite combination of Taifeng Building was undoubtedly the biggest stumbling block on the top-tier restaurant’s path to the championship. Ironically, this large and solid stumbling block had not yet made a name for itself.

Although Sun Maochai was widely recognized as the number one active chef in Chinese cuisine, he was also recognized as a Chinese cuisine chef who couldn’t beat Chef Arno.

Jiang Feng, needless to say, had made a name for himself quickly yet had not had enough time to appear in the celebrity chefs compilation. The specifics of his skills and ranking were actually not yet clear to everyone.

Most importantly, Taifeng Building still had no background, no backing, no sugar daddy.

With such perfect conditions, it would just be too good an opportunity to miss for the production team not to take some action, to explain away the early disposal of Taifeng Building with the excuse of bad luck, to let Taifeng Building die before it could prove itself. They would really be too sorry if they didn’t take advantage of such a coincidence.

So Chef Arno was very clear that even if the production team had meddled, they had done so for his benefit. He was the one who stood to gain the most.

But that didn’t mean he was happy or accepting of it.

On the contrary, he was now very annoyed.

So annoyed that he wanted to make another call to rant some more.

Chef Arno was a man with a strong competitive spirit, exceedingly arrogant, extremely confident, always striving to reach the top, only wanting to prove he was the second best in the world, and then find an opportunity to challenge the first.

For the production team to clear his obstacles in this way was simply an insult to his character, an insult to his determination to be the world’s second best.

He, Chef Arno, intended to become the second-ranked chef in the prestigious chef listings!

If he won against Jiang Feng with these dirty and underhanded tactics, how could he ever hold his head up in front of Jiang Feng. Knowing that Jiang Feng wasn’t even Peng Changping’s disciple, if he couldn’t hold his head up in front of Jiang Feng, would that not mean he’d never be able to face Peng Changping in his lifetime.

The more Chef Arno thought about it, the angrier he got, the more he felt like shit, and the more he wanted to curse someone out.

And that’s exactly what he did.

Chef Arno called the production team’s hotline once again.

On the other side, Sun Jikai was also trying to call the production team’s hotline.

“Hello, the number you dialed is currently in a call. Please…”

Sun Jikai: ?

“Still in a call, it’s already past eleven o’clock, and I have to go to work tomorrow. Maybe we should just let it be for today,” Sun Jikai suggested.

Jiang Feng could only give up, “Then we’ll call again tomorrow.”

“It’s no problem,” Sun Maochai comforted, “It can’t get any worse, anyway.”

The three: …

On the other end, it was still the same newcomer answering the phone.

“Hello.” The young man felt a mixture of emotions.

In just those few minutes, he had thought about a lot.

At first, he was angry, thinking that his idol, Chef Arno, was making an unreasonable fuss.

Then, after his colleagues’ cryptic hints and the strange reactions of the head supervisor, the young man suddenly realized that their production team might not be as clean as he had thought, and that Chef Arno might not be making a fuss without reason.

He picked up the phone, carrying a mix of guilt, fear, apprehension, and admiration.

Indeed, worthy of his idol; with just a few words, so much could be discerned!

“Shit!”