The Game of Life

As soon as Wang Hao returned to the dormitory, he saw the basin of dough on Jiang Feng’s desk.

The lights were blazing in the dormitory, the doors and windows were shut tight, the rolling pin was stored in the cabinet and hadn’t been taken out, Jiang Feng’s shoes were scattered next to the chair, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind only the mysterious dough on the desk.

Only 21 years old but with more than ten years of experience reading novels, and even trying his hand at writing one this year, Wang Hao’s imagination couldn’t help but run wild.

Wang Hao remembered that something had been off about Jiang Feng since last year.

After last summer’s vacation, Feng had changed. Everyone used to be academic slackers, but Feng secretly became a top student, skipping classes and not worrying about finals, immersing himself in cooking and enjoying making all sorts of strange dishes. If Jiang Feng’s surname wasn’t Jiang but Liu instead, Wang Hao might have suspected that Jiang Feng was in fact the descendant of the legendary Little Chinese Chef, Liu Maoxing.

Wang Hao stood in place, calmly thinking for a moment, then tentatively called out to the dough on the table, “Feng?”

Jiang Feng, who had just returned from fetching hot water and overheard Wang Hao calling out to the dough, was dumbfounded: ????

Had he become stupid from romance, or from studying?

“I’m here,” Jiang Feng said.

Wang Hao was startled, quickly turning his head to see Jiang Feng holding a hot water bottle behind him, and he breathed a sigh of relief, “You scared me to death, Feng, you don’t make a sound when you walk.”

Jiang Feng: ???

Jiang Feng, who had long been accustomed to Wang Hao’s various quirky behaviors, silently took the hot water kettle to the chair next to him, sat down, and started to ask a soul-searching question, “Have you memorized your textbook?”

Wang Hao: …

Feng, you’ve changed. You weren’t like this before.

“Feng, why are you kneading dough late at night?” Wang Hao tried to change the subject.

Jiang Feng sighed, “You don’t understand, the stress from cooking has been too much lately. Kneading dough at night helps me relax.”

Wang Hao: o_O???

“So… what about this dough?” Wang Hao asked.

Jiang Feng fell silent.

Indeed, what should be done with this dough? When he kneaded it, he had not thought about what to do with it afterward, the dorm wasn’t home, and with only a rice cooker, even thinking about making dumplings and chopping stuffing was troublesome.

“Hao, are you hungry?” Jiang Feng asked with a mischievous smile.

“Hmm?”

“How about I pull some noodles for you?”

…

In the end, the dough that Jiang Feng had kneaded went to waste, and Wang Hao didn’t manage to taste Jiang Feng’s noodle pulling before Wu Minqi did. The reason was simple, Jiang Feng found out the rice cooker in their dormitory was broken.

Indeed, the quality of the 50-yuan rice cooker bought from Taobao couldn’t be trusted.

Learning from the night’s lesson, Jiang Feng decided to change his dough-kneading routine, switching to kneading dough in the morning at Master Huang’s shop and taking the two bags of flour he bought to Master Huang’s shop as well.

So, on the second morning of the semester, the students who went to eat noodles at Master Huang’s shop were surprised to find that Master Huang seemed to have taken on a new apprentice, who was already kneading dough early in the shop. If these students were from the physics department and had ever eaten at the Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant, they might be even more surprised to discover that the apprentice Master Huang mentioned looked very familiar, as if they had seen him somewhere before.

Master Huang appreciated Jiang Feng’s dough-kneading skills. If not for knowing that he was from a family of heritage chefs and that Sir Jiang had a fiery temperament, he might have even wanted to take Jiang Feng on as an apprentice and have him inherit his noodle shop after learning noodle pulling.

“Ding.” The game suddenly sprang back to life.

Jiang Feng paused in his kneading, wondering if he had randomly triggered some sort of side quest. He quickly resumed kneading.

“Feng, at this stage, you don’t need to work the dough as hard as before. Kneading requires skill, not just strength; otherwise, you’ll wear out the chef.” Master Huang took the dough from Jiang Feng’s hands and started to demonstrate personally. The dough in his hands seemed to come alive, effortlessly changing shapes, looking much more relaxed than when Jiang Feng was kneading.

“Three lights are just a standard, but to truly knead a dough well you need to train hard. It’s about feeling, and once you catch the feeling, everything falls into place. Practice more, and as you do, the feeling will come,” Master Huang said, handing the dough back to Jiang Feng.

Jiang Feng nodded, thinking that this sort of thing sounded familiar to him, as chefs in Chinese cuisine also prioritize feeling.

“Boss, two bowls of beef noodles, a large and a small one, and a bowl of seafood noodles with no green onions, packed for takeout,” said a customer who walked in while Jiang Feng was still kneading.

When customers arrived, Master Huang couldn’t continue talking to Jiang Feng and went behind the cooking station to start pulling noodles.

Unless the customer requested otherwise, Master Huang would just make ordinary-sized noodle strands, pulling them eight times. Ever since the rise of takeout, he didn’t know how many times a day he had to make these noodles—it was done both skillfully and swiftly.

As Jiang Feng kneaded dough, he watched Master Huang’s noodle-pulling movements, starting to get the illusion that it didn’t seem particularly difficult after all.

Since he started learning to cook with Sir Jiang, this kind of illusion had occurred seven or eight times a day.

Jiang Feng kneaded dough, and Master Huang pulled noodles. Jiang Feng had all three meals at Master Huang’s restaurant—beef noodle soup, bone broth noodles, pork intestine noodles, tomato and egg noodles, and seafood noodles—he switched between these, and days passed like this until the 9th arrived suddenly.

Jiang Feng had booked a return ticket to Beiping for the evening of the 9th. Knowing he would leave that night, Master Huang didn’t just have him watch anymore. Whenever there weren’t customers in the shop, he’d let Jiang Feng try his hand at pulling noodles.

The results, of course, spoke for themselves. Jiang Feng was famously quick to learn but quick to mess up, with a 99.9% chance of failing any new dish he tried for the first time.

The ticket Jiang Feng had booked was for after 11 p.m., still the kind of sleeper where he could doze off and arrive in Beiping. This time he booked a soft sleeper, hoping for good luck and a night of sweet dreams before reaching Beiping.

After his 4:30 p.m. class finished, Jiang Feng felt he had some time, so he went back to the dormitory to pack his bags and then directly took his suitcase to Master Huang’s restaurant. He intended to learn for a few last hours before heading to the train station.

“Yes, pay attention to the motion of your hands, it doesn’t matter if it’s lighter or slower. Shake it, let the dough shake.”

Initially, Jiang Feng only agreed to have Master Huang coach him until he got the hang of noodle pulling, but it had clearly turned into a master-apprentice teaching style, the kind where the master teaches the disciple hands-on, every trick in the book.

“This won’t do, start over with a new portion, and find the feel for it.”

“Right, this time your rolling is better than before. The movements should be smooth; the smoother they are, the better the feel. Remember what I told you about noodle pulling, don’t just fix your eyes on the dough. Yes, that’s very good.”

“No, you see, you just got tense again. You need to stretch it out slowly and gently, don’t rush it.”

“Breaking is very normal. Who can manage to succeed so smoothly from the very start? Even geniuses can’t do that. Try again. The skill of the White Chef is practiced through repetition, even a thousand or ten thousand times if necessary, so that even a fool could become a genius.”

Master Huang’s instruction for Jiang Feng continued until the shop closed at 9 p.m. Jiang Feng knew that Master Huang had given his all that day, even teaching him the summary of his many years of noodle-pulling experience.

“Master Huang, thank you for these past few days.” Jiang Feng sincerely expressed his thanks. “If you ever have time, come visit Beiping. I’ll make you my specialty dish, Sweet and Sour Yam.”

“No need to thank me. I just casually taught a bit. You have a talent for this, don’t waste it,” said Master Huang, having not felt the joy of teaching a disciple in many years and genuinely happy.

“If I don’t leave now, I’ll miss the last subway. I’m off to the train station. Remember to visit Beiping when you have time. I added you on WeChat a few days ago,” Jiang Feng said with a smile.

Thinking about Jiang Feng’s rapid progress from zero to proficiency within just a few days, Master Huang suddenly mustered his courage and suggested, “Feng, how about delaying your return for a few days and staying to learn noodle pulling from Master Huang? You can go back to Beiping after you’ve learned.”

Jiang Feng: ???

This sudden keenness to take on a disciple was unexpectedly happening to me!

This was the protagonist’s treatment in the legends!

Jiang Feng stood stunned on the spot.

“If your parents and grandfather disagree, I’ll go talk to them. You were meant to be in this profession, and you shouldn’t waste such talent in pastry-making,” Master Huang said courageously.

Jiang Feng was taken aback, realizing that Master Huang might have misunderstood their family’s culinary structure. He explained, “Master Huang, my grandfather is skilled in pastry-making.”

“Ah?”

“It was just my dad who only learned the Red Chef style from my grandfather and didn’t learn pastry-making. You remember my uncle, right? The tallest and strongest among my uncles, the one with hair. He’s very good at pastry-making. If I wanted to learn that, my grandfather wouldn’t object,” Jiang Feng said.

It was just that the two Sirs were currently focused on teaching him sea cucumber dishes and weren’t going to teach him pastry-making at this time. The Jiang Family Dishes were indeed not limited to the Red Chef style; they also explored pastry-making.

“Thank you for these past few days, Master,” Jiang Feng said.

Sir Jiang had taught him from a young age about the many types of masters in the culinary field: those who teach their apprentices for over a decade, as close as fathers, and those who teach only a single dish or for just a few days. Regardless of the type, if they ever taught the apprentice with full dedication, then they are masters, and the apprentice should respect, love, and honor them, for they had once been their teacher.

In his life, Jiang Weiguo had many masters, and although he had never formally undergone a disciple initiation ceremony, those masters held a place in his heart, and he would respect and cherish them, fulfilling the duties of any apprentice.

It was just now that Jiang Feng realized Master Huang was his first culinary master outside of his family members.

Master Huang was momentarily startled, then laughed, “If you have time to come back, remember to drop by. I’ll make the thirteen-fold pulled noodles for you.”

“Definitely,” Jiang Feng smiled, and left with his suitcase.

Master Huang turned back to look at the clean kitchen counter that Jiang Feng had just swept and the table he had wiped carefully, nodding and smiling to himself.

“Jiang Jiankang really has a good son, lucky him. Too bad I don’t have that luck,” he said.

“This kid Feng cleans tables pretty well too.”

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