The Game of Life

Several days had passed in the blink of an eye, and Ji Xia got along well with the kitchen staff. Jiang Feng didn’t explicitly say that Ji Xia was her disciple, but she just told everyone that Ji Xia would start learning the craft and helping out in the kitchen from that day on.

The kitchen staff assumed this was a job position that Ji Xue had asked Jiang Feng to arrange for Ji Xia, and everyone was happy to have an extra pair of hands to make the work a bit easier. Considering that Ji Xia was Ji Xue’s younger sister and seemed to have a good relationship with Jiang Feng and Wu Minqi, the staff were also willing to help her with any questions or matters she wanted to discuss.

As for Ji Xia’s usual reticence, it didn’t stand out in the kitchen.

Probably only Sang Ming was talkative in the kitchen; at other times, aside from the necessary calls for dish names, passing items, or serving food, people usually stayed quiet if they could. After all, work was tiring enough, so why not speak less if possible.

After a week of training, Ji Xia had become a very qualified kitchen helper.

She wasn’t yet taking on the task of chopping on the cutting board, but her daily knife skills practice was indispensable. Jiang Feng pondered and came up with an excellent idea— letting Ji Xia go to the Li family old house every noon to chop pig feed for Da Hua.

This was a rite of passage for every Jiang family child. The successive generations of Da Hua, Erhua, and Sanhua in the Jiang family’s pigsty were all fed with slop born under the knives of one Jiang child after another, either cooked into mush by Mrs. Jiang or personally fried by Sir Jiang.

The pig feed was abundant and didn’t care how poorly you chopped it since it would end up in a messy cook anyway. With Mrs. Jiang as a ready-made supervisor, she had watched her 5 sons chop pig feed when she was young, her 4 grandsons when she got older, and recently even her two granddaughters. Now, not only could Mrs. Jiang supervise Ji Xia cutting the feed, but she could also offer advice on how to chop, what techniques to use, and how to improve the chopping.

At present, the young Ji Xia’s most ambitious goal was to chop pig feed that would satisfy Mrs. Jiang and make Da Hua happy.

After a few days of interaction, Ji Xia had built a deep friendship with Da Hua. She had raised chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, and cats at home but had never had a pig, so she was especially curious about pig farming.

After hearing that Da Hua was Jiang Feng’s pet, Ji Xia’s regard for Da Hua reached a certain peak.

The master’s pet!

You must chop the vegetables well!

Ji Xia outright ignored that no matter how she chopped or whether the cook was Chen Suhua or Mrs. Jiang, the veggies’ fate was to be turned into mush and poured into the pig trough, followed by Da Hua’s satisfied grunts.

On a sunny and breezy afternoon, Ji Xia was chopping potatoes as usual at the Li family old house. Mrs. Jiang had a card game today, so supervising was done by Chen Suhua. However, it was Mrs. Jiang’s turn to cook for Da Hua today, so Chen Suhua would go and take over for Mrs. Jiang after Ji Xia finished chopping.

Even when Chen Suhua was supervising, she didn’t idle and took some time to give Da Hua a bath. Although Da Hua was essentially a domestic pig, as a pet, it needed to look like one.

After months of meticulous care and occasionally hustling Da Hua out into the yard for a walk, Da Hua was no longer as fat as during the New Year due to being sedentary. Instead, it began to resemble the physique of the preceding Da Hua.

Plump and sturdy, but strong and healthy.

This led Mrs. Jiang to often grumble behind the scenes that her little grandson was good in every way, but sometimes his ideas were baffling. To not butcher such a fine pig or keep it for breeding, but instead to insist on keeping it as a pet seemed like such a waste.

“Ji Xia, when you go back today, talk to Feng as well,” Chen Suhua said. “I know modern young people are impatient with everything. They start raising pets but end up leaving the responsibilities to their parents. But Da Hua is ultimately the pet he wanted to raise. A few months back, he would come over every day, eagerly chopping vegetables and frying pig food for it, but now, with him being busy, he doesn’t visit Da Hua for weeks. This can’t go on. Tell him to come and see Da Hua tomorrow or the day after. You can’t neglect a pet’s care.” Since Professor Li’s students were the majority of the young people Chen Suhua met, she was accustomed to addressing young ladies and young men with the term ‘student’.

“I’ll tell the master when I get back,” Ji Xia immediately agreed.

“But Feng has been really working hard,” Chen Suhua began her daily ramble. “A couple of days ago, I heard from my husband Li that Feng still had to find time for his graduation thesis. No wonder he hasn’t had much time to come over lately…”

Ji Xia was very cooperative, cutting vegetables while listening attentively on the side.

…

Jiang Feng was spacing out in the back kitchen.

It couldn’t exactly be called spacing out; at first, he was indeed practicing seriously, but as he practiced, his mind wandered to Ji Xia’s training plan, and before he knew it, he was lost in thought about who knows what.

It was his first time being a mentor, and Jiang Feng was taking it very seriously.

Not only did he carefully recall the entire process of learning to cook as a child, but he also earnestly sought advice from Granduncle Weiming on how to properly instruct a disciple, and even developed a training plan.

This training plan was to replicate the process by which Sir Jiang taught him when he was younger and integrate it with Granduncle Weiming’s advice to provide Ji Xia with proper care and encouragement.

The specific approach was to offer Ji Xia some praise at the end of each day, such as:

“Hmm, the potato pieces you cut in the picture today show improvement over yesterday,” or “Hmm, you cut the vegetables very quickly today,” the kind of insincere praise.

Jiang Feng was just thinking about how to compliment Ji Xia later, since he doesn’t have a vast repertoire of praise, in contrast to the extensive vocabulary of insults he’s accumulated. He had pretty much exhausted all his complimentary words these past few days.

“Ding, game update complete.”

“A new optional side quest has been discovered.”

“A new optional side quest has been discovered.”

“Ding, a new optional main quest has been discovered. Please choose at your discretion.”

“Ding, received a new evaluation: A chef who has achieved some success.”

“Congratulations to the player for reaching level 25 and unlocking the new function: Backtracking.”

A series of system notifications completely baffled Jiang Feng.

There was no time to go to the restroom. Jiang Feng looked around to ensure there was no one in the back kitchen, glanced at his watch to gauge that it was an unlikely time for anyone to enter, and then directly opened the familiar panel in front of the cooking station.

Player Name: Jiang Feng

Level: 25 (97842/25w)

“`

Skill: Appraisal (High Level): You can obtain all the information you desire.

Cooking Porridge (High Level): Your porridge cooking has surpassed the vast majority of chefs. (11111/100,000)

Knife Skills (Master Level): Your knifework has reached the level of top chefs. (404,379/1,000,000)

Fire Control (Master Level): Your fire control has reached the level of top chefs. (39,851/1,000,000)

Seasoning (Master Level): Your seasoning has reached the level of top chefs. (31,678/1,000,000)

Lies (High Level): Your lies can convince most people. (91,337/100,000)

Mathematics (High Level): You have completely mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. [Not upgradable]

Physics (High Level): You have completely mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. [Not upgradable]

English (High Level): You have completely mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. [Not upgradable]

Food Testing (Intermediate): You can differentiate ingredients, and that’s about it. (Not upgradable)

Main Quest (Optional) (Skip duplicates):

2. [Improve Yourself]: As the hidden owner of Taifeng Building as well as its future head chef, how could you command respect without solid skills? Strength is the most powerful weapon to earn respect and recognition from everyone. Please complete 10 different dishes with a rating of A or above. [Choose: Yes/No]

Quest Reward: Unknown

Side Quest (Optional):

1. [Master Huang’s Appreciation]: As a white chef with nearly 30 years of noodle pulling experience and no successor, Huang Shi has always wanted to train a chef who could learn his noodle pulling techniques, even a rough understanding would satisfy him. Please produce noodles with a score of 6 knots or above to earn Master Huang’s appreciation. [Choose: Yes/No]

Quest Reward: Noodle Pulling (Beginner)

2. [Ji Xue’s Wish]: The past cannot be changed, what we can do is to make every effort to make the unpredictable future beautiful. Please fulfill Ji Xue’s wish for Ji Xia to find the right path and have a clear plan for the future. [Choose: Yes/No]

Quest Reward: A piece of Ji Xue’s memory

…

Rating: A moderately successful chef.

Three optional quests appeared at once, and Jiang Feng felt that none of them posed a problem. He had even already completed the side quest given by Master Huang, so he accepted them all.

“Ding. You have completed the side quest: [Master Huang’s Appreciation], and have received the quest reward: Noodle Pulling (Beginner).”

“Ding. You have completed the side quest: [Ji Xue’s Wish], and have obtained the quest reward: A piece of Ji Xue’s memory.”

What Jiang Feng didn’t expect was that Ji Xue’s wish had been fulfilled, meaning Ji Xia had already made a clear plan for the future.

Now the question arose, did Ji Xia want to become a white chef or a red chef, or did he want to continue pursuing his dream of opening a breakfast shop back in town?

After all, Ji Xia was his, Jiang Feng’s, major disciple, and going back to town to open a breakfast shop seemed to lack prestige.

Jiang Feng looked back at the main quest. The current progress showed (2/10). Clearly, the game recognized his Sweet and Sour Yam and Yun Chicken as A-rated, with the quest hint being just a simple sentence.

Please work hard to improve your cooking skills.

Jiang Feng suspected the game was scoffing at him.

Anyway, the game wasn’t scoffing at him for the first time, and he wasn’t being scoffed at for the first time; after all, the younger generation of the Jiang Family had been scoffed at by Sir Jiang since they were young. Compared to the main quest, the new backtracking function seemed more intriguing to Jiang Feng.

That’s because next to the word “Backtracking” in the attributes panel, there was a small question mark.

As someone who had played games before, Jiang Feng naturally reached out to the question mark, and sure enough, this question mark explained the backtracking function.

[Players can backtrack through the memory associated with any recipe they have acquired. They can go back through the entire memory or choose specific memory segments for backtracking. Only one dish’s memory can be backtracked at a time, and there’s a 7-day cooldown period for each backtracking. Current cooldown time: 0]

Seeing this explanation made Jiang Feng’s eyes light up. Initially, when he obtained memories, they were divided into one-time entries and multiple entries, but at the time, multiple entries had no apparent purpose, and this function was soon patched as a bug in the next update.

Just because it was useless then, doesn’t mean it is now. As Jiang Feng acquired more and more memories, more and more dishes began to appear in those memories. Whether it was the authentic Clear Soup with Willow Leaf Swallow made by Jiang Chengde in Jiang Huiqin’s memories or the kitchen of Yonghe House filled with all kinds of Tan Family Cuisine dishes from Cao Guixiang’s memories, they were all worth revisiting repeatedly with the backtracking function.

Suppressing the urge to use the backtracking feature to return to the kitchen of Yonghe House, Jiang Feng opened the items tab.

[A piece of Jiang Chengde’s memory]

Ever since he completed the main quest and acquired this memory, Jiang Feng had not forgotten about it. Although he did not often check the update progress in the attributes panel during the game update, he was still thinking about this piece of memory.

After all, it was his great-grandfather’s memory.

The legend who could turn cabbage into a delicacy of immortals.

Just what kind of divine dish would be memorable to him!

With various fantasies in mind, Jiang Feng clicked yes.

“`

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