Dao of Cooking

The room was a mess, tiles cracked, and the walls splintered. Bits of wood lay scattered over the bed. It seemed as if a battle had taken place right between the two beds. Half of the wooden shutters had disappeared, replaced by the cold night view beyond. Beneath them, two candles had snuffed out.

And then there were the boys. They stood silent, heads down.

“Back to your rooms, now!” Lei said, pushing through the other kids, waving them off. They all huddled near the door. Hardly a surprise, considering the loud cracks that had nearly shaken the whole house. But it was only when Zhu Luli gave them a glance that the kids scurried away, whispering among themselves.

“What happened here?” Lei asked as soon as he stepped into the room, heart still pounding in his chest. The boys seemed fine. Either way, he checked them for any wounds to be safe. He found nothing and let out a breath of relief.

I thought those bastards had come again.

“Who was it?” Zhu Luli asked, crossing her arms as she stood beside him. She scowled at the boys, as if deep in thought. “Who used Qi here?”

Lei cocked an eyebrow at her. Was that why the air felt so heavy in here? There was a suffocating pressure about it, pressing down on him like a thick, invisible blanket. He tried to wave it off, even to take it in, but it lingered around him.

“I—”

“It was me.” Snake stepped forward, looking up at the two of them. “I was… trying something.”

“Brother Snake!” Stone said, eyes widening. “You know—”

“I’m sorry, Little Brother.” Snake gave him a smile. “I should’ve listened to you. I made a mess in the middle of the night.”

Stone lowered his head, but Lei caught a small smile at the corner of his lips. What was up with these little devils? They acted so mysterious, as if they were hiding something.

“You?” Zhu Luli seemed to have something else on her mind as she pointed at the room. “You made this? Using Qi?”

“Yeah, I think I did.” Snake didn’t sound that sure. “I was trying to control the Qi around me. You said that we should see the spiritual energy of the world as a part of our true selves, right? Like another limb? I imagined it as a billowing cape, rolling down my shoulders. But it was—”

“A cape?” Lei blinked at the slippery brat. “This was the cause of it? Your cape nearly blew up the whole room?”

Snake shrugged, while Zhu Luli nodded in understanding. “It’s possible. You can’t really guide the Qi around you before the Qi Condensation Stage, but you can nudge it in certain ways. It would be foolish to do so,”—she glanced at Snake—"as it would be like releasing a cage of mindless beasts into a forest. They would thrash around, just like your little cape did.”

“Monstrous geniuses,” Lei muttered, shaking his head. “I guess I should’ve taken it literally.”

“It’s—”

“Don’t, Sister Luli. Don’t tell me it’s normal,” Lei sighed at her before turning to the boys. “I get it. You’re excited. You want to try new things. Who wouldn’t? But know that with great power comes great responsibility. From now on, if you want to try these new things, you will first get permission from your Teacher Zhu here. Understood?”

The boys nodded sheepishly. Snake even looked ashamed, staring down at his feet. Zhu Luli, on the other hand, was looking at Lei with a glint in her eyes.

“What?” Lei asked.

“Nothing,” Zhu Luli smiled. “Just that I didn’t expect you to quote Emperor Xia. You might not be the country bumpkin I thought you were. You’ve read one of his books, haven’t you?”

Are you serious?

“Yeah, no, I’ve heard it somewhere else,” Lei said, trying not to roll his eyes at this famed Emperor. He’d had his doubts before, but it was becoming obvious that this man was a fellow transmigrator like him. So it was true that he wasn’t alone.

Wait a second. If he has books...

“But I’ve been meaning to get one of his books for some time. You don’t happen to have one with you, do you?” Lei asked, keeping his face straight.

Zhu Luli shook her head. “I had one of his novels with me, but I lost it in the woods during a Dreadmare attack. That creature... I’m glad the book was the only thing I lost.”

She visibly shivered, but it wasn’t the Dreadmare part that caught Lei off guard. She’d said one of his novels.

“What was the name of that novel?” Lei asked, raising a hand when Zhu Luli looked at him. “We have a library here. I don’t want to go in blind picking some random book, so I’d appreciate a suggestion.”

“Mm.” Zhu Luli raised a hand to her chin, narrowing her eyes. She then snapped her fingers, her eyes flashing eagerly. “Then you must start with Lord of the Emperors. It’s a trilogy, and it has a whole new world that feels completely different from ours. It has species like orcs and elves!”

“You sure it isn’t Lord of the Kings?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Lord of the Emperors,” Zhu Luli nodded. “I’ve read it like multiple times. They’re good, and I mean really good.”

“Alright, then,” Lei said. “I’ll try it.”

They turned and stepped out of the room. Lei still didn’t know what to make of this Emperor of the East Continent. Not just him—this whole thing, actually. Something was very wrong with this world. It was a twisted mess, as if somebody poured every little thing they could find into a single bowl, mixing it with a spoon.

“Er… Big Brother Lei?” came a voice from behind.

Lei looked over his shoulder to see a confused Snake staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

Snake gulped nervously before pointing at the room. “What do we do with this… mess?”

“Clean it,” Lei said with a straight face. “It’s your mess, right? Then you ought to clean it yourselves. Get to work, now.”

He left the pair of them with their own mess and went to his bed.

…

The day passed in a confused daze. Everything was in motion. The table was set, and the house cleaned. Stone and Snake did most of the work as punishment, since Lei thought it would be a pity not to use their experience after they handled the mess in their rooms. At least this way, he hoped they had learned to think before doing something like that again.

It was getting late, and the kitchen was lively when Lei came to check on the kids. His would-be restaurant staff was busy preparing the ingredients. He saw the steaks resting on the side, next to a bowl full of Roseroot juice. Even though it was mostly rainwater mixed with spiritual energy, it had a pinkish hue. The stalks of the plant were cut and laid on a plate, seasoned with salt and pepper.

After the hunt they’d gone on during the weekend, they had more than a few spiritual plants—even spiritual meat—but they cooked most of the meat right away, as Lei didn’t want to keep it for long. Unlike most Immortal Cities, they didn’t have anything resembling a refrigerator here, and Lei hadn’t bothered to smoke or dry it.

The wind blew easily through the wooden shutters, the last light of the sun dotting the walls with little red circles. Night was close, and the old couple would be here in about an hour.

“We’re ready, Big Brother Lei,” said Little Jiao, taking her place near the counter. She glared at the others as they lounged around, gesturing for them to get in line. They obliged after a moment and stood at attention.

“Good,” Lei said, looking at them. The four kids had done most of the prep work, which was good practice for the restaurant. Lei still doubted whether he could trust them around meats and other complex dishes, but a part of him believed in the talent of these kids. It was a different kind of talent that wouldn’t make them cultivators, but Lei saw no difference.

“Start with cutting the pasta,” he said, motioning toward the yellowish dough that sat near the onions. “I want thin, long strips. What do we call it?”

“Spaghetti!” came a chorus of voices.

Lei smiled, letting them work the dough as he pulled out a pan — a cast iron one that Fatty Lou had delivered early in the morning, taken from Granny Xu’s place. She might be the Iron Lady to most of her staff and customers, but she surely knew her stuff around the kitchen. She’d ordered three of these pans from Lanzhou, and Lei knew they didn’t come cheap.

Putting the pan over the stove, he closed his eyes and started pondering. This was the crucial part. He didn’t want the dish to be overly spiritual, but he knew if he just used the Roseroot’s juice, it would be a standard dish made with spiritual ingredients. That had been the reason why Fatty Lou was doubtful about his restaurant plan. Could he make his dishes… less spiritual?

The obvious solution to that problem was to use his skill on the lesser ingredients. The gnarled fries and the spiritual burger were made directly with System-enhanced spiritual ingredients, which turned them potent enough to rival spiritual pills. What if, then, he used the skill on the Roseroot juice with which he would just baste the steaks while cooking?

The answer was that it depended. If he so much as cooked the meat beyond medium-rare, the enhanced Roseroot juice seeping into the cracks would turn the dish into a Medium-Quality Mortal-tier dish. Back when he started, making a Medium-Quality dish required multiple spiritual ingredients and a unique recipe, but now, the [Essence Enhancement] skill alone was enough to boost most basic spiritual dishes to Medium-Quality.

It will get harder and harder to control this skill, Lei thought.

He checked his status:

Name: Liang Lei

Age: 20

Class: Chef

Tier: (Tier Upgrade Quest Available)

Skills: Eyes of the Yellow Maiden, Spiritual Sensitivity -- Novice 5

Cooking Skills: Essence Enhancement - Novice 6

Cultivation Stage: 2nd Step of Body Tempering Stage

Dao: None

It had been days since he’d hit a roadblock in his Tier. To move on, he would have to cook an Earth-tier dish, but that was easier said than done. Just like the Body Tempering and Qi Condensation stages, Lei reckoned the system had a similar difference between its tiers. That was why even when he used a Medium-Quality ingredient, the recently improved Essence Enhancement couldn’t boost the dish to Earth-tier.

They had yet to find a real High-Quality ingredient he could use. The Darkloom Forest was full of spiritual beasts and plants, but according to Zhu Luli, the scarcity of spiritual energy in the forest couldn’t support a Qi Condensation Stage beast. Beasts of that stage would simply migrate to more energy-rich locations. In theory, they could still find one or two if they ventured deeper into the forest, but they didn’t want to risk it.

Those bastards were still out there.

And then there was the Spiritual Sensitivity skill. Unlike the Essence Enhancement skill, Lei wasn’t sure what really changed with each upgrade. The descriptions of the plants and the things around him mostly stayed the same, with just a sentence or two that lacked real insight. He had felt a little jolt around his neck when Snake and Stone nearly blew up their room, but it was just that — a jolt that could’ve meant anything.

Perhaps he hadn’t been around any spiritual anomalies to tell the difference. The skill made it clear that it had something to do with those, after all.

A part of him was disappointed that he hadn’t received a new skill after everything he’d been through, but he was still aiming for the Tier Upgrade. It sounded like a significant change, just like how it was for cultivators who stepped into the Qi Condensation Stage for the first time.

That was a curious detail, to Lei’s thinking. Could it be that the System somehow imitated the stages in the cultivation world but called them different names? And what about that Emperor Xia? Was he sent here by the system as well? Lei had made a mental note to get one of his books after he convinced Granny Xu and Master Li, but just that Lord of the Emperors alone gave him enough hints.

Emperor Aragorn. It was hard to come up with such a name in an ancient world of cultivation if you didn’t have prior knowledge.

“Alright, it’s time to start,” he said, glancing toward the shutters — the sun was down. “Little Jiao, let’s start with the pasta. And I want that arrabiata sauce perfectly seasoned. You can’t put too much basil in it, so I’m leaving that up to you. I’ll check the sauce in a bit.”

Lei snapped his fingers toward Little Yunru and Little Chuanli. “You boys start cutting those stalks for me. I want them salted and grilled. Don’t you dare burn them, or else! Chop chop, boys!”

The kids moved efficiently around the kitchen, gathering ingredients rapidly. Little Ning, on the other hand, stepped near Lei and waited, hands clasped behind her back. Today she would be Lei’s assistant, learning how to cook the steaks.

“We want the pan hot,” Lei said, kindling the stove. The wood crunched and released a puff of smoke, earning a smile from Lei. “I’ll go with salt only, but you can spread a pinch of pepper as well. Can’t go wrong with those two. And I don’t want to play too much with the meat. Just let it cook over the wood fire, build that crust slow and steady.”

Lei checked the pan with a hand, palm facing downward. He waited a few seconds before deciding it was hot enough. Then he took one of the steaks near the stove and winked at Little Ning before slapping it on the pan.

It hissed and sizzled, releasing a delicate swirl of smoke that curled around Lei’s fingers. He slapped another one, and another, until the pan contained three gorgeous steaks sizzling their tasty little song.

“Juice,” Lei said, pressing a finger onto one of the steaks. Little Ning pulled the Roseroot juice bowl near the pan, craning her head toward the steaks. “Flip,” Lei said, flipping the steaks one by one. After that was done, he used the [Essence Enhancement] on the Roseroot juice.

“Eh?” came Little Ning’s voice. She yelped, pointing at the bowl. “It’s shining!”

“Yeah, it is!” Lei said, though he still covered the bowl with his hand. That was one of the new changes to the skill. It made the enhanced ingredient shimmer with inner light, as if announcing the effect to the whole world. The kids enjoyed it, saying he was really a Heavenly Cook, but it would certainly make it hard for Lei to keep his influence over the ingredient a secret in the future — especially from curious eyes.

“Juice, in,” he said, letting Little Ning take the bowl and pour the juice into the pan. Lei grabbed a spoon from under the counter and lifted the pan to start basting the steaks. The pinkish rainwater mixed beautifully into the marbled meat. Lei found himself gulping at the blackish-brown crust that coated the steaks.

“Fifteen seconds,” he muttered, working the spoon with a deft hand. Scoop the juice and splash it across the meat. Let it soak it all in.

At one point, all the kids — even Stone and Snake — had sneaked into the kitchen, staring silently at the pan. The smell was something magical, like a sneaky siren stealing the hearts of men. It beckoned them with a call unlike any other. The juice evaporated into a fragrant swirl, leaving only three perfectly cooked steaks in the pan.

“Is this…”

“I don’t think I can hold myself.”

“Heavenly Cook… I’ve never seen meat like this before. I want it.”

Lei turned to glare them down after he set the steaks to rest. “You’ll have to wait, brats! But I’ll let you know that if you put up a good show for Granny Xu and Master Li tonight, then you can have more of these… two for each of you!”

“What?!”

“Deal!” Stone’s voice, high-pitched and full of passion. He shouldered past the others, towering over the group. “I’ll keep the order, Big Brother Lei, you can count on me.”

“I sure can, eh, Little Stone?” Lei chuckled happily. “Then let’s get back to work.”

He still had more steaks to cook and a sauce to tend to. That old couple... they wouldn't know what hit them.