Chapter 95 - 93: Need to Find a Good Reason

Chapter 95: Chapter 93: Need to Find a Good Reason

Once Chen Jingle adjusted his attitude, the true extent of his abilities was astonishing. Although the system provided significant help, even the most powerful system in the world would be useless if he lacked subjective initiative. This perfectly demonstrated the importance of subjective initiative emphasized in dialectical materialism.

Take cooking, for example. As long as Chen Jingle wanted to, he could recreate any highly difficult dish from the Eight Great Culinary Traditions—even those on the verge of being lost or already lost to history. The only difference was how much time it would take. Relatively simple recipes were easy to reproduce; it was no different from ordinary cooking, just requiring a bit more care. However, for those lost recipes with no tutorials available online, he had to meticulously study ancient texts and conduct repeated experiments.

Being able to achieve this was already absurd. Even internet-famous chefs who prided themselves on their culinary talent might spend months trying to recreate a dish from a video and still fail. Take the Jade Pearl Fish Flower, for instance. As a top-tier dish in Huaiyang cuisine, it was on the brink of being lost. Out of the countless Huaiyang restaurants out there, very few chefs were capable of—or willing to—make it.

Why? Because it was too much of a hassle.

Its flavor profile was basically identical to Squirrel Fish—a sweet and sour taste. However, its intricate presentation added an immense layer of difficulty, severely testing a chef’s knife skills and precision. Ordinary cooks couldn’t make it or couldn’t make it well; it required the touch of a master chef. Yet, master chefs found it too time-consuming and labor-intensive to be worth the effort. Thus, it gradually faded into an elegant delicacy that ordinary people couldn’t afford. With the system’s help, Chen Jingle didn’t find it too bad. He just needed to learn it and then make it.

Just two simple steps.

Chen Qiyun, as a result, was in for a treat. She sat at home stuffing her face with dishes that others couldn’t even find in high-end restaurants. While eating, she didn’t forget to take a picture and send it to Teacher Li. Chen Jingle always said that one should learn to share good things with others, and this was exactly how she chose to share.

Li Beixing seriously considered blocking her. Who did that? Sending these kinds of pictures right before someone was about to eat—how despicable! She took the picture and showed it to her family’s private chef. "Auntie Wang, do you know how to make this dish?"

Auntie Wang was proficient in several culinary traditions, and her skills were on par with any head chef at a fancy hotel. But when she saw the picture Li Beixing displayed, she grew a bit nervous. "This looks like the Jade Pearl Fish Flower from Huaiyang cuisine. It’s similar to Squirrel Fish, but the knife work is much more difficult. I haven’t made it before, so I might not do it perfectly, but I can give it a try. Do you want to eat this, Miss?"

Amateurs look at the spectacle, but experts see the skill. One glance at the finished dish and she knew it was definitely the work of a master chef. Was it because she had done something wrong recently, and the young miss was trying to make things difficult for her so she could fire her? Please, no! A job that paid twenty thousand yuan a month just to cook for a family of three was incredibly hard to find, especially in a small place like Jiangbei.

Li Beixing hadn’t thought that deeply about it. She simply wanted to try it and didn’t mind if it didn’t turn out perfectly. "Let’s make this for dinner tonight, then."

"Understood. I’ll have someone deliver a fish right away." Auntie Wang’s palms were already sweating, and she hurriedly wiped them on her apron.

Li Beixing waved her hand dismissively. "It’s fine if it’s a bit late. My parents probably won’t be back until later anyway."

Unsurprisingly, when dinner time came, although Auntie Wang successfully prepared the Jade Pearl Fish Flower, it wasn’t exactly perfect. Fortunately, there were no major issues with the taste. However, compared to the photo Chen Qiyun had sent, the gap between the two was glaringly obvious. One looked like an exquisite piece of art, while the other resembled a mass-produced modern craft—that was roughly the difference.

Nevertheless, Li Qiguang and his wife were very satisfied with it. They thought the dish was quite creative, tasted wonderful, and was worthy of praise. This made Li Beixing incredibly curious—were those delicacies Chen Qiyun posted really made by her older brother? Did Chen Jingle, a man who practiced calligraphy and painting, really have the time to learn how to cook? And to do it so well? She was a bit skeptical, but she doubted Chen Qiyun would lie about something like this.

She wondered, "So, aside from all this, what else can Chen Jingle do?"

Her curiosity about the man was only growing. Was there truly someone in the world who knew everything and was an expert at everything? That was impossible!

If it had been the old Chen Jingle, he wouldn’t have known how to do much, let alone be considered an expert. It could only be said that he was decent. He was like a monkey proclaiming himself king of the mountain because there were no tigers around. But if he wanted to evolve from a mere mountain king into the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, he had a very long road ahead of him.

But what was his situation? In a word: lazy!

He had left the top-tier talents bestowed by the system entirely unused, muddling along day by day, slacking off whenever he could. Yes, he completed the missions, but the difficulty of those missions was basically on the level of daily login rewards in a mobile game—grabbing whatever standard rewards the system handed out and saving up for a ten-pull before calling it quits. He didn’t take on challenges, didn’t turn up the difficulty, and didn’t grind new dungeons. In short, he wouldn’t try anything that he found remotely difficult.

Of course, there was no great fault in living like that, and no one could say he was wrong. Even if he continued down that path, with the system’s help, he would eventually make a name for himself in multiple fields and become a figure of awe and admiration. But those achievements would belong almost entirely to the system. To put it bluntly, even a pig bound to this system could accomplish the exact same thing.

So—what exactly did Chen Jingle have to brag about?

He couldn’t just act like a classic Japanese anime protagonist, thinking that simply being "gentle" was enough. Those blandly gentle protagonists had already been entirely phased out of the market, because being nice without having actual abilities was the most useless trait in the world! You had to prove your worth! The fact that Chen Jingle had realized this, snapped out of his complacency, and actually taken action made him far better than the vast majority of those good-for-nothing, overly gentle protagonists.

That evening, instead of his usual extracurricular reading, Chen Jingle decided to spend his time watching and studying various cooking tutorial videos for the first time in a while.

Looking at all the knowledge and skills he currently possessed—leaving aside theoretical subjects like literature, math, foreign languages, history, and politics—there was simply too much to learn if he wanted to reach the pinnacle of any industry. The literature he needed to read could pile up into a mountain. Among his practical skills—calligraphy, painting, planting, and cooking—he had originally picked up calligraphy and painting to show off, and later used them to make money. Planting was just to pass the time and cultivate a peaceful state of mind.

Cooking, however, was the one skill he felt could most effectively improve his happiness. For someone who had stumbled through life, leaving behind countless large and small emotional scars from growing up, good food was the simplest and most effective way to heal and fill those voids.

He specifically sought out highly difficult state banquet dishes, signature recipes from the Eight Great Culinary Traditions, and exclusive techniques. For instance, the Soup-Filled Yellow Croaker from Lu Cuisine. The technique of deboning a whole fish using just a pair of chopsticks was something only a Direct Disciple could ever hope to learn in the past. But nowadays on the internet, many master chefs—seeing that their apprentices lacked the talent and drive to inherit these skills, and fearing that these techniques would be lost forever—preferred to reveal their secrets publicly just to ensure they were passed down. Thanks to this, Chen Jingle was able to appreciate and learn these closely guarded techniques.

Another example was the legendary Kangle Restaurant’s famous Jiangnan dish, Peach Blossom Float, also known as Tomato Crust Shrimp. It was the bona fide signature dish of a top-ten chef from the First National Chef Competition. Of course, friends from Sichuan and Chongqing might know it by another name: "Bombing Tokyo." Then there was the Jiangnan Hundred Flowers Chicken from Cantonese Cuisine. Ordinary people might never have even heard of it, but it was the crown jewel of the Wenyuan Restaurant during the Republic of China era.

As for must-learn staples like Mapo Tofu, Kung Pao Chicken, and Beef Chow Fun, there was no need to even elaborate on them. After an entire night of watching videos, he had truly reaped a massive harvest of knowledge.

If his previous skill level could have allowed him to set up a street stall with lines around the block, his current skills would allow him to open a restaurant with reservations booked solid until next year. To sound a bit arrogant, based purely on the quality of the dishes he knew how to cook, he was now nearly at the level of a culinary grandmaster—and not just in a single cuisine.

Of course, becoming a true grandmaster involved far more than simply knowing how to cook well. The road from a little monkey to a monkey king, and finally to the Great Sage, was still very long.

For the foreseeable future, Chen Jingle’s plan was to constantly experiment with various top-tier dishes to challenge his limits. Waste was shameful, but wasting one’s own talent was downright offensive. People often said that squandered gifts were easily taken back by the heavens. Heaven only knew when this unexpectedly acquired system might be revoked, so Chen Jingle had no choice but to force himself to work hard.

Meanwhile, Li Beixing felt a lingering sense of dissatisfaction after finishing her dinner. She reached out to Chen Qiyun to fish for information.

"Was that dish you ate this afternoon really made by your brother?"

Chen Qiyun replied, "Teacher Li, I’m studying right now."

Uh...

Li Beixing couldn’t help but feel a sudden pang of guilt. She had actually interrupted her student’s studying. However, Chen Qiyun quickly followed up with, "Of course. Why would I lie about that?"

Curious, Li Beixing asked, "Then how did he make it?"

"He just bought a fish, did this and that, and it was done."

Exasperated, Li Beixing replied, "...Could you be a bit more specific?"

Chen Qiyun thought for a moment. "He gutted the fish... and deep-fried it?"

"..."

Forget it. Asking this little idiot was a complete waste of time.

She thought, "According to Auntie Wang, whoever made that dish has to be at least a Huaiyang cuisine master. But Chen Jingle... Wait, if he doesn’t have a teacher and is purely self-taught, then that’s even more ridiculous."

Li Beixing found it incredibly hard to believe. If she told anyone else, they probably wouldn’t believe it either. For one person to display such extraordinary talent in so many different fields simultaneously—all while being entirely self-taught and reaching the pinnacle of each respective field—was simply outrageous. Could someone’s talent truly be this freakish?

Even though part of the truth was already laid bare before her eyes, she was still somewhat reluctant to accept it. If it were just Chen Qiyun bragging, she wouldn’t have cared, but the fact that Auntie Wang herself admitted she fell short meant there was real substance to it. If she ever got the chance, she desperately wanted to taste Chen Jingle’s cooking to see if it was really as amazing and delicious as it seemed.

"The problem is, how am I going to get to eat it?" Li Beixing racked her brains.

She couldn’t just invite Chen Jingle to her house to cook for her; he wasn’t her private chef. Offering to pay him would be too alienating. They could already be considered friends, and constantly bringing up money between friends was terrible for a relationship. Worse, he might start thinking she was an arrogant nouveau riche who liked throwing money around.

No, no, no!

Then... should she go to Chen Jingle’s house? Li Beixing blinked. That wouldn’t be easy to pull off without a good excuse.