THE GAME OF LIFE

Chapter 741: Chapter 740 Teaching Task

The good news that Zhou Shi had become Peng Changping’s closed-door disciple reached Jiang Feng only after Peng Changping had left.

Peng Changping always seemed leisurely and carefree on ordinary days, but after accepting a disciple, he became unexpectedly hurried. The banquet for accepting his disciple was directly set for the day after next, leaving one day for Xu Cheng and Lu Sheng to prepare the ingredients. The day after next, he himself would be busy in the kitchen all day, with the banquet taking place in the evening.

However, there were only a few guests for the banquet, just one table of people.

With Peng Changping bustling about preparing for the disciple acceptance banquet, Zhou Shi’s list of tasks grew even longer. His private restaurant back in his hometown had only been open for half a year—and it could be said that the capital hadn’t been recouped yet, with the reputation just starting to build—when it was already time to close its doors for good.

After getting off work and returning home, Jiang Feng had a talk with Zhou Shi. Zhou Shi felt it was a pity to shut down the restaurant after investing so much in renting and renovating the venue, mainly because of the money. Zhou Shi planned to hire two chefs temporarily to fill in at the restaurant, and whether to continue business or close down for good would be a decision for later.

In fact, besides the restaurant, Zhou Shi had many other matters to deal with, but he didn’t mention much to Jiang Feng. For instance, Jingjing, the girlfriend he was dating, the endless pressure from his mother to get married and have children, and his bank account which was running on empty.

But Uncle Zhou wasn’t a child; he was a 30-year-old adult with substantial social experience, and Jiang Feng was confident that he would resolve those issues in no time.

It was past midnight when he finished chatting with Zhou Shi. Zhou Shi wasn’t someone who liked to chat online with others. Normally, it was Tao Shu who rattled on with messages, while he read them and replied with a word or two as a gesture. Today, he was so excited and thrilled about becoming the disciple of his idol that he desperately needed to talk to someone who knew the details, which led to his late-night conversation with Jiang Feng.

After putting down his phone, Jiang Feng was about to close his eyes and sleep when he felt thirsty and remembered there seemed to be some cold water in the jug on the table. So he got up in the dark and, using the light from outside, found the jug on the table.

There was still half a jug of water left.

Jiang Feng didn’t turn on the lights; he poured himself a glass and gulped it down. As he set the glass aside and turned to go back to his room, he suddenly caught sight of a shadow in the kitchen, which almost made him leap from the living room to the entrance hall.

“Who’s there?” Jiang Feng challenged angrily, thinking that thieves nowadays were too audacious; they’d managed to climb up to such a high floor of their building. What was the property management’s security doing?

“It’s me.” The person in the kitchen was Wu Minqi.

Jiang Feng was startled and hurriedly switched on the light, indeed finding Wu Minqi there. Wu Minqi was up late, not sleeping but squatting in front of the refrigerator in her pajamas, not even opening the refrigerator door, just staring at it.

“Qiqi, what are you doing here?” Jiang Feng almost wondered if today’s news of Zhou Shi becoming Peng Changping’s disciple had somehow affected Wu Minqi.

But Wu Minqi wasn’t really acquainted with Zhou Shi, so it didn’t seem like something that would distress her.

“I’m searching for inspiration,” Wu Minqi said gravely.

Jiang Feng: ?

Inspiration?

He had thought it was weird enough for art students to come to Taifeng for wontons in search of inspiration, but he hadn’t expected his wife to do something even more… bizarre.

“Did you find it?” Jiang Feng asked.

Wu Minqi shook her head: “No.”

“If you haven’t found it today, then don’t look any further. Go to sleep first; it’s already past midnight, and you have to get up early for work tomorrow,” Jiang Feng suggested.

Wu Minqi stayed put, still squatting in her original position: “But I feel like I am about to find it.”

“It’s always just… missing something?” Wu Minqi sighed and turned to look at Jiang Feng. “Fengfeng, how did you find the inspiration for all those dishes?”

Jiang Feng: …

You might not believe it when I say this, but I pretty much see it all in my memory.

“It just… just… comes to me all of a sudden,” Jiang Feng said. “Qiqi, what dish are you trying to find inspiration for?”

“I don’t know,” Wu Minqi stared at the refrigerator. “I think it’s spicy dumplings, but then again, it seems it’s not.”

“I remember there’s a dish, it’s delicious, extremely delicious, but I can only remember how good it tastes, I don’t remember what it actually is. It seems like spicy dumplings, but at the same time, it’s not. I’ve been making spicy dumplings for days, and I can’t recreate that taste in my memory, not even a little bit.”

“So, I’m wondering if I remembered it wrong and that the dish isn’t spicy dumplings at all. But if it’s not that, what could it be?” Wu Minqi mused as if saying a tongue twister.

“Is it spicy?” Jiang Feng inquired.

“Spicy!” Wu Minqi affirmed confidently.

Jiang Feng thought of a dish, one that could help someone find inspiration and would be perfect for Wu Minqi—he had ghosted Ji Gezi for this dish, the ‘Pigeon Swallowing Swallow’.

“How about this, Qiqi? It’s really late today, go back to your room and get some sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll help you look for inspiration,” Jiang Feng proposed.

“Alright.” Wu Minqi also realized that squatting in the kitchen staring at the refrigerator wasn’t going to conjure up inspiration. She stood up, her legs numb from squatting too long, and almost fell over when she tried to walk because she wasn’t steady on her feet. Fortunately, Jiang Feng supported her in time.

“How long have you been squatting here?”

“I don’t know, I just wanted to come out for a drink of water before bed, and then… I started thinking about other things,” Wu Minqi was obviously still pondering the dish in her memory that seemed like spicy dumplings but wasn’t, distracted.

Worried that Wu Minqi’s feet were numb and she might not walk steadily, Jiang Feng supported her all the way into her room and only relaxed when he saw her sitting on the bed.

“Go to sleep, Qiqi, don’t think too much,” Jiang Feng said, bending down to kiss Wu Minqi on the cheek as a goodnight gesture.

Wu Minqi was still distracted, nodding perfunctorily, her mind clearly still on the spicy dumplings.

Jiang Feng went back to his room to sleep.

“Ding, game update successful, new feature unlocked: Teaching Task.”

At 2 a.m., Jiang Feng, deep in sleep and battling spicy dumplings in his dreams, trying to escape the sea of spicy oil, was suddenly awakened by the game’s alert tone.

Jiang Feng, startled awake, didn’t know whether to thank the game alert for rescuing him from the nightmare or curse the game for its behavior of updating in the middle of the night and disturbing people’s bad dreams.

It wasn’t really a nightmare, though, since spicy dumplings are actually quite tasty, just that swimming in a sea of spicy oil isn’t a great experience.

Since he was awake anyway, Jiang Feng decided to open the property panel to see what the new unlocked feature was.

The game update was quite fast this time, not like before when an update would take months, slow enough to make Jiang Feng wonder if the global village was still on 2G dial-up internet.

Of course, the first thing Jiang Feng looked at were the most critical values, especially his knifework, which he cared about greatly. His proficiency in knifework was now very close to Grandmaster Level, just over 1000 proficiency points away from upgrading.

Jiang Feng also knew that these 1000+ proficiency points could not be achieved by simply chopping potatoes and onions in everyday cooking; he likely needed to stack them up with Ten Thousand Fortune Meat.

He estimated that a few days of cooking Ten Thousand Fortune Meat should get his knifework to Grandmaster Level.

After checking these basic values, Jiang Feng opened the master-disciple panel.

This panel could likely be considered the one he clicked the least on a daily basis. Although it allowed him to check Xiaxia’s various values, there really wasn’t much need.

Perhaps because he himself was a Red Chef and not very skilled in White Chef tasks, the game’s numbers were biased towards Red Chef values. The basic values for White Chef couldn’t be seen at all; only noodle pulling was visible. Xiaxia had no real talent for Red Chef tasks, her main talent lying in White Chef tasks, so this property panel was rather useless for Xiaxia, not worth checking.

The game might have also realized this, so it introduced a new feature without fixing any bugs.

That is the Teaching Task mentioned in the alert that woke Jiang Feng.

This Teaching Task was a task set by the master for the disciple, meaning Jiang Feng could assign tasks to Xiaxia. Of course, Xiaxia couldn’t see this task or get any rewards from it. Its sole purpose was to let Jiang Feng clearly understand Xiaxia’s current progress.

Only one task could be assigned at a time.

During this time, Jiang Feng had been busy with his own things, and the teaching work for Xiaxia had been done by Jiang Jianguo. Jianguo didn’t have much left to teach Xiaxia about noodle pulling and had only taught her to make some other types of Suzhou-style pastries, but what Xiaxia did the most and the best was making flaky pastries.

After thinking it over, Jiang Feng assigned Xiaxia a task to make flaky pastries 100 times.

An additional task instantly appeared in the Teaching Task column.

[Make Flaky Pastries]: The irresponsible master, unable to think of a proper task to set for the disciple, casually issued this half-hearted task of making flaky pastries 100 times, focusing on quantity over quality, with no benefit to the disciple’s culinary skill development.

Current task progress: (0/100)

Jiang Feng: …

If only you’d said sooner that you’re actually a mentor in disguise as a Teaching Task, I would have issued a more challenging task.

But since only one task could be issued at a time, Jiang Feng could only wait for Xiaxia to complete making flaky pastries 100 times before assigning the second task, and whether this Teaching Task had any new features and uses could only be explored when the second task was assigned.

Fortunately, the task he assigned was to make flaky pastries 100 times. Xiaxia made quite a lot of flaky pastries every day, so it was estimated that it would take a week or two to complete. If he had been impulsive and chosen to make flaky pastries 10,000 times, then that feature would be… useless.

After exploring the new feature, Jiang Feng, now wide awake, felt very spirited and even thought of watching a couple of TV show episodes to wind down.

But since the recent TV shows were not very appealing, Jiang Feng could only choose to watch a memory clip instead.

Okay, he just plainly wanted to watch a memory to see if he could get a hint of an advanced recipe.

He didn’t really think of watching memories often, but right after a game update, he was eager to do so.

There were a few memory clips left in the property panel, and after hesitating, Jiang Feng chose [A Memory Clip of Jiang Weiming] and clicked yes.

A dense fog.

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