Before dinner, all of the chefs from the old restaurants rushed over when they received the news. The Fu family was very grateful that they had chosen to stay during such a difficult time, but they didn’t express their thanks excessively. Everyone still interacted just like before.
“Ximing, where did you get this recipe from?” The most experienced chef opened his mouth, his expression showed some excitement.
“I bought it from an old man. His sons and daughters were unfilial and wanted to take the recipe to sell it but he wasn't willing. So, he set up a small challenge arena on the street. He said that he would sell the recipe to whoever could make the dishes from it to his satisfaction. I was curious, so I went to try it and he sold it to me.” Ye Zhizhou spoke nonsense with a serious expression and eyes full of sincerity. These old cooks were all human beings so they would be more likely to believe it if he made it sound unconventional.
Sell for money, sell for money! All people know is to sell for money! Your ancestral crafts aren’t just something you can sell!” A more grumpy chef directly slapped the table and shouted, staring at the Fu couple as he said it. Obviously, this was said for them to hear.
The Fu couple coughed uncomfortably and looked towards the sky. On this issue, it really was them who didn't think it through clearly…
The most experienced chef looked at the recipe again and asked seriously, “Ximing, can you make the dishes from this recipe?”
“Yes.” Ye Zhizhou nodded and then smiled modestly. “But, I’m sure the dishes won't be as good, compared to all of yours, uncles.” As the successor of a gourmet family, his cooking skill could be subpar, but he must be able to cook. More importantly, he must be able to eat. The original host had always paid great attention to this aspect and his cooking skill could be considered decent.
“Then, you can go make a tableful of dishes for us to taste in advance. There are some parts of the recipe that are vague, so we have to slowly refine it.” The old chef handed over the recipe list and took the lead in standing up. “Go. Let’s go to the kitchen, everyone.”
Everyone got up one by one after hearing this. The expressions on their faces were much more relaxed, completely different from their previous worried and anxious expressions.
Because it was written to fool his lover, some steps on the recipe that showed the level of heat and the measurements of the specific ingredients were really vague. While he was making the dishes, Ye Zhizhou intentionally reduced or increased the number of ingredients, letting the old chefs see the obvious mistakes. He always kept the cooking level at the same level as the original host.
It took about two hours to make a whole table of Imperial Feast dishes. The chefs picked up their chopsticks to taste the dishes one by one, exchanging their thoughts with each other. As they became excited, they directly rushed into the kitchen to practice. The lights in the Fu family’s kitchen were on all night and fragrance after fragrance floated out, making the neighbors unable to sleep well that night.
Before dawn the next morning, Ye Zhizhou left the Fu’s house with his luggage and took a bus to the airport.
There were three main reasons why the Fu family ended up in this kind of situation. One of the issues was their funds, another was problems with their ingredient suppliers, and third, was that the location of the new restaurant opened by the protagonist basically overlapped with the Fu family’s restaurant. Moreover, the protagonist intentionally set up a restaurant near the Fu family and stole most of their business. The Fu family’s Fu Yuan and the protagonist’s Gentleman’s Pavilion were like McD** and KF* of some other world. Wherever you open a new shop, I’ll open one next door just to pester you to the end of the world. From this point of view, the protagonist’s intention to suppress the Fu family was too obvious.
Presently, the Fu family only has a few old restaurants which mainly focused on imperial dishes, but the protagonist still wouldn’t let go of them. She even went as far as paying a high price to buy out a store near their old restaurants to open her own high-grade restaurants, that also focused on imperial dishes. For example, the recently opened Gentleman’s Pavilion in M city just happened to be right next to the Fu family’s restaurant. The scent of the challenge was really strong. If the protagonist continued like this, the Fu family would really be finished and his task would become more difficult to do.
He hastily flipped through the plot in his mind as his hands continued to move. He quickly listed out several ways to make money fast for comparison. He directly abandoned the idea of waiting for stock returns, which required time, and checked the stone gambling and other gambling options.
After he arrived at the airport, he bought the earliest ticket for Y province and went straight there. When he earned his principal amount in stone gambling, he swallowed a Yi Rong pill and went to A city to become a professional gambler. Within a week, he returned to the Fu family with sufficient funds and thus fixed their issue of funding.
The Fu couple was stunned but Fu Xia was directly stupefied. “Brother, h-how did you do it? You actually collected enough.”
“Don’t worry, all the money was made legally.” Ye Zhizhou waved his hand tiredly and went upstairs to his room, falling asleep the moment he hit the bed. He didn’t know that there were a lot of people in-game waiting for him to go online, including the protagonist and her harem.
After solving the problem with funds, Ye Zhizhou began to search for new ingredients suppliers from all over the country. Most of those who had cooperated with the Fu family had been poached by the protagonist and the male leads. The goods offered to the Fu family were either falsely priced or of poor quality. He had to find new suppliers. But, before he could find new suppliers, the restaurant's supplies could only be temporarily supplied by his space's reserves.
Truckloads of fresh, high-quality ingredients were hauled to the back of the old restaurant. The chefs were so shocked that their mouths dropped.
“Ximing, where did you get all of these? They're all good quality!”
Ye Zhizhou felt the chicken in the box and vaguely said, “These were all bought at a high price. I can only do this method before I find a new supplier. These ingredients are for the newly launched Imperial Feast meals, if it’s not enough, call me and I will try my best to get more delivered.” These chickens were all wild pheasants. For the sake of these ingredients, he had to squander quite a lot of animals from his space.
The head chef came forward and patted him on his back, happily saying, “Fortunately, the Fu family still has you. Don’t worry, us old men will save these last few roots of the Fu family even if we have to fight with our lives!”
“Where are you uncles old? Obviously, you guys are still very young.” He replied with a smile and a low sigh, “Everything will be okay very soon.”
With his cheating device known as spiritual power, he soon found a group of ingredient suppliers with a good character and a reasonable price. Two days later, he found a way to solve the problem of ingredient storage and transportation and returned to the Fu house with a newly formulated Imperial Feast recipe. After completely passing out at night, he went to the old restaurant early in the morning to hand over the new recipe to the chefs. He told them about some points to pay attention to and checked the accounts in the restaurant. He was finally completely relieved.
The broken funding, the poached management, the blocked ingredients supply channel, and the large scale market seizing… Although the problems were only partially solved, the Fu family’s hopeless case finally had hope. It wasn’t a waste of his leg that he nearly broke by running around these days.
When he went back to the Fu house, everyone was having breakfast. The Fu couple and Fu Xia were stunned when they saw him come in.
“Ximing, why are you up so early? Where did you go? Why didn’t you sleep a little longer?” Mother Fu came up to him with a face full of heartache, touched his face and then touched his arm. “It hasn’t been that long but your face looks so skinny. Let your father deal with the restaurant issues, you should go rest a little bit.”
Father Fu nodded when he heard her words, his gaze was both proud and sorrowful. He sighed. “Ximing, you’ve been running around outside a lot these days. If you have anything you need to do, just tell me and I’ll go do it. You should take good care of yourself. You can play chess with your grandfather or play games with Xiao Xia. In other words, don’t overexert yourself.”
“I don’t play games anymore…” Fu Xia said in a quiet voice.
Ye Zhizhou was taken aback when he heard these words. His mind that was recently filled with the Fu family affairs suddenly cleared. He thought about that pit of a holy level quest in the game. Damn it! These two weeks were so busy that he had forgotten about everything in the game!
【 Respected player Ye Zhizhou, welcome back to Dreaming Continent. 】
The colorful characters flashed in the dark sky, and then the darkness dissipated. Aunt Wang’s warm and spacious yard appeared in front of his eyes.
It looked like the updated game wasn’t any different from before. The golden characters representing the holy level quest still hung in the air. He tentatively poked it, transforming the text into a detailed quest description.
At the beginning was a single red warning sentence: There are 99 stages total in this holy quest. If you fail any stage, you must restart from the beginning. After that sentence were detailed descriptions of all the 99 stages of the quest, all of which were related to cooking. The first stage was to make egg fried rice, the second stage was to fry poached eggs, the third stage was to make tomato and egg stir fry… The last stage was to make a top feast with the meat of the Zerg Queen.
Unlike regular quests, holy level quests were broadcasted live to the whole server. That is to say, when Ye Zhizhou opened the quest details, all of the online players on the server could see that the characters hanging in the middle of the sky for nearly half a month had finally changed. Then, the world channel exploded.
I Love Crayfish: Ah ah, Ye Zhizhou is online!
Chrysanthemum Eye: WTF! Was this quest made by a human? 99 stages, if you fail any stage you have to restart from the beginning. The last stage really requires you to kill the Zerg Queen. Will I be able to eat buffed food made by me in this life…
Butts Up for the Crowd: Weakly asking a question. Can this Ye Zhizhou cook?
Ye Tang: Ye Zhizhou, open the friend system, I have something to talk about.
Angel Wings: Eh, Why is Tang baby looking for Ye Zhizhou? Does he want to cooperate? Jing Shu baby is going to help Ye Zhizhou finish the quest?
I Married for Wealth: Baby, your uncle! Dishonest fans, go away!
Ye Zhizhou closed the world chat panel that automatically popped up and rubbed his chin, clicking open the wealth rankings. As expected, it’s still Jing Shu. The protagonist’s game ID can’t be ignored. The in-game restaurant she opened was also called Gentleman’s Pavilion. How mentally retarded were the male leads to not find the protagonist’s real identity? He then clicked to open the expert rankings and saw Tang Ye was first, and the next two to seven ranks were all filled by the male leads. The Fighting Power rankings, Trade Union rankings, Guild Prestige rankings, Popularity rankings… The protagonist and the seven male leads occupied almost all top ten spots on all of these rankings, simply horrifying.
He glanced at his rank, then at his inventory and sighed. That being said, how does one make in-game money…
Ding dong. A friend request bypassed his shut off friend function and popped up in front of him. Then, a private chat in red, bolded characters appeared in midair, directly out of the panel.
GM Lu: You're the one that triggered the holy level quest? Ye Zhizhou?
GM? Did the holy level quest also shock the GM? He quickly clicked accept and then returned to the private chat.
Gm律:坐标。
GM Lu: Coordinates.
Ye Zhizhou: ?
GM Lu: Stay where you are and don't move.
【 Your friend GM Lu is offline.】
“…” So what did this GM message him for?
Ye Zhizhou walked out of Aunt Wang’s yard and began to run in the novice village. In order to complete this crazy holy level quest and PK the protagonist and her harem, his level shouldn't be too low. At least, he has to get out of the novice village first, or else he can’t even use the trading function.
Five minutes later, the space in front of him distorted and a cold-faced, handsome man with black hair and long robes suddenly landed in front of him, immediately attacking him.
Ye Zhizhou, who was pulling out weeds for Zhang Daye, the head of the village, was shocked. “Brother, what are you doing!” I’m only a small level 5 account. Was it really necessary to bully people like this!
Split chapter this time sorry! Next chapter is gonna be interesting