Chapter 31: Chef Competition
Lu Yunxi began her new working life in the small town.
“Xiao Lu, one portion of braised meat, one plate of grilled fish, and one plate of stir-fried vegetables!”
“Coming!” she responded immediately. Several stoves fired up at the same time, her hands moving in a blur.
After about half an hour of frantic rushing, the dining area finally quieted down as the guests left one after another.
“Did they change the cook today? The broth tastes incredible!”
“I had no idea there was a chef in our town who could cook such delicious food! The stir-fried vegetables are so crisp and juicy, it’s just amazing!”
“Hey, if this chef is so good, why aren’t they participating in the cooking competition? Isn’t our town always ridiculed by the neighbors for lacking any great culinary talent?”
“But I heard the new chef is a woman! No woman has ever won the chef’s competition!”
“…”
The guests’ voices gradually faded away, but the phrase “Chef Competition” lingered in Lu Yunxi’s mind.
Later that afternoon, when the rush had died down and the restaurant was empty, the shopkeeper looked over her logs with a highly satisfied expression. He praised her endlessly, so she used the opportunity to casually bring up the matter.
“A chef’s competition?” The shopkeeper was stunned, then quickly explained. “Each town nominates representatives to compete in the city, and the top three finishers receive massive prizes! It’s a shame no one from our town has ever placed. If you’re thinking of entering… I’d advise against it. That competition is truly terrifying!”
“Prizes?” Lu Yunxi’s eyes lit up, completely tuning out the rest of his sentence. What was so scary about a cooking competition anyway? The absolute most important thing right now was saving up enough tuition to enroll in a proper martial arts school!
“How much is the bonus?” She rubbed her hands together impatiently.
The shopkeeper looked at her as if she were a tragic, misguided teenager, his eyes swimming with pity. “The prize money is indeed substantial; it’s supposed to be several hundred silver coins! If you really want to throw your hat in the ring, just head over to the government office to sign up. The next regional qualifiers start in three days. Do your best, kid.”
He said “do your best,” but the sheer expression on his face screamed you don’t stand a chance!
Her lips twitched. She couldn’t understand why the shopkeeper had so little faith in her. Her cooking skills had already grinding their way to the intermediate level!
After wrapping up her shift, Lu Yunxi did a little more digging around town.
It turned out that the restaurant’s previous chefs had all enthusiastically entered the competition before, only to fail miserably in the end. Worse yet, the defeat had crushed their spirits so severely that they couldn’t even bring themselves to pick up a ladle again. That was the real reason the restaurant was constantly cycling through new kitchen staff.
She was a bit surprised by the psychological toll it took, but she walked over to the government office and registered anyway. Because the specific rules and themes of the competition fluctuated every year, studying past tournaments was completely useless. She didn’t bother wasting any more energy asking questions.
On the day of the qualifiers, Lu Yunxi took a formal leave of absence from the restaurant and used the government office’s teleportation array to travel straight to Jinzhou.
Jinzhou City was vastly larger than her small town. The streets were perfectly mapped, humming with a heavy flow of carriages and pedestrian traffic. The roads were wide, flat, and paved; rows of neat, uniform houses lined the lanes, and the passing locals all wore bright, content smiles.
Before the event officially commenced, Lu Yunxi wandered the surrounding blocks, hoping to scout some local information. As she navigated a quiet alleyway, two specific words caught her ear, causing her to halt mid-stride.
“The academy is opening its admissions cycle again this year, right? Are you going to register?”
“Of course! The institution features both civil and martial tracks. Which one are you targeting?”
“Is that even a question? The academy is famous for its literary department. That martial arts track is just a cheap gimmick to swindle clueless outsiders who don’t know any better! Everyone in the city knows their martial arts program is absolute garbage. Anyone with an ounce of real talent would never waste their time learning combat forms there!”
The academy? She vividly remembered the village chief mentioning that his ancestor had visited a legendary academy and returned with world-shattering strength. However, the old man had stressed that the institution was shrouded in deep mystery, and she hadn’t known if she would ever locate it.
Lu Yunxi stared blankly at the wall. Is this the exact same ‘mysterious academy’? It’s getting ridiculed to a pathetic extent!
The speakers’ voices began to drift further away down the path, and she instinctively moved to follow them to gather more details. But right at that moment, a man burst around the corner, completely out of breath, panting heavily as his eyes locked onto her face.
“You’re Lu Yunxi, right? Your batch is up next! What on earth are you doing wandering around the alleys?!” The coordinator threw her an extremely irritated look and grabbed her arm, hauling her away. “Move it! You’re assigned to the third row, third station!”
Yunxi stiffened, forced to jog a couple of steps to keep her balance before she could fully process the intrusion. She glanced back over her shoulder, but the alley was already deserted; the passing locals had vanished into the bustling city network.
She pursed her lips, a wave of deep regret washing over her. Whatever! I’ll handle the cooking tournament first and hunt down the directions afterward!
The announcer standing at the elevated center of the stage looked out over the crowd, noting that every contestant had finally settled into their designated positions. He immediately flashed a brilliant smile, his voice booming over the courtyard.
“Good morning, masters of the craft and esteemed guests! The opening round of the Jinzhou Regional Qualifiers is officially underway. The elite competitors who successfully navigate three brutal elimination rounds and secure a top ranking will formally represent Jinzhou City on the national stage…”
Listening to the guidelines while scanning her competitors, Lu Yunxi couldn’t suppress a minor surge of surprise. She hadn’t anticipated such a staggering number of entrants. A quick headcount revealed roughly forty to fifty active cooking stations set up across the main plaza!
Due to the limited layout, the chefs were grouped into batches based on their respective home districts. This meant her immediate adversaries in the opening bracket were entirely composed of rival chefs from her own small town. Even with the grouping, the venue was scheduled to run ten massive batches in a single day, with separate culinary arenas operating simultaneously across different districts of Jinzhou.
Jinzhou City was an immense administrative hub with nearly a hundred satellite towns under its jurisdiction. The preliminary phase alone was going to take several days to process!
On the bright side, the evaluation for this opening round was handled entirely by the public audience. If the responsibility fell solely on a small panel of official judges, the poor individuals would have literally vomited from sheer exhaustion after tasting forty distinct plates of food in an afternoon. Yunxi was particularly fortunate; her town had been sorted into the second batch of the morning, a timeslot when the audience seating wasn’t yet completely packed.
While the host continued his non-stop, dramatic speech on stage, the surrounding onlookers began murmuring in low whispers.
“Hey, look at that station. The previous cooks from that town made absolute fools of themselves. I can’t believe a little girl actually has the nerve to step up to the stove today!”
“Sigh, she’s a remarkably pretty thing, too. What a shame! When she runs off the stage weeping in a few minutes, the crowd is going to mock her relentlessly. Trust me, I bombed here once and didn’t dare show my face outside for a solid month!”
“…”
Although the chatter was kept down, Yunxi’s enhanced hearing caught every single syllable clearly. But before she could formulate a reaction, the host’s voice soared as he formally unveiled the competitive parameters.
“The directive for this bracket is: ‘Staple Foods’! Please convey your specific grocery requirements to the attendant staff below, and they will rapidly secure your resources! Your forty-five-minute limit officially begins in fifteen minutes!” The host sang out the theme with theatrical flair.
Yunxi instantly wiped the crowd’s doubts from her mind, her focus narrowing as she fell into deep thought.
A forty-five-minute window was far too tight to execute a rich, deeply slow-cooked pot of savory braised meat over rice. Ultimately, she resolved to craft a refreshing bowl of cold noodles. Given the sweltering, oppressive heat of the summer noon, a chilled dish would naturally stimulate the sluggish appetites of the sweltering audience.
The moment her requested ingredients materialized at her station, she threw herself into the work.
Yunxi first prepared a clean, savory base broth, then rapidly kneaded her dough from scratch, slicing the sheets into uniform, delicate ribbons. The moment the noodles hit the perfect al dente threshold in the boiling pot, she pulled them, rinsing the strands thoroughly in cold water before submerging them directly into the seasoned broth. She moved to the chopping board, turning fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and tender slices of pork into flawless, uniform matchsticks to layer over the top. To finish the presentation, she added a halved hard-boiled egg. Done!
If she had access to actual ice blocks, the dish would have been absolute perfection. Lacking advanced refrigeration, she improvisational rested the porcelain bowls deep within a bucket of chilled well water to rapidly bring down the core temperature.
Even with the added step of chilling the broth, Lu Yunxi completed her dish in a fraction of the time taken by her fellow competitors, executing the presentation with absolute efficiency before stepping forward to submit her plate.
