The Game of Life-Chapter 642 - 640

Chapter 642: 640

Jiang Feng, in the distant back kitchen, sneezed, rubbed his nose, and found the empty kitchen somewhat strange as he glanced around.

Why weren’t Qiqi, Zhang, and Xiaxia in the kitchen today? And why were Ji Xue and Jiang Weisheng staring at him all the time, making his skin crawl?

Jiang Feng looked at the task list.

After a period of what could only be described as devilish training, his frenzied practice had led to a considerable increase in his three basic stats, and his knife skills were estimated to reach Grandmaster Level in no more than two weeks.

Grandmaster Level!

The thought of those three wonderful words filled Jiang Feng with infinite motivation.

...

Achieving Master Level required a proficiency of one million points, but it was not just one million points. Long before, Jiang Feng had found that after the proficiency of his knife skills had reached the latter stages of Master Level, the speed of improvement was noticeably slower than that of seasoning and fire control.

Previously, Jiang Feng hadn’t been tracking the differences in his stats morning and evening as he did now. Although he had a sense of it, there were no direct data to confirm his suspicions. But since he had started to record these, he had discovered that once the proficiency of a Master Level skill had broken through 900,000 points, the increase in proficiency slowed to nearly half the pace of before.

Back when his knife skills were still at an advanced level, even if Jiang Feng was somewhat distracted while chopping vegetables, engaging in conversation with Mr. Jiang Jiankang and resulting in uneven cuts, it didn’t affect the growth of his proficiency. But after passing 900,000 points, he found that if he was distracted or not meticulous enough while cutting, his proficiency would not just increase slowly but stagnate completely.

It could be said that proficiency couldn’t rely solely on quantity anymore; quality was also necessary.

Jiang Feng’s fire control and seasoning had both broken through 700,000 points, and his knife skills had reached as high as 950,000 points. Although the process was unbearably painful, so much so that more than once during these days, Jiang Feng thought: Forget it, I might as well take a break. Granduncle Weiming can probably wait a bit longer for a layabout.

However, it was not that he recorded his stats every day, that he could see his daily progress, and that he could estimate in his heart how long it would take for his knife skills to reach Grandmaster Level, that Jiang Feng might have already gone out to play around.

With the grand and juicy carrot of Grandmaster Level dangling before him, Jiang Feng wished he could even whip himself to move faster.

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How did that saying go? At first, I didn’t want to, but he offered far too much.

Jiang Feng had just finished processing another pigeon.

Now, he primarily practiced his knife skills in the morning and focused on fire control and seasoning at other times. However, he couldn’t just practice these haphazardly, and the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon, along with stewing soup, became the best choices.

Jiang Feng even started to request Mrs. Wang Xiulian to increase the preorder quantity of the Eight Treasures Chestnut Fragrant Pigeon.

When Jiang Feng proposed this to Mrs. Wang Xiulian a few days ago, he thought she would be delighted. Instead, Mrs. Wang Xiulian peered at him for a long time with an expression of indescribable lamentation mixed with reticence before finally telling him to go back and think it over.

What’s there to think over?

At this thought, Jiang Feng put down the filling he was handling and decided to have a proper talk with Mrs. Wang Xiulian about this matter.

He wasn’t someone with incredibly strong willpower and drive for self-improvement. Jiang Feng was the type of person who needed others to supervise or even force him to strive forward.

Essentially, he deserved a good thrashing.

When he was younger, practice required Sir to thrash him, and as he grew up, studying still required Sir’s thrashings. After going to college without Sir to discipline him, Jiang Feng became as much a slacker as Wang Hao.

Jiang Feng turned around.

Ji Xue and Jiang Weisheng, who were closely monitoring Jiang Feng’s every move, became somewhat anxious.

They were the undercover agents Mrs. Wang Xiulian had sent to the kitchen to make sure Jiang Feng did not go upstairs and stumble upon the secret meeting.

The two inept undercover agents shared one common characteristic: they were not adept at telling lies.

Seeing Jiang Feng about to leave the kitchen, Ji Xue cried out hastily, “Jiang Feng!”

“Hmm?” Jiang Feng turned his head.

“Do you… do you need help with that basin of filling? I saw you left it halfway done and worried it might… go bad.”

Jiang Feng: ?

Go bad?

I’m just going to find someone, and the filling is going to spoil while left in the kitchen?

Jiang Feng smiled: “I’m just going to talk to my mom about something real quick, I’ll be right back, just leave it there.”

As Jiang Feng said this, Ji Xue and Jiang Weisheng grew even more flustered, with Jiang Weisheng hurriedly saying, “Feng, you can’t go now, your mom is discussing things with your grandfather and your uncle.”

“Discussing things?”

Seeing that Jiang Weisheng had let something slip, Ji Xue hastened to fix the situation: “Right, discussing things. They’re talking outside, they arranged to meet at the coffee shop next door.”

“How do you both know?” Jiang Feng asked, puzzled.

“Um… well…” Ji Xue was at a loss for words.

“The master told me,” Jiang Weisheng quickly improvised.

Ji Xue caught on in an instant: “Master Jiang told me.”

Although he still found the whole situation rather odd, Jiang Feng didn’t think too much of it, nodded, and went back to his place to continue processing the pigeon.

Ji Xue and Jiang Weisheng finally let out a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, although Ji Yue’s theory that Jiang Feng might be sick was agreed upon by most, there were still a few who disagreed.

At the forefront were Wu Minqi and Zhang Guanghang.

Wu Minqi and Zhang Guanghang couldn’t be sure whether Jiang Feng was indeed ill, but they felt that Jiang Feng, aside from suddenly becoming diligent and hardworking, hadn’t changed much, and certainly couldn’t be considered as having undergone a body swap, at most a rebirth.

Zhang Guanghang felt that Jiang Feng must be driven by something to be working so hard; they just didn’t know what that something was.

The group bickered incessantly, with Jiang Zaidi and Jiang Shoucheng even comparing how Jiang Feng used to study and train in cooking as a child, how he originally practiced cooking, and how he now practiced, in an attempt to identify the variables through comparative analysis.

“Enough.”

At 3:56 PM, the old master, who had been silent throughout the meeting, finally spoke up to conclude.

“There’s definitely something off about Feng, but I don’t think it’s as serious as being ill. It’s probably, as Zhang and Wu suggested, that he’s been shaken by something. Jiankang, San’s wife, and the eldest brother’s wife, find time to have a good talk with Feng and see if you can get anything out of him. As for the medical examination Ji mentioned, we still need to do that; these are things we don’t understand, so we should leave them to the professionals.”

“I think the kid Feng must have encountered something unclean; a ghost has possessed him,” stated Mrs. Jiang, who had not been properly educated in ideological education during her literacy classes and was now hugely superstitious.

“Mom, what era are we in now? There’s no such thing as possession anymore. After the founding of the new China, all spirits were forbidden to refine themselves, and all lonely ghosts have dissipated,” the eldest aunt said soothingly.

“What if some escaped the net and Feng stumbled upon one?” Mrs. Jiang stuck to her opinion.

Everyone: …

With a sigh, Mrs. Jiang said, “Ah, my poor grandson. Who knows which family’s ghost he’s collided with to end up like this—up at the crack of dawn and bustling about every day. I need to make him more food to nourish him. Old man, I’m going home now. Don’t forget to bring some flour back with you; I’ll make pancakes for Feng in the morning.”

The Jiang Family: ???

Mom/Grandma, let that ghost bump into me too, look at me, look at me!

The time had come for everyone to disperse, and Wu Minqi deliberately slowed down her pace to be the last to leave, as she had a question for Zhang Guanghang.

“Zhang,” Wu Minqi called to Zhang Guanghang, who was about to go to the locker room to change, “Why are you so sure that Jiang Feng is being pushed to work hard by something, and not sick as Yue suggested?”

“Actually, I’m not entirely sure myself. If it weren’t for your firm belief, I might even have started doubting whether he’s truly sick,” Zhang replied.

“It’s because I was once in the same situation as him,” Zhang Guanghang said. “To be precise, I was even more frantic than he is now.”

Wu Minqi was stunned.

“My great-grandfather died when I was very young, but everyone hid it from me, and I used to travel back and forth between here and France every year. Every time I returned, they would tell me my great-grandfather had gone traveling. They fooled me with that clumsy lie for many years until I was 14.”

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“Although it sounds somewhat unbelievable, when I learned of my great-grandfather’s death, it felt as if my whole world had collapsed. I turned the house upside down, dug out everything my great-grandfather had used, and crammed my room full with his belongings, forbidding anyone to enter.”

“At first, I spent every day with those things, feeling that only by seeing them could I sense that my great-grandfather was still alive. But later, I began to dread seeing them, because they reminded me he was gone.”

“Over time, I found something that let me remember my great-grandfather without fear, and that was making Fiery Silver Thread, also known as sprouts stuffed with meat.”

“Most of my meals growing up were prepared by my great-grandfather, and while his cooking skills weren’t great, he had eaten many good things in his youth. After every meal, he would tell me about the delicious dishes he had eaten before, and promised to take me back to Beiping to taste them someday.”

“The dish he talked about most was Fiery Silver Thread; he had eaten it only twice but remembered it for decades, and upon returning to Beiping, he couldn’t find one that matched his memory.”

“So…”

“So, I thought if I could recreate the Fiery Silver Thread my great-grandfather described, he would be very happy, even though he was no longer with us. So after I returned to Beiping, I spent all my time figuring out how to make Fiery Silver Thread, obsessed, not wanting to eat, drink, or sleep, just wanting to get that dish right.”

“But the dish was too difficult to master. I could thread the ham strips into the bean sprouts, but I couldn’t make them all look uniform, nor make it look like the ham was embedded within the sprouts, or make the fried sprouts translucent and clear—it wasn’t the Fiery Silver Thread my great-grandfather missed.”

“So did you eventually succeed?” asked Wu Minqi.

Zhang Guanghang shook his head: “No, later my mentor succeeded and, after a fierce scolding, took me to the zoo for a day out and that solved everything.”

Wu Minqi thought for a moment: “Although it sounds a bit similar, Jiang Feng is not like you were back then.”

“He… he has no reason. Feng just had a sleep, and the next day he turned that way, there was nothing at breakfast, it was only after he came to the store that I noticed something wasn’t quite right.”

“Nothing strange that morning either, just that a cucumber was missing from the fridge,” Wu Minqi murmured. “Could it be because of the cucumber?”

Zhang Guanghang: …

“He’s not like me back then, of course. I was trapped in a dead end, using cooking as an outlet for my sorrow and rage, but Feng…”

“I think he’s using a very positive intent and goal to diligently learn a dish, at least that’s how I feel.”

“Then… let’s take Jiang Feng to the zoo for a day,” Wu Minqi began to clutch at straws.

Zhang Guanghang: ???

I was 14 then, OK?

“The zoo wouldn’t be quite right; how about mountain climbing?” suggested Zhang Guanghang. “In this season, an outing to enjoy the fresh and green is most appropriate.”