As a Chef, It Was Perfectly Normal to Fight with Ingredients

To be honest, this was the first time Bai Zhi had ever seen a task with a clear penalty for failure.

It's either pass the so-called test or die; it's that simple.

"Successfully passed the assessment... the Chef's assessment?"

Looking at the system information that was automatically displayed in front of him, Bai Zhi quickly began to think.

PrayerUnderDreams had successfully cleared this Dungeon before and obtained the Title "Lord of the Five Grains Cycle" from Dungeon, so theoretically, the other party's experience should be able to provide some reference value to them.

However, judging from the Walkthrough left behind by the other party, their experience was completely different from what they were going through. They became Chef directly, unlike them who had to go through some kind of assessment.

In other words, the rules have changed.

The difficulty and danger of the mission have increased dramatically, and no one knows what will happen next.

After the system notification disappeared from their sight, the noise coming from behind the wooden door gradually subsided. About three minutes later, the tightly closed wooden door slowly opened a crack, and a few withered fingers slowly emerged from the crack.

"Please let the first applicant enter."

Then, a hoarse, inhuman voice came from inside the room.

--As the vanguard, [Cloudfall Illusion] takes the lead.

The Number One Plate he was holding flew out automatically and disappeared into the crack in the door. Then he stood up from the Sofa, pushed open the door, and stepped into the room, his feet treading on the flowing blood.

Due to the limited perspective, and because the door was never fully open, the Player sitting on the Sofa could not see most of the interior.

... In reality, apart from Cloudfall Illusion, no one else could see anything.

Just like the darkness at both ends of the Corridor, the inside of the door was also pitch black. As Cloudfall Illusion's figure disappeared into the darkness, the wooden door quietly closed.

What greeted the Player next was a deathly silence.

About half an hour later, the wooden door was reopened, and those withered fingers stretched out again.

"Please welcome the second applicant."

As the person with Number Two on their Number Plate disappeared from the doorway, the Young Girl in the white coat walked through the wooden door.

--As for the whereabouts and final fate of Cloudfall Illusion initially entered through the wooden door, no one knows.

Throughout this process, the Player sitting on the Sofa was unable to move and could only silently watch everything unfold before him.

Bai Zhi did try to summon Shadow Guard, but each one he summoned disappeared, so he had to give up.

Time passed by little by little, and soon it was the turn of Number Six, which was Bai Zhi's side.

The Five Players before him had all entered the wooden door, with varying intervals of time between them, but none of them had come out.

Because the information was so scarce, Bai Zhi had no way of judging anything and could only idly record the time when the wooden door reopened after they entered.

The Number Plate five, Li Changsheng, who was sitting next to him in a trench coat, took the longest time, about 40 minutes before the door reopened. The Young Girl holding Number Plate Number Two took the shortest time, with the wooden door reopening 15 minutes after she entered.

As for the rest of the people, the time they spent was generally around half an hour.

As if his body were being manipulated by an invisible force, after the Number Plate disappeared into the door, Bai Zhi spontaneously stood up from the Sofa and walked towards the wooden door like Marionette.

After entering the room, as the wooden door behind him closed again, Bai Zhi found that he had finally regained control of his body.

"..."

Bai Zhi narrowed his eyes slightly, examining the layout of the room.

The room behind the wooden door wasn't very big, and most of it was shrouded in darkness. Directly opposite the wooden door was another closed door. In the center of the room was a stove with pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils on it.

The dim light bulb above provided a small patch of light centered on the stove, while the rest of the area was completely dark and indistinct.

"Complete a common dish using any ingredients within one hour."

Just as Bai Zhi was pondering this, a hoarse voice came from the darkness.

Is this really Chef recruitment event? It's so eerie, like a Haunted House...

While silently complaining to himself, Bai Zhi didn't do anything reckless and walked to the stove.

The stove area was a bit messy, with all sorts of cooking utensils haphazardly placed together. Judging from the fact that the Player came in earlier had all cooked on this stove, these things were probably deliberately scattered.

... Is this to prevent people from deliberately leaking exam questions and cheating?

While pondering this in his mind, Bai Zhi roughly cleaned the stove area and washed the black pot, which was covered in something black, under the tap.

After doing all that, Bai Zhi turned his gaze to the Ingredient Area behind him.

There's nothing wrong with the stove, so the problem must be with the ingredients.

The Ingredient Area was also within the Lights's reach, located just behind him, about a turn away. However, the Lights there was dim, consisting of small black squares, each about the size of two basketballs. The squares were covered with wooden boards, arranged in a four-by-four square structure.

Strange sounds emanated from most of the black squares: some were the sound of glass beads bouncing, some were creaking, and some even included cries of pain from humans... No one knew what was inside.

Of the sixteen squares, five are already open.

After a moment's thought, Bai Zhi reached out and lifted the wooden board on top of a silent black square.

Just as he lifted the wooden board, a handleless Kitchen Knife shot out from the black square and slashed straight at his face.

However, just as the Kitchen Knife was about to strike his face, Kitchen Knife suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared on the cutting board on the stove behind him, shattering the board in two.

A Chopsticks fell diagonally from in front of Bai Zhi.

With the Puzzle Card: Swap, God's Perspective, and the dynamic vision provided by Pluto, this operation was not difficult for him.

Then, at that moment, Bai Zhi finally saw clearly what was inside the black square.

It was a rather peculiar fish with a dent on its back and a fierce appearance. It swam silently in the pool within the square. The handleless Kitchen Knife that had flown towards him earlier had been launched from behind it.

"So what kind of weird ingredients are these... Knife Fish?"

Looking at the fish staring at him with unusual ferocity, Bai Zhi's lips twitched slightly.

"I used to laugh at Xia Wen for fighting with a fish in the kitchen, but now I'm actually fighting with a fish..."