I'm here to repay your kindness!

Outer Court cafeteria, Staff Lounge.

Gao Ren was cultivating there.

To keep applicants from being unable to find him, he planned to stay there even during the cafeteria's downtime, until he had hired enough staff.

"Little Gao! Little Gao!"

The door to the Staff Lounge opened, and Auntie Lin, who handled the cafeteria's purchasing (and supplied Little Huo with fish for grilling in the original story), walked in.

"Auntie Lin, what happened?"

"There's a pretty senior female student outside. She says she's here to apply to work for you."

Gao Ren couldn't help freezing for a moment at Auntie Lin's answer.

That fast? I remember only putting the notice up a little while ago, didn't I? Someone willing to work has already shown up?

On the Douluo Continent, aside from Food System Soul Masters, Soul Masters of other types rarely knew how to cook.

After all, those who could become Soul Masters were generally nobles or sect disciples. Raised in fine clothes and on sumptuous meals, with food delivered straight to their mouths, why would they go out of their way to learn cooking?

Compared to them, the odds of a Soul Master appearing among commoners were pitifully low... Every student at Shrek Academy was a Soul Master, and very few were genuinely good cooks.

Not to mention that students had only just begun returning to school. No wonder Gao Ren felt that an applicant had come too quickly.

"Got it, Auntie Lin. I'll head out right away."

Gao Ren thought, Hopefully she's a Food System Soul Master. That would save me some trouble.

Gao Ren didn't care whether his employees were pretty. He had seen plenty of beautiful women, and good looks earned no bonus points with him.

All he wanted now was a helper who could do the work properly.

After leaving the Staff Lounge, Gao Ren soon met the senior female student who had come to apply at the kitchen entrance.

The girl looked fourteen or fifteen, with a slender, well-proportioned figure and long golden hair falling in loose, broad waves behind her.

Her beauty could topple cities and kingdoms, seeming to drain the color from everything around her.

Naturally, Gao Ren knew someone like her. She was Jiang Nannan, known as the Outer Court's greatest beauty.

Jiang Nannan was a core disciple and had the privilege of eating free at the Outer Court cafeteria. When a cook and a diner saw each other often enough, they naturally became acquainted.

"Oh, it's you, Sister Nannan." Gao Ren greeted her without asking about the application. "How's your mother doing? Did my Pure World Overlord's Leg and the Healing Overlord Leg help?"

At Gao Ren's inquiry, Jiang Nannan, whose brows were already relaxed, looked as though something wonderful had just happened. Beaming, she said, "Thanks to you, she's completely recovered!"

She looked extremely excited, her eyes filled with gratitude as she gazed at Gao Ren.

"That's good." Gao Ren nodded.

To explain how this had begun, they had to go back to the end of the previous semester.

Back then, their great Tang Sect leader, Tang Ya, who would someday lead the Tang Sect to a resurgence (by coasting to victory), had noticed that her close friend and roommate, Jiang Nannan, always wore a cloud of sorrow that refused to disperse.

So Tang Ya had asked Jiang Nannan what exactly had made her so emo.

Jiang Nannan hadn't wanted to tell her at first, but under Tang Ya's Mysterious Jade Hand, she had eventually been forced to reveal the reason.

Jiang Nannan told Tang Ya that her mother was seriously ill. Her heart had a severe congenital defect, and she needed to find a way to treat it as soon as possible.

The longer the illness went untreated, the more likely it was to threaten her life.

"In that case, your family needs to call in Gao Ren."

That was what Tang Ya had told Jiang Nannan at the time.

Jiang Nannan thought Tang Ya had a solution. After all, the Tang Sect had a long-standing heritage. Coming from a commoner's family, she simply couldn't compare with Tang Ya in that regard.

Jiang Nannan asked Tang Ya where this "expert" was. "Gao Ren" sounded the same as the Chinese word for "expert," which had misled her.

"You eat at Gao Ren's place every day. How could you not know where he is?"

Tang Ya's thunderous way with words left Jiang Nannan feeling she had been toyed with, making her so angry that she wanted to cut ties with Tang Ya.

After all, in Jiang Nannan's eyes, Gao Ren was just a little boy of eight.

The only things that set him apart were that he was a bit more handsome, had grown up a bit too quickly (absorbing Soul Rings had accelerated his development), had a delicious Food-type Martial Soul, and was Xuan Zi's disciple.

She didn't believe for a second that a little boy like him could have any special way of treating her mother's illness.

Tang Ya had coaxed Jiang Nannan for a long time before she finally calmed down and slowly began listening to Tang Ya's explanation.

Tang Ya thought Gao Ren might have a solution because of what she had heard from Bei Bei.

Bei Bei was Mu En's great-great-grandson. With such a dramatic change in Mu En, Bei Bei was bound to be curious... He had learned from Mu En about the effects of Gao Ren's second and third Soul Skills, and assumed Gao Ren was currently a Soul Grandmaster.

Of course, Tang Ya hadn't told Jiang Nannan that the old man who lay sunning himself below the dormitory building all day was the supreme pavilion master of Shrek Academy's Sea God Pavilion.

She had only told Jiang Nannan that the old man was no longer hunched over and was in better shape, all because of Gao Ren.

Tang Ya told Jiang Nannan to ask Gao Ren for help regardless of whether it would work.

When Jiang Nannan came straight to his door to plead with him, Gao Ren chose to lend her a hand. It was no more than lifting a finger for him, anyway... Though pity for Jiang Nannan also played a part.

He truly couldn't understand why that esteemed figure had dreamed up such an outrageously absurd plot.

A dignified core disciple of Shrek Academy had actually been reduced to selling herself like merchandise just to obtain medicine that could save her mother's life...

If she had to sell herself, why not sell the rest of her life to Shrek Academy and have the academy help her?!

If that esteemed figure had been normal, and if Shrek Academy had been normal, surely a core disciple in need wouldn't have been left to suffer something like that.

"I saw the hiring notice on the academy bulletin board. You're hiring here, right? Do you think I'd do?"

Gao Ren thought back to when he was five. That was when Jiang Nannan had first enrolled at Shrek Academy.

He remembered that when Jiang Nannan had just enrolled, before becoming a core disciple, she had worked at the Outer Court cafeteria for a while.

Although he wasn't quite sure how well she had done back then, judging by her way of doing things and other aspects of her character, her cooking probably wouldn't be too bad.

After all, she was a child from a commoner's family, and a girl at that. She surely knew how to cook.

Only...

"Sister Nannan, why did you decide to apply here?" Gao Ren asked a very important question. "You're a core disciple of the academy. Now that your mother's problem is resolved, you shouldn't have anything else you especially need money for, right?"

"I'm here to repay your kindness!" Jiang Nannan said solemnly. "A life-saving kindness deserves a gushing spring in return! You saved my mother's life. I could never repay that debt, even in an entire lifetime!"