"Xixi, don't tell me you're dating someone?"
Li Mengyao looked at Lin Qianqian with a deadly serious expression.
"What the heck? Stop making wild guesses."
"I'm not making wild guesses. This is a deduction backed by evidence."
"You never used to have any interest in baking. Now you suddenly want to learn, so there has to be another reason."
"Come on, are you learning to bake so you can make treats for some man?"
Li Mengyao laid out her reasoning as though Sherlock Holmes had possessed her.
To be fair, she was pretty close to the mark.
Lin Qianqian was indeed learning to bake because of a certain man.
The treats she made were also meant for that man to eat.
But her reason for feeding him was completely different from what Li Mengyao imagined.
"Oh, stop worrying about why I want to learn."
"Just answer one question: are you going to teach me or not?"
"I only came to you because you're my best friend. If you don't want to teach me, I can easily find someone else," Lin Qianqian said.
"Yes, yes, yes! I'll teach you!" Li Mengyao hurriedly grabbed Lin Qianqian's hand.
After all, she rarely got a chance to have Lin Qianqian come to her and ask for a favor.
Now that such a rare opportunity had presented itself, she certainly wasn't going to let it slip away.
Besides, Li Mengyao strongly suspected that Lin Qianqian was learning to bake for a man.
She wanted to see just who had enough pull to make Lin Qianqian learn to bake for him!
"Can you actually teach me?"
"Relax! This'll be a piece of cake!" Li Mengyao was brimming with confidence.
She had learned to bake as a child and was good at making all sorts of common treats.
How hard could teaching Lin Qianqian be?
"What do you want to learn to make? Egg tarts, wafer rolls, cookies, cupcakes, or something else?"
"No need to make it complicated. Cookies will do," Lin Qianqian said.
"I already learned how to make cookies yesterday, so I have some experience."
"Sure. Make a batch first, and let me see how much you can do," Li Mengyao said.
She figured that since Lin Qianqian had already spent all of yesterday learning to make cookies, there couldn't be any major problems.
At most, there would be a few little details to improve.
"Okay."
Lin Qianqian began beating eggs, mixing flour, adding butter...
Li Mengyao nodded as she watched her work.
Her movements were still unpracticed and clearly a little clumsy.
But overall, the process went fairly smoothly, which showed that Lin Qianqian had genuinely put effort into learning yesterday.
Before long...
The first batch of cookies was ready.
Although their surfaces were a little scorched, they looked reasonably good.
Li Mengyao picked up a cookie, put it in her mouth, and took a bite.
That single bite made her expression freeze.
It had nearly chipped her teeth.
Hard!
Harder than a rock!
She had nearly fallen victim to a cookie's sneak attack!
"Ptoo, ptoo, ptoo... Xixi, why are your cookies so hard?"
"I don't know either. I followed the tutorial exactly, but they just won't turn out right."
"It's okay. Try again. This time, I'll watch you through every single step," Li Mengyao said.
Earlier, Lin Qianqian had seemed to know what she was doing, so Li Mengyao hadn't watched closely, assuming everything would be fine.
Now it seemed she had let her guard down.
"Okay."
Lin Qianqian started again.
This time, Li Mengyao watched her personally, guiding her through each step and immediately pointing out any problems she spotted.
Soon, the second batch of cookies came out of the oven.
This time, Li Mengyao had full confidence in Lin Qianqian.
She had watched the entire process, and there hadn't been any problems.
Yet when the cookies came out, they were completely burnt!
"Wait, how did these burn?"
"I don't know either." Lin Qianqian looked utterly baffled.
If she knew the reason, she wouldn't have needed to ask Li Mengyao for help.
"Maybe there wasn't enough oil, or there was too much sugar. The proportions must be off."
"Again!"
Li Mengyao refused to believe she couldn't teach Lin Qianqian to make a single batch of cookies today!
The third attempt...
The fourth attempt...
The fifth attempt...
The sixth attempt...
They tried over and over, but every attempt had a different problem.
Sometimes the cookies wouldn't hold their shape and fell apart.
Sometimes they burned.
Sometimes they were too hard.
Sometimes they were too soft.
In short, every conceivable problem cropped up.
Much of the time, Li Mengyao couldn't even understand why something had gone wrong.
Every step was right, yet the results were all wrong.
And the result went wrong in a different way every time. That was what baffled Li Mengyao most.
"How can there be so many problems? Xixi, let me make a batch."
Li Mengyao decided to do it herself and see exactly where the problem lay.
She used the same recipe and followed the same steps.
Li Mengyao succeeded on her first try.
Her cookies were neither too hard nor too soft, with just the right flavor and a lovely, crisp texture.
"There's nothing wrong with my cookies."
Lin Qianqian tried one too. "These taste great. They're completely different from mine."
"But my steps were pretty much the same as yours. Why did they turn out differently?"
She couldn't understand it herself.
"If I can make cookies with these ingredients, that means there's nothing wrong with them. The problem has to lie somewhere else."
"So there's only one conclusion I can draw-you really have no talent for baking, Qianqian!"
In her hands, these ingredients became beautiful, delicious cookies.
In Lin Qianqian's hands, they became all sorts of bizarre failures.
Since the ingredients weren't the problem...
It could only be the person using them.
"Xixi, maybe you should just give up," Li Mengyao said.
She had started out brimming with confidence, but now that confidence had taken a serious beating.
For a moment, she had almost wondered whether something had gone wrong with her own baking skills.
Thankfully...
The problem was with Lin Qianqian.
Not her.
"No!" Lin Qianqian rejected the suggestion outright.
She had to make delicious treats!
The system would grade her performance on the punishment task.
If her score wasn't high enough, she wouldn't get the reward.
And the system's score depended on whether the treats she made could earn a decent review from Zhou Fan.
Yesterday, Zhou Fan had torn her first attempt to shreds.
That simply wouldn't do!
Besides...
Even without the system's requirements...
Lin Qianqian refused to accept that she couldn't make even a single cookie!
Because Zhou Fan's words yesterday had hurt her.
She swore she would make delicious cookies and make Zhou Fan regret what he'd said!
She was a mighty wielder of an S-rank superpower. How could one tiny cookie defeat her?
Li Mengyao was moved by her determination.
"Xixi, I knew you wouldn't give up that easily!"
"Don't worry. I'll use everything I've ever learned. I'll teach you, no matter what!"
Now she wanted to know even more.
What could possibly make Lin Qianqian so determined?
If it really was a man, she couldn't imagine what kind of man could make Lin Qianqian put in so much effort!
Before you continue