Utterly Heartless

Lu Yuan discovered that zongzi weren't the only thing missing from this world.

He flipped through the Food Flavor Pavilion's menu. One of his reasons for coming was to see how good the restaurant was. If its food was amazing, it naturally wouldn't need a little food-stall owner like him.

He wouldn't have known without looking, but one look filled him with confidence. Not only did the Food Flavor Pavilion have pitifully few dishes, it served only simple fare like egg fried rice, greens and meatball soup, and steamed spare ribs.

There was no sign of slightly more complicated dishes like fish-fragrant shredded pork, cumin lamb, or sweet and sour spare ribs. These were restaurant staples. No one had to order them, but a restaurant absolutely had to have them.

By now, Lu Yuan had a plan in mind. It seemed a huge chunk of this world's food culture was missing. Zongzi were a legendary food, after all!

What terrible disaster had happened to make the Hua People forget how to eat? Good heavens!

For Lu Yuan, though, that was good news. He knew that paying for his mother's treatment was almost certainly in the bag.

"Chef Wang." As he passed Chef Wang, Lu Yuan struck up an apparently casual conversation. "I picked up a few cooking skills before. Sweet and sour spare ribs are my specialty."

Chef Wang wiped his hands on a rag, his face full of confusion. "Sweet and sour spare ribs? You can put sugar and vinegar together? Wouldn't the flavors clash?"

Lu Yuan was delighted, but he put on a slightly bashful expression. "How about I cook a portion and you give me a score, Chef Wang?"

Chef Wang hesitated. Chefs generally didn't like outsiders touching their knives. Seeing this, Xiao Bing immediately stepped up to support her brother. "Chef Wang, my brother's cooking is so delicious! Really!"

She was thinking of the egg-stuffed flatbread she'd eaten that morning.

Only then did Chef Wang nod. He had to give Xiao Bing some face.

At the stove, Lu Yuan washed and dried his hands and took his place. All the cooking equipment was there: knives on the knife rack, a spatula and ladle hanging to one side, and bowls filled with every kind of seasoning.

It was all incredibly familiar to him. He had toiled for many years within just such a small space.

Taking a deep breath, Lu Yuan briskly began selecting ingredients.

The spare ribs were fresh and only needed chopping. The rock sugar, scallions, and ginger were all fine. Only the vinegar wasn't quite right... it would have to do.

Clack, clack, clack! Clack, clack, clack!

While Lu Yuan prepared the ingredients, Chef Wang chatted with the manager on the other side of the kitchen. He hadn't really paid much attention. As far as he was concerned, what cooking skills could a high schooler have?

But when the rhythmic sound of chopping spare ribs reached him, Chef Wang raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Oh, I misjudged him," he said quietly to the manager. "He's a pro."

The moment an expert made a move, you could tell whether he had the goods. A novice would never chop spare ribs like that. At that speed and with such clean strokes, a novice would chop his fingers!

The manager was astonished. The boss had gone to great lengths to poach Chef Wang. He might look like a simple, honest fellow, but his cooking skills were beyond question. If even Chef Wang called him a pro, then Lu Yuan was no ordinary young man.

Lu Yuan was focused on his work, free of distractions.

In his previous life, he had failed the college entrance exam, but he hadn't let himself sink into despair.

He had attended a culinary school and studied hard, becoming its best student.

He had wanted to make something of himself. He remembered his father's words:

A person should be diligent and hardworking. Even as a chef, there was plenty of room to make a mark.

Lu Yuan's cooking skills had been considerable in his previous life. Here in the Divine Land, a world that was a culinary desert, they were even more remarkable.

Blanch over high heat, drain, mix the sauce, and caramelize the sugar over low heat.

Chef Wang had been watching without taking his eyes off him, but by this point, he could no longer make sense of what he was seeing.

Why put rock sugar in hot oil?

He had never heard of such a technique. Was this kid just messing around?

While Lu Yuan worked, the other kitchen staff were resting and chatting or scrolling through their phones. None of them paid him any attention; they didn't have Chef Wang's discerning eye, after all.

But when a flame half as tall as a person shot up from the wok with a bang, everyone jumped. Several people dropped their phones on the floor.

"Fire!"

One kitchen assistant shouted and scrambled to find a rag. The others looked just as panicked. This world had no such ferocious wok-tossing technique.

"What's the panic?"

Lu Yuan spoke without looking back. His hands pushed, pulled, and flipped the wok in one smooth motion, a distinctive domineering air about him in the flickering firelight. The kitchen staff were reassured by the way he made it look effortless and stopped panicking. They realized this had to be some incredibly, incredibly impressive wok technique.

Xiao Bing planted her hands on her little hips, absolutely thrilled by her brother's performance. "Didn't I tell you? My brother's amazing!"

A moment later, a heaping plate of sweet and sour spare ribs came out of the wok, their caramel color making everyone's fingers itch to dig in.

"Chef Wang, would you help me judge them?"

Lu Yuan extended the polite invitation. He was a little worried that if people's sense of taste had changed in this world too, all his cooking skills would be useless.

Chef Wang didn't dare treat the request lightly. He fetched a small bowl and took two pieces.

He wasn't the only one. More than a dozen people in the kitchen came over with small bowls and each took a piece of spare rib.

This was a rule in the restaurant business: tasting a dish.

The group stood there, sampling it in little spoonfuls.

Xiao Bing's eyes narrowed with pleasure as she ate.

Everyone was immersed in the unique taste and texture they had never experienced before. For a moment, no one spoke.

But just then, someone began shouting from the doorway:

"Well, well! This is how you run your restaurant?"

"This is outrageous! You didn't tell your customers you had something so delicious!"

"You're hiding back here, eating it in secret!"

The people shouting at the door were four or five customers. They had been eating in the front dining room when they suddenly smelled a strange, wonderful fragrance. It was sour with a hint of sweetness, and sweet with a hint of sourness. They had never smelled anything like it, but it had to be delicious!

They followed the aroma to the kitchen, only to find such an utterly heartless scene!

The people running a restaurant were keeping a delicious dish from their customers and hiding in the back to eat it themselves. If that wasn't utterly heartless, what was? The customers were furious!

One auntie carrying a handbag was particularly angry. Oh! Wasn't she the picky auntie who had been arguing in the dining room just now? Who knew why she'd come back when she'd just eaten!

She pointed at the manager, drooling as she scolded her. "I'm going to file a complaint against you!"

I've been wronged! the manager thought. Luckily, Xiao Bing was quick-witted and hurried over to explain. "Sister, you've misunderstood. We're trying out a new dish. If you like it, we'll bring you a portion right away!"

The auntie's expression hardened. "Make it two portions to start!"

Chef Lu stepped up without hesitation. That evening, he cooked more than two hundred portions of sweet and sour spare ribs in the Food Flavor Pavilion's kitchen, stopping only when he had used up all the spare ribs in the refrigerator.

There hadn't originally been that many customers, but almost all of them asked for a few more portions to take away after trying the dish. It was a delicacy they'd never tasted before, after all, and they wanted to take some home for their families to try.

The manager, Auntie Zhang, happily calculated the takings. She felt that Xiao Bing and her brother were both her lucky stars. At closing time, she counted out five hundred yuan and pressed it on Lu Yuan. After all, the tens of thousands in extra takings were all thanks to him.

Lu Yuan politely declined the payment. He had a bigger goal.

What had happened that night would soon reach the ears of the boss, Jia Shengnan. But a single sweet and sour spare ribs recipe probably wouldn't be enough to make the big boss readily fork over 1.5 million yuan. Nobody's money blew in on the wind. Sweet and sour spare ribs weren't that difficult to make; at the very least, Chef Wang had surely learned how by now.

He wasn't a simple student, and he considered the worst in everything. The restaurant could simply sell the sweet and sour spare ribs itself. There was no such thing as copyright on cooking.

So Lu Yuan had to use a runaway hit to make Jia Shengnan understand the need for cooperation.

As it happened, a potential hit was right in front of him.

"Auntie Zhang," Lu Yuan said to the manager after declining the five hundred yuan. "You said shaobing doesn't sell well during the Dragon Boat Festival. I happen to have learned how to make a traditional snack. It's simple to make, and I guarantee it'll sell well. Would your restaurant like to try selling it?"

If Lu Yuan had walked in a few hours earlier and said he had a snack that would definitely sell well, the manager, Auntie Zhang, certainly wouldn't have believed him.

But now, the takings in the cash register were real enough. The manager and Chef Wang exchanged a look and nodded together.

"Let's give it a try!"

Lu Yuan then arranged for the ingredients to be purchased and explained what to watch out for. After both sides agreed that he would return the next day, the siblings left the Food Flavor Pavilion.

It was late, and time to go home and sleep.

On the way back, Xiao Bing happily ran circles around her brother. She still didn't know what Lu Yuan's plan was; she simply thought her brother was amazing.

Lu Yuan, meanwhile, was imagining how things would develop in the future.

The Divine Land was now a culinary desert. He could almost see a vast culinary empire rising rapidly, and he, Lu Yuan, was its ruler!

Just then, a high-level cultivator traveling somewhere flew overhead.

In the moonlight, the cultivator's long robes were white as snow, his figure carefree and at ease.

Below, the siblings watched with longing.

Damn it, who wants to be a chef?! I want to be a cultivator!

The culinary empire came crashing down!