The Game of Life-Chapter 765 - 764 Exploration of the Secret Chamber

Chapter 765 -764: Exploration of the Secret Chamber (4000 words)

Chapter 765 -764: Exploration of the Secret Chamber (4000 words)

What Jiang Feng hadn’t expected was that Zhang Xi didn’t turn from a fan to a hater, nor even became indifferent; instead, she insisted on coming over the next evening.

Of course, Zhang Xi’s taste buds were still normal. She didn’t come for the pure meat wontons, she came because she wanted to have the eight-treasure porridge. It was while Jiang Feng was at Yonghe House that Ji Yue messaged him to tell him about Zhang Xi’s arrival.

For several consecutive days afterwards, Zhang Xi came to Yonghe House every evening, but she never managed to taste the eight-treasure porridge made by Jiang Feng. Every time Zhang Xi arrived, Ji Yue would send a message to Jiang Feng. After coming for four or five days in a row without getting her porridge, Zhang Xi seemed to lose interest in coming.

Jiang Feng and Zhou Shi didn’t work like 007 with a clock-in, clock-out job at Yonghe House—they needed rest days just like any other chefs. The difference was that the rest days for the chefs at Yonghe House were scheduled on a shift rotation, while Jiang Feng and Zhou Shi’s days off depended on whether Peng Changping felt like working that day or not. The last time Peng Changping didn’t show up at Yonghe House, he messaged Zhou Shi, and they were both free to do as they pleased, which counted as a day off for them. After seven days, Peng Changping once again decided he didn’t want to work and informed Jiang Feng and Zhou Shi a day in advance that they had a holiday the next day.

Because of the aftereffects of eating braised pork, Jiang Feng had a bit of a phobia about it, even though the buff it gave was really good, he didn’t dare to eat it too often. He limited himself to once a week, usually on Mondays. Coincidentally, Peng Changping’s time off this time was set on a Monday, so Jiang Feng even skipped his weekly braised pork meal.

If Wu Minqi were still around, and Jiang Feng had a leisure day off from not eating braised pork, he would definitely laze around at home happily, browsing his phone, watching TV, snacking, playing video games, fully enjoying the opulent holiday life of a pseudo-capitalist.

But now things were different. Wu Minqi had gone home to strive hard and practice cooking, even having video call sessions with Jiang Feng every evening to exchange the results of their daily practice, much like checking in with homework.

Whenever Jiang Feng thought about his wife training hard in the land of Shu, while he was leisurely enjoying air conditioning, eating watermelon, connecting to WiFi, and playing games, he felt a deep sense of guilt well up inside him.

But he really didn’t want to work during his holidays.

Past days off involved going to Yonghe House in the morning, but since Peng Changping didn’t feel like working and issued a sudden half-day leave, this time off was a full day’s holiday because Peng Changping simply didn’t feel like working at all.

With different types of holidays came different possible activities.

After much consideration, Jiang Feng felt that he needed to relax without slacking off too much. Adhering to the maxim that shared joy is triple joy, Jiang Feng borrowed the keys to Fen Garden from Zhang Guanghang, took Jiang Junlian, Jiang Junqing, and Ji Xia for a party at Fen Garden.

A food party.

The specifics were, three girls ordered dishes, and he cooked.

Jiang Junqing and Jiang Junlian could never have dreamed of such a delightful party in this world. If there were such parties every day, they’d be willing to join daily, paying whatever membership fee was required, as long as they could afford it.

Before handing the keys over to Jiang Feng, Zhang Guanghang enthusiastically reminded him that the cleaning lady specifically responsible for cleaning Fen Garden had gone back to her hometown for an emergency and wouldn’t be back for half a month. Zhang Guanghang was too lazy to hire a new cleaning lady, fearing she might not understand the rules and mess up something, so Fen Garden had been left uncleaned for half a month.

If Jiang Feng wanted to party at Fen Garden, it looked like he might need to do some cleaning first.

Zhang Guanghang usually only used the kitchen for cooking at Fen Garden, but as the kitchen was only a small part of what was once Beiping’s number one private dining restaurant, there was also the dining hall for guests, a courtyard landscape, and two storerooms for miscellaneous items.

Zhang Guanghang told Jiang Feng that because Xia Mushi rarely threw things away, the storeroom contained old junk from thirty or forty years ago or even older. After Xia Mushi passed away, these items, which no one had cleaned, were all locked in the storeroom by Zhang Guanghang, who was reluctant to dispose of them. If Jiang Feng was interested and needed them, he could also sort through the storeroom and see if there were any interesting or useful items, which could then be stored separately somewhere else.

Jiang Feng: ?

He felt sure Zhang just wanted him to give Fen Garden a free cleaning.

Updat𝓮d from frёewebnoѵēl.com.

Indeed, not a single capitalist heart at Taifeng Building was red.

They were all 24k pure black.

Even though the pleasant vacation was about to turn into unpaid voluntary cleaning duty, Jiang Feng was still happily dragging his two younger female cousins and an apprentice to Fen Garden.

After all, he just needed to be in charge of cooking today, and as for cleaning… There were four of them here, weren’t there?

Jiang Junqing and Jiang Junlian, completely oblivious to their older cousin’s plans, chatted excitedly with Ji Xia on the subway about what they could eat for lunch today, discussing what to eat and how to maximize stomach capacity.

Throughout the conversation, it was Jiang Junqing and Jiang Junlian doing all the talking, leaving Ji Xia somewhat confused. Jiang Feng occasionally listened in and found that all he heard were names of meat dishes like Ten Thousand Fortune Meat, pork knuckles, braised pork, lamb chops, spicy beef with chili, stir-fried pork intestines, sweet and sour ribs, crispy fried pork loin, and sweet and sour fish fillets. Not many veggie-related words were to be found in the names of the dishes.

Not the least bit creative.

Seeing that Ji Xia had not spoken, Jiang Feng took the initiative to ask her, “Xiaxia, what would you like to eat for lunch today?”

Listening to Jiang Junqing and Jiang Junlian recite the names of dishes had mesmerized Ji Xia, and after much thought, she couldn’t come up with any meat dish that the two cousins hadn’t already mentioned. She struggled for a while before finally voicing a dish she had been learning recently.

“Fresh meat mooncakes.”

Jiang Junlian’s eyes instantly lit up at the mention of fresh meat mooncakes, shining like a 500-watt lightbulb.

“Little brother, you know how to make fresh meat mooncakes now? You’re seriously amazing!”

Jiang Feng: …

No, I don’t.

Jiang Feng silently looked at the ground, avoiding eye contact with any of the three: “Fresh meat mooncakes are too time-consuming and troublesome, if you want to eat them you can just order straight from Eight-treasure House’s delivery, they’re already selling them since the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up.”

“Pick something else.”

Ji Xia began seriously considering if there were any other meat dishes she could think of.

Jiang Feng also started pondering what kind of apprentice task to assign Ji Xia.

Last time, he had casually given her the task to make a hundred layered pastries, which had been ridiculed by the game for being exceedingly perfunctory and meaningless. Ji Xia had only just completed it two days ago. This casual way of assigning tasks had also backfired on him—tasks with no value that just took up space, blocking the way to assign other tasks.

Other than the first period when Ji Xia practiced making the pastries near ten times a day, she now usually only did it once or twice daily. During this time, she had also been learning how to make fresh meat mooncakes from Jiang Jianguo, so the practice for pastries became even less frequent. If it weren’t for Jiang Feng urging Ji Xia halfway through because the progress of the task was too slow, reminding her to keep up practice every day so as not to lose her touch, that useless task might not have been completed even now.

The lessons from the last failed task prompted Jiang Feng to contemplate how to assign a valuable task this time.

As her mentor, the only thing he could teach Ji Xia was the Red Chef techniques, but it would be a waste for Ji Xia to give up her great talent for the White Chef arts to learn Red Chef. Initially, besides giving Ji Xia some pocket money and having her go to Da Hua to chop pig feed to practice the basics, there wasn’t much he could do. Now, finally having some things he could possibly do for his apprentice, he obviously needed to consider carefully.

But what kind of task would actually be valuable?

Can you see the tasks where Ji Xia made progress and growth?

“Xiaxia,” Jiang Feng suddenly began, “how is your fresh meat mooncake coming along?”

“I tried to make a batch yesterday, and the result…” Ji Xia said, somewhat embarrassed, “I can’t exactly call it a failure, it did look like a mooncake, but it didn’t taste good. The texture of the crust was a bit off, and the meat juice wasn’t sealed in tightly.”

Jiang Feng thought it was normal to have a mishap or failure the first time. How long had Ji Xia been learning to make fresh meat mooncakes? Although ‘mooncake’ and ‘crispy pastry’ both contain the word ‘cake,’ their difficulty levels were not in the same league.

“Don’t worry, when your master first started cooking, I would often fail too, but now I fail much less. It’s all a process, take it slow, and one day you’ll be as great as your master.” Jiang Feng dished out some motivational soup to Ji Xia.

Ji Xia happily drank it all in and promised to work hard.

Fen Garden wasn’t too far from the Jiang Family, just over half an hour by subway and then a few minutes’ walk. Jiang Junqing, Jiang Junlian, and Ji Xia were all visiting Fen Garden for the first time, exploring around like tourists, everything appearing novel to them. Even the garden areas, which had become slightly deformed from half a month without tending, seemed exotic, and they soaked in the true daily life of the genuinely rich.

The truly wealthy, after finishing their work, could only practice their cooking alone in such a grand siheyuan courtyard.

The courtyard was so large it even required a dedicated cleaning lady.

Jiang Feng, following the instructions previously given to him by Zhang Guanghang, easily found the storeroom.

Normally when Jiang Feng came to Fen Garden, he went straight to the kitchen, occasionally to other places and the restrooms, but he had never been to these two storerooms.

They were called storerooms, but really were just two rooms combined into one, very large and located in a corner near the wall. It was clear that not many people frequented this place, and likely the cleaning lady didn’t bother with it either, as weeds were growing right onto the pathway.

Jiang Feng opened the door of one of the storerooms.

A cloud of dust hit them instantly, causing all four to sneeze in unison, then they sprang into action.

Jiang Feng suspected Zhang Guanghang might never have opened the door to this storeroom.

But looking inside, Jiang Feng also felt there really wasn’t any need to have opened it; it was incredibly messy.

There was everything – cloth of unknown purpose, tables, chairs, stools, things wrapped in cloth, bottles and jars, boxes, and even rusted metal bars.

Jiang Feng held his breath and went inside to look at a dusty plate carelessly thrown on a cloth. The plate was chipped; it must have been discarded as useless.

Jiang Feng thought that Xia Mushi likely didn’t use this place as a storeroom, but more like a giant trash bin.

But not everything in the room looked like trash. Through the legs of a chair, Jiang Feng caught a glimpse of what looked like a wooden toy car, probably a toy from Zhang Guanghang’s childhood, later discarded here by Xia Mushi.

There were still some interesting things around, they just needed to be sorted out.

Jiang Junlian found something interesting too.

“Brother,” Jiang Junlian said as she pulled a dust-covered wineglass from a wooden crate, so thickly covered it was hard to see its original color and pattern, “This wineglass is so quaint, just like the ones from period dramas.”

Jiang Junqing and Ji Xia could barely stand the dust flying everywhere in the room and stood at the door without coming in. Jiang Junqing wafted away some dust in front of her nose and asked, covering her mouth and nose, “Brother, what are we doing here? Are we looking for something?”

“This is part of our party for today,” Jiang Feng started to spout nonsense earnestly.

The three of them: ?

“The items in this storeroom, some are old objects from thirty or forty years ago. As you can see, the place is huge, filled with many things. It’s a bit dirty, yes, but there are still plenty of interesting items. Aren’t we having a party today? Just cooking and eating isn’t what a party is about; there must be activities for it to be a party.”

“You know escape rooms, right? Today’s activity theme is ‘room exploration.’ Later, I’ll go cook, and you’ll be responsible for finding things here that you think are useful and interesting. Clean them after you find them, and when the dishes are ready, I’ll come to evaluate and judge. There’s a reward for the winners.”

Of the three, it was Ji Xia who had interest for the so-called room exploration, as she hadn’t even played escape rooms before. Jiang Junlian and Jiang Junqing weren’t children anymore and had little interest in such childlike adventure games, but they were very interested in the rewards Jiang Feng mentioned.

“Brother, what’s the reward?” Jiang Junqing asked.

“The reward is a serving of Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup for the winner the day after tomorrow,” Jiang Feng said with a smile.

He was now able to just about make a complete version of Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup. Because he wasn’t yet proficient, he still made some minor mistakes, and the quality fluctuated between ‘A’ and ‘S’ grades. Even when he managed an ‘S’ grade, it wasn’t as good as he expected because there were differences even within ‘S’ grade.

In any case, the Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup he made hadn’t reached the taste he envisioned.

It wasn’t as scrumptious as Chicken Tofu Blossoms, nor did it give that stunning impression.

Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup was the real signature dish of the Jiang Family, and if Jiang Feng, as the heir to Jiang Family Dishes, couldn’t make the soup his own signature dish, what kind of signature dish would that be?

The three of them had never tried Jiang’s Sea Cucumber Soup, but they were aware that Jiang Feng had been learning the dish from Peng Changping. Suddenly, Jiang Junlian felt that the dust in the storeroom wasn’t that bad. Her nose itched a bit, but she could handle it – just breathe less.

“Where are the rags?”

“The first small room you saw at the entrance is the cleaning room, and it has cleaning supplies,” Jiang Feng said quietly, passing the keys to Jiang Junqing, who was closest to him.

Jiang Junqing grabbed the keys and ran, with Jiang Junlian and Ji Xia quickly following, looking every bit like cleaning whizzes.

Wait a minute, wasn’t the theme for today ‘room exploration’?

Jiang Feng finally remembered the nonsense he had just made up.

Whatever, it’s not like he had to do the cleaning himself.

Jiang Feng walked towards the kitchen, light-hearted and content.