The Game of Life

11 Chapter 11: Task Rewards

Editor: Larbre Studio

After a satisfying meal with plenty of drinks, everyone was contentedly rubbing their bellies and half-reclining in their chairs, including Chen Xiuxiu.

The eight dishes and one soup on the table were wiped clean, not even a drop of sauce left behind, the plates so clean they looked licked.

Had it not been for fear of upsetting Sir, Jiang Jiankang and Jiang Jiandang wouldn’t have minded licking the plates themselves.

As the years passed and Jiang Weiguo grew older, his body was still robust, but his stamina was not what it once was. A bountiful meal like this was rare, even for the New Year.

Jiang Jiandang, looking at the empty plates on the table and then thinking about his son, who didn’t have a shred of culinary talent and only knew how to eat, suddenly felt frustrated at his incompetence.

Jiang Shoucheng, who had sneezed on the high-speed train returning from Metro Medical School, rubbed his nose, wondering why the air conditioning on the train was so excessively strong.

"From now on, Jiandang, you’ll go to the morning market every day to buy fresh, natural ingredients, and stay away from those pesticide-sprayed, hormone-filled products,” Jiang Weiguo began assigning the daily tasks after Chen Duxiu and Chen Xiuxiu had left.

Jiang Jiandang nodded repeatedly, knowing that the quality of the ingredients directly affected the taste of the dishes.

"Feng, follow me every day to learn cooking. Get the fire control down. If you can’t even master the basics, how are you to inherit your father’s restaurant? What on earth was that porridge you made this morning?” Jiang Weiguo was obviously dissatisfied with the porridge Jiang Feng had cooked that morning.

“When you were a kid, you ran off as soon as you finished practicing your knife skills, saying studying was more important. More important my foot! How is studying more important? What good is some optical information degree compared to being a chef?”

"Your great grandfather was the head chef at Taifeng Building, where so many dignitaries couldn’t even buy a meal with a fortune,” Sir was clearly still troubled by Jiang Feng’s refusal to learn cooking under the pretext of studying.

Jiang Feng: …

He truly loved studying back then!

If he didn’t study, he had to go hang punching bags, chop potatoes, cucumbers, tofu—chopping until his hands needed bandaging, and then he’d have to keep on chopping. How could he not love studying?

"Dad, what about me?” Jiankang asked, eagerly waiting for his father to assign him a task.

"Aren’t you running your business?” Jiang Weiguo glanced at Jiankang.

"Yeah, aren’t you running your business?” Mrs. Wang Xiulian chimed in, also giving Jiankang a stern look before turning to Jiang Weiguo with a smile,

“Sir, I can help with washing the vegetables. I’ll wash them every day, they’ll be very clean.”

Washing vegetables at home meant getting freshly cooked dishes from Sir, a deal that was more than worthwhile.

Jiankang: …

Sir nodded slightly in agreement.

As Sir got up, Wang Xiulian and Li Mingli almost simultaneously began picking up the bowls and chopsticks, both declared in unison,

“I’ll wash the dishes!”

Such trivial matters never concerned Sir, who went into the kitchen, took out the cutting board and knife, and from a big bag of potatoes and radishes that Jiankang had bought, picked a few and put them in front of Feng.

"Cut the potatoes into chunks with a rolling cut and the radishes into slices. Let me see if your knife skills have gotten rusty,” Jiang Weiguo said.

Of course, Feng’s knife skills had indeed become quite rusty.

Under the scolding of Sir, Feng was reminded of the days of his youth, when his constant companions were potatoes, radishes, and cucumbers.

In the evening, Jiang Weiguo stir-fried some tolerable potato chunks and radish slices into several small dishes, while the rest he sent to the restaurant for Jiankang to cook and sell to the customers.

For the following period, Taifeng’s ‘healthy snacks’ involving potatoes and radishes were on special offer every day.

Jiang Feng felt like he was a kitchen hand in the restaurant’s back kitchen, spending his days chopping on the cutting board

“tap tap tap tap tap,” and even the reluctantly cut vegetables were scorned by the head chef.

Fortunately, Feng progressed from cutting vegetables to cutting meat.

Everyone was finally spared from having to eat minced meat stir-fried with potatoes and radishes or cucumber with mustard sauce every single day.

To celebrate Feng’s success at completely processing a chicken, even though it was a cruelly tortured farmyard chicken during the deboning process, Jiang Weiguo decided to make a dish of deboned stuffed chicken with it.

"Starting tomorrow, you can finally touch the pots,” Jiang Weiguo announced at the dinner table.

Jiang Feng, who had spent over ten days reclaiming his knifework, was moved to tears with joy.

During this time, Chen Xiuxiu had gradually shifted from being too embarrassed to come over for meals every day to arriving without invitation at meal times, and then to showing up one or two hours early every day to help Wang Xiulian and Li Mingli, completely forgetting her previous strict diet and refusal to eat.

Both of them set their eyes on the same piece of chicken.

When their chopsticks clashed, Jiang Feng couldn’t help but sigh that this day had finally come.

It was a piece of chicken evenly glazed with sugar, fried to a golden brown, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and exceptionally appetizing in appearance.

"Aren’t you on a diet? The calories in boneless chicken cutlets are too high for you,” Jiang Feng tried to persuade.

"Does Xiuxiu still need to diet?” Jiang Shoucheng, who was diligently eating, suddenly looked up with shock written all over his face.

"Even eating can’t shut your mouth!” Jiang Weiguo scolded.

Jiang Shoucheng immediately bowed his head and continued eating, following his grandfather’s teaching to fill his own mouth with food.

"How can you lose weight without eating enough?” Chen Xiuxiu, relying on years of experience in snatching food from Jiang Feng’s bowl, skillfully twisted her wrist and flicked her chopsticks, knocking Jiang Feng’s chopsticks aside and successfully claiming the chicken cutlet for her plate.

"Ding, side quest completed: [Neighbor’s Wish]. You have earned the reward: Cooking Porridge (Intermediate).”

These days, Jiang Feng had been chopping vegetables so absentmindedly that he had nearly forgotten about his task.

The Chen Xiuxiu from a year ago was back!

Looking at the chicken cutlet in Chen Xiuxiu’s bowl, Jiang Feng wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or sad.

"This afternoon, you’ll start with learning to fry eggs,” the old man began assigning learning tasks to Jiang Feng.

"Grandpa, how about I cook you some porridge this afternoon?” Jiang Feng tried to negotiate, hoping to win over his grandfather with his exquisite Cooking Porridge (Intermediate) skill.

"Porridge, porridge, porridge. How did our Jiang Family produce someone like you who loves cooking porridge so much?” The old man’s temper had become increasingly worse these days,

“You spent so many years practicing your knifework just to end up cooking porridge?”

Jiang Feng was left speechless by the retort.

Jiang Feng guessed that his grandfather regretted coming over to teach him culinary skills, only to find that he remained unteachable.

If he wanted to make a dish that would earn his grandfather’s approval,

He would need their great-grandfather’s spirit to possess him!

After dinner, Wang Xiulian, Li Mingli, and Chen Xiuxiu, as usual, scrambled to wash the dishes, while Jiang Shoucheng was directed by his grandfather to help in the store. Jiang Feng picked up the kitchen knife and continued his

“clang, clang, clang, clang.”

He still had to chop the ingredients for cooking in the afternoon by himself.

He didn’t even have a moment of leisure to check what Cooking Porridge (Intermediate) was all about, as any mistake with the knife would result in a loud and formidable scold from the old man.

"Jiang Feng, didn’t you eat lunch? You can’t even chop vegetables properly!”

At such times, Chen Xiuxiu would stand by, nonchalantly munching on a cucumber while watching the commotion.

Heartless.

Ah, women.