“The texture, the taste, the raw umami…”, Qian Shanyi continued, keeping her half closed eyes on Wang Niu’s tired face. He looked so happy, she was barely keeping herself from bursting into laughter. Wu Lanhua kept her curious stare on her, but focused back on the stew. “It’s almost like I am fighting this ox myself, and it is winning, trampling me underneath its powerful hooves.”

“Well, it’s good that you have finally accepted your place.” Wang Niu laughed.

“If this was a duel of the dishes, you would have undoubtedly won,” she said, her grin slowly filling with malice, as she opened her eyes wide. “It’s unfortunate, then, that this is a duel of the chefs - and while you are a great cook, you are, undoubtedly, one of the worst chefs I have ever seen.”

“What?” he said, his smile faltering slightly, and she finally let herself laugh as all the eyes in the room turned on her.

It was time to finish this.

“Did you really think that it’s the dish that makes a perfect chef?” She kept laughing as she walked back around to her station. “How naive. A chef is not like a cook at all - a chef is a head of the kitchen, the director of an orchestra of cooks who come together to create something beautiful. Merely perfecting your dishes is not enough at all. Let me show you how a real chef cooks!”

From one of the cupboards, she took out a small hourglass, and slammed it down on the counter, letting the sand fall.

“Three minutes,” she grinned, “in three minutes, my dish will be complete, or my name is not Lan Yishan!”

“Impossible!” He said, unknowingly playing along, the fool. “You have barely even started!”

“Oh please,” she laughed again, “I could have finished it twenty minutes ago. The only reason I waited was so that I could present it second. Behold…My secret ingredient!”

She reached into her ice box, the talisman inside of it well on the way to burning out after many hours of use, and brought out a large bowl of ramen noodles. She raised it above her head with both hands as if making an offering to the heavens, angling it slightly so that the judges could see what was in it.

“What? No, how -” he said, clearly panicking, “When did you have time to make them?!”

“Did you truly think I unpacked everything from this chest of wonders, simply because I laid out so much already? How naive!” She laughed again, tossing the noodles into the hot soup on the stove to let them rehydrate. “A true chef always keeps a secret or three up their sleeves!”

Moving quickly, she grabbed an empty pot, covered it with a clean cloth, tying it in place with a piece of rope that slithered out of her robes. With her other hand, she lifted the pot of soup she left in her ice box, now at just the right temperature, and poured it over the top, filtering out the broth.

“I made the noodles as soon as you left the boat, you fool,” she said, commenting on what she was doing, “we have only agreed on the cost of the ingredients, not on how raw and unprocessed they had to be - and the noodles are dirt cheap! But despite their cost…the noodles are a perfect weapon for any chef, far more valuable than even their knife! Just like rice, you can turn noodles into practically any dish - a hot dish, a cold dish, a filling dish, or even a sweet dish. Their versatility is almost infinite.”

The solids in the soup collected on the cloth, and she grabbed a wooden spoon, stirring the mixture, forcing it to filter faster.

Two minutes left.

“Adaptability is the first key virtue of any chef!” she continued, “Who can say in advance what would happen in a kitchen? Perhaps a dish would burn, or a junior would chop off their own arm, or an enemy cultivator would burst through the doors! But a great chef must be able to cook in any circumstances, no matter how bizarre, they must improvise and adapt their cooking on the fly. How could you adapt without versatile ingredients?”

She gestured to the glass casing enclosing the non-functional cold air talisman. The eyes of the judges were glued to her, the stew in front of them all but forgotten.

“What are the circumstances at play? There are two absolutely crucial factors,” she continued, “first of all, we are in a duel! If you are in a duel, are you not fighting for your own life? That means you must think ahead, and make sure that no singular screw-up will cost you the victory, no matter what your opponent does. Secondly, the room is too hot, because the cooling talisman has broken! And if the room is too hot, then the way you should adapt is by making a cold and refreshing dish!”

“It’s true,” Wu Lanhua said, surprise clear in her tone, her left hand fanning her own face faster. “I haven’t thought of it, but this stew really doesn’t fit the temperature.”

The soup kept pouring, but it was almost over. Wang Niu was grimacing as if she had stabbed a knife straight through his stomach.

“But that path was forever closed to you when you picked your dish, junior cook Wang Niu,” she laughed, “A beef stew cannot be cool and refreshing, because as soon as you tried to cool it, the hot, liquid animal fat would solidify and, at best, turn it into aspic. That was your second failure, an unforgivable lack of foresight. Picking beef stew as your dish, when you knew nothing about me or my methods, and could neither predict nor control the circumstances of the duel, meant you had crippled yourself right from the start. Compare that to my pick - ”

One minute left.

She grabbed four bowls, and made them spin at the center of her working area. Grabbing the pot with her noodles off the stove, she quickly strained the noodles out, and divided them among the four bowls.

She wished she could toss them through the air, but her skills were still nowhere near the ramen-tossing realm.

“- fish ramen! It can be served in hundreds of different ways. Its preparation cannot be stopped by any given ingredient going missing - because it has no true set of ingredients. It is a perfect choice for a duel like ours.”

She pulled the cloth off the pot, bringing all the filtered solids away, and quickly poured the clean, smooth broth into the four bowls. With a few quick moves, she added the fish filets to the bowls, fresh and fried vegetables, and cooked mushrooms as garnish.

“But you didn’t think about that at all, did you?” She shook her head sadly, bringing the dishes over to the dining table, “This was another failure of yours. Oh, your mind is like an open book - you focused on making the perfect dish, one that could only truly be made by someone of your skill, but you forgot that you were supposed to make the dish fit to the tastes of the judges, not your own. I’ve tasted your stew - it is so incredibly rich in flavor, that only another cultivator could possibly truly appreciate it - and as cultivators, we are already less affected by the heat and cold, so of course you would forget about the air temperature. But two out of three judges are not cultivators - is that truly the best dish you could have made, under these circumstances?”

She placed the bowls in front of the judges just as the last grains of sand in the hourglass fell down.

“Please enjoy this cool and refreshing soup, honorable judges. I hope it helps you cope with this unbearable heat,” she smiled, and turned fully to Wang Niu.

She stretched out her hand with the last bowl invitingly, but he did not take it. A shame.

“Perhaps in the nice, clean, structured duels you had with other cultivators of your sect, you could simply win on taste alone.” She shook her head again. “But this is the real world, and you can’t simply get by that easily - not that someone like you could understand this. You need planning! Preparation! Presentation! I could see the smoke of disdain in your eyes when I was juggling the vegetables, instead of peeling them straightforwardly. But entertaining the guests in any way is the job of the chef - the raw taste is only a narrow part of the entire experience!”

“This is pure luck. You are making this up as you go.” He scowled. “If the talisman wouldn’t have broken, all this rhetoric would be pointless.”

“Yet you are the one who stopped us from opening that door,” Wu Lanhua said, taking a sip of her ramen, her face brightening immediately. Wang Niu reeled back, as if struck by a blow.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“The door? The door is not half of it, honorable merchant Wu,” Qian Shanyi shook her head again, heading back to her table, “Honorable cultivator Wang could have easily prepared for this eventuality, even if he was dead set on making a beef stew.”

She reached back into her ice box. “Behold, my second secret ingredient…Pure ice!”

Looking at him, she thought Wang Niu was about to have a heart attack.

She pulled out a chunk of ice, wrapped it up in a cloth, and punched it hard enough to shatter it into nuggets. Taking five glasses out of one of the cupboards, she quickly filled them with the hot water from a kettle, added some sugar, squeezed half of a lemon into each glass, and finally dropped in enough shattered ice to chill the mixture instantly.

“We both agreed to prepare a main dish, but nothing in our rules stopped you from preparing a side dish as well,” she said, stirring the fresh lemonade to make sure the sugar was completely dissolved, “a well-planned side dish could have easily compensated for the weaknesses of the stew. No, this is simply yet another failure of imagination.”

She brought the glasses to the table, and toasted everyone in the room.

“You knew there would be a stove, and so a source of heat,” she said, “yet you did not bring ice, a source of cold? A talisman in an ice box can only do so much. How pathetic of a chef could you possibly be?”

He grit his teeth, his face going red, but did not say anything more. She sipped her lemonade calmly, waiting for the judges to taste both dishes, and make their decision. The minutes stretched on, with the three of them whispering to each other quietly, until Wu Lanhua raised her hand.

“Well, I admit I did not expect this reversal of fortunes after tasting your stew, honorable immortal Wang,” said Wu Lanhua, “but we must give this victory to Lan Yishan.”

“What?” Wang Niu exclaimed, “This is an outrage!”

“It was a narrow decision,” she continued calmly, “even despite how inappropriate a hot stew is in a room that is turning into a sauna, your cooking has been simply incredible. And while this ramen is quite refreshing… Yishan, there are no true problems with it that we could taste, but it is not particularly exemplary either.”

Qian Shanyi simply nodded her head. She was only cooking for less than a month, that was only to be expected.

“However, ultimately, I think honorable immortal Lan is right,” Wu Lanhua continued, “and while rhetoric was not initially a part of this duel, my fellow judges agree with me. We cannot judge a chef simply on the merits of the dish, and as a chef, she wins on pretty much every other metric - preparation, planning, cost of ingredients, panache and presentation, and so on. I am afraid… you have lost this one, honorable immortal Wang.”

“This is unacceptable!” He slashed his hand to the side, scowling at Wu Lanhua. “This - this slop, and some spoken nonsense do not make her a chef! Your so-called ‘judgment’ is a farce, and you -”

“Hold your tongue,” Liu Fakuang spoke sharply, standing up slowly from the table, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Wu Lanhua smiled, crossing her arms, letting him talk. “Before you kill yourself with it.”

Wang Niu glanced at Liu Fakuang, and stepped back, a drop of sweat sliding down his forehead.

“Are you saying my fiance is a liar?” Liu Fakuang said, nodding sharply at Wang Niu, “Well?”

“I - no, honorable spirit hunter Liu,” he muttered, his voice turning gray.

“Are you saying that I am one? Is my word that this duel was judged honestly not enough for you?”

“No, of course not.” Wang Niu shook his head.

“Then do you accept the outcome?”

He balled his hands into fists, and for a moment, Qian Shanyi thought he would lash out after all… but instead, tension left him all at once.

“There is nothing more to say,” he said, his voice turning gray, “I have agreed to the terms, and if the honorable judges say I have lost, then I suppose it is so.”

“Good,” Liu Fakuang nodded, sitting back down, “now apologize to all those whose honor you almost impugned, and you may leave.”

“I am sorry for my sharp words, honorable merchant Wu, fellow cultivator Liu,” Wang Niu bowed deeply, “this was a hard and long duel, and I spoke without thinking. This brings great shame to my name, but I hope you could forgive my misstep.”

“No harm was done,” Wu Lanhua said.

Wang Niu bowed again, and turned to leave.

“Stop,” Liu Fakuang called after him, “I said all. This leaves Lan Yishan.”

Wang Niu turned back to her, and she saw his face shift through a dozen grimaces as his spirit fought against itself.

“I apologize,” he ceded through his closed teeth.

That’s it?

“Fellow cultivator Wang.” She smiled, not able to hold herself back. “Perhaps I could offer you a bit of advice, from one immortal chef to another?”

He nodded, and she approached him, putting her lips right next to his ear, and whispering so quietly they barely moved.

“You know…These ice talismans are so fragile,” she whispered, “so delicate. Why, if someone wanted to sabotage one… it would be ever so easy…”

He jerked back from her, and she saw his eyes fill with murderous rage, his lips trembling over his bared teeth. She held his gaze with a smile.

Come on, you pompous, arrogant fuck, she thought, her face a mask of perfect innocence, call me out on it. You know you want to. Give me my triple prize.

But he did not. Instead, he turned, and fled, not saying goodbye.

“Junior cook Wang Nui, if you can’t take the heat, you should… Stay out of my kitchen!” she declared triumphantly after him, slashing her hand through the air like the blade of a vengeful angel.

He didn’t look back.

----------------------------------------

That fool never stood a chance.

“What did you say to him?” Wu Lanhua shook her head, once her friend Li Shangwen made his excuses to retire for the night, and the three of them were left alone. Qian Shanyi quickly cleaned up the kitchen, made some late night tea, and brought it alongside her victory prize over to the dining table. “I’ve never seen Wang Niu make that kind of face before.”

“I simply gave him some pointers on his strategy,” Qian Shanyi replied with an easy smile, “if he studiously meditates on them, then perhaps in ten or twenty years he would be ready to challenge me again.”

“Yishan, I need him to cook for me in a couple months, not a decade.” Wu Lanhua groaned, rubbing her eyes. “No matter his stupidity, I simply don’t have another chef anywhere near his skill. I would have to send him a message before we leave, to make amends for what happened here. Did you have to push him this much?”

“He did it to himself.” Qian Shanyi snorted. “He had every opportunity to simply walk away. If I hold out my hand and someone runs their face directly into it, I have hardly slapped them, have I?”

“I suppose I am one to talk,” Wu Lanhua muttered, “I could have mediated this conflict better between you two, but the idea of watching this duel play out was far too interesting to pass up.”

“I hope I have managed to entertain your personage, honorable merchant Wu?” Qian Shanyi gave her a small mock bow without getting up.

“Immensely. Thank you for your cooperation.” Wu Lanhua nodded, sipping her tea. “Still, some things do not quite make sense to me. You said the ramen dish could use any ingredients - yet you have also cooked a large fish, far too big to fit into a bowl, which you ended up burning. What was the point of that?”

“Mainly, to give me an excuse to set the oven heat far higher than what his ox cheeks could handle. Since I didn’t need the fish itself, burning it up in the process was completely acceptable.”

“An obvious cheat, then? I am surprised he didn’t call you on it.”

“Cheating is in the eye of the beholder,” Qian Shanyi said, playing with one of her new knives, watching sparks spread across its surface when she channeled her spiritual energy into it. It almost felt like the knife was sucking up spiritual energy, such was the contrast to the ordinary steel she was used to, and it also felt lighter, easier to handle. “We have agreed that any cheating has to be proven by either one of us; since he didn’t call me out, everything I did is entirely in accordance with the rules, essentially by definition. As for the general principle, I don’t see how structuring my approach to make his work harder is cheating, any more than taking my opponents pieces in a game of shatranj is cheating - this is a duel, after all. And if, by some miracle, he managed to notice the trick in time - I could have used the fish after all, perhaps by turning it into cutlets at the last minute. It wasn’t only there as a counter-cook.”

“What interests me more is how you managed to catch all that fish,” said Liu Fakuang, “before, you spent several hours on the ship with only a single one to show for it.”

“With the flying sword technique you helped me test earlier today,” she said.

“Yishan, that malformed technique exploded.”

“Exactly.” She smiled. “It’s stable enough to last for a couple seconds, before violently exploding. Far too dangerous to use in a fight, of course, but more than good enough against some fish. An underwater explosion stuns them, you see, and they simply float up to the surface - while the shrapnel is stopped by the water.”

Liu Fakuang shook his head.

“I wondered why you would study immortal chef techniques from a spirit hunter,” he said, “but if that’s the kind of thinking you were taught, then I can see it. Who else would risk blowing their own arm off in the kitchen?”

“To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens, fellow cultivator Fakuang,” she said, smiling wider, “and the heavens bestowed upon us no dish, only plants that grow in the forests and demon beasts that stalk us through the darkest night. What, then, is cooking, if not the purest form of rebellion?”

She toasted him with her cup of tea.

“To take from the heavens in order to bring joy to your fellow man,” she said, “is this not the true purpose of all good cultivators?”