The start of a new day also brought about new customers to the Gilded Snow. The chefs have to get up early to prepare beforehand, and today, Kairos will also be joining them to learn alongside.

The boy arrived hours ahead of time, and started practicing with some of the tools. Laksa came in slightly later in search for him, and he called the boy to another room for a talk.

Kairos readied himself to receive proper instructions.

Despite he had already invented new culinary methods, he knows it is by listening that he could gain the other party’s experience and skill.

But unexpectedly Laksa only laughed when he saw the young master’s serious expressions, “You don’t need any instructions today. Just follow along me and learn.”

Instead, he took out a thin, browning, old, manual, and gave it to the boy, “The reason I called you here is for this.”

Kairos took the book into his hands carefully. On the cover was the name, ‘Qian Kun Carving Technique (乾坤刀法)’. He opened it gingerly and saw words that were scribbled all over the pages. Despite every space was filled and there were plenty of crossed out ideas and rewritten parts, everything was neatly jotted down and easy to understand.

The focus at the start was on the anatomy of all kinds of plants and animals, teaching him how to identify the tender parts to slice. Instead of being like an encyclopaedia, the information emphasised on identifying how muscles, tendons, and bones would look like underneath skin and fur. For plants, it teaches how to find edible parts and what to extract.

Looking at Kairos’ unconcealed interest on his book, Laksa explained, “this is my self-made carving technique While, you can learn the other cooking skills from watching and practicing it yourself, this particular one is the epitome of my techniques.

It has all my years of experiences written within. I want you to practice it without fail every single day. It doesn’t matter if you mastered it already. Even for a short ten minutes, you must never stop your training until I allow you to stop.”

“How long should I practice it for, master?”

“You can decide on your own. But, I don’t want you to ever skip it, not unless your body can’t move, or you lost consciousness, or dead.”

“Yes chef.”

“Good. You don’t have the time to read it now, so I will demonstrate it once. Watch carefully.”

The chef took out some ingredients from his Time-space ring and set it down. At the same time, Kairos flared up his Soul Perception, condensing the ability on this small table between them so that he would not miss even the tiniest details.

A thought entered his mind, and his eyes also began to shine brightly golden, the indication of him activating his Veritable Sight. Now, he can not only tell everything that is happening before him, but also the energy that Uncle Laksa is using within his body.

The chef nearly jumped back in shock when he saw his new apprentice’s eyes glowing in the dim light. But instead of feeling that a monster is standing before him, he felt like falling on his knees in worship.

It was as though he was before a great king or a legendary hero.

With an uneasy smile, Kairos explained briefly that these eyes of his will help him better learn the technique, and only then did the chef shook himself out of the trance.

Laksa steadied himself, then held his knife. The moment the master chef’s hand wrapped around the wooden handle, his aura changed and all previous traces of submissiveness had fled.

At this point, he was the master in this place and the true ruler of the kitchen, not losing to the presence of any king.

“As expected of teacher…,” Kairos said.

He used a thick monster claw for his demonstration a meat, quickly deboning it.

“Observe the places I slice. When to cut the tendons, when to avoid it. How to strip the flesh from the bone with the blade swimming through the meat. Without striking the bone with your knife, a good chef can use a chopper for years. But divine chef can use a chopper forever.”

Kairos carefully observed how Laksa took apart the meat. The immense experience that the master chef had, shone with every movement. He cut through the meat easily, parting them as though it was mere air.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

His knife sliced off specific parts, or removed tendons, all the while keeping the harm on the ingredient to a minimum. It looked like a miraculous performance where he could direct his intention onto the food with ease.

“Chef… this… Your way of wielding the knife to your heart’s desire looks like the Second Form of the sword. Heart-Sword”

“Oh, is it now? HAHAHAHA … So, I’ve created a martial art as well?”

Kairos took the manual into hand and started flipping through quickly.

After the pages that was filled with pictures and descriptions of different meat structures and how to properly slice them apart, he found depictions on the way to move the knife as the heart wills.

After a quick look through, the boy nodded, “Although, it is somewhat different in its purpose, but the end result is not too different from a martial art. Judging from the technique and the strength… Head chef, may I have your permission to use your carving technique in battle?”

“Hmm? It’s usable? Well, I already taught it to you, if you think it could be helpful, then go ahead. The life of my precious disciple is the most important thing after all. Hahahaha!”

Kairos nodded with a smile.

After showing the way to wield the knife once, Laksa kept everything and ushered him out.

“We really should go back now.”

They had spent the better part of an hour working in another room, and the two returned to the kitchen together.

When the other apprentice saw him coming in with the head chef, they became green with envy. They could easily guess that the master chef had imparted some secret techniques to Kairos.

Although, all of them are apprentices, if they were in a clan, then Kairos’ status is like a personal disciple, while they are only outer disciples.

While the chefs prepared their ingredients for the day, Laksa started teaching Kairos on the side.

“Young master, the recipes and techniques you had learnt yesterday were accumulations of other chefs from all over the world. Now, I will teach you what I’ve learned.

You will definitely face a lot of times where you need to cook for yourself in the wilderness and I will teach you several methods that could save your lives.

From young master’s background, I expect you already know how important it is to keep your nutrition up and with the convenience of Time-space rings you can keep large stores; enough to last for several months.

However, as I’ve explained yesterday, what your body needs depends on your condition.

Therefore, I will separate what you need to learn into this three categories:

First is for Cultivation. Different from spirit pills, by cooking the correct ingredients, you can slowly gain energy that you can make into your own. The digestive system is the best refinement method for Heavenly Energies.

You should’ve heard of stories that the immortals can simply become immortal by breathing the air of their realm, and eating the food of their highly spiritual land.

The extinguished North Kingdom I came from had done research on this matter and found it to be half true. Although people still must cultivate to become immortals, the food and air of their realm does play a large part in strengthening them.

And, the best part is, there is no side-effects of becoming less potent like pills.

To do this, first, we need to choose ingredients with the correct element you can cultivate in. Next, we must be careful when in ensuring that we do not let spirit herbs and beast meat lose their potency during the cooking process. Finally, we will infuse a partially-refined elemental energy at the final stages of cooking, which is what the Runes Engineers are good at.

At the same time, while we are preparing the ingredients, we have to be careful about the impurities in food that you consume. When you breakthrough to the next rank, your body will expel those unwanted particles that had been stuck in your body. But, with some treatment, you can decrease the amount you take in.

In other words, it will help you when you are trying to reach the next rank. This task falls to our Purifier.

The second is for Recovery. When injured, you can use healing salves and pills, but that is merely solving your problems. Why go through the trouble when you can prepare beforehand?

Recovery foods are those that pack high heat, allowing you to cultivate your body and boost your speed of regeneration. With the right spices and herbs, you can create a miraculous effect on your body. Wounds that slow or incapacitate the others will not debilitate you and your opponents will tire out way before you break a sweat.

But, we don’t stop here. If you can prepare your body ahead of time, why not make yourself so tough that you don’t get wounded when others would?

This brings us to the third, and what should be the most exciting for you: Strengthening.

We have discovered many incredible effects from eating rare and powerful spiritual ingredients. There are stories that fill the children’s bedtime of those lucky few who found odd spirit herbs and ate them, becoming incredibly powerful practitioners overnight.

There are some truths in that.

But, the question is, why not make such an ingredient into pills? Wouldn’t the effect become better?

I’ve done research on this, and my conclusion is that it depends on the suitability of the ingredients.

If you add dragon blood to your food, you will slowly become tougher. Unlike pills that grants you a one-time boost, this way will slowly change your entire constitution for the better.

You can think of food as setting a foundation, while pills creates the buildings.”

At the end of Laksa’s words, Kairos could only stare at his master with wide-eyes.

He had high hopes for the culinary arts, but he never expected such a thing.

This knowledge was enough to drive even the Pill masters crazy. Perhaps it is because of Saint Empire’s culture in dismissing any craft except cultivation that they missed out on a thing of such value.

Noticing the boy’s reaction, the chef said with a smile, “The true identity of my art is Combat-Enhancement Cuisine. No matter you believe it or not, I was an officer back in my days.”

Kairos had a look of astonishment causing Laksa the nod with satisfaction, then, the teacher empowered his hand with his Ki.

The power that only S ranked cultivators has!

“This,” Laksa explained, “is years of accumulation done through food. I had never cultivated a day in my life.”