The look of shock on Kairos’ face did not fade away. If anything, it became even more intense than before. Even if he doesn’t want to show his amazement, it’s impossible to keep a poker face after knowing that without a day of cultivation, the master chef reached S rank!
For the scores of cultivators who found themselves stuck at the bottlenecks of D and A ranks, knowing this would probably make a couple of generations fall into self-doubt and denial. Yet, the chef did it through eating delicious food. If those poor souls had heard about this, the tears they shed would be enough to fill up a lake.
Granted, if Laksa were a pill master, such a thing would be quietly accepted. Those that depended on drugs to reach S rank are not uncommon, and some even had the power of double S cultivation, but in return, those people have to suffer from various side-effects like a weakened potential.
What sets Laksa’s Combat-Enhancement Cuisine apart is the envious benefits does not have any known consequences. The only downside is the limited effect it has to those with stronger cultivation. And, of course, it also depends on how much food one can eat and digest.
Afterwards, the master chef asked Kairos on what he had learned from reading the cookbooks yesterday.
The boy’s immaculate replies made Laksa realise that Kairos’ progress was far more than he could ever hope. The chef’s expressions became the same as the day before when he first learned of the Breath of the Ancients divine technique.
“As expected of the young master!”
Despite only a day passed, the ideas promised to be ground-breaking.
Laksa, Helena, and Siegfried’s expectations of Kairos were not unfounded.
They are each expert in their field and had reached a height that is difficult to progress further. On the other hand, Kairos who dabbled a little in every trade had different ways to see things. For someone as versatile as him, to find a way to help them breakthrough their arts to the next level was actually much easier.
Laksa asked Kairos, how exactly he could think up of all those things when some of them were secrets that weren’t written in any books. In fact, he was confident that no chefs would know them. And, finally, his disciple told him the secret of his technique: Heart’s Echo.
It is a secret that Kairos had only revealed to his brothers, but the relationship between a student and teacher were no lesser.
Just as the kitchen’s preparations were complete, the first customers of the day entered the restaurant.
The orders came in quickly, in one by one, and the chefs swiftly fulfilled their station responsibilities and passed to the next person in line.
At this time, Laksa suddenly instructed Kairos to voice out his thoughts while the rest cooked.
The others were of course extremely displeased. They had been tolerating since the boy joined the kitchen. If their respected head chef did not protect him, they wouldn’t have to put up with this.
Though Kairos is the owner of the Gilded Snow, the other chefs did not consider it a big deal. After all, which of them here do not have the reputation, funds, or backing to open their own restaurants at any time they desired?
It is only Laksa’s reputation that kept these prideful and talented cooks reined in.
But even then, they are already reaching their limits.
“This greenhorn! He is to advise us now?”
“What would an amateur like him know?”
“Ridiculous, letting an outsider give instructions.”
“For his own good, he better keeps his mouth shut. Don’t come over and throw his face before true experts like us.”
Laksa did not speak up for him, but instead, silently indicate with a gesture of his head for Kairos to carry on.
Under the hostile scrutiny of the other chefs, Kairos went to the stations and carefully observed.
The first dish ordered is a cold dish, and he looked at one who is smoking poultry, then said, “This type of meat prefers a stronger kind of wood elemental infusion, we have a cherry oak firewood in the store that would suit it perfectly.”
“Tch. What do you know, we have been using this expensive grey oak and never had never complains.”
“Shut up,” Laksa barked immediately, “Go and get what he said.”
The sliced meat was put aside, and the station chef begrudgingly went to get the log. Moments later, he returned and changed the fuel on the heat runes.
Meanwhile, Kairos had moved on to another station, where a chef is cutting the salad. He placed a bulbous plant together with a few slices of fruit, but Kairos quickly stopped him.
“The Jade Peach slices cannot be placed next to the Fire Onions when cutting.”
“Look, boy, we are going to mix everything in the salad anyway, and the two ingredients aren’t touching each other anyway.”
The salad chef complained, but when the master chef looked over, he clenched his teeth and separated the food.
“Also, the Jealous Apples are spoilt. They look alright, but the smell is off.”
Of course, he didn’t literally smell it with his nose, but with his Soul Perception, nothing that is happening in this kitchen could escape him. Then, Kairos suddenly loudly called over to the station at the end of the kitchen, “Watch your heat, you’re using too much!”
In such a manner, he went about giving suggestions and making minor changes.
He could hear the cries of every ingredient before the other chefs reacted, he already knew what went wrong. By the time the first dish was done, all of the chefs were standing around it in wonder.
“This aroma…”
“It’s different from the usual one we did.”
“… I mean, we could make the best dishes in the empire, but this! This is something revolutionary!”
“Head chef, can we have a try?”
“Please chef. We can quickly remake the dish for the patrons, but if I missed trying the taste, the next time I wouldn’t know where I did wrong.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Haha. Calm down. I’ve planned for everyone to try it from the start. Go ahead and take a bite, and you’ll understand.”
The station chefs jumped right in without waiting. Those that tried looked at each other in shock. While cooking, every process must be correctly sequenced, and every detail must be carefully handled. Only so, it would bring out the potential of their food.
People are strange creatures. When a person is slightly better, they would have feelings of jealousy and unfairness, but if that person is incomparably superior, it would only cause others to look up to him.
Granted, what Kairos advised were all minor changes, but they were things that these more experienced chefs did not know, and the results were extremely impressive.
“I could eat this every day! Every meal, even.”
“Bah, I don’t get what you guys are so excited about,” one of the chefs came over and took a smoked morsel into his mouth, “Hot damn! It’s completely different with just a few tweaks!”
It is a laughable understatement to describe these chefs as picky. They are all gourmets that sought after the ultimate taste, yet, they were blown away by just one bite.
The flavour was ridiculously good. In an instant, their hearts had flown away with the taste.
One of the kitchenhand thought a while then he embarrassingly said, “However, compared to what the head chef could create, it still seems to lack something.”
The station chefs also started thinking hard about it. It was true that there are still differences.
Kairos did not doubt this.
Laksa’s experience, technique, and talent, is incomparable for a newbie like him. Especially in terms of talent, his master’s food creativity and instincts were something he can only envy.
The things he came up with were more helpful for a master chef with extensive knowledge than someone who just stepped into the kitchen.
As the day went on, Laksa’s recipes that were fabulous from the start, received many upgrades with Kairos’ help. New combinations or even techniques that no one had thought about, sprung up in the kitchen, one after another.
Frost cooking.
High-pressure cooking.
Poison cooking.
There were revolutionary new techniques that the different chefs brainstormed together with Kairos, and unknowingly, there were great changes in their attitudes towards him.
Outside the kitchen, there overwhelming positive feedback from the customers.
Laksa looked at the boy like a treasure, his lips couldn’t stop turning upwards into a smile, but later that night, the other masters couldn’t wait any longer. Helena pushed Siegfried to the side and entered the kitchen.
“Hand him over!” she said with hands on her hips.
The benefits that Kairos brought to the kitchen had spread to the rest of the Gilded Snow, and both the Pill Master and Blacksmith couldn’t wait any longer.
Although Laksa protested, he eventually gave in. As long as the boy comes back every day for a few hours to practice, he would let him go. Helena gave the chef the whites of her eyes, then pulled Kairos to her apothecary.
The herbalist immediately shows Kairos the thing she was working on, the recovery scent she mentioned during the meeting a day ago.
From her description, it sounded similar to something he had, and he took out the Silverthorn Weed, Goldbristle Grass and Platinum Flowers.
“When alone, these herbs do nothing, and cannot be created into pills. However, when placed together, it forms a special sort of scent that induces stamina regeneration, stimulates recovery, and releases an aroma to improve our absorption of heavenly energies to replenish ourselves. It is extremely mild and can works together with pills and other scents without clashing. However, it’s not strong enough to replace the usual recovery items.”
Helena nodded with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Young master, you have quite a treasure with you. The properties of these three plants were the basis for my invention and I had the fortune of studying them once before. If my research succeeds, we can change the liquid healing salve into a gaseous state and allow everyone nearby to heal superficial wounds quickly.”
The pair immediately started working excitedly on it while she gave Kairos a quick lecture on the rudimentary knowledge of pill creation at the same time. Although she claimed it was only the basics, what she told him far exceeded the academy’s standards. Especially, the methods to pull out specific medicinal effects from plants that she touched on were still theoretical in Saint Empire.
Afterwards, she took out a beautiful jade Pill Furnace and some spirit herbs to give him a demonstration.
Helena summoned an orange coloured flame on her palm and easily split it into ten, then, at the same time she began refining spirit herbs. A fragrant scent flooded the room as the liquid essences flowed out from the ingredients.
Kairos stared in wonder. Her mastery over her Alchemic Fire was enchanting.
She displayed unbelievable control fine tuning the temperatures to specific points for each of the different herbs cooking in the flame, as though the flames were an extension of her limbs, and more amazingly, she could contain the hotness to the exact areas she wanted and prevented cross-contamination of heat. Helena showed that she is truly a master at her art.
Despite the differences in the ten groups of materials, she was refining, they turned into liquid essences in perfect sequence, and she sent them one after another into her Pill Furnace.
After a short while, numerous beautiful black pills fell out of the outlet into her hand. Their aroma was enough to cause Kairos to salivate, and with a smile, she gave them to him.
“They are just basic cultivation pills,” she explained.
“But, it’s different from the ones I’ve seen before.”
“Of course, the pills are the same type, but the refining method changed their potency.”
She pushed her hand forward to Kairos.
Kairos did not decline and kept those pills, knowing that their research value is worth more than the benefits of eating them.
After demonstrating the refining process that the young master wouldn’t be able to learn from school, Helena excitedly asked him to show her the famous Unknown Flame Sovereign. Her reasoning was that she had struck at wall in her research and need to explore new areas to breakthrough.
Kairos summoned it without hesitation, and a motionless purple flame sat on his palm.
“This… it’s amazing! Incredible, it does give out extremely high heat. I wonder how it is sustained? With this strength, not only could it work well in battle, it could melt down ores for new pill recipes! Perhaps this will be crucial in making the recovery scent possible.”
“Ore?! Metals can be used in pills?”
“Anything that is beneficial to the body can be made into pills.”
“But… is it really okay for those raw minerals enter the flesh?”
“Why not? Your blood is made up of minerals. So long that you could withstand an increase in metal elements, it might even increase your durability. I imagine, for external practitioners, it will be something worth experimenting.”
Kairos gave her an awkward smile, “It might be hard for me to melt down larger ores. The amount of Unknown Flame Sovereign I have is too small. Unfortunately, the flame is of divine nature, and it’s extremely difficult to nurture it with my materials on hand.”
All he had was a thumb-sized flame. Even candle flames are larger than his.
“That’s easy to solve. I have some on my hands, and can easily get more. Can… can young master teach me how to cultivate the Unknown Flame Sovereign?”
Kairos shook his head at first, then nodded after thinking a while and said, “It might be possible, but I’d need a large amount of purple flames.”
Helena immediately summoned several tanks from her storage ring, “Are these enough?”
“This many! Of course, it’s enough. I didn’t expect you have so much in store. We can begin immediately.”
Helena grinned and nodded her head excitedly.
Kairos began explaining that even after sealing the flame up, it is nearly impossible for others to cultivate. He could only succeed because he had a pair of dragon-shaped Ki within his body that feeds on the purple flame.
However, after he subdued it, it is possible to create Flame Seedlings for others. It is a solid form of flame that is deactivated from crystallisation. It will only be warm to touch, until someone claims ownership.
However, to make it into this state, a large amount of fire must be sealed and turned into a tiny little gem. In the past, because he did not have enough of the divine flame, he did not consider such an option.
He asked Helena for her permission to scan her constitution, then started the sealing process immediately.
In a moment he emptied a full tank containing the Unknown Flame Sovereign. He started sealing it the same time while drawing it into his Dantian. It violently tore at the chains that Kairos placed, vowing to destroy the one that dared to consume it.
The beast flame thrashed and struggled. Every time it clashed against the seals, it removed a tiny piece, and each time, it felt increasingly gleeful.
As it finally destroyed the shell that binds it, a small tongue of purple flame escaped the crack.
The moment a small part of it escaped, all ideas of revenge disappeared, and its beautiful dark purple faded away till it looked like a washed out rag.
Two fearsome beings stared at it as though they found their dinner.
Trembling, the flame realised that it wasn’t sealed up. It was sealed in.
The once haughty divine flame trembled involuntarily as the two dragons roared.
Coaxing his now larger Alchemic Flame, Kairos formed a sparkling crystallised purple fire in his hand. It was luminous in the night, and it grew silently until it became fist-sized and then he handed the still hot jewel to Helena.
“It has been tamed now.”