The alarm set for the four o'clock chime began to clamor, and Mo Bai pulled open the tightly shut kitchen doors.
"Highness Mo Bai."
"Senior."
"Mm." Mo Bai nodded, his gaze sweeping over the three faces wearing looks of fatigue and worry. "Bathe, change clothes, prepare to depart."
===
"We have waited for a long time." The First Emperor sat upright on the high platform on the third level of the Pure Room. His posture had not changed in the slightest since Mo Bai's departure, as if the entire night was merely a blink of an eye to him.
Carrying the ingredient cart on his shoulder as he entered the room, Mo Bai immediately felt a heavy wave of pretentiousness washing over him.
"I won't let you down." Stepping steadily up to the second-level cooking station, Mo Bai set down the culinary cart and took out the thawed Hell Ice Bass.
Even after thawing, the surface of the Hell Ice Bass, which came with its own Freezing Buff, had still condensed a layer of frost.
The three-meter-long Hell Ice Bass was laid horizontally across the cooking station.
Mo Bai placed his left hand on the fish's eye, which flashed with a strange light, and took a deep breath.
Even with Mo Bai's LV20 physique, which completely exceeded human standards, his ungloved hand couldn't help but turn pale from the cold.
"I express my gratitude to you, now rest in peace."
"I will cook you into the greatest dish!"
His right hand gripped the kitchen knife Little Bai, and the Little Gold Man mode erupted instantly.
The path to dismantling the entire Hell Ice Bass became instantly clear in his mind.
The cold glint raised by the kitchen knife resembled a roaming dragon. Amidst flying ice chips, the fish meat, appearing even more crystalline under the candlelight, bloomed in the air.
In less than a few breaths, Mo Bai sheathed his knife and stepped back.
After the dismantling was complete, a silver Hell Ice Bass phantom burst out from the body of the fish—which could still be pieced together to look whole—and leaped into the air.
"Oh? A Food Spirit?" The First Emperor's expression shifted slightly as he looked at the ice bass phantom above the cooking station.
The ice bass phantom swam two circles around Mo Bai before returning above the bass. The phantom made of silver light turned into particles of light and scattered onto the disassembled fish meat below.
The fish meat, already shining due to the Purification culinary skill, instantly released a blazing light, looking like a white sun falling onto the cooking station.
The moment it glowed, the panel for the Hell Ice Bass underwent a massive change.
[Ingredient: Hell Ice Bass (Food Spirit-grade Dream Ingredient)]
[Ingredient Quality: Six Stars (90/90)]
[Evaluation: An Ice Emperor that even the Snow Woman clan must capture with extreme caution. Due to no one being able to cook it for a long time, the quality of the Hell Ice Bass had declined.]
[Evaluation 2: Through the cooperation of the culinary skill Advanced Purification and the Food Spirit, the quality of the Hell Ice Bass has surpassed its peak. A Hell Ice Bass... No! This is the King of the Hell Ice Bass clan!]
[PS: The person it has been bitterly waiting for has appeared. Young man, what are you still hesitating for?]
"I express my gratitude to you once again." Mo Bai, having entered the Little Gold Man state, was devoid of sorrow or joy. He placed the fish head and the entire fish bone into the soup pot, added water, and turned on the fire.
He put the disassembled fish meat back onto the culinary cart, leaving only the fatty belly meat needed on the cutting board.
Mo Bai bowed to the First Emperor, then turned and walked towards the door under the latter's surprised gaze.
"This familiar art style..." Little Bai cried out in his heart that this was bad, seeing Mo Bai's face as calm as water. "Holy shit! Old Bai, don't do anything rash!"
Mo Bai pulled open the door to the Pure Room. The rich golden light on his body made all the miko waiting outside look sideways.
Everyone looked up at the only light source in the pitch-black, doomsday-like scene—the young man radiating golden light from his entire body.
The ten-thousand-foot Black Dragon in the dark clouds and the golden sun-like youth formed a scene the miko would never forget.
"Highness... Mo Bai?!" An incredulous, dry voice came from the Great Miko's mouth.
"I need the Supreme Walking Shark and the Platinum King Crab." Mo Bai spoke, but to the miko's ears, his voice sounded like a bell.
"Damn it!" Predicting this outcome, Little Bai looked up at the sky speechlessly.
"I'll go get them right away." Yukikawa Shiratori rushed urgently towards the cellar where the shrine stored ingredients.
"I'll go help too." Yukikawa Yukie realized what was happening and followed closely behind her mother.
===
"Highness Mo Bai is truly no ordinary person." The Great Miko sighed as she watched Mo Bai enter the Pure Room carrying the colossal objects on his shoulder. From the Little Gold Man state, the Great Miko sensed an incredibly vast power hidden beneath Mo Bai's youthful exterior.
That unquestionable majesty in his words was just like—an incarnation of a god walking in the mortal world!
"Your martial valor is worthy of Our praise. The ancient strength of wrestling rhinoceroses and Elai who fought bears and tigers were no more than this." When the ordinary human Mo Bai climbed onto the cooking station carrying the Supreme Walking Shark—ten meters long, three meters high, and weighing several tons—solely with physical strength, while also dragging a Platinum King Crab weighing over a hundred jin in his hand, even the First Emperor could not help but be moved.
The people of Qin valued martial arts, and the First Emperor was naturally no exception. There were few ancient monarchs who did not like fierce generals.
Mo Bai's sledgehammer-swinging operation successfully aroused the First Emperor's strong interest.
After cupping his fists in thanks, Mo Bai continued to stare tightly at the soup pot.
The Hell Ice Bass bones naturally contained the same difficult-to-dissolve cold energy as the meat.
In the long time it took the miko to prepare the Supreme Walking Shark and Platinum King Crab, the ice block of the fish head and bones inside the soup pot, which froze upon contact with water, had only just melted its outermost ring. It would take a very long time to boil into stock.
Shaking his head, Mo Bai returned to the side of the Supreme Walking Shark, rolled up his long sleeves, and raised the kitchen knife high.
A crescent moon appeared in the room, and the tail of the Supreme Walking Shark fell to the floor.
He didn't need meat with too high a fat content; the active meat of the tail was more suitable. Of course, regarding the issue of excessive collagen making the soup too thick, he would remove most of the fish meat to maintain the appropriate soup consistency.
Next was the Platinum King Crab. Similarly, Mo Bai didn't plan to use the higher quality crab legs, but instead chose the cleaned crab body under the shell as the ingredient.
Once both were processed, Mo Bai turned his gaze to the ordinary ingredients in the culinary cart.
Removing the stomach sacs from the front of the krill heads, disemboweling the pike, tearing the black membrane from the bellies of the ribbonfish...
All these ingredients, sourced from the memory images of the Hell Ice Bass, were taken out by Mo Bai. The special species from the Inner World that couldn't be found were replaced with similar edible varieties.
Blade light flashed within the Pure Room, and the chopping board tapped rhythmically, creating quite a lively scene.
Perhaps because the image of a fierce, powerful man had established a first impression, Mo Bai's show-off-like performance of light and agile knife skills drew repeated nods from the First Emperor.
The fully processed ingredients piled up into a small mountain on Mo Bai's cooking station. At this moment, a bubbling sound finally came from the soup pot.
A faint, elusive fish aroma began to drift through the Pure Room with the overflowing steam.
Mo Bai lifted the pot lid. The surface of the soup, clear as plain boiled water, glittered with silver light as the ladle stirred the flow.
The krill were put in first, and a hum of satisfaction sounded from the clear soup in the pot.
The First Emperor's upright body leaned forward slightly after this hum of satisfaction, his gaze burning as he stared at the soup pot.
"..." Startled unexpectedly, Mo Bai paused for a moment before returning to calmness.
Various ingredients began to be continuously thrown into the soup pot, and the moaning sounds became clearer and louder each time.
After the Supreme Walking Shark tail and the Platinum King Crab body were thrown in, the soup pot erupted with a silver pillar of light that pierced the sky.
Within the sky-reaching silver pillar of light, a White Dragon phantom draped in rainbow light could be faintly seen echoing the ten-thousand-foot Black Dragon in the distance.
________________________________________
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