Usually, his sixth sense, so sharp with ordinary ingredients, was completely unresponsive when facing special ingredients without the support of recipes or the Little Gold Man mode—it was as if his brain had crashed.
"Do I need to boil it in cold water?"
He turned on the stove and placed the pot with cold water on it. The moment the Crystal Rice touched the bottom of the pot, it instantly froze into a block of ice.
"As expected, that's not the reason either." Unable to maintain that feeling of having everything under control, Mo Bai felt like a child who knew absolutely nothing about cooking. His thinking was rigid, his movements clumsy.
"And Crystal Rice is only a One-Star Lower Grade ingredient, too."
Mo Bai understood that the gap between his actual culinary skills and his skills in the Little Gold Man state was immense. Now, it seemed that 'immense' was an understatement; describing it as the difference between heaven and earth wouldn't be an exaggeration. The tree of arrogance in his heart, which had vanished after making a Qilin-level dish, had grown back.
"What is a chef with only two months of experience thinking, trying to reach the heavens in a single step? Having a cheat to use is already pretty good." Patting his cheeks, Mo Bai forced himself to sober up from the massive sense of disparity. He didn't have many other virtues, but having thick skin and a high resistance to blows were definitely among them. "Don't overthink it. Take it slow."
"If I want to cook Crystal Rice into porridge, I must overcome the cold that erupts once it enters the water." Grasping a handful of slightly cool Crystal Rice in his palm, Mo Bai couldn't figure out where that bursting cold came from.
Could it really be coming from nowhere? Even if you are a Dream Ingredient, hey, respect the Law of Conservation of Energy!
"Or perhaps it exists within the rice grains during growth and is only triggered upon contact with water?" Mo Bai thought of a possibility and quickly put it into action. "Let's try rinsing it under running water."
The stream of water washed over the Crystal Rice in the colander, but the result left Mo Bai greatly disappointed.
The clear water flowed through the gaps between the grains, flowing out without carrying away any of the Crystal Rice's chill.
The result, naturally, went without saying—into the pot, sticking to the bottom, freezing into ice, all in one go! It was truly a hero among the rice family!
"It's not the water. Then is it the temperature?" After all, there were only three things on the stovetop prep table: pot, water, and fire.
Mo Bai grabbed a kitchen thermometer and began measuring the water temperature.
Water temperature at ten degrees Celsius: Crystal Rice showed no reaction.
Twenty degrees Celsius: Still no reaction.
Thirty degrees Celsius: Still no reaction.
Forty degrees Celsius: A few small bubbles emerged around the Crystal Rice.
Fifty degrees Celsius: With a poof, the Crystal Rice suddenly burst, and the thermometer's reading plummeted.
"Fifty degrees? But what use is that?" Even understanding that the Crystal Rice would self-destruct and cool down at fifty degrees, Mo Bai was completely at a loss on how to proceed. "Do you expect me to cook a pot of porridge using water that never exceeds fifty degrees throughout the entire process?"
"That's too ridiculous!" As soon as the thought emerged, Mo Bai himself was speechless.
"What on earth should I do?" Mo Bai picked up a single grain of Crystal Rice between his index and middle fingers, tilting his head back to scrutinize it closely under the light, his brows tightly knit.
This scrutiny actually revealed a clue. There seemed to be a thin, film-like substance on the outside of the crystal-clear, rounded Crystal Rice.
"Eh? This Crystal Rice seems like..." Mo Bai hurriedly brought the grain up close, squinting one eye to examine it carefully. "Does it have an outer shell?"
Mo Bai, realizing this belatedly, suddenly slammed his fist onto the prep table.
"I actually forgot about that! Whose rice can be eaten right after harvesting? Doesn't it all need to be husked?"
Rubbing the tough, filmy outer shell of the Crystal Rice, Mo Bai decided to test it in the crudest way possible.
He held the kitchen knife horizontally above the Crystal Rice and chopped down swiftly.
The split Crystal Rice quickly released a gust of cold wind into the surroundings, and a faint fragrance typical of rice drifted out with it.
"Success!" Mo Bai was overjoyed.
===
"Big Brother has been gone for a long time..."
"Hey, Big Sister." Dagenzi tugged at the corner of Yukie's clothes, her emerald-green eyes filled with hope. "Can Big Brother really make a dish that will let Huaouzi grow up?"
To the side, Hotarugusa, holding the infant form of Huaouzi, pricked up her ears.
"Yes, don't worry. Highness Mo Bai is a great senior who completed two Divine Festivals in a single day." Yukie stroked the back of Dagenzi's head, which looked round and chubby in her radish plush suit.
"Divine Festival?" Dagenzi tilted her head, a question mark practically popping up above it.
"So Big Brother is that amazing?" Hotarugusa, holding Huaouzi, looked excited. Judging by her body size, she clearly had more experience and understood the meaning of a Divine Festival. "Grandpa Tree once said that any chef who can successfully perform a Divine Festival is very amazing."
"Wow, so he can definitely make food that lets Huaouzi grow up, right?" Dagenzi's cute appearance, with stars in her eyes, made Yukie unable to resist pinching her chubby little cheek.
"Mn, it will definitely work." Hotarugusa nodded vigorously.
"..." At the door, Mo Bai, holding the sweet porridge, felt pressure as massive as a mountain.
He didn't understand why the people in this room were more confident than he was.
His gaze fell on the bowl of sweet porridge in his hand, where not a single grain of rice could be seen. To be honest, he was panicking.
Facing a Dream Ingredient where his beginner-level Intuition was ineffective, relying solely on his rookie culinary skills and Purification (Advanced) was completely insufficient to push the sweet porridge to the realm of glowing.
If there were a score, it might only be considered a passing grade.
Could a dish that didn't glow really achieve the effect of making Huaouzi grow again?
"Should I go back and make another one?" Mo Bai fell into deep thought.
"..."
"No! Remaking it would just be a waste of time. I firmly believe that this portion is the best dish I can present right now."
"If a chef doesn't even dare to bring their dish before a customer, doesn't even dare to accept failure, what kind of chef are they?"
"Here goes!" Mo Bai pressed down the door handle. "Sorry to keep you waiting."
"Wow! Big Brother! Is the food done?" Dagenzi lunged forward and hugged Mo Bai's thigh, looking up with an eager little face.
"Yeah, you could say that." Mo Bai held out the plain, unadorned white porridge.
"Senior, this porridge..." Yukie couldn't quite believe this was a dish presented by Mo Bai. After all, at the shrine, Mo Bai had set off one flashbang after another. Those magnificent lighting effects had led Yukie to mistakenly believe they were the trademark of his cooking.
"It's my first time making cuisine to promote the growth of Inner World creatures, so I don't have much confidence in whether it will succeed either." Although Mo Bai presented the dish, he wasn't optimistic about his success. "If it doesn't work, I can send you to Chiba Shrine. I trust that with their resources, raising Huaouzi slowly will still allow her to grow up again."
Hearing Mo Bai's explanation, the radish sprouts standing straight up on Dagenzi's head slumped down.
Just as everyone's mood hit a low point, the crybaby Huaouzi in Hotarugusa's arms caught the sweet scent, and her whimpering sounds became urgent.
"Ying ying ying! Ying ying ying!"
Hotarugusa was nearly knocked over by Huaouzi's sudden exertion of force.
"Huaouzi seems... to want to eat it?" Huaouzi's restlessness reignited hope in everyone.
Hotarugusa hurriedly scooped up a small spoonful. The thick, continuous rice broth was translucent and snow-white; surprisingly, there wasn't a single grain of rice to be seen.
A rich rice fragrance and a pleasant sweetness began to drift out slowly.
Everyone in the room, Mo Bai included, swallowed their saliva in unison.
________________________________________
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