The rich, mellow aroma of grains transitioned from faint to intense, like a soft, tender hand gently teasing the instinct known as appetite within everyone present.
"(╯▽╰ ) So fragrant~~" The three cute creatures twitched their little noses, their faces filled with intoxication.
"Senior, is this—Crystal Rice?" Yukie paused slightly, searching her memory for a matching scent.
Holy crap, I forgot there's a member of the victim's main family here. Is this the rhythm of getting arrested on the spot?
"Cough, cough, cough. Yes," Mo Bai said with darting eyes.
"As expected of Senior, to even get your hands on Dream Ingredients that aren't circulated on the market," Yukie exclaimed in admiration, her face filled with the adoration of a fangirl.
"Hahaha, it was okay, I guess."
Perhaps because he had a guilty conscience, Mo Bai found the word "get" in Yukie's praise particularly piercing to the ear.
"Taste it first. Let's see how the effect is," Mo Bai hurriedly changed the subject.
"Mn." Hotarugusa brought the porridge, which looked like ambrosial nectar, to the mouth of the infant Huaouzi. The latter hurriedly swallowed it in one gulp, her cherry-colored eyes slipping into a trance.
"Ying! Ying ying ying!" The pink lotus petals surrounding the ball-shaped little Huaouzi began to sway along with her, the chirping sounds becoming increasingly urgent.
"How is it?"
"Huaouzi says it seems to be working!" Hotarugusa looked up excitedly.
"Then hurry up and continue."
Spoonful after spoonful of sweet porridge was fed. Under the horrified gazes of Mo Bai and Yukie, Huaouzi began to expand at a speed visible to the naked eye.
By the time the sound of the spoon hitting the bottom of the bowl rang out, the two finally snapped back to reality. Huaouzi had gradually expanded from the size of a basketball to that of an exercise ball roughly the height of an adult's knee.
"...It wasn't successful?" Mo Bai sighed helplessly in his heart as he looked at Huaouzi, who was still in a spherical shape.
"That's not it. Huaouzi says your cooking has already saved her half the time needed to regrow." Hotarugusa and Dagenzi appeared exceptionally happy that their companion was revitalized.
Even if I saved more than half the regrowth time, ultimately, it still wasn't a complete success.
"..." Mo Bai opened his mouth but couldn't say anything.
Although he had prepared himself to accept failure, the result of failure was often more bitter than imagined.
Mo Bai's mood was somewhat complex for a moment.
Yukie, hearing Hotarugusa's words from the side, suddenly clapped her hands. "Since the cuisine is effective, why not let Huaouzi eat a bit more?"
The three joyous cute creatures and the somewhat disappointed Mo Bai suddenly froze.
"W-What is it? Did I say something wrong?" Seeing the four of them fall silent while staring straight at her, Yukie felt a little creeped out inside.
"I just wanted to say, you really are a clever little devil." Mo Bai forced a stiff smile.
He felt fortunate about this sudden turn of events, but the feeling of having his intelligence crushed by someone else stung his heart slightly.
After Mo Bai moved the soup pot from the kitchen, the feeding work proceeded with renewed fervor.
Under the infusion of spoonful after spoonful of translucent porridge, Huaouzi's form became increasingly massive, and the petals around her began to grow wildly.
Soon, the petals wrapped around her round, spherical body. Through the layers of gaps between the lotus petals, one could faintly see a brilliance spilling out from within.
It seemed as if the Digimon evolution BGM was playing in the room.
Mo Bai was dumbstruck: There's actually this kind of mechanic?!
A fair, tender arm reached out from the petals. Immediately after, a loli wearing a lotus leaf on her head and a dress styled like a lotus flower pushed aside the heavy layers of petals and appeared before everyone's eyes.
"I, Huaouzi, am back!"
"It's Huaouzi-da!" Dagenzi knocked Huaouzi down with a rocket headbutt.
"Hahaha~ Dagenzi, don't rub against me, it tickles!" The three little ones turned into a rolling gourd of playfulness, their crisp laughter, like silver bells, echoing through the room.
Seeing the scene of the cute girls playing, Yukie's breathing quickened, and a strange smile floated onto her face.
Mo Bai, preoccupied with his thoughts, pushed the door open and left silently.
While the perfect outcome was certainly good, he couldn't feel happy in the slightest. The problems revealed about him were simply too numerous.
This instance of "naked gear" cooking caused the mindset of satisfaction he had after making a Qilin-level dish to collapse completely.
Thinking about it now, being able to create a Qilin-level dish was largely due to the Hell Ice Bass that birthed a Food Spirit, followed by the credit of the Little Gold Man mode, then the recipe from Yukikawa Shrine, and finally Little Bai's god-like cutting skills.
He had merely contributed the lowest level of labor by integrating these cheats.
But when his Intuition (Beginner) skill failed to trigger in the face of Dream Ingredients, and with Little Bai busy receiving information, Mo Bai truly felt his own insignificance.
"There's nothing bad about recognizing oneself clearly." Mo Bai exhaled a breath of turbid air, the roots of that large tree in his heart firmly taking hold in the soil of his mind. "I really am a genuine beginner."
Fortunately, he could use cheats. He didn't have to be like Harano Katsuya, who worked diligently for ten years trying to advance his chef rank but couldn't even find the door.
Thinking of it this way, Mo Bai felt he was still very lucky.
"Little Bai, how do I upgrade my culinary skills?" Mo Bai understood that Intuition was the skill that helped him the most in his normal state, covering a series of cooking processes from start to finish, such as method selection, heat control, and pairing.
"Use points, of course," replied Little Bai, who had been lurking and copying information.
"Points..." Mo Bai muttered.
Little Bai suddenly realized something.
Holy crap! How did Old Bai suddenly ask about points?
Could it be... did he figure out that I embezzled the points from the daily business before, the employment assessment points, and the points from the two Divine Festivals?
Seeing Mo Bai deep in thought, Little Bai dripped with cold sweat.
If he found out, should I reissue them to him?
Little Bai glanced at the hidden income of points; the last two sums from the Divine Festivals alone totaled up to several hundred million.
After all, that was the First Emperor, the top-tier power of the Inner World; just a slight leakage of his mental power amounted to points in the hundreds of millions.
The other one, Ryougi Shiki, who possessed BUG-like authority and could be called a world administrator, was the same. As someone who often came to taste Mo Bai's cooking, she was practically a point-printing machine.
Reissue my ass! I embezzled those points with my own ability, why should I reissue them?!
In the end, Little Bai was blinded by the massive amount of points.
"Can I use ingredients from the Ice Continent to pay off the points?" Mo Bai asked.
Seeing that Mo Bai hadn't noticed his maneuver, Little Bai let out a long sigh of relief.
However, Mo Bai's words left Little Bai with a face full of black lines.
"You want to use Ice Continent ingredients to pay off points? Where do you expect me to sell them?"
"Don't forget, on the system's registration platform, I'm still a Martial Arts System," Little Bai sighed with a melancholy tone.
If not for that, how could he, known as the honest and kind Little Gentleman, bear to embezzle his host's points?
Earning the price difference and eating public funds was where the big money was!
Even if earning the difference and eating public funds didn't seem to amount to as much as the Divine Festivals right now.
"Then how am I supposed to upgrade my culinary skills?" Mo Bai felt his head swell as he looked at the string of zeros on his personal spreadsheet.
"Recreate Century Soup, of course!"
"That is the locus of faith for the entire Ice Continent. When the time comes, not only will you be able to pay off all your debts, but you can also condense an Avatar and detach from physical limits. Wouldn't that be delightful?"
Little Bai pointed out a broad, golden avenue for Mo Bai.
At worst, depending on the situation then, I'll wipe a zero or two off for you.
Leaving aside the nastiness behind the scenes, the situation was already clear.
"Century Soup... looks like I have no choice but to conquer it."
"That's right, that's right. Don't forget, we now have the ingredient data for the entire Ice Continent."
"With the infinite time of the Mental Time Chamber plus the ability to project infinite Ice Continent ingredients based on the data, it's in the bag!"
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