Chapter 39: A Bowl of Strange Soup

“Is there a problem with the cooking competition?”
Sykes knew that Ella was not one to disturb him for no reason.

[According to recent posts on the forum, the players strongly hope that you can serve as a judge for the competition.]
Ella reached out and pulled out a virtual web page from the void.
It was a screenshot of a post made by a player on the forum.

-Although, but, can I see our Lord in the cooking competition?

-I also want to ask! The Lord hasn’t appeared for a long time, 1551. My gallery hasn’t been updated!

-He probably will, right? After all, the final reward is a skill taught by the Lord himself.

-Lord, Lord, Lord! Sykes, Sykes, Sykes! Madly cheering!

-[Image][Fan Art] Please look at our beautiful and noble Sai. Everyone, charge! As long as we post enough, the developers will definitely hear our voice!!

-I really want the Lord to taste my cooking. Count me in!

Sykes: “…”

To be honest, in his initial arrangement, he had no intention of appearing in person.
As long as he input enough pharmaceutical knowledge into Ella’s database, she could generate a judging system on her own to identify and score the dishes made by the players.

Why did he have to be a judge himself for something Ella could solve?

It was a strange request, but when he set his eyes on the last reply, his intention to refuse underwent a subtle change.

“Okay, I will be there. As for the other aspects, you can arrange them according to the customs of the human side,” he turned and rummaged through his bookshelf.
In the end, he had piled the books into a small mountain.

Sykes pushed the small mountain in front of Ella.

“Let’s input these first. Although it’s only the most basic pharmaceutical knowledge, given the current abilities of the players, it probably won’t exceed this range,” he said to Ella in a relaxed tone.
“If there are any more profound potions, just have them go find the ‘appraiser’ Scott.”

Ella looked at the mountain of pharmaceutical books, which was several hundred times larger than herself, and was silent for a moment before she began to transmit them into her database one by one.

She was reminded of a complaint from a certain professional student she had seen on the human forum—is it true that in any world, the medical field requires so much memorization?

It wasn’t until the next day that the exchange post in the square opened its doors.
The players who had been waiting for a long time almost swarmed up.

There was no helping it.
Because it was the closed beta, many facilities in the game were still incomplete.
Currently, the most interesting activity was exploring the sea, which was a torment for life-skill players who didn’t like to fight.
But fortunately, the game soon launched the farming mode, which was already enough to make people happy.
Unexpectedly, the cooking system followed closely behind.

Yay! Cooking! Yay! Eating in the game won’t make you fat!

After the above viewpoint was proposed on the forum, the post instantly flipped through more than ten pages.
Many players and cloud players were checking in below—isn’t it everyone’s dream to eat without getting fat!

No one would doubt whether Sea Realm could achieve this.
Those who had doubted before had already had their faces swollen from being slapped.
Moreover, with [Contemporary Foodie]’s heartfelt performance and the players’ personal accounts, even cloud players who had never played the game knew that the officials of Sea Realm were extremely conscientious, even replicating the sense of taste to a very high degree!

The first player to squeeze into the exchange post looked around and first felt that something had changed—was this exchange post more exquisite than before?
The cracks in the corners seemed to have been filled, and the previously bare walls had been painted a gentle milky white.

For some reason, this player had an illusion, as if the more reputation points the players spent here, the more luxurious the exchange post would become.
No, no, how could that be?
Sea Realm is a conscientious game! He shook this thought out of his mind.

He skipped over the most conspicuous various golden, shiny, and gem-encrusted utensils and directly fixed his gaze on the few patches of green at the end of the room.

To say it was green was just a habitual expression on Earth.
It wasn’t quite appropriate here, because the vegetables in the seabed didn’t seem to be all green.
In fact, if you went up and compared them, green only accounted for a small part.
The remaining colors were even more numerous than the colors of the rainbow fountain at the resurrection point: there were light yellow, purplish red, and even semi-transparent ones!

The player picked up the nearest crop.
Its appearance was a spicy blue, like the blue version of a certain cola.

[Name: Green Pa Grass]

[Description: A common vegetable from a distant sea. The people there often use it to make soup.]

You say that again, what is this thing called? it is fluorescent blue, yet it’s called green??

The player stared at the blue…green grass, in the end, he still threw it into his backpack.

Ding.

It was the sound of the system automatically deducting reputation points.

Besides these common vegetables, he also found another type of goods in the corner!
There were about a few dozen sealed bags mysteriously placed on the edge of an inconspicuous shelf.
The bags were made of coarse cloth, the opening sealed tightly, and a rough question mark was painted on it with red paint.

‘What is this?’
When the player picked up the bag, the system description popped up in time—

[Name: Mysterious Parcel (Crop Type)]

[Description: Contains unidentified crops. Type unknown, effect unknown. Limited to one per person.]

[Price: 1000 Reputation Points]

It had to be said that the players’ hearts were full of exuberant adventurous spirit.
This was not only reflected in their successive sea exploration activities, but also now—

Even though this player only had a little over a thousand reputation points left, he couldn’t help his eager hand.
With a flick of his tail and a grit of his teeth, he closed his eyes and threw a bag into his backpack.

Ding.

This time, the sound of the system deducting reputation points sounded much harsher in his ears.

‘Next time, I must suggest on the forum to have the developers remove this sound! I don’t usually feel it, but now when I’m impulse buying, my heart hurts so much, QAQ.’

But thinking about it from another angle, it’s a limited purchase, this is a limited purchase! A limited purchase must be something good! Maybe I can open some top-grade crop!

Thinking of it this way, the price, which was twenty times more expensive, didn’t seem so heartbreaking anymore.
Comforting himself like this, the player finally left with satisfaction.

And Ella was also very satisfied.
Seeing the pile of “blind bags” being snapped up, she felt her program run a little more smoothly—this was a promotion method she had learned in the human world.
It was said that they always had a strange gambling desire.
Even if they knew luck wouldn’t be on their side, they would tirelessly step into the same trap.

[Humans have always researched the study of “how to better screw themselves over” so thoroughly,] Ella wrote in her notes.

Of course, Ella still retained the most basic conscience.
Besides the common vegetables in the bags, each bag was stuffed with one or two special crops that were either extremely difficult to react to or extremely easy to react to.
She believed that with the players’ research desire, the scene her master was looking forward to seeing would soon appear—even if they couldn’t reach the level of national potion masters, they should at least know the basic pharmacology, right?

At this time, the players who had happily cleared out their reputation points and returned to their houses with a pile of vegetables still didn’t know that they were about to relive the fear of being dominated by university courses in the game.

“Old Li, Old Li!” Hua Yibing happily threw the things he had bought onto the ground and urged Old Li, who had just returned from moving bricks, to hurry to the exchange post.

“They’ve stocked a new mysterious crop bag with a chance to open rare crops, limited quantity, why aren’t you going to grab one!!”

Because he was too anxious, he rattled off the long sentence above like a machine gun.

Old Li’s gaze fell on the coarse cloth bag that had rolled to his feet.
He picked it up with one hand and felt skeptical about the claim that there would be rare crops inside, but he still obediently went to queue up with Yan Shuangwen—

Anyway, they weren’t short of reputation points, and a limited purchase from the system was still worth buying.
What if they could open something useful?

Twenty minutes later, the three of them were sitting cross-legged in a circle in the house, with the loot they had just bought piled in the middle.

Yan Shuangwen pursed his lips.
Although the underwater crops were indeed very interesting, to him, they were still not as attractive as living animals.
And the reason why he had bought such a large pile back…

It was really because the atmosphere of the players was too enthusiastic, which had infected him and made him abandon a few seconds of reason.
By the time he came back to his senses, his backpack was already full of all kinds of crops.

He suddenly understood why online shopping had developed so maturely, yet his parents were still keen on going out to buy the discounted goods in the supermarket.
This feeling of making one’s head hot, besides being a bit expensive, was surprisingly not bad?

“Smack!”

Hua Yibing placed the flame pedestal he had bought on the ground, breaking the silence.

Old Li also came back to his senses, unfolded a [Rules and Regulations of the First Sea Realm Cooking Competition] flyer that he had picked up while shopping, and read it to his teammates.

The first page was an introduction on how to cook—

“Players can use the flame pedestal and corresponding pots for cooking. The cooking methods are not limited to frying, deep-frying, boiling, and stir-frying, and can be freely explored.”

As soon as Old Li’s voice fell, he heard a few ‘dong, dong, dong’ sounds.
Hua Yibing had already very cooperatively poured out a bag of stones he had brought from the quarry in front of Yan Shuangwen.

“Old Yan, it’s time to test your magic learning ability!”
He said, as if entrusting some important mission, and patted Yan Shuangwen’s shoulder with force.

Yan Shuangwen silently picked up a few stones, attached his magic power to them, and the stones slowly softened from their hard state, finally becoming like plasticine that could be kneaded into a ball.

Although he didn’t have any talent for kneading utensils, the final product was still similar to a real wok—as long as you ignored the pits and bumps on the edge.

“This won’t do. The heat will be uneven,” Old Li said with a serious face and smeared a few more pieces of stone mud on it.

The bottom of the pot was flat now, but it had become extremely thick.

“…” Old Li silently withdrew his hand.

Hua Yibing sighed pretentiously, “Facts have proven that a hand-cripple has no future.”
Saying that, he took out a few pots he had bought at a high price from his backpack and proudly placed them on the ground.

“This time, it’s the victory of the pay-to-win party!”

Yan Shuangwen turned to look at Old Li.
“What’s on the back of the flyer?”
He completely ignored his roommate.

“Different herbs… eh? Is this written wrong? It should be different vegetables, right?” Old Li hesitated for a moment, then continued to read, “Cooking different vegetables together might have extra effects. Players are encouraged to try.”

“The cooking competition will be held in three days. At that time, the great Lord will be the judge, and several awards such as the most delicious dish and the most creative dish will be selected. If you can win the Lord’s favor, you will also have the chance to obtain a skill personally taught by the Lord. Come and participate!”

“Is it my imagination, or do I feel like this flyer has a marketing account vibe?” Hua Yibing wrinkled his nose and retorted.

“Is that all?” Yan Shuangwen took the flyer, confirmed that there were only these few lines on it, and looked at the vegetables laid out in front of him, feeling a bit at a loss.

But Hua Yibing over there had already opened the waterproof cover of the flame pedestal with lightning speed, placed a pot on it, and then added some clean water, planning to start with the simplest stewed soup.

Just as he was muttering the secret recipe for white radish soup he had heard from his grandmother, the action of grabbing vegetables in his hand suddenly paused.

“Wait, I suddenly realized a problem!!”
His expression now looked as if the sky had fallen.

“The things we use in the sea realm are completely different from those in reality. So why did I have to work so hard to memorize so many recipes before?”

Old Li: “…”

Yan Shuangwen: “…”

Old Li and Yan Shuangwen looked at each other and sighed in unison.
It seemed to be true, but none of the three of them seemed to have thought of this.

A miscalculation.

“Forget it, don’t think so much. Let’s just try it slowly. Didn’t the system say to be brave and try? Just treat it as playing some kind of potion game. Maybe the randomly made dishes will have special effects?”
Old Li reached out and grabbed a pot.
In any case, he had to try it himself to know the result.

Since the recipes they had memorized were useless, they simply started the most basic permutations and combinations.

Hua Yibing held a wooden stick he had gotten from somewhere, stirred it in the soup pot, and then smiled benevolently at the不明mixture inside.

When Yan Shuangwen accidentally瞥见this scene, he was suddenly reminded of the evil witch in the children’s cartoon his younger sister, who was still in kindergarten, used to watch.

“Add a poisonous mushroom, and then an old shoe heel~ hehe!”
Huahua had clearly also gotten into character, muttering the lines the witch had said.

As he spoke, he fumbled for a vegetable from the pile of vegetables next to him and, without looking, threw it into the pot.

But he didn’t expect that as soon as this fluorescent blue vegetable entered the pot, it quickly dissolved into the soup, and its dyeing ability was extremely strong, forcefully turning the entire pot of soup into a strange green.
The green, illuminated by the firelight from the base, was cast on Hua Yibing’s face, making him look even more like a witch stirring her magic potion.

“What is this thing?” Witch Hua was greatly alarmed.

Yan Shuangwen remembered the name of that grass.
“This vegetable is called green pa grass.”

“I understand the logic, but isn’t it a blue grass?”
Hua Yibing looked at his pot of green soup with a pained expression, then had a sudden realization.
“No wonder it’s called green pa grass. It turns out that the soup it stews is actually green!”

The vegetables were already in the pot, and it was impossible to separate them out again.
At this time, small bubbles were bubbling up in the pot.
The heat should be about right.
He scooped a bowl of soup out of it.

Apply for appraisal.

He firmly poked the button on the cooking interface.
But the system had no reaction.

Only then did Hua Yibing discover that there was a line of small words at the bottom of the interface—[Players need to personally taste the experience for reference before appraisal~ (Note: it doesn’t necessarily have to be the person themselves.)]

Huahua held the bowl of green soup, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down.
He struggled to bring it to his mouth, then quickly moved it away.

He turned his head and greeted his two good friends enthusiastically, asking with a smile, “Cooking is hard work. Have some soup to de-stress!”

Even Old Li, who was usually easy-going, took a few steps back this time.
Yan Shuangwen even turned his face to the side.

Hua Yibing smacked his lips in disappointment, then put on a look of heroic sacrifice, tilted his head back, and drank it down.

As soon as the bowl of strange soup, a friendly product of Witch Hua, went down his stomach, he felt a strange sweet and spicy taste that he couldn’t describe shoot from his throat directly into his stomach, and then his whole body felt fiery, as if he had endless power.

Then he found that his brain was abnormally excited.
His strongest desire at the moment was actually to open the door and swim a few thousand or tens of thousands of meters to feel invigorated!

Apply for appraisal!

He struggled to control his desire to frolic.
While spinning around in the room, he didn’t forget to apply for appraisal.

[Name: A Bowl of Strange Soup (can be named by yourself)]

[Description: Due to the influence of a certain ingredient, you have entered a state of slight excitement. Speed bonus 5%, effect lasts for 1min. And during the effect, you will find it difficult to feel tired, but when the effect ends, the fatigue will be returned twofold; satiety +50 after consumption.]

[Rating: 9.0 points]

“See!” Hua Yibing backhandedly posted his recipe in the team channel.
“What is a culinary genius! All of you, sit down!”
He laughed wildly with his hands on his hips.

“9 points? Is the full score a hundred?” Yan Shuangwen glanced at the remaining soup in the pot, feeling that his eyes had been hurt by the strange color.

Before Hua Yibing could say anything, he was interrupted by a loud ‘bang!’.
He turned his head sharply and saw that something was wrong on Old Li’s side.