Chapter 44: Improved Formula

The much-anticipated first cooking competition of Sea Realm finally came to an end.
The various status-enhancing foods made by the contestants were greatly sought after, especially the foodie’s fried fish fillets—who doesn’t like food that can increase health by a full half?

Another key point was that it was delicious.

Ahem, to be honest, if this reason were given in the food streets of the Flower-Planting Nation, you might be laughed at by the entire street of shopkeepers.
What good-selling thing isn’t delicious?

But this theorem did not apply in Sea Realm.

A contestant had made sugar pills, which could also increase health, and their popularity was second only to the fried fish fillets.
Each sugar pill he made could increase health by ten points.
Although the value added at one time was not as much as the fish fillets, it looked like a snack.
Not everyone could eat several servings of fish fillets without changing their expression, even if this was a holographic game and they wouldn’t get full.

But this sugar pill had a fatal problem.
Its taste was too, too, too sour.
One bite was like swallowing a whole lemon raw.
No matter how much the person eating it cared about their image, at that moment, they would become ferocious, the kind that could scare children to tears in minutes.

The contestant also wanted to improve this weakness, but the key ingredient that added the sour taste was also the main ingredient.
It couldn’t be removed or neutralized.
So, in desperation, he named this candy [Lemon] and, every time he sold it, very tactfully reminded the players that this candy was a bit sour.

Most first-time buyers would say dismissively—I can eat sour plums and cold-dressed lemon slices on their own in real life.
I’m not afraid of this little candy.

Then he would suffer a merciless beating from society.
His friends would take a picture of his changing face with a ‘kacha’, happily upload it to social platforms, and even get on the hot search under a certain lifestyle entry, becoming a little famous.

However, as beautiful as the taste was the price of the lemon candy.
You could buy one for only ten reputation points.
Compared to the fried fish fillets, whose ingredients were rare and whose production was cumbersome, it was a fairly affordable item price.
So players who were short on cash could only pinch their noses and endure the sourness.

Later, there was a small episode—a certain female player lost a game during an offline social gathering and was punished by eating half a lemon raw.
Not only did she not refuse, but she ate a full three of them without changing her expression, and at the end, she snorted coolly, “Is that all?”

Although she didn’t successfully get a partner in the end, she gained countless little brothers and fangirls, which could be considered a different kind of success… right?

Ahem, back to the main topic.

Actually, many players also wanted to buy Ge Feifei’s takoyaki.
They weren’t after its effects, but were going for the double delicious seal of approval from the lord and the snail.
So you could see many players who wanted to return to the city early during their exploration take out a box of takoyaki from their backpacks, and after eating it, they would shout “Refreshing!”, and then dive headfirst into the resurrection point to be reborn.

So this fresh, fragrant, crispy, and tender takoyaki, with its strange texture as if an electric arc was dancing in the mouth, was also nicknamed “The Last Supper” by the players, meaning the last meal eaten before going on the road, XD.

Even Hua Yibing’s dish, which was written as pan-fried meat patties, looked like fried meat balls, but was actually a time bomb, had a good market.
Although it couldn’t be eaten, wasn’t it great to put it in the backpack as a powerful destructive weapon!
A bomb should be sold as a bomb!

However, those players were all firmly rejected by Hua Yibing.
He was determined not to sell his own work before improving the recipe for pan-fried meat patties.

“Waah,呜呜呜呜呜, what should I do, Scott? I’ve been trying to improve it, but it’s still not as good as the first version’s recipe,” Hua Yibing cried with a mournful face, hugging Sykes’s fishtail and wailing.
“Grandma’s pan-fried meat patties are so delicious. How come when it gets to me, it’s not even edible QAQ.”

Sykes, who was hugged as soon as he entered the house, helplessly flicked his tail, but still couldn’t shake off this tail pendant.

“You do it step by step and show me,” he finally compromised.

Seeing him relent, Huahua leaped up happily and dragged the ingredients he had already prepared in front of Sykes.

He had to say, there was a reason why the single-celled organism Hua Yibing had managed to survive until now.
The more single-celled an organism was, the more accurate its intuition was, and it would subconsciously act according to its intuition.
For example, when Huahua encountered a problem with improving the recipe, he subconsciously felt that only Scott could help him, so he unhesitatingly squatted at the door on the day Scott had scheduled a visit, and directly hugged his thigh after seeing the fish.

“Speaking of which, Scott, how did your profession change quest go before?” Huahua asked while smashing the minced meat with his gemstone giant hammer with a ‘gwang, gwang, gwang’.

Sykes: “It went very smoothly. Thanks to everyone getting the first kill before, I turned in the mission and am now an official appraiser.”

“Did the Lord himself change your profession for you?” Hua Yibing suddenly thought of this and looked up at Sykes with sparkling eyes.

Sykes… “Yes, the merman lord changed my profession for me and allowed me to borrow knowledge.”

“You’re too lucky. I also want a reason to get close to the Lord!” Hua Yibing said with envy.
“It’s a pity I can only get close to my idol during the next class.”

“Idol? You mean the lord?” Sykes still couldn’t understand.
“…the lord doesn’t often appear in front of people. Why would you treat him as an idol?”

Hua Yibing put down the hammer and began to tear up a handful of vegetable leaves piece by piece and throw them into a bowl.
The movements in his hands slowed down, and his brain’s processing also slowed down by half a beat.

“Why… ” Hua Yibing thought carefully.
“I don’t understand either, but think about it. When the first batch of us closed beta players came, there was nothing on this territory. Only the lord, one person, lived in this ocean. The name Sea of Death sounds very lonely, right?”

He seemed to have thought of some unpleasant experience and hung his head low.
The fine bangs on the side covered his eyes.
“The lord can be so outstanding and so strong even in such a lonely place. I also want to become a strong person like him.”

Sykes was suddenly at a loss for words, he was a devoted student, except for the time when he was wandering and studying, he was a stay-at-home fish, and his social skills were poor.

Sykes felt that his question seemed to have touched a certain wound of Hua Yibing.
He also realized that the strength the other envied was not referring to his own martial strength, but the merman just didn’t know how to open his mouth, what to say to continue the conversation.

Hua Yibing opened his mouth in a daze.
Just as he was about to poke Ella for help…

“Hello? Hello? Scott, what are you thinking about?” He tilted his head and looked at Sykes.
“You didn’t fall for my trick, did you! Hahaha, the lord looks like the type of a top student. If I could be as smart as him, what would I have to fear from failing the final exams!”

Sykes hesitated for a moment.
“Actually, you are also very amazing. Don’t be so self-deprecating.”

Hua Yibing felt the awkward comfort from his new friend.
After being moved, he still shamelessly continued to ask, “Where am I amazing? You’re not tricking me, are you?”

Sykes was at a loss for words for a moment.
He tried hard to think and finally found a reason.
“To be able to create such an interesting timed explosion attribute in the entire Sea Realm can also be considered a kind of talent,” the merman praised sincerely.

K.O.!

Hua Yibing took a critical hit.

His face turned ashen.
He silently raised a white flag, then threw the meat patties he had made into the pot and sprinkled some red powder on them.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The meat patties swelled up into meat balls one after another, rolling in the pot with a ‘guruguru’.
Hua Yibing had learned something from his repeated failures during this period.
At the very least, he had become more and more skilled in controlling the heat.
When the surface of the meat balls showed an attractive oily sheen, he picked one out with chopsticks and placed it in a bowl.
The rest were directly packed up and stuffed into his backpack—the time of items in the backpack was frozen, so there would be no tragedy of an exploding backpack.

“You can study it for five minutes and then throw it away. I’ll get you a new one,” Hua Yibing carefully handed it to Sykes and reminded him.

Sykes nodded, took the dish, first sniffed its smell, then peeled off a small piece of crispy skin from the top.
With the sound of Huahua sucking in a cold breath, he put it into his mouth.

“Spit it out, spit it out quickly!” Hua Yibing jumped three feet high and was about to snatch away the deadly food.
He still had some idea of his own cooking skills.
Even if you could resurrect after dying in the game, what kind of talk is it to die from eating and exploding!

However, the tragic scene that Huahua had imagined did not actually happen.
Sykes was still standing there perfectly fine, his brows slightly furrowed, with an inexplicable aura of a top student that made the underachievers fear him.

“It’s a very strange combination,” the merman gave such a judgment.
He operated the screen a few times with his hand and sent his appraisal report to Huahua.

[Name: Pan-fried Meat Patties]

[Creator: Hua Nord]

[Description: A miraculous ingredient (red python fruit and yin-natured crab meat) has produced a violent reaction in the food, giving the food the characteristic of [Explosion] (explosion range diameter 2 meters, damage level slight, players hit will have their health reduced by 300 points). The mutual restraint of other ingredients (rolled vegetable) prevents the [Explosion] from taking effect immediately, but delays it for a period of time (6min 15s).]

[Note: Adding a fire-attribute material might have a further effect.]

[Rating: 9.5 points]

Hua Yibing opened the report and his eyes widened in surprise.
He looked at Sykes, then at the report, then at Sykes again, as if looking at some legendary quest, with great enthusiasm.

“Scott!! Are you the Kamisama of the underwater world!!”
He was so excited that he shed two streams of wide noodle tears, the tail behind him wagging crazily, stirring up a wave.

This was the first time Sykes had seen a fish wag its tail like a dog, but this time he didn’t find it cringe-worthy, but rather felt it was a little cute.
Immediately, he deeply reflected on himself.

Just as Hua Yibing was running circles around Sykes with great admiration, the door of the hut was pushed open.
Old Li and Yan Shuangwen, who had gone out to do their dailies, happened to come back.

Yan Shuangwen looked at Hua Yibing, who was running around in the room, and mercilessly complained, “Did you drink too much of the soup you brewed yourself?”

“Of course not! Look, this is the recipe Scott appraised for me!”
Huahua flicked his hand and sent the data to the group.

After Old Li and Yan Shuangwen had read the completed appraisal report, they finally realized what this temporary teammate’s hidden profession meant—this was simply cheating, wasn’t it?

As the center of the three’s gazes, Sykes unhurriedly took out a few promotional leaflets that Ella had kindly made from his pocket—

[The first shop in Merman Town opens today! All items in the store are 90% off! Don’t miss it when you pass by!]

[Are you still confused because the items you found have no description in the system? Are you still tangled because the effect description of complex dishes is too vague? Bring them all for an appraisal! Address: XXXXXXXX]

“This is a leaflet given by the system, not the advertisement I originally registered,” Sykes explained, seeing the indescribable expressions on the 123 team’s faces.

The other side was still silent.

[Master, according to investigation, making a joke among humans can ease a stiff atmosphere,] Ella’s little assistant came online in time.

The gray-haired merman was in a difficult position for a moment.
He tilted his head slightly and made a not-so-skilled cute expression.
“Then, thank you for your patronage?”