Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle

Chapter 1265 607: [Longevity Noodles Level S]

Qin Huai and Cao Guixiang chatted until 10 o'clock in the evening, during which Zhang Chu was secretly eating kumquats. By the time Cao Guixiang discovered him, half a bowl of kumquats was gone, making her roll her eyes at Zhang Chu several times in frustration.

The conversation between Qin Huai and Cao Guixiang was not just about cooking skills.

For Qin Huai, making snacks is part of his daily life, as he is a breakfast master, a snack master, and also the boss of Yunzhong Restaurant. Snacks are his life, but that doesn't mean his life is only about snacks.

Guests, colleagues, employees, friends, brothers, sisters, teachers, Tan Wei'an, who is leisurely lazing around in Hangzhou, Dong Shi, who shares gossip from Gusu with him regularly, and Zang Liang, who rarely communicates but likes his social media posts—all are part of his life.

Master Qin's life seems boring, but in reality, it's very colorful.

Cao Guixiang is the same.

She seems like a retired old lady at home, no longer needing to look after her grandchildren, enjoying her retirement.

But actually, she is.

Cao Guixiang is good at discovering the beauty in life. She can talk about knitting for over half an hour, not to mention she often chats with her old friends, goes shopping, visits parks, and hikes. The gossip she can access is richer than young people can imagine.

Cao Guixiang even shared some gossip about Shi Dadan with Qin Huai.

The two unfortunate kids of Shi Dadan performed really poorly in their final exams this time, making Shi Dadan's wife so angry her blood pressure skyrocketed. Unable to sleep in the middle of the night, she went to the fish pond to scold the fish.

After scolding the fish, she scolded the kids, then her husband, and eventually even scolded the breakfast shop downstairs.

As for why Cao Guixiang knew so accurately what Shi Dadan's wife said while scolding...

Because there was a spy in Shi Dadan's fish farm.

As everyone knows, Shi Dadan handles fish farming effortlessly. He just needs to buy fingerlings, throw them into the pond, feed them regularly, and the rest takes care of itself—no need to care about water temperature, no need to study oxygenation, sometimes even forgetting to feed them is fine. Fish can survive missing a couple of meals.

No matter how competitors target him by drugging or power-cuts, it doesn't affect Shi Dadan's farm in the slightest. The fish he raises are the best locally, targeted by all aquatic product vendors.

Over the years, industry peers have thought Shi Dadan surely had some secret recipe for fish farming. This secret must be very strange and very secretive, which is why after all these years of probing, they haven't uncovered a single clue.

This also resulted in many spies being planted in Shi Dadan's farm, or rather, none of his farm employees aren't spies.

But Shi Dadan didn't mind at all. Those who came to be spies were professionals, and being a spy entails being diligent and competent before exposure. Shi Dadan welcomes these diligent and wage-indifferent spies trying to steal trade secrets without ever checking on them, putting trust first.

There were even senior spies who had worked seven or eight years in Shi Dadan's farm, seasoned employee spies.

Drawing two salaries for years without delivering any useful information made the spies feel immense pressure, leading them to share anything at all.

Words of Shi Dadan's wife scolding by the fish pond were even passed around as if they were farming secrets, word for word.

When Shi Dadan's wife found out about this, she went back to the farm and scolded the fish again in anger.

In general, Qin Huai and Cao Guixiang's chat last night was very light-hearted and enjoyable. They talked about anything and everything that came to mind. If not for both being accustomed to early sleep and rise, with the need to do so tomorrow, Qin Huai and Cao Guixiang could have probably chatted until one or two in the morning.

Sleeping early means waking early.

At 5 o'clock the next morning, Qin Huai was awake. The sky was still dark outside, but Cao Guixiang and Zhang Chu were already up, and the kitchen was filled with the rich aroma of chicken soup. Zhang Chu was standing at the kitchen door drinking soup, the fragrance wafting from the kitchen to the living room.

"Xiao Qin, you're up so early!" Zhang Chu said cheerfully to Qin Huai, holding a bowl of soup. "I'm helping Grandma Cao taste the seasoning."

Qin Huai glanced at the half-full bowl of soup Zhang Chu had already drunk, nodded in understanding—here, tasting meant finishing the whole bowl.

Such was the condition at home.

After a quick wash, Qin Huai put on an apron and went into the kitchen to make hand-rolled noodles.

Making hand-rolled noodles was easy for Qin Huai. Unlike stretched noodles, hand-rolled noodles don't need skill, only the ability to increase the value of the basic skill of yeast, the higher the better, resulting in fantastic hand-rolled noodles.

Even though making hand-rolled noodles itself doesn't require yeast.

Since the game system named this basic skill yeast, Qin Huai always considered it a general term for the overall basic skills.

Cao Guixiang watched Qin Huai knead the dough and couldn't help but exclaim after merely dozens of seconds: "Your progress is indeed remarkable."

"Is Zhiwei Restaurant that impressive? If you can achieve such results after studying there for a few months, then I think you should stay at Zhiwei Restaurant for a few years, and perhaps eventually replace Master Zhou, becoming the number one in pastry."

Qin Huai knew Cao Guixiang was joking, but he still explained seriously: "Master Zhou teaches well, but I learned from more than just him."