Side Story 40. The Number One Cooking Competition Under Heaven (3)

10,082 people.
Ten thousand and eighty-two.

That was the number of people who had registered for the Number One Cooking Competition Under Heaven hosted by the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild.
How had such an overwhelming number of participants been gathered?

To begin with, the notices for the Number One Cooking Competition Under Heaven had not been posted only here in Hangzhou.
That much was obvious just from the fact that Ma Bi-hong, a Special-Grade Chef who worked in Beijing, had come all the way here to Hangzhou.
Wherever the distribution network of the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild reached, the notices for the Number One Cooking Competition Under Heaven had been posted.

As a result, everyone who believed they had at least some confidence in their cooking gathered here in Hangzhou.
Then were all ten thousand of them truly remarkable cooks?
They weren’t.
In truth, by proportion, there were hardly any cooks as skilled as Ma Bi-hong.
That was only natural, because the prizes were simply too great.

The third-place prize was five thousand nyang of silver.
That was enough to live on for a lifetime. One would never need to cook again.

The second-place prize of fifty thousand nyang of silver was enough to live in luxury for the rest of one’s life.
Rather than working as a cook, one could spend the rest of one’s life eating food made by others.

Then there was the next one.
One hundred thousand nyang of silver and the golden ladle.
Its value hardly needed to be explained.

Moreover, if someone made a striking showing in the cooking competition, there was a high chance they would be hired by great powers such as the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild.
Wouldn’t it be better to be hired by such a household than spend one’s whole life making tavern snacks in some inn?

About half of the participants were people who had at least cooked something once in their lives.
And the other half.
Roughly four thousand of them were simple bumpkins who knew absolutely nothing.

“Do they really give you five thousand nyang of silver?”

Everyone in Hangzhou who had too much time on their hands had gathered there.
Even while cowed by the authority of the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild and Seok Family Manor, they still dared ask such questions.

Then one of the judges belonging to the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild would roar at them.

“What, do you think I’m holding the prize money for you? Stop talking nonsense and go register!”
“Yes, sir.”

Then the fools who had come knowing nothing would scratch their heads and register anyway.
With ten thousand people gathered, there was no way they could run a proper preliminary round for that many.
Preparing ingredients for all of them would have been troublesome enough, so the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild side came up with a trick.

“Wait over there. This round isn’t over yet.”

They grouped the participants in batches of several dozen and had them present a simple dish.
They set out fifty braziers on the ground and placed iron woks over them.
The participants each prepared the ingredients they had been instructed to bring.

The task was a stir-fried dish using eggs and vegetables.
The point of that simple task was to weed out the dead weight.

And the trio and Jin Li-yeon, who had all registered together, were likewise standing before their own braziers.

Chwarararak!

Flames flared up, and the iron woks rattled.
Some people could not even handle a single wok properly and burned their food black.

“Aaagh!”

Amid the disorderly atmosphere, someone let out a scream.
It was Tsering.
She was screaming while staring at the iron wok in her hands.
Seeing it, the judge screamed too.

“Euaaagh!”

Flames were roaring up from Tsering’s wok.
The judge hurriedly scooped up sand from nearby and dumped it into Tsering’s wok.
The fire went out, but Tsering got showered with sand as well.

“Are you messing around!”
“……”
“Get out!”

Tsering couldn’t say a word and shuffled away from the brazier.

“Snrk.”

Baek Sang-ye, having completed a glossy stir-fried egg-and-vegetable dish, laughed as she watched Tsering’s retreating back.
The judge tasted her dish.

“Tasty. Passed!”
“Thank you~”

She passed easily.
Like Tsering, she too left the brazier, but her steps were far lighter.

And then there was Jin Li-yeon.
She diligently stirred the wok with a ladle.
Her motions were rougher than Baek Sang-ye’s, but she was not someone who was naturally clumsy with her body, so it was manageable.
Jin Li-yeon carefully plated the finished stir-fried vegetables.
Then she cautiously raised her hand.

“It’s done.”

When they entered the competition, none of the four had worn Azure Forest robes. They would have stood out far too much.

“Hmm, it looks alright.”

The judge came over and said that.
Jin Li-yeon lifted her chin in a proud posture.
Surely she did not want to be eliminated in front of the three younger disciples.
Though Jin Li-yeon was normally far removed from cooking, that was precisely why she had secretly practiced.

“I’ll have to taste it first…”

The judge lifted his chopsticks and picked up a bite of Jin Li-yeon’s stir-fried vegetables.
The moment he put it into his mouth,

“Ptooey! Ptui, ptui, ptui!”

He violently spat the stir-fried vegetables back out.

“What in the world did you make!”
“…Stir-fried vegetables.”
“You taste it yourself.”

Her eyes widening at the unbelievable reaction, Jin Li-yeon picked up some of the stir-fried vegetables and ate them herself.
Her face soon turned ashen.

“How did you make it so sweet?”

All the ingredients, including the eggs and vegetables, had to be brought by the participants themselves.
It was not as if Jin Li-yeon and the trio lacked money.
They had even procured salt and precious sugar themselves.

“You put in that expensive sugar instead of salt? Good grief.”

She had put the two in the wrong way around.
Considering how precious sugar was, it was a blunder no cook should ever make.
Of course, Jin Li-yeon was not a real cook.

“Eliminated!”

Her elimination was only natural.
Jin Li-yeon trudged away with a shocked expression.
What kind of disgrace was this, in front of her three younger martial nieces and nephew?
Cheongho came up beside her as she walked away forlornly.
Her face brightened as she asked Cheongho,

“Did you fail too?”
“I passed.”

But at Cheongho’s blunt answer, Jin Li-yeon’s expression darkened again.

“I’m good at cooking.”

Cheongho said that as if emphasizing it.

Baek Sang-ye and Cheongho passed.
Jin Li-yeon and Tsering failed.
That was the result of the day.

The next day, at Mancheon Inn.
Once lunchtime had passed, even the few regulars still there drifted away.

It was a quiet afternoon.
Ordinarily, it would have been the time when Old Man Yuk, the innkeeper, nodded off and enjoyed a midday nap.

But not today.
He was stalking around the kitchen with fire in his eyes.
His face wore a stern, dignified expression, and he looked ready to bark at someone at any moment.

“No!”

And at last his shout erupted.

“How can you slice scallions like that? The shreds are getting crushed.”

He grabbed the shredded scallions Baek Sang-ye had cut and shook them.
They were not bad, but they lacked uniformity and had gone limp.

“……”

Baek Sang-ye looked resentful.
When had she ever had to learn something while being scolded like this?

“Oh dear, judging by that expression, you look ready to hit me.”

Mocking her to the hilt, Old Man Yuk snatched away Baek Sang-ye’s knife.

“If the knife is sharp, it won’t show as much, but you can’t always cook with a perfectly sharp knife. …Why are you crying. Are you tearing up?”
“Because I was slicing scallions, so my eyes sting!”

Baek Sang-ye’s eyes were slightly reddened.
When she protested as if dumbfounded, Old Man Yuk laughed as if he had been waiting for it.

“That’s all because your knife work is sloppy.”

Then Old Man Yuk began slicing the scallions himself.

Tododododo—

His knife work was superb.
A few days ago, when he had competed against Ma Bi-hong, his hands had trembled, but not now.
That was because after that day, he had quit drinking completely and begun giving them cooking lessons.

“It isn’t only Murim people who find the Dao in the blade. A cook’s knife carries Dao too. If you cut as though pushing through, the scallions won’t get crushed.”

Even while speaking, his knife work remained perfectly steady.

“Since the cut surface doesn’t get crushed, the vegetable juice doesn’t splatter and your eyes don’t sting. And when you stir-fry them, the aroma improves too. Not to mention the texture. Look!”
“…Kuh.”

Even Baek Sang-ye had no choice but to admit it.
The shredded scallions Old Man Yuk cut were perfect. Their length and width were consistent, making Baek Sang-ye’s look poor by comparison.

At the side, Tsering clapped her hands.

“Wow, the way you explain things is utterly profound.”
“Heo heo heo!”

Tsering was only doing it to tease Baek Sang-ye, but Old Man Yuk burst into pleased laughter.

Jin Li-yeon was sitting in the dining hall, watching all this.
They were in the middle of a mission, but things really had taken an oddly amusing turn.
Who could have imagined she would end up entering a cooking competition with her younger martial nieces and nephew?

But her expression darkened again when she looked at the letter before her.
A cipher was written in the letter.
It had come through her own intelligence network.

The sender was Noh-sik.
It really was that beggar who had once been a young elder of the Beggars’ Union.

Some time ago, Jin Li-yeon had informed the Hangzhou branch post of the Murim Alliance of the current situation and asked for cooperation.
But the reply she received was that they could not provide manpower immediately.
That much had been expected.
Even the Murim Alliance could not wield power however it pleased.
It was also difficult to pressure the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild carelessly.

Even so, because it was an important matter, she requested that the report be forwarded to the Murim Alliance main headquarters.
She waited several more days, but the reply that came back was brief.
“Do not act rashly. Wait.”

That was when she sensed something suspicious.
Jin Li-yeon, who did not take her instincts lightly, turned to her own information network.
That was where Noh-sik came in.

Jin Li-yeon read the letter once more.

“The report was suppressed by the upper ranks of the Murim Alliance.”

Noh-sik had passed on that shocking message.
Was the Murim Alliance trying to overlook the actions of the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild?
Or had it already come to some agreement with the guild?
Something stank. As far as she knew, Alliance Leader Baek Ryu-san was not the kind of man who would ignore such a situation.

“It seems the Crimson Fighting Fiends are on the move.”

The letter also contained fresh news.
Those who consumed Guihon Jade gained extraordinary martial power, and when they drew on that power, their eyes shone with a red light.
The term used for such people was Crimson Fighting Fiends.

“This time, the Crimson Fighting Fiends may be gathering in Hangzhou. A great battle may break out.”

And Noh-sik had added,

“Infiltrating Seok Family Manor to seize the Guihon Jade is not a good idea. The Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild is calling in retainers. It seems they are actually waiting for the Crimson Fighting Fiends.”

If that was the case, then any plan to steal the Guihon Jade would have to be postponed.
In that light, deciding to enter the cooking competition had not turned out badly.
Of course, Jin Li-yeon and Tsering had been eliminated, but still…

“You there!”

Then Jin Li-yeon sprang to her feet at the shout calling her.

“How long are you going to sit around resting? If you’re going to work as an assistant, you need to learn to cook.”
“…Yes.”

Jin Li-yeon and Tsering had been given assignments too.
Contestants who made it to the main round were allowed one assistant, so the two of them also had to learn cooking.
Jin Li-yeon awkwardly made her way into the kitchen.

And then, three days passed.
More than half of the ten thousand participants had been weeded out during registration.
But even then, more than three thousand remained.
Over the next three days, preliminary rounds would be held, and from those three thousand, sixty-four finalists would be chosen.

Cheongho’s preliminary round was today.
The morning session, the first half of the preliminaries.
The two of them entered the outer compound of Seok Family Manor, where the preliminary test was being held, and gaped in amazement.

“Wow…”

Their amazement was only natural.
It was not because the outer compound of Seok Family Manor was luxurious.
It was because of the people gathered inside.
A full five hundred people were burning with fighting spirit.
Fighting spirit was not something martial artists alone possessed.
Faced with a chance that could change their lives, people devoted to cooking were all blazing with passion.

“The preliminary round will begin shortly. Participants, gather!”

A judge with a powerful voice shouted that.

Deng!

A gong rang out, announcing the start of the preliminary round.