Side Story 45. Red Eyes (3)

They were supposed to catch their own ingredients and cook with them?
That was no different from telling them to hunt.
Hunting was something hunters did, not chefs.
So when the chefs heard the format of the test from Wang Ho-cheol, they were flustered.
No matter how skilled a chef was, how many of them could possibly have experience hunting and butchering animals themselves?
Hunting was for hunters, butchering was for butchers. That was common sense.

At most, chefs only had experience breaking down meat that had already been caught and then cooking it.
Using a knife in the kitchen and using a knife out in the mountains were entirely different things.

This was not a test to choose who cooked well.
“A true chef must master even the catching of ingredients”?
It sounded plausible, but it was no different from nonsense.
The contestants knew that.
But there was no one who could dare say a word.

“Goddamn it!”
“This is fucking insane, seriously!”

All they could do was curse and rush headlong into the woodland.
It was said that martial artists stationed by the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild were guarding the perimeter of the woodland.
Somehow, they had to catch a usable beast inside it.

Unlike the chefs, who were in a frenzy, there were some who remained calm.
Cheongho and Jeok-yeom were examples of that.
Cheongho was not the least bit worried about catching animals.
The same was true of Jeok-yeom.
Even before becoming a Crimson Fighting Fiend, he had been a Demon Cult warrior.
He had often roamed the mountains and caught beasts to eat.
Training in martial arts did not automatically make one a great hunter, but surely it put him ahead of most others.

But there was someone who worried despite having learned martial arts.
It was Baek Sang-ye.

‘I can do this… right?’

How many times in her life had Baek Sang-ye, who had spent it in the imperial palace, ever caught an animal herself?
While traveling Kangho, she had at least seen a chicken’s neck wrung a few times out of the corner of her eye.
But the thought of personally killing a pig and cutting its throat made her shudder.

“No. I have to.”

Muttering that, Baek Sang-ye ran through the woodland.
Then she suddenly stopped.

Come to think of it, she would not catch any beasts by running around like this.
What she really needed to do was stop and listen.

Soon, she heard the sound of rustling.
Baek Sang-ye lunged into the brush.
And there was an animal there.
She snatched up the small furry thing the way a hawk would seize prey.

“Kiing, ng! Kiiing!”

Then she froze stiff.
It was a fluffy gray rabbit.
Baek Sang-ye’s eyes met the struggling rabbit’s.

And in that instant, something came back to her.
The time she had killed Ajeo.
Without realizing it, she loosened her grip.

The rabbit, freed, started to run, then stopped.
Then it looked at Baek Sang-ye with a bewildered expression.
Its black round eyes sparkled brightly.

“Just go!”

At that, the rabbit jumped in shock and bounded away.
Baek Sang-ye felt disgusted with herself.

It was not as though she had never eaten rabbit before, and yet she simply couldn’t bring herself to twist the rabbit’s neck.
Was it not just too cute and tiny?
Clicking her tongue at what felt like her own hypocrisy, she listened again.

She heard squealing sounds.
She used her movement art once more.
As she cut through the trees at ferocious speed, a pig soon appeared.
It was clearly not a wild beast, but a domesticated pig released by the organizers.

“Phew, maybe I’ll make Dongpo pork.”

Baek Sang-ye muttered that on purpose.
Naturally, she didn’t have her unique weapon, the iron rod.
But that did not matter. Even a pig could be killed with a hand strike alone.

“Don’t resent me.”

Saying that, Baek Sang-ye stood before the pig.
If she brought her hand down here, the pig would squeal and die.

“……”

But no matter how long she waited, Baek Sang-ye’s hand did not come down.
The stupid pig seemed to have no fear of humans at all.
Had it mistaken her for someone about to feed it?
Instead of running away, it rubbed its nose against Baek Sang-ye’s knee.

“Ugh, seriously!”

Baek Sang-ye snapped irritably.
The pig was much uglier than the rabbit, but for some reason its eyes shone just as brightly.
Even when Baek Sang-ye lashed out in irritation, the pig just stood there blankly and did not leave.
Seeing that, what little motivation she still had disappeared too.

She dropped heavily onto a rock.
When Baek Sang-ye sat down, the pig also came over and flopped down beside her.
At its carefree demeanor, Baek Sang-ye burst out laughing.

“Haha, this is bad.”

Who would have thought she would run into a problem like this?
Tsering and Cheongho would never have this sort of problem.
Tsering had slaughtered sheep and goats herself back in Tibet, and Cheongho had always been bold to begin with.

“…No.”

But Baek Sang-ye did not simply wallow in self-loathing.

“Let’s think about the intent of the test.”

She had been a tomboy when she was young, but she definitely had a sharp mind.
The Son of Heaven had once said that if she took the civil service exams, she had the talent to pass at least the metropolitan examination.

“…Is it really right to just catch a chicken or a pig?”

Whether that was truly deep thinking or just self-justification, even she could not tell, but that was what Baek Sang-ye thought.
The organizers had given them a very strange test.
They said to catch ingredients from nature and cook with them, yet to keep it from being too hard, they had released livestock as well.
If they were meant to cook with domestic pigs, was there any need to hold the test in a woodland like this?

“Now that I think about it, that’s true.”

Baek Sang-ye’s doubt was a plausible one.
In fact, it felt as though she had hit upon something essential.
Then what the organizers wanted was…
To cook with ingredients of the woodland?

Wang Ho-cheol had said that the judging would be done directly by executives of the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild.
They were not ordinary commoners. They would be very wealthy people who had traveled all throughout the Central Plains.
Would what they expected from a cooking competition really be Dongpo pork made from a domestic pig or kung pao chicken made from a barnyard chicken?

‘No, there’s no way.’

As someone who had been a gourmet in the imperial household, she knew for certain.
The more experience people accumulated and the more pride they developed, the more obsessed they became with what was new and special.
They would never be satisfied with ordinary ingredients.

‘Then what should I catch?’

What sort of wild animals would there be in this woodland?
Mountain birds. Mountain birds might be manageable.
As a Peak Realm master, she might somehow be able to bring down a mountain bird with a thrown stone.
Or perhaps it would not be bad to find a pond and catch fish instead.

As her thoughts deepened, the pig that had been lying down suddenly got up.

“Squeal!”

Then it began squealing loudly.
It looked terrified.
Baek Sang-ye, who had been staring at it in confusion, soon hardened her expression as well.

Crack, crunch.

The sound of something large stepping on branches rang out.
Something was approaching this way.

“Squeeeal!”

Catching the rank smell spreading through the air, the pig finally began sneaking away.
Of course, instead of doing the same, Baek Sang-ye stared at the place the presence was coming from.

“Right. Come to think of it, a forest of this size could have one.”

If there were boars and deer in the forest, there could also be an animal that preyed on them.
A predator did not have to be a tiger.
A beast that could stride proudly through the forest.
There was a lord of the forest that had caught the pig’s scent, felt hunger, and grown agitated because of the human commotion.

“Bear… a bear dish…”

A large black bear appeared in front of the muttering Baek Sang-ye.

“Gwoooong!”

The beast was enraged that Baek Sang-ye was not running away, but she smiled instead.

“A bear paw dish?”

The finest ingredient had rolled right to her on its own.

The woodland was quite large.
Cheongho had gone in the direction opposite Baek Sang-ye, but even after going quite far, the boundary of the woodland had yet to appear.

At this very moment.
Baek Sang-ye was delighted by the sudden appearance of the black bear and was beating it up.
Then what was Cheongho doing?
Had he, like Baek Sang-ye, realized the true intent of the test?
Had he realized that catching easy prey like pigs or chickens would not make him competitive?

No, he had not.
Cheongho had not thought about it at all.

“Hup.”

But did that mean he had caught pigs and chickens?
Not that either. If anything, Cheongho had caught a very rare ingredient.

“Got it.”

What writhed in his hand was a very strangely shaped creature.
It had a shell like a turtle’s, but smoother and softer.
Stretching out its long neck and struggling, the creature was a soft-shelled turtle.

“It’s big…”

The soft-shelled turtle was enormous. At this size, it was a rare thing worth more than ten nyang of silver.
Cheongho had found a soft-shelled turtle living in a pond.
It was a premium ingredient that would make even the executives of the Yellow Dragon Merchant Guild drool.

“Hey, are you done now?”

Someone asked Cheongho who had his legs dipped into the pond water.
Cheongho turned toward where the voice had come from.
A man was sitting on a rock with a fishing rod cast into the pond.
He was another contestant. His name had been something Son, and he had said he was a Hangzhou-born chef.

“You keep splashing around, so the fish won’t bite! You caught a turtle?”
“Yes.”

Cheongho held up the turtle he had caught.

“It’s not like that’s something to boast about. Now hurry up and get out! I need to catch something too.”

Fortunately, Cheongho came out carrying the turtle.
Chef Son Baek-gu let out a relieved sigh.
He was someone confident in fish dishes from West Lake. When he found the pond, he had delightedly made a simple fishing rod.
He had definitely seen a carp as thick as a man’s leg swimming there.

He had happily cast his line, only for that brat to appear out of nowhere and interfere while catching a turtle.
Now he really had to catch something.
Making up his mind, Son Baek-gu focused.
He had threaded an earthworm onto the hook, so something was sure to bite soon.

“……!”

The float moved.
It was just as he thought that.
Cheongho suddenly jumped into the pond.

Splash!
“Ah, fuck!”

Son Baek-gu nearly snapped his fishing rod.
He had been about to get angry, but then he was astonished.

“Th-that’s a duck, ain’t it!”
“Got it.”

In an instant, Cheongho had snatched up a duck that had lunged in to catch fish.

“What kind of body moves that fast, like he ain’t even human.”

Even Son Baek-gu was impressed.
The duck’s feathers shone brilliantly, making it seem not to be an ordinary duck either.
With both a turtle and a duck, how many dishes could he make?

“Now seriously get out of here already!”

Cheongho also came out of the pond without complaint.
Still huffing, Son Baek-gu focused on his fishing again.
Whether he could catch that giant carp was purely a matter of luck.

It seemed Heaven had not abandoned Son Baek-gu.
Once again, the rod in his hands twitched.
He immediately began pulling in the rod.

“Ohh!”

It had bitten. It had definitely bitten.
It had to be the carp, the lord of this pond.
That much was obvious from how the bamboo fishing rod bent like it was about to snap.

“Uaaah! This bastard’s strong too!”

Cheongho tried to jump into the pond to help, but Son Baek-gu stopped him.
Son Baek-gu was a born fisherman.
He wore the carp down by alternately pulling and relaxing the line.
After a long and exhausting contest of strength, the carp finally stopped thrashing.
Then Son Baek-gu pulled up the fishing line and lifted it out.

“Euhaha, a monster catch, a monster catch!”

It really was a carp as big around as a man’s calf.
A catch like this was the sort of monster one might encounter once in ten years.
It was so heavy that even pulling it up was difficult.

“It looks heavy.”

Son Baek-gu jumped in shock at the voice by his ear.
At some point, a tall man had appeared behind him.
It was Jeok-yeom, the man with the long scar on his face.

“I’ll help.”
“No, it’s fi—”
“It really is a monster catch!”

He lifted the heavy carp with one hand.
When he grabbed it by the mouth with one hand and held it up, the carp thrashed wildly.

“Oho.”

Then, with his other hand, the man flicked the carp between the eyes.
With a tung sound, the carp died and went limp.
At that terrifying sight, Son Baek-gu shuddered.
He had a bad feeling.

“…G-give it back.”

Son Baek-gu said that.
His voice was incredibly desperate, but—

“Heh heh.”

Jeok-yeom only grinned.