Chapter 412: Side Quest 8 and a New Recipe
Closing the door behind him, Qi Han took a deep breath before reopening his quest page. He carefully looked over the completion notice for Side Quest 7, and a look of excitement appeared on his face.
A whole month!
Do you have any idea what he have been through this past month?
Without hesitation, he quickly clicked to claim his spirit power reward.
As waves of warm energy coursed through his body, flowing swiftly through his meridians, Qi Han's spirit power broke through once more—rising from level 44 straight to level 46.
He clenched his fists tightly, feeling the spirit energy within him swell by nearly forty percent, and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.
Just four more levels to reach the fifth ring. If he continued to gain two levels per quest, completing two more would do the trick.
And once he reached the five-ring stage, the 4 Star recipes that had remained locked until now would finally become available for him to study.
Thinking this, Qi Han ignored the 3 available 3 Star recipes on display and instead swiped down to reveal a brand new quest.
This was Side Quest 8—automatically triggered upon completing Side Quest 7—though he hadn't had the time to check it until now.
[Side Quest 8: Steps of Conquest I]
Please select one 1 Star recipe (excluding original recipes), teach it to 1,000 people, and ensure that they can cook a "Good"-grade dish.
Quest Description:
Conquering another world with the cuisine of Earth is not about standing alone at the top—true conquest lies in integration and sharing.
Reward: Spirit Power +2 levels; 1 3 Star recipe of your choice.
After reading it carefully, Qi Han's face instantly darkened with exasperation.
He never would have guessed that Ru Yi's system missions would start going in this direction.
"Ru Yi, this quest is called Steps of Conquest I... does that mean there'll be a II and III afterward?" he asked, glancing at the quest name.
"Of course," Ru Yi replied swiftly. "It's a series quest. The difficulty will keep increasing."
'I see.'
Qi Han nodded slightly, then reread the quest requirements—and something caught his attention.
The quest mentioned Good-grade dishes.
In terms of cooking quality, Good-grade was one tier below Perfect-grade. The dishes Qi Han made himself were Perfect-grade, while Good-grade referred to the kind of quality you'd expect from an excellent restaurant back on Earth.
The standards for heat control, knife skills, and ingredient selection were much lower.
If he chose to teach a relatively simple recipe, and his students had decent talent, they could probably reach the Good-grade standard within a few days. After all, with his experience teaching Ye Lingqing, Qi Han had grown quite confident in his teaching ability.
The real problem… was the number of people.
He had to teach one thousand students.
Even if it took only two days per person, that would still be six years of nonstop teaching.
No way.
There was no chance he could spend that long on a side quest.
Which meant—to complete it, he would have to adopt a group teaching method. That was the only way to make the timeline feasible.
As Qi Han pondered how to carry out Side Quest 8, he returned to claim the three 3 Star recipes he had earned from Side Quest 7.
It was perfect timing—he had just finished learning the previous batch of recipes, so it was time to try something new.
He couldn't help but wonder what dishes he would get this time.
Inside the system space, Qi Han temporarily set aside the matter of Side Quest 8. Standing beside Ru Yi, he watched nervously as a violet roulette wheel spun rapidly in the void.
Before long, it stopped—revealing the results of the three random draws.
3 Star Recipe: Lantern Shadow Beef
3 Star Recipe: Pheasant Soup
3 Star Recipe: Yangzhou Fried Rice.
Uh… what?
Qi Han blinked, surprise flickering across his face as he looked at the three recipes that had appeared.
He really hadn't expected to draw these three dishes this time.
Lantern Shadow Beef, of course, needed no introduction. This famous dish from Dazhou in Sichuan Province wasn't something many people had actually eaten, but nearly everyone had heard of it.
The word "lantern shadow" refers to the shadow-play art form—when light shines on a screen, the silhouettes of the puppets appear, moving with the puppeteers' hands.
The beef dish earned this name because its slices were so thin that they were translucent under light, like the shadow figures of a lantern show. Thin as paper, gleaming red, with a spicy, crisp flavor—each chew leaving an endless aftertaste.
As for Pheasant Soup, despite the refined name, in truth, it really was that refined.
Before the mobile game Food Fantasy made it more widely known, most people had never even heard of it. Yet this dish, with over four thousand years of history, bore the title "The First Soup Under Heaven." It was also the earliest recorded famous delicacy in Chinese history.
In The Songs of Chu–Heavenly Questions, there is a line:
"Peng Keng presented pheasant broth—what did the Emperor feast upon? How did he gain long life and enduring years?"
In the Han dynasty, Wang Yi annotated this passage:
"Peng Keng, known as Peng Zu, loved fine flavors and was skilled at preparing pheasant soup. He served Emperor Yao with this dish, who delighted in it."
Later, the Song scholar Hong Xingzu added further commentary:
"Peng Zu, the great-grandson of Emperor Zhuanxu, nurtured his vitality through culinary arts. He prepared pheasant soup for Emperor Yao, who rewarded him by granting the fief of Pengcheng."
In short—Peng Zu, a legendary gastronome, created this dish, cured Emperor Yao's loss of appetite with it, and was rewarded with the title of King of Peng, ruling over what is now Xuzhou—one of the birthplaces of Huaiyang cuisine.
To be honest, Qi Han wasn't that interested in the dish itself.
But Peng Zu? Now that caught his attention.
This was the first time he had encountered a recipe attributed to Peng Zu, meaning he would soon come face-to-face with the man's lingering soul.
Hmm… he'd have to ask whether Peng Zu really lived 8 hundred years.
If he did, Qi Han was definitely going to pry out his secret to longevity.
And as for the final one—Yangzhou Fried Rice—Qi Han couldn't help but feel a little surprised.
From the 1 Star Egg Fried Rice to the 2 Star Bodhi Vegetarian Dish, he never expected the 3 Star member of the fried rice family to be this dish.
He had always assumed Yangzhou Fried Rice would only rank at the 2 Star level.
"Ru Yi, if Yangzhou Fried Rice is at the 3 Star level, does that mean the rice used isn't the same as before?" Qi Han asked curiously.
After all, in any fried rice, the rice itself was the true protagonist. If the side ingredients outshone it, the dish would lose its balance and charm.
"The rice used in Yangzhou Fried Rice isn't the same spirit-spring variety," Ru Yi quickly explained. "It's a thousand-year heavenly ingredient—Cloud-Patterned Golden Silk Rice. It grows only in places touched by divine dew and refuses to root in ordinary soil. The grains bear natural cloud-like markings."
"Hiss…" Qi Han raised his eyebrows. He'd seen this ingredient in the Douluo Continent Ingredient Encyclopedia before—it was leagues above spirit-spring rice, simply incomparable.
Using it as the base for fried rice meant the dish's flavor would never be overshadowed by its add-ins. And besides… it would probably be incredibly expensive.
Ordinary rice plants had over twenty stalks per bundle, with one or two hundred grains per stalk—enough to yield half a bowl of cooked rice.
But Cloud-Patterned Golden Silk Rice only bore nine stalks per bundle, each with precisely ninety-nine grains.
To make a single serving, you'd need nearly ten bundles of thousand-year-old golden silk rice—and that was before adding any side ingredients.
So, in conclusion, Yangzhou Fried Rice must taste absolutely divine!
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