Chapter Fourteen: This World

Having known in advance that the Polaris Dorm required students to bring their own ingredients for the entrance examination, Feng Xue was in no hurry to find his dormitory. Instead, he wandered away from Totsuki Academy to explore the area.

Upon arriving in a new world, the first order of business was to understand the course of its history. Although a demi-plane would generally adhere to the original storyline, it was no longer quite the same as the source world. In places not specifically detailed in the original, all manner of bizarre and dramatic changes could occur. Take “Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma” for example; even the textbooks listed three of the most extreme cases—a sequel to “Cooking Master Boy” set many years later, where clothes would burst apart from internal energy; a prequel to “Toriko” before the Earth expanded, where shredded clothing meant gourmet cells had been activated; and a grand crossover world where various urban planes were fused together: the Celestial Empire had the peerless Long Aotian, America had the Avengers, and Japan boasted all manner of harem academies.

If he could uncover the hidden details of this world, Feng Xue might reap unexpected rewards. For instance, he might find the Super Bun from “Negima!”, the legendary kitchenware from “Cooking Master Boy,” or even Amei making steamed buns with Tai Chi from “Shaolin Soccer,” and perhaps the Hunan Shaolin Temple, which doubled as the Chinese Culinary Training Academy from “The God of Cookery.”

Of course, seeking extra rewards was not the main reason for such investigation—rather, it was to avoid grave losses. For example, crossing paths with a certain scoundrel named Sakurai Tomei and being killed by the man and his harem army. This was no joke; there was once an idiot who, after vying with Sakurai for a woman, ended up surrounded and executed by the Imperial Guards on the orders of the Empress of Japan, Sakurai’s consort.

Missing out on bonus prizes was no big deal, but suffering an unexpected loss could cost one’s life! Even in end-of-term exam worlds with death protection, dying once would deal significant psychological trauma—let alone in a world where traveling on one’s own could easily shave ten years off one’s lifespan.

Thus, Feng Xue naturally slipped into an internet café. What he found there made cold sweat bead on his brow.

The trajectory of this world was already somewhat skewed, but things had gone completely off the rails during World War II. Hitler, declaring that only the Aryan master race deserved to enjoy fine cuisine while lesser races should subsist on black bread, sparked a conflict that united the world against him. The war was finally quelled when Acacia, later revered as the God of Gourmet, shared his creations with the world. Thereafter, the status of food soared—gourmets and chefs became honored guests in every nation, wielding enough influence to settle international disputes.

That’s right—even territorial conflicts could be resolved through a food war! What had been an internal tradition at Totsuki in the original story had become the world’s standard solution. The Celestial Empire, leveraging its millennia-old culinary heritage, had even bested the White Bear in food wars, restoring its map to the old begonia leaf shape—a reference to the nation’s territorial shifts under historical pressures.

The most classic example? The Celestial Empire undertook land reclamation projects so its soldiers could have vegetables to eat—and not a soul in the world questioned this rationale! The worldview of this place was truly, spectacularly askew.

If that still wasn’t clear enough, consider this: in the real world, people often mocked “Cooking Master Boy” for its absurd black technology (mechanical arms), inner energy (skin alone setting rivers ablaze), and improbable chefs. But in this world, the focus of ridicule would be classic martial arts tales.

For instance, if residents here watched “The Legend of the Condor Heroes,” they’d probably exclaim, “What a bunch of good-for-nothings! With such powerful martial arts, why aren’t they learning to cook? There’s only one woman in the whole martial world doing real work (referring to Huang Rong), and maybe the old beggar counts as half a sensible person!”

“What the hell!” Feng Xue stared at the computer screen, dumbfounded. If he hadn’t been certain that this was just a mundane white world, he might have thought he’d landed in the world of “Toriko.”

He double-checked and confirmed there were no bizarre ingredients from “Toriko” here before finally relaxing and setting out on a shopping spree. After all, he hadn’t forgotten that Polaris required residents to bring their own provisions—no, ingredients—for the entrance test.

This world truly lived up to its reputation as a culinary utopia. Though it was only early April, he could see plenty of out-of-season ingredients. Uncommon vegetables and fruits abounded, but what really stood out was the availability of fresh fish for sashimi.

After considering his strengths, Feng Xue ultimately bought two live fish, but he ended up purchasing a wide array of cooking tools—from pots and pans to chopsticks, knives, and forks, including various types of kitchen knives. Although he’d already prepared a set of kitchen utensils before entering this world, the unique ingredients he planned to handle made him reluctant to use the high-end tools he’d purchased from the academy with an entire credit.

———My name is the dividing line———

Even after visiting an internet café and browsing the market, Feng Xue arrived at Polaris Dorm well before Soma Yukihira. What? A day and a half early doesn’t count as much? Well, it’s not his fault—after all, that idiot wouldn’t remember his dorm arrangements until after his first class tomorrow!

Though he’d seen this haunted house-like dorm in the anime, standing before it in real life was truly awe-inspiring. How to describe it? It felt like facing Dracula’s Castle in person—that kind of overwhelming pressure.

“Funny, the interior decor is nothing like the outside!” As soon as he stepped through the front door, Feng Xue’s eyes lit up. Unlike the decrepit exterior, the inside was immaculate, as if a team of maids cleaned it every day. Wait, why maids?

“So, you’re the new transfer student? I’m the dorm manager—you can call me the Holy Mother of Polaris, Mrs. Wenxu.” An elderly lady with Saiyan-like hair and a face full of wrinkles, yet brimming with energy, greeted him with a nearly terrifying smile. “Are these the ingredients you brought?”

Dragging his large box of kitchen tools into the mansion, Feng Xue nodded. “Mrs. Wenxu, I’d like a more secluded room—preferably one in a quiet corner, with few people passing by, spacious, and ideally with a private cooking station. If it faces the sunlight, that would be perfect…”

As she listened to his requests, Mrs. Wenxu’s brow twitched more and more until she finally snapped, shouting, “Enough! At Polaris, the better you perform in the entrance test, the better the room you get. If you impress me, you can have any room you want! But if you fail, you’ll be staying outside in the wild…”

“Of course!” Feng Xue shook his fish basket. “Is there a room with a private cooking station? The ingredients I’m preparing are rather dangerous—not suitable for the shared kitchen…”

“Dangerous? What could possibly be…” Mrs. Wenxu muttered as she took the fish basket from him—and nearly jumped out of her skin. “What on earth are you thinking? Do you even know how to handle these?”

What Feng Xue had brought was none other than fugu—the pufferfish.

The saying goes, “One cannot know the true flavor of fish without tasting fugu; after tasting fugu, all other fish are tasteless.” But alongside this delicacy comes its notorious poison.

The toxin in pufferfish—a mere 0.48 milligrams is enough to kill—is over a thousand times more potent than the cyanide commonly used for murder in detective stories like “Conan.” Yet, despite the risks, many still gamble their lives for a taste, including China’s legendary gourmand, Su Dongpo, who famously declared it “worth dying for” after eating it—despite the Song Dynasty’s rudimentary preparation method of simply boiling it for a long time, a far cry from the Japanese practice of slicing and soaking in lye. There was a significant risk of residual poison; Su Dongpo was truly risking his life for a bite.

Even in modern Japan, a nation obsessed with gourmet cuisine, several people die each year from eating fugu. Japan even issues licensed fugu chefs a small annual quota of allowable deaths—this is true: in reality, certified fugu chefs in Japan are allotted about four or five deaths per year; as long as fatalities remain within this number, it’s considered acceptable. In recent years, however, the use of non-toxic or low-toxicity pufferfish has made these quotas largely symbolic.

Although farmed pufferfish today are less toxic—some even marketed as completely non-toxic—gourmets insist the flavor of toxic fugu is superior, whether due to psychology or the subtle effect of trace toxins. Regardless, Mrs. Wenxu could tell at a glance that the fish Feng Xue had brought were wild specimens.

“Well, this is the only ingredient I’m truly skilled with!” Feng Xue replied with a wry smile.

He wasn’t exaggerating. In this world, though gourmet culture was extraordinarily advanced and held in high esteem, the ingredients themselves weren’t much different from his previous life. Only with fugu could he fully utilize the culinary techniques he’d inherited from the “Toriko” world.

After a year’s training at the Culinary Forest Temple, Feng Xue’s fundamentals were solid; combined with his above-average physical prowess, he was well-grounded in the basics. Yet, that was all—his skills were only enough to stand on par with the story’s native characters, who grew up in worlds where cuisine was paramount. He didn’t possess Erina’s God Tongue, Akira Hayama’s God Nose, or the years of hands-on restaurant experience of Soma Yukihira and Ryo Kurokiba. He hadn’t even mastered many classic recipes (after all, the “Toriko” world didn’t have the Eight Great Cuisines, French cooking, and the like—or if it did, they were radically improved with rare ingredients, making them useless in a normal world).

More importantly, he lacked the most crucial traits for a chef: imagination and creativity. It wasn’t that he lacked these qualities, but rather that his culinary horizons were too narrow—how could he create new dishes without having tasted enough flavors? Even Liu Maoxing, with his tongue capable of constructing flavors in his mind, would struggle to create ordinary dishes without having tasted true delicacies.

Thus, if he wanted to rise to the top in the autumn selection six months later, Feng Xue would have to triumph through surprise and ingenuity. His main research focus? The fugu.

PS: Shameless book recommendation time, though I myself am just a hack—blood-pumping, flamboyant hot-blooded fiction, with love triangles, forbidden romance, and dramatic showdowns, all in “Fantasy of the Hazy Realm.”