Chapter Twenty-Three: The Gourmet Demon

The recommendation period is about to end, and I still have no idea if I'll have a recommendation slot next week. If you have a recommendation ticket, please cast it for me; if not, at least add this to your favorites. Otherwise, if I end up "running naked" next week, the fate of this book will be sealed!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Feng Xue, who had originally planned to sleep the day away, was once again roused from her slumber by the noise just in time for lunch. It seemed Totsuki Academy had no intention of letting its students rest; a paltry four hours of sleep was merely enough to keep them from dying of exhaustion.

“Heavens above, earth below! What did I ever do to deserve this?” Feng Xue muttered weakly, dragging herself from bed. After hastily dealing with lunch, she joined the throng heading to different kitchens for yet another round of assessments.

Though it was called a new round, the difficulty was about the same as before: a Totsuki graduate would propose a challenge, and the students would tackle it independently. But because each graduate had their own style, the criteria for passing varied greatly.

Take Kojiro Shinomiya, for example. His experience in France had left him deeply averse to anyone altering his recipes, so only students who could reproduce his dish to exacting standards would pass. Hinako Inui, on the other hand, valued creativity above all; she would even require students to prepare Japanese cuisine without any ocean fish available—a nearly impossible feat, given that Japanese cooking relies heavily on ocean fish, from the basic dashi made with bonito flakes to the stark differences between freshwater and saltwater fish. In my opinion, only Takumi’s hybrid duck passed that challenge in the original story; any student using freshwater fish should have failed outright. Of course, if you insist that the artificial rivers at Totsuki Resort are saline or stocked with migratory fish, I won’t argue. After all, mountain resorts with rivers full of sweetfish—which require brackish waters—stretch the bounds of credulity; even the presence of migratory red-spotted trout seems less outrageous in comparison.

Yet for Feng Xue, all this amounted to mere fatigue training. Possessing “Food Sense” as she did, she could always discern the best way to handle any ingredient. Under the influence of Food Will, not a single detail could go awry. Even the legendary, knife-skill-demanding “Thousand-Thread Tofu” was nothing more than a matter of deft blade work for her.

With her recent insight into the “Chef’s Heart,” Feng Xue found her last weakness—imagination and creativity—had been mended. Combined with the “black technology” of infusing intent into her cuisine, Feng Xue could now proudly call herself a man who had mastered the art of “dosing”—in other words, imbuing food with such power that anyone who took a bite would be compelled into extravagant facial expressions, just like the original work’s most dramatic moments.

Indeed, this effect—akin to being drugged—was the result of the so-called “Chef’s Heart” and its power of synesthesia. Through taste, everything the chef wished to express was branded directly onto the diner’s senses, allowing them to experience precisely what the chef intended, as if they’d stepped into an amusement park, wandered through scenic vistas, or fought a heated battle. This transmission from taste to the five senses left no resistance; every tasting felt like the first, and such blissful flavors made it easy to see why this world would revere cuisine above all else.

These thoughts led Feng Xue to recall other culinary series. “Toriko” hardly needed mentioning, but even the ancient classic “Cooking Master Boy” spoke of the happiness food could bring. In fact, in most food-themed stories, dishes had the power to change people’s moods. Even outside the genre, episodes like the “clam spirit” arc in “Hell Teacher Nube” featured similar phenomena.

This was the Chef’s Heart.

Though the original story never described it as such, this half-plane world evolved according to people’s imaginations, transforming what was once unscientific—almost like special effects—into unique powers intrinsic to the world. This seemed to be a common trait among all such half-planes.

Even in “God of Cookery,” Stephen Chow once said, “Anyone can be a God of Cookery, as long as they have heart!” And after evolution through the half-plane, this “heart” became the Chef’s Heart that Feng Xue had now begun to grasp.

Thus, the God of Cookery’s words became easy to understand: so long as one can infuse their own spirit into the ingredients, anyone can become a God of Cookery!

Though Feng Xue’s Chef’s Heart was still at its most rudimentary stage, five days of Totsuki’s training had made her ever more adept at wielding it. Yet, perhaps due to her life experience, her Chef’s Heart had not attained the “Supreme Father” level so common among shounen protagonists—a trope so widespread it might as well be “politically correct.” Naruto’s father was the Fourth Hokage, Luffy’s was the revolutionary leader, Ichigo’s was from the Four Noble Families, Edward Elric’s was the Sage of the West, Onion Head’s father was the Thousand-Curse Man who saved the world, Toriko’s was the Gourmet God Acacia, Wild Dog’s was Kiritsugu, Kiritsugu’s was a top-class Enforcer, Makoto’s was the world’s greatest bulldozer Zewei Zhi, and even Conan had a father who could teach him any skill he needed in Hawaii. In short, if you want to be a shounen protagonist, just make sure you have a powerful dad. Soma Yukihira’s father, after all, could infuse the sights of the world into his cooking!

By comparison, even if Feng Xue pushed her Chef’s Heart to the limit, all she could achieve was imbuing her dishes with a certain emotional undertone. At best, she could make those who ate her food feel joy or sadness—she couldn’t even evoke the sense of homecoming that Megumi could with her cooking.

Though this supernatural power alone couldn’t elevate a world to an extraordinary realm, for those who possessed Gourmet Cells, it made a world of difference. With such power, their dishes would always be of a higher caliber.

Five days slipped by in this way, until at last—after a grueling afternoon of assessments—the moment Feng Xue had long awaited arrived: four o’clock sharp.

Yes, it was time for the final project of Totsuki’s resort training: sampling the creations of past graduates.

Only then did Feng Xue realize that this was no mere tasting. Clearly, Totsuki Academy intended this banquet to let students experience the techniques embodied in the dishes of the Elite Ten across generations, as well as the indescribable power of the Chef’s Heart.

A fitting final trial—regardless of whether the students who made it this far could comprehend it, the Chef’s Heart within the food would indelibly stamp itself on their minds as they ate, becoming a seed that would sprout and blossom as their culinary skills grew.

But for Feng Xue, this was something else entirely. The moment she took her first bite, she felt an unbelievable deliciousness coursing through her body. This was not a flavor that could be quantified, but something that transcended all known senses, rooted deeply in biological instinct. If one had to call it something, perhaps “delicious” was the only word broad enough to encompass it.

But do not mistake this for the taste of the food itself. Rather, it was the result of her Gourmet Cells refining the essence of these dishes as they were digested, providing the evolutionary energy for those cells—a primeval appetite, the source of all flavor and the endpoint of all cuisine.

Feng Xue ate continuously, her actions perfectly aligned with the table manners Totsuki instilled—French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish—each dish consumed in the most proper way. Yet there was nothing elegant about her state, for her speed was simply too great.

Dish after dish disappeared into her stomach, “deliciousness” coursing into her Gourmet Cells. Feng Xue felt her body strengthening layer by layer, reaching the peak of the extraordinary—yet she felt no imbalance, nor did she struggle to control her newfound power as so many protagonists do. She was confident she could now pick up even a piece of soft tofu with chopsticks, unbroken.

All of this was owed entirely to the power of Food Will. If Feng Xue could master Ape Martial Arts, she could even create miracles—give him a pebble, and he could alter the earth’s orbit! (The secret of Ape Martial Arts lies in collective cellular consciousness, synchronizing the will of every cell. With Food Will to perfectly harness all that power, even shifting the planet with a minute movement would not be difficult. Of course, in the original story, the characters’ base strengths were already so immense that destroying planets wasn’t unusual, so no one paid much attention to these technical improvements.)

But that was not the main point. What mattered now was the cocoon, invisible to all but Feng Xue, beginning to crack open behind her…

It looked like an insect emerging from its chrysalis, but emanated a force utterly unlike any insect. What appeared to be a tough cocoon shell was torn as easily as paper, and in the next instant, a massive figure burst forth!

At first glance, it was an enormous, metallic-lustered butterfly, covered in iridescent, metal-like scales that refracted the light in all directions, making it nearly impossible to see the true form.

Yet, from Feng Xue’s vantage as its master, she could observe every detail of this Gourmet Spirit.

Those seemingly butterfly-like wings were, in fact, two pairs of enormous, blue-violet, metallic-scaled bat wings—so large they gave the illusion of butterfly wings (much like the wings of Exermon in Digimon). Between the wings was a slender, elegant, chrysalid body armored in sharp black scales. Whether this was the true form of Gourmet Cells or merely another stage in their evolution remained an open question.

The scales on this chrysalid body were anything but simple. Feng Xue could sense that, if she wished, these scales could elongate at will, transforming into countless smooth, serpentine tentacles of varying thickness and length.

Atop this chrysalid body sat a classic demon’s head, crowned with elegant, ornate, coronet-like bone horns. Yet, this fearsome head and the scale-covered body were perfectly harmonious, as if it were only natural for such a creature to exist.