Story 8 - Tribulation Troubles (Part 5) (Patreon)

By the time we landed in our courtyard, Little Spring had fully recovered from the recent duel.

“I’m ready to make our last Qi Condensation body cultivation meal.” The kid looked determined.

“Good! The last meal should increase our survivability significantly.” We wouldn’t be able to consume the Foundation Establishment meals if we didn’t finish these.

“I’ll be using the forge today, so there are some things I need to prepare. ” When I took a step away, he tugged on my sleeve.

Large brown eyes blinked at me.

I swear the brat had weaponized adorableness.

Weren’t kids supposed to get less cute with age?

I guess he still had four or five years before he became a gangly teen. Then he wouldn’t be cute at all.

“Sister Lin… I was actually hoping you’d watch?”

Well, the only time I’d observed him prepare this cultivation meal from start to finish was the initial attempt. We had looked at the recipe together and I helped him decide which tools he needed. After that, the kid had to figure out the timing and process himself.

Of course, his first attempt had completely failed and almost caused the whole palace to explode.

“Do you want me to see how much you’ve improved?”

He nodded shyly. “The last time—”

“Was an important learning experience.”

It was also a relief.

The kid was already growing up to do things too perfectly. If he didn’t have serious setbacks now and then, he wouldn’t get the chance to exercise his indomitable will.

That was something I’d had the chance to develop significantly in my past life since it was about endlessly trying until reaching success, then endlessly succeeding until reaching the peak.

Of course, because he had ruined so many meals over the course of 19 days, he’d wasted all five of the extra ingredient sets I’d allotted for this recipe. The last time had been just a couple of days ago.

And, despite my best efforts, I hadn’t found another batch of these ingredients at a reasonable price.

Little Spring couldn’t afford to fail again, and he knew it.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to make sure he didn’t fuck up.

I grinned. “I can spare some time.”

The brat seemed to fill with energy and vanished into his space.

I entered as well, making my destination the new kitchen.

The golden dragon spirit flew through the wall and blew imaginary fire at me.

I scowled at the spirit. “What was that for?”

“A reminder for you to plant that tree of yours.”

Doubtful considering our recent cold war. Likely, he was just trying to get some frustration out since the current scoreboard had me in the lead by one.

I secretly flipped it off, and it flew away while spewing flames.

The kid sent me a curious look.

“I’ll show you later. Right now, I want to focus on your progress.”

I gestured towards the gleaming countertops and sparkling floor then sat at the small kitchen table and crossed my arms like a stern teacher observing my student.

Ever since the old shack had turned into a small palace, everything within it had seriously upgraded.

This room was one example. Every part was so clean and spotless all the time that it almost looked like a contemporary professional kitchen designed for a chef who practiced traditional Chinese cuisine.

Of course, the modern-style tools I forged to help the kid may have contributed to that look.

Little Spring started to set up his workspace.

He pulled out and measured the specialized spices and pre-made sauce he’d worked so hard on creating.

Next, he waved his hand over the countertop. Several vegetables, a sack of rice, and a bag of flour appeared on the surface in a perfect line.

He even set aside a plate with the last of the spiritual tofu that took the both of us an hour to grind up and squeeze a few days ago.

This was a far cry from the stir-fried vegetables he first prepared for me.

His brows furrowed.

Maybe he was more tired than I thought? It couldn’t have been easy to go from training, to studying, to dueling — only to come home and prepare one of the hardest meals he currently could.

“If you need it, you can take a break first.”

He smirked and proudly puffed up his chest. “I’m fine. Chef Garlic taught me a method that uses less energy with better effects and I want to practice it. With it, I should enhance the effectiveness of the meal even more!”

“Just from the taste, I can tell that you’ve improved every day.”

The rapid quality increase was so shocking that I contributed most of it to Garlic’s teachings. Girl might be a cooking psychopath, but the bitch knew her shit.

Little Spring grinned.

“Just remember that if you fail this meal because you’re experimenting with something new, you’re dead.”

He coughed, then nervously took out a chef’s knife.

His eyes focused on the colorful veggies as he breathed in and out, calming his mind.

Suddenly he attacked a carrot, slicing it faster than I’d ever seen him before. His accuracy was astonishing. Each piece was the same size as the previous one.

Well, fuck. Did the kid spend the full day chopping cabbage and working on his blade techniques? He was a thousand times better than that instance a couple of years back when he’d awkwardly chopped a cauliflower and almost sliced his finger off.

Once all the veggies were sliced up and placed in separate bowls, he used the cleaning technique on the whole area, including his hands.

Good! That’s what I liked to see! Then again, if he didn’t already know how much better working with clean surfaces made a meal, I would have kicked him out of the kitchen until he did.

He poured some of the Hot Winds Spiritual Flour onto the counter, along with spring water and special secret ingredients, then let it sit.

This would become the start of his noodles. Was it Garlic who taught him that or had he picked it up from his mundane cooking?

The kit looked up at me and grinned. “I learned this two weeks ago.”

He grabbed some spiritual seeds in one fist and crushed them while creating a hand seal. Oil poured from his fingers into a bowl.

I almost stood up from shock.

The last time we made oil, I had to make a whole damn spiritual tool to extract and process it. This single technique did it all! And from what my divine sense picked up, it kept more of the seed’s energy!

The kid repeated that process until he’d filled the bowl.

Next, he used the cleaning technique on just his hands and started roughly kneading the dough.

With one pat, he flattened it into an oblong pillow.

Then he threw it up into the air and punched it several times. Before it could fly across the room, he used Impossible Leap to catch it in a bowl!

I admit that when I taught him that technique, I never expected to see it used for immortal cooking.

The kid spun the bowl around and threw a moist cloth over it.

Fortunately, this was spiritual dough that was being processed using the technique of an immortal chef. It didn’t need the normal long wait times and care that mundane dough would.

While Little Spring let that sit, he scooped a few handfuls of spiritual rice into a wok with spring water from Fairy Lake and had it soak on the side.

This would not only remove the impurities from the rice but also help increase the speed it cooked, something the kid had repeatedly explained.

The spiritual ingredient wasn’t like the mundane rice of my past-past life that benefited from soaking for 24 hours. This would only need a few minutes before it was ready. Though the first time we tried it, I did have him soak it overnight... it turned into rice-water.

That spring water was just too powerful.

As if he were a cooking machine, the kid pulled a whole bulb of garlic. He used a hand seal to blast away the peels. Before the cloves could land on the counter, he waved his arm and sent the peels into his bag.

From there, he grabbed the bowl of fresh oil in one hand and the spiritual garlic in the other. Using his enhanced strength, he crushed them like softened butter. They dripped down, causing a bit of oil to splash up.

Sure... Why not use hands to crush something when there was a perfectly good mincing tool I spent my precious time forging?

I crossed my arms.

He glanced at me and had the grace to look sheepish.

Yeah. That’s what I thought. Whatever. At least he’d used it for a short while.

After using the cleaning technique, he took a brief break to replenish his spiritual energy and drink some spring water.

Once he finished his preparations, he looked at me like he wanted something.

I gave him a thumbs up. “This is a much better setup than last time. Keep up the good work.”

His cheeks turned pink. Then he grabbed a handful of flour, spread it on the countertop, and poured the dough ball on top of it. He pressed it and used a hand seal I didn’t recognize to flatten it. Then he rapidly and repeatedly folded it over.

Somehow it became a hard-looking box with perfectly sharp corners.

I know I watched the entire process, so how the hell did he turn soft dough into that?

Whatever. As fascinating as that technique was, I was no chef. And I never would be since I had zero interest in learning to cook.

If Little Spring hadn’t studied it, I’d have returned to practicing grain liberation.

Next, he started five earthen flames on the stove I’d MacGyvered into something like a combination of a modern stove and the traditional style the kid was used to using.

With an incredible amount of speed and precision, he placed the covered rice over one flame then, a wok full of lake water over another.

He grabbed three smaller pans and generously poured oil into two of them.

When he scooped the crushed garlic and oil into the last pan, it started sizzling.

These next several steps were where things became complicated and where I’d seen him fuck up.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the plate of tofu high into the air. Before it could land, he aimed his blade at it and slashed. “Cube!”

Several small blades of sword Qi left his chef’s knife and entered the soft white box. It sliced up the tofu from the inside.

I almost stood up in shock at the precision! While I knew he’d been working on his Qi-type skills, I hadn’t seen him use them in a crafting capacity like this! Well done, brat.

He caught the spiritual tofu in one of his pans. They landed like bouncy cubes.

With the wave of his hand, he pulled a bowl of the prepared spices over. It sprinkled onto the tofu, then he grabbed the handle and tossed the cubes high into the air. With a simple hand seal, the spices covered everything evenly. Then he caught everything. Not even a single piece bounced away!

In another pan, he haphazardly threw in all the vegetables he’d diced and placed a bamboo lid over it.

I had no idea if there was a method here or if he really was just throwing things together.

At this point, the scent of garlic practically took over the kitchen.

He removed the garlic oil pan from the fire and threw in another of the bowls full of ingredients he prepared earlier. After a quick whisk, he poured it into a large jade gourd, finishing the Three Fires Garlic Chili Oil.

Its scent lingered, causing even my mouth to water — and I’d eaten the same fare nineteen times in a row!

He had so many things going on at this point that I half wondered if he’d mastered the Split Mind technique.

But I knew he hadn’t, which meant that he still had a chance at ruining this meal. If that happened, we’d have to scramble for a duplicate set of ingredients.

I might even have to beg my martial nephew to help pay for it. Because I would never allow us to fail our body cultivation before reaching Foundation Establishment.

That would make all those Kiwis that I forced—er, coerced Peerless Resolve to collect for me completely useless

As Little Spring stood in front of the stoves, controlling multiple fires, he appeared to be a mini emperor observing his court of immortal dishes.

The water he’d let sit started boiling. Instead of leaving the flames alone like I’d have expected, he used a hand gesture to turn them down to the minimum. Then he lassoed the block of dough with his spiritual energy and swung it over to the water until it hovered in midair. Next, he grabbed a special knife and quickly shaved thin slices of the dough into the water, creating the noodles.

As soon as the first noodle hit the surface, it steamed.

A slight afterimage of a stalk of the White Yang Wheat used to create the flour briefly appeared over the wok. Once the entire block was shaved, the bubbles increased significantly.

Ah, that was why he turned down the flames! The yang energy of the flour caused the heat to increase subtly.

It didn’t take long before he had the full block cooking in rapidly bubbling water.

He glared at the noodle-filled water as if daring it to not do what he wanted. Suddenly, his eyes widened.

He pulled out two bowls, placing them on the counter. Next, he used a special immortal chef technique that looked like he grasped an invisible fly. The noodles flew out of the boiling water and separated in midair. This caused them to cool down and stop cooking. Then they split into two portions and flew into the bowls.

They seemed to sparkle with energy.

Without pausing, he used another chef’s technique to grab half the fried tofu and sent it flying into the same dish. They softly bounced into the bowl, looking like soft, exquisitely browned tofu.

Finally, he poured an equal amount of Three Fires Garlic Chili Oil from the gourd into each bowl and topped them with Resplendent Yin Coriander.

With that, the first half of the meal was perfectly complete!

Now, to see if he spent too much time on this part and left the other to burn.

At this point, the only things left on the stove were the covered rice, the frying vegetables, and the other half of the tofu.

He flipped the remaining tofu into the fried veggies. This caused a small whirlwind to appear above the pan.

I wasn’t sure if this was an effect of two energies clashing with each other or if this meant the last dish was about to fail.

A bead of sweat dripped down Little Spring’s forehead, but he was too focused to pay attention to it.

The suspense had me on the edge of my seat.

Then a grin spread across the brat’s face.

He gestured to a bowl filled with special seasoning. It flew over the pot and dumped its contents into the funnel. The tiny tornado distributed the spices evenly between vegetables and tofu before it disappeared.

I had no idea what had just happened there. When it came to immortal cooking, aside from how to make tools for chefs, I was out of my depth.

Little Spring glanced my way, expectantly.

The grin I initially returned to him felt stiff as fuck.

Well, whatever. The kid looked like he knew what he was doing.

I relaxed and gave him a nod of approval.

His smile grew larger, and he made a chopping motion toward the wok with the rice. The bamboo lid sailed high into the air. Then he appeared to grasp something invisible.

Two large rice balls flew toward him at excessive speeds. Before they reached him, he pulled two dishes from his spatial ring and caught each portion. However, just catching them, apparently, was the easy part because they’d moved with so much force that the kid skidded back several feet.

Seriously, why was immortal cooking so weird?

Once he’d stopped, he ran towards the remaining pan and kicked it into the air.

The fuck?

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Author’s Note: Thank you all for reading! You are the absolute best readers a writer could ask for!

I hope you’re enjoying the meal crafting! I had a lot of fun with it. Maybe too much.

Sorry for the strange stopping spot. The place I originally wanted to stop would have made this part a double chapter. At 2800 words, it’s already larger than most of the chapters I’ve been putting out lately.

TBH, this chapter definitely needs more passes to make it funnier and fix some things, but this is all I can do for now. I hope you were able to get a few laughs out of it or at least had fun seeing a slice of the two’s regular life within the sect.

The recipes Little Spring makes in this chapter were loosely inspired by these recipes:

https://www.feastingathome.com/szechuan-tofu-and-veggies/

https://drivemehungry.com/spicy-szechuan-noodles-with-garlic-chili-oil/

One image in this chapter is a stock photo licensed from Adobe Stock Photos, and the other is AI art by MidJourney.