Chapter 863: The Mastermind

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Old Man Wang was without doubt a very strong opponent, and Jiang Haifu regretted underestimating him before this. It was clear that he wasn’t as prepared as Old Man Wang. If he had known earlier on, he would have reviewedA Record of Divine Cuisine before coming here. This was an ancient text, written by an unknown author, which he had inadvertently picked up back then. But all of Jiang Haifu’s achievements until now was precisely because of this ancient text.

“I thought of a recipe, but forgot how it goes. Can I get outside help?” Jiang Haifu opened his mouth blankly.

“Brother Haifu, do as you please.” Old Man Wang smiled faintly. “I also invited this cooking cat as external help. Brother Haifu, if you’ve forgotten the recipe, feel free to look it up. When we get older, we tend to forget things.”

When Old Man Wang said this, Jiang Haifu’s face burned. For a chef to forget his recipe was actually a disgrace… Most importantly, Jiang Haifu didn’t write A Record of Divine Cuisine himself. In fact, the fish skin noodles dish he was cooking today also wasn’t his idea, and was from the cookbook A Record of Divine Cuisine .

Jiang Haifu was a person who very much cared about winning. He thought he could win this competition beautifully, but Old Man Wang’s two mind-blowing operations one after another had directly stupefied him into forgetting his own recipe!

Sometimes, people would randomly forget things. Perhaps everyone has had a similar experience — talking to someone and wanting to ask a question, but the moment you opened your mouth, you straightaway forgot what you wanted to ask!

Jiang Haifu spent two minutes making a call to have his wife send him a PSD file of A Record of Divine Cuisine to his phone.

A Record of Divine Cuisine had been turned into a digital file because the pages of the old book were already yellow with age. Jiang Haifu spent a lot of money every year to maintain and repair the original version. He didn’t even dare touch the book now, since every turn of the page would damage it.

So very early on, Jiang Haifu’s team had already turned A Record of Divine Cuisine into a PSD file. However, Jiang Haifu had hidden it very deeply and had never made it public. Even his own wife had to be directed through the phone call just now to go deep into his computer files. In the end, she found it in an encrypted folder called “Kuxuan is really handsome”!

Jiang Haifu received the PSD file from his wife on his phone shortly afterward.

This file was also similarly locked, and only Jiang Haifu knew the password.

Jiang Haifu flipped through it for the fish skin noodles recipe. Because A Record of Divine Cuisine was similar to a notebook and didn’t have a contents page, Jiang Haifu had to rely on his own memory to find the approximate place in the cookbook.

But just then, Old Man Wang quietly opened his mouth. “818.”

Jiang Haifu was dazed. He turned to page 818, and it turned out that the page really was about making “fish skin noodles”!

Jiang Haifu was completely startled!

Jiang Haifu: “Sir, you…”

Old Man Wang chuckled. “When I saw Brother Haifu’s fish skin noodles dish, I thought of a cookbook I randomly wrote when I was young, I’ve forgotten what it’s called. But I still remember the page numbers, and it was page 818. Also, it’s the same number as the date for our competition today. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

Jiang Haifu was petrified. “When you were young? When was that?”

Old Man Wang: “When I was thirteen or fourteen or so… My imagination used to run wild all day long back then… While I worked as an apprentice, I started to come up with ideas for my writing.”

Jiang Haifu: “Wri… writing?”

“Yes! Writing…”

Old Man Wang recalled, “You must have source material when you write! You can’t write a story without it! Then I started making up recipes, and planned to use them as source material for a novel. I ended up creating more and more recipes.”

Jiang Haifu: “…”

Old Man Wang: “And then that year, I was specially hired as a chef before I could finish the novel, so I stopped writing. I also don’t know where that cookbook went. Then when I was in my forties, I just so happened to enter Kikkaro Restaurant, and found that a lot of the dishes there were exactly the same as the ones in my cookbook!”

Jiang Haifu: “…”

Old Man Wang: “That Kikkaro Restaurant was a new shop and wasn’t famous at the time. When I saw the dishes, it was like I was back in my teens. At that time, I was very touched! It felt like the heavens had arranged this fate! It was profound destiny.”

Jiang Haifu: “…”

Old Man Wang: “Brother Haifu! This fish skin noodles of yours is also a fateful connection between us!”

Hearing this, Jiang Haifu simply wanted to cry. “Sir… please don’t call me Brother Haifu! You can just call me Haiwa 1 !”

Jiang Haifu really wanted to cry.

He had been looking for the owner of the cookbook for so many years…

He never thought that it would actually be this Old Man Wang in front of him.

Furthermore, he freaking wrote it when he was thirteen or fourteen…

Where on earth did this immortal come from?!

At that moment, Jiang Haifu only had one thought.

He wanted to surrender…

…

Elsewhere, an unexpected guest had shown up at Mo Immortal Castle, which had already been absorbed into the Office of Strategic Deception.

This person was none other than Gu Shunzhi, who had just officially joined No. 60 High School not long ago as a transfer student.

Gu Shunzhi didn’t hesitate to express his sincerity, and magnanimously placed a tetrahedral crystal on the table. The Lord and Lady of the Castle turned pale when they saw it.

A Tesseract…

This was a super rare material… several grades above primordial black crystal!

Gu Shunzhi’s expression was very serious. “This is my offer, and I only need a copy of the information.”

The Lord rubbed his hands together. “Well… what kind of information would you like to buy, sir? With your asking price, you can buy anything you want.”

“That’s good.”

Gu Shunzhi nodded. “I want information on a person.”

The Lord: “Who is it? Do you have a Daoist name?”

Gu Shunzhi nodded again. “I do!”

With that, Gu Shunzhi slapped a photo down on the table.

The Lord and Lady were astounded when they saw the person in the photo, and they exchanged looks.

Because the person in the photo…

… Was none other than Immortal Toya, the leader of the Office of Strategic Deception’s medicine team…

Why did this person need information on Immortal Toya?

Both the Lord and the Lady were dazed.

When all was said and done, Immortal Toya, who was part of the core of the Office of Strategic Deception, was now the Lord and Lady’s superior.

How would they dare sell information on their leader…

The Lord sweated as he gazed at Gu Shunzhi. “Sir, just a moment… I need to make some inquiries.”

But no sooner had the Lord finished speaking when Gu Shunzhi held him back with one hand on his shoulder. “Just a minute.”

The Lord: “???”

Gu Shunzhi: “Is he your superior?”

The Lord and Lady were alarmed yet again!

This man could read minds!

“Then this will be easy.”

Gu Shunzhi smiled. “You now only have two choices. First, take the Tesseract and sell me the information. Second, refuse the trade, and I’ll peek into your memories.”

The Lord clenched his teeth. He never expected such a troublesome person to show up today…