Did he seriously just kick the damn pan?! Unnecessary and risky! If he couldn’t catch everything... Fuck, we’d have to store the first dish in the new time-freezing pantry of the space, then search for the ingredients for the tofu and vegetables.

I should yell at the brat. But I had to keep silent — cooking was one of the few subjects I knew shit about. For all I knew this was necessary.

While I kept a stiff face, I watched the little shit use an immortal chef technique to spin the bowls under the falling vegetables, catching each of them before they could fall all over the place.

When the dishes landed softly on the countertop next to the Scorching Garlic Chili Noodles, they appeared to be full of energy, but also a tiny bit lackluster. It was like the dish wasn’t complete and was duller for it.

That was when he grabbed his pre-made sauce. With a twist of a spoon, he drizzled it over the rice, vegetables and tofu. That was when both dishes started to sparkle. Waves of intense mouthwatering scent wafted through the kitchen.

When he added a few julienned sprigs of Split Yang Carrots as a garnish, I visibly saw the meal increase in quality. If this were in a manhua, it would have gone from having a few sparkles to filling the panel with them. Possibly even a rainbow effect just to add that extra bit of special.

Actually, if I squinted hard enough, I could see a hint of an illusory Taiji symbol.

A Qi Condensation level meal producing such an image was beyond impressive.

This kid had some big protagonist energy.

When Little Spring placed my portion in front of me, I took out my chopsticks and picked up a bite of the Soothing Yin Tofu and Vegetables.

The flavor subtly overwhelmed my tongue while the spiritual energy sent a wave of soft chilling Qi deep into my bones.

His eyes glittered impatiently.

Since these two dishes were designed to be consumed in tandem, I next ate a bit of the Garlic Noodles.

The sharp flavor of garlic combined with the spicy Qi warred with the cold energy. These two energies fought in a way that gently strengthened the body instead of destroying it.

I set down my chopsticks.

The rest would have to wait. This kid had worked his ass off making this, and he deserved all of my attention.

“Before I talk about the taste and spirituality, I want you to know that you still have a long way to go before you’re a true immortal chef.”

His eyes didn’t waver.

Guess I wasn’t fooling the brat.

I cleared my throat. “That said, the chef techniques you showed me were impressive. You are mastering each one at an incredible speed. Don’t think that I didn’t see you combining ‘Any Blade is my Sword’ and the immortal chef skill, ‘Slice and Dice.’”

He blushed, but his eyes turned into half circles from how big he was grinning. “I named it after that concept you taught me.”

What?! He remembered me talking about math, cubes and the power of three? I hadn’t touched on those concepts in months.

“We’re the type of cultivators that learn multiple disciplines. Because of this, we may never master every one of them as well as someone who devotes their whole existence to the subject. But, if we work intelligently, and combine the things we can do in unexpected ways like you’ve just shown, then it’s possible to be just as strong or even stronger than the individual who does.”

Essentially, ‘A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.’

He nodded, then looked at the food that was slowly cooling and impatiently shuffled from foot to foot.

Right. He was desperately holding back the urge to tell me that it won’t taste as good if it goes cold.

There was one last point I had to make. “Your execution on your final-chance to prepare this meal was the best one yet. Not only did the flavor spread through my mouth evenly, but the softness of the tofu we made together was even more tender while being firm in the right places. The garlic was very noticeable, but it wasn’t overwhelming in the noodles this time.”

He winced. “It was only that one time when I used too much.”

“You’re dealing with spiritual ingredients here. Even using a slightly larger garlic clove than necessary might cause the flavors to vary.” At least, that was what I’d heard master chefs comment on before. “Fortunately, immortal cooking is more forgiving than alchemy at low levels.”

He grimaced. “I doubt that Chef Garlic would agree with that.”

She’d be wrong.

“You worked hard and succeeded to an incredible degree.” That seemed to perk him up. “Now, let’s eat!”

We both wasted no time and dug into our meal. Each noodle and grain of rice vanished into our stomachs at an alarming rate.

Vanishing in the literal sense.

Immortal cuisine was interesting because it looked like food, we ate it like food, but it did not digest like food. It digested like a slow-acting dan.

Even as I ate the last bite, the meal dissipated from my stomach and energy slowly entered each part of my body in a cycle similar to my cultivation technique.

The energy painlessly increased the density of my bones, strengthened my muscles, empowered my blood and hardened my skin while keeping it malleable and soft.

The great thing about this was that I could finish my preparations without waiting for the energy to finish its work.

Muahahaha!

I still couldn’t believe how easy this all was.

For a thousand fucking years, I believed the author had a ‘no pain, no gain,’ policy when it came to body cultivation. But these meals worked without that.

This felt like cheating. Finally, it was me that was cheating!

Of course, considering the Xianxia genre, it made sense that the original author would set it up so the goddamn protagonist could breeze through body cultivation. The fucker even gave him an immortal chef wife so he didn’t have to learn cooking himself or expose his secrets to a hired chef.

Just thinking about the set of blackout-painful baths I went through over a year ago when I could have...

It didn’t matter. Even if I knew about these meals, I wouldn’t have had the spirit stones for it. All the ingredients to bring just the two of us up to the peak of Qi Condensation cost Peerless Resolve the equivalent of a Nascent Soul’s yearly wages.

The kid cycled his cultivation since he’d used a lot of internal Qi. Actually, he was almost ready to transcend his own tribulation. I’d have to lecture him about creating a foundation soon. But not now. There would be plenty of months before he was ready.

Once Little Spring recovered his energy, I grinned. “Want to help me forge my new spiritual armor?”

The kid’s eyes sparkled. “Yes!”

***

After we moved into the smithy, I set out the components I’d need to make the first part of what would become my new outfit.

“What kind are you making this time?” Little Spring picked up an ingot of the Spiritual Iron that a family gave me during the plague. They couldn’t afford their child’s medicine so they paid for it in iron.

Little Spring poked his finger into a bowl of Salty Magnificent Black Carbon Sand. I swatted his hand away. That sand took me days to collect during the crab mission.

With a flick of my sleeve I pulled out the red sword shard and beamed at the kid. “I finally managed to find a piece of Three Star Red Titanium!”

“It’s not like the sect didn’t have any... we just couldn’t afford it without going on several more missions.”

One reason I used the black market.

I cleared my throat. “The issue is that this piece here isn’t pure Red Titanium.”

“Does that mean that you have to make a tool that isn’t as good?”

“Of course not! Who am I?!”

“Sister Lin!”

“That’s right. And I’m going to teach you how to extract and purify this metal. Muahahahaha!”

The kid’s eyes grew wide.

“But I thought that, once a metal was mixed with something, you couldn’t un-mix it.”

I grinned. “That’s not always the case. There are ways to separate some metals. It’s just not always cost-effective.”

“So, this one is cost-effective?”

“That’s right... Because I know how to cheaply extract Three Star Red Titanium from an alloy.”

“Then how do we make it?”

I teleported a big barrel of Verdant Spiraling Limes from the space’s time-freezing pantry. Well, I called it a pantry but it was a small room where anything living would die immediately but where spiritual food would never get old and never get cold.

“We start by juicing these in a way that extracts the spiritual essence into the juice.”

“Oh! I can do that really fast.” As an immortal chef in training, I expected as much.

“Good. While you do that, I’ll take care of the hard part.”

“And that is?”

“Cutting up this shard into manageable pieces so it doesn’t take a week to dissolve.”

He nodded, then disappeared with the limes.

The first thing I did was fire up the furnace. This upgraded version warmed up within a minute.

Once it was the highest temperature I could make it, I threw the sword shard inside.

Because of how hard the fragment was, it couldn’t melt at all.

But that was expected. This was the type of metal that would need a strange flame to fully liquify. But that didn’t mean that I had no other methods of working with it.

I placed the heated shard in the center of the secret crafter’s formation I’d set up earlier. After activating it, I started using my forging tools to chisel the hot shard like I was carving marble.

My increasing strength from finishing the body cultivation helped speed things up.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t use sword Qi here since this was a type of material that was added to blades and armor specifically to block sharp types of energy.

Just as I finished the last break, Little Spring carried in a pot filled with Spiraling Lime juice.

“Here’s the juice. What should I do with the peels?”

“When you have a free moment, slice them up and throw them in the garden later.” I gestured for him to bring the pan to the worktable and pulled out a glass jar I’d made just for situations like this.

Actually, to make it, I’d taken a different special sand that I’d collected on the crab mission, fired it up in the furnace and blew a few jars from it. They didn’t look pretty but they’d work for my needs.

Fuck, I missed my old tools. A good craftsman was worthless without quality ones.

While I’d made do with those I cobbled together myself, I’d have to make progressively better tools by myself. There had been a lot of progress in item forging in the past thousand years.

I placed the metal fragments into the jar, grabbed a ladle and poured some juice over it until it completely covered the small pieces.

The kid looked into the glass. When nothing happened, he turned to me. His narrowed eyes as if asked me if I had him juice all those limes for nothing.

I grinned and pulled out another item I picked up for cheap during the mission we did not speak about. A special black stone.

“Ah!” The kid pointed to it. “Isn’t that the ugly pearl someone conned you into buying?”

Brat. “You mean that I conned someone out of.”

He looked skeptical.

I coughed. “This is a Black Dreams Sea Pearl, and while it looks like an eldritch lemon with the surface of a black pearl, it is actually a stone found in the ocean.”

He studied it skeptically. “Are you just going to drop it in there or something?”

“That would be wasteful. Pull out that zester I forged.”

He reluctantly grabbed the small grating tool. Technically, I’d originally made it for this purpose. He’d just commandeered it for his cooking.

I ran the stone along the blades to shave some pearl filings. Once they gathered into a small pile, I dropped a single shaving into the glass jar. It disappeared on contact with the lime juice.

I added the pieces one at a time until the solution started boiling where it touched the metal. Bubbles rose to the surface.

The metal visibly started to disappear and the juice darkened.

Wonder filled the kid’s eyes. “Is this considered alchemy or forging?”

“It’s both.”

He poked the jar. “This is genius. How did you learn this?”

I grinned. “As a genius, of course, I was the one who developed this method!” Coming up with things like this rather than squabbling with petty people was what I tried to spend my last 1000 years doing.

Imagine all the time I wasted and the experiments I could have done if it wasn’t for Bloodsword’s fucking harem!

Those bitches were always bringing me into drama I wanted nothing to do with. Waste of my goddamn time!

Whatever.

“Remember, our Dao embraces multiple professions. But time is still a limited resource. The best thing you can do is choose to focus on things that work well together.”

“Like Alchemy and Immortal Cooking?”

“Exactly. But even if you begin a profession where you can’t see a way to combine it with your others, you may discover connections later on that will allow you to take your profession in a unique and powerful direction.”

He nodded, then pointed to the glass jar. “How long is this going to take?”

I grimaced. “Longer than I’d like. And we’ll have to keep adding in lime juice and stone shavings until the liquid has turned red and there’s no metal left.”

His eyes grew wide. “Wait! No metal left?!”