Chapter 77

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Lu Tai called out to Stephen Chow at his room and followed Cai Tou the monk to the kitchen of Shaolin Temple.

Stephen Chow had always been puzzled. Could this Ah Tai use magic? He didn’t know how this guy managed to become the abbot’s junior brother after a few twists and turns. In the past few days, Lu Tai had been showing off, taking Stephen Chow around the temple every day. He didn’t know if the combination of kung fu and culinary skills that Ah Tai talked about would really work. As the days passed, the opening of the Food God Competition drew closer, and Stephen Chow’s confidence waned.

Today, he finally got to see the kitchen of Shaolin Temple. Stephen found that his heart, which hadn’t truly been excited for many years, began to beat faster. The feeling was like when he was in school, and his gentle and sweet deskmate called him to go home after school.

The trip to the Shaolin kitchen was quite disappointing for both Lu Tai and Stephen. What they saw was far from what they had imagined, almost to the point of despair.

There was no difference from an ordinary canteen kitchen, except that there were no meat ingredients here.

The fire was fueled by liquefied petroleum gas, and the water was from the tap. About thirty monks were busy with their tasks—kneading dough, washing rice, cutting vegetables, and stir-frying with large shovels. All the scenes seemed to be telling them, "Don’t kid yourselves, it’s just a canteen, how could there be anything magical here?"

Unconvinced, Lu Tai pulled Stephen, rolled up his sleeves, and joined the ranks of the kitchen workers.

After a day of hard work, their only gain was that they were as exhausted as dead dogs, almost crawling back to their beds.

Stephen didn’t even have the mood to ask why Lu Tai’s knife skills were so incredibly proficient. He vaguely asked, "Ah Tai, has your culinary skill improved?"

The last word was still echoing in Stephen’s nasal cavity when it was shattered by the snoring that followed.

Lu Tai was in much better shape than Stephen, but he was still quite tired from the day’s work at the Shaolin kitchen. Lying in bed, he didn’t move, but his sore muscles were still trembling slightly, as if protesting against the abuse they had endured.

Lu Tai had always wanted to figure out why Tang Niu could learn such powerful culinary skills in the Shaolin kitchen, even surpassing Stephen, who was known as the Food God in Hong Kong. After all, Stephen had defeated countless famous Hong Kong chefs to earn this supreme title. Could it be that Shaolin Temple taught Tang Niu how to cook various seafood?

After a day of hard work, Lu Tai seemed to understand.

What Tang Niu learned in the Shaolin kitchen was not the methods of making various dishes. It was the intense work in the kitchen that trained his wrist strength, arm strength, and exquisite knife skills and precise eyesight.

The Shaolin kitchen provided meals for hundreds of martial arts experts in the temple, including the eighteen bronze men, whose appetites were almost monstrous. Just one of the bronze men could eat twenty large steamed buns in one meal, along with a basin of various vegetables, and still drink a basin of rice porridge.

There was no way around it; martial arts experts consumed a lot of energy every day, so their appetites were naturally astonishing. To satisfy these monsters, the kitchen had to steam dozens or even hundreds of pots of buns every day, along with stir-frying dishes and making porridge, which was a workload that was almost inhuman.

Why did only Tang Niu become a super chef among the thirty or forty cooking monks? It was because Tang Niu had the innate talent to be a top chef, and the devilish training in the Shaolin kitchen ultimately made him a super chef who could defeat Stephen Chow.

It seemed that even if Tang Niu hadn’t grown up in the Shaolin kitchen, he would still have become a good chef, but such a Tang Niu probably wouldn’t have had the strength to defeat the more talented Stephen Chow.

Understanding this, Lu Tai went to sleep with a smile, knowing that the day when Stephen Chow would defeat Tang Niu and reclaim the title of Food God was not far off. Similarly, the day when he would complete his mission was also approaching.

After helping in the Shaolin kitchen for seven days, Stephen finally snapped.

"Ah Tai, I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving Shaolin Temple tomorrow. This is not a life for a human being. Do you know, Ah Tai, that I have to chop more than four hundred cabbages every day? Four hundred! That’s enough to feed a pig farm, but these bald heads can finish every single leaf. I came to the mainland to learn culinary skills, not to raise pigs in this temple!"

Seeing the furious Stephen, Lu Tai realized he had made a huge mistake.

In the movie, Stephen Chow was trapped in Shaolin Temple by the abbot and forced to cook in the kitchen every day. He was always thinking about how to escape. After countless battles with the eighteen bronze men, although he was beaten up every time, he learned superior martial arts from these struggles.

However, due to Lu Tai’s arrival and his mysterious rise to become the abbot’s junior brother, Stephen lacked the sense of urgency and pressure. Without the plot where a turkey sacrificed itself to save him, Stephen wouldn’t have the heart-wrenching experience that led to his creation of the "Heartbreaking Meal" that ultimately defeated Tang Niu.

Perhaps Lu Tai had unknowingly stifled Stephen’s potential for growth. Just looking at the current Stephen, who was unwilling to endure hardship, it was easy to imagine that in two months, Stephen would still be defeated by Tang Niu.

Lu Tai finally managed to persuade Stephen to work for three more days, promising that if the Shaolin kitchen still didn’t teach him super culinary skills after three days, they would leave together.

Watching Stephen leave with weak legs, Lu Tai’s expression became serious.

Due to Lu Tai’s lack of consideration and arbitrary interference with the original plot of the movie, Stephen Chow had not learned enough from his failure against Tang Niu. The smooth promotion of the Urine Beef Balls had made Stephen gradually revert to the arrogant, unwilling to endure hardship, and unwilling to face challenges chairman of Tang Dynasty Catering Group.

What should he do?

How could he get Stephen back into the original movie plot?

After much thought, Lu Tai realized he was in a dead end. The turkey had been tricked into getting plastic surgery, the killer had been eliminated, and even the killer who hadn’t appeared in the movie had been taken care of. Stephen Chow had come to Shaolin Temple, but the most pressing issue was that Stephen Chow no longer believed that Shaolin Temple was the so-called Chinese Culinary Training Academy.

It seemed that Stephen Chow was destined to be unable to compete with Tang Niu. What should he do now?

Lu Tai stood up and slowly paced around the room, hands behind his back, head nodding unconsciously. If this problem wasn’t solved, the system’s mission might really be impossible to complete.

Thinking about the failure of the mission, he would have to live in this movie world forever, which made Lu Tai dizzy.

Would he really have to part ways with Sun Fat and Liu Yifei forever?

No, he couldn’t give up. Even if Lu Tai could abandon everything in the real world, the punishment of becoming an eighty or ninety-year-old woman was something he absolutely could not accept.

There must be a way. If Stephen Chow ultimately couldn’t compete with Tang Niu, could Lu Tai act as Stephen’s assistant and fight together with him, using their combined strength to defeat Tang Niu?

This seemed like a viable path. Lu Tai already had a level seven culinary skill, which, although not as good as the level eight skills of Tang Niu and Stephen, might still have a chance of defeating Tang Niu when combined with Stephen’s skills. After all, although Stephen was slightly inferior to Tang Niu, the gap between two level eight chefs was not insurmountable.

However, this was only a last resort. Unless Lu Tai could draw culinary skills again in the lottery, even if he teamed up with Stephen, there was no guarantee of defeating Tang Niu. The best way was to reignite Stephen’s fighting spirit.

While Lu Tai was deep in thought, he suddenly saw an item he had forgotten about, and his eyes lit up. A brilliant idea came to his mind...

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