"I learned one thing in this chef career..." Dōjima Gin's voice, heavy with nasal congestion, sounded somewhat out of character. "The more one pursues the limits of culinary arts, the more one can perceive the vast boundlessness of the culinary world."
"Gulp." A drop of cold sweat slid down his cheek; Mo Bai quietly waited for Dōjima Gin's follow-up.
"The world of cuisine is infinite, but human energy is limited!"
"Therefore..."
"I reject my humanity!!" Mo Bai suddenly stole the line.
Adding drama for a moment is fun; always adding drama is always fun.
Dōjima Gin: "Hah?"
"? Weren't you going to say this sentence next?" Hearing Dōjima Gin's puzzled tone, a question mark involuntarily popped up on Mo Bai's head.
"However, I was not," Dōjima Gin retorted.
"Cough cough, don't mind the details." Mo Bai coughed awkwardly a few times; he hadn't expected Dōjima Gin, with his thick eyebrows and big eyes resembling the JoJo style, to actually follow a normal script style. "What did you want to say?"
"Precisely because a person's energy is limited, one needs to cherish it even more."
"When I was twenty-two, I successfully advanced to become a Special-Grade Chef, shaking the Far East with my fame. It was also at that time that I ultimately couldn't resist the temptation of status and wealth, and entered Tōtsuki Resort."
"Subsequently, due to responsibilities and involvement in too many identity relationships, although my culinary arts were improving during my time at Tōtsuki Resort, I lost the high-speed improvement effect I had previously when I devoted myself wholeheartedly to cooking." Dōjima Gin recalled with regret, his tone prolonged.
"I don't regret it. It's just that thinking about it now, if I could have entered Tōtsuki Resort a few years later back then, and continued to delve into culinary arts during that golden time of rapid culinary development, perhaps I really could have taken a step further now."
"Just like I said before, humans always have limits. Even though I bear the title of Tōtsuki's most outstanding genius, I still cannot avoid the fact that my culinary arts have stagnated."
"Every level of chef rank is a chasm that needs to be crossed. Nowadays, I am gazing at the ocean and sighing on that sea level where the edge cannot be seen at a glance, between Special-Grade Nine-Star and the Qilin-level."
"With my age being two cycles older than you, perhaps I will never be able to touch that Qilin-level coastline in this lifetime." Saying this, Dōjima Gin sighed lightly and fell silent for a long while.
"But you are different, Mo Bai-kun."
"You are the youngest, most talented chef I have seen in so many years. No one has ever been able to grasp the Culinary Heart to this degree at your age. You even... completed the Divine Festival."
"Hahaha, Head Chef Dōjima, what are you saying?" Mo Bai laughed dryly. "Divine Festival? What is that? Is it edible?"
"I am a Special-Grade Nine-Star Chef after all, and I have some say in the Far East culinary world. Do you really think I don't understand the inside story you concealed?" Dōjima Gin did not care about Mo Bai's pale and feeble defense.
"Moreover, during the week I was hospitalized, Miko Shiratori has made no less than four or five calls, each one beating around the bush for your information."
"Even when I was promoted to Special-Grade Nine-Star, Yukikawa Shrine was not like this. Even an outsider can feel the abnormality of Yukikawa Shrine's attitude towards you."
Mo Bai covered his face; he had never seen such pig-like teammates.
Heck! Does this group of mikos really have holes in their brains from staying on the mountain too much?
Mo Bai thought with malice.
"Of course, being valued by a shrine is a good thing, but I hope that at your age, you don't pay too much attention to things unrelated to culinary arts."
"You are destined to become a Special-Grade. This starting point can bring a greater prospect and stage. Perhaps you can even cross the barrier of the Qilin-level and become the second Qilin-level Chef in the Far East in a hundred years."
"Actually..."
"?"
"No, nothing."
Mo Bai, who wanted to be mischievous, swallowed half of his words back down.
[Frantically testing the waters on the edge of being sliced up for research.jpg]
Develop low-key, develop low-key; never be in a hurry to act cool when strength is insufficient.
Mo Bai soothed his own restless little heart.
Moreover, the success of that Qilin-level cuisine was largely built on the help of Ryougi Shiki and the predecessor of the Little White Dragon, Xiao, that Hell Ice Bass ingredient that birthed a Food Spirit.
That magical experience of communicating with ingredients—Mo Bai had never turned it on again after that time.
"In short, during the period of rapid culinary development, never pursue things too early that you will naturally obtain later."
"Chef Zhang Yu asking me for your appointment as Branch Hall Head Chef is roughly the same idea," Dōjima Gin admonished earnestly.
"Mmh, I understand," Mo Bai nodded.
"By the way, Head Chef Dōjima, listening to your words, it seems the gap between Special-Grade and Qilin-level is very large." Before hanging up the phone, Mo Bai still couldn't hold back the curiosity in his heart.
"This is something you will have to face sooner or later; I might as well take this opportunity to let you understand." Dōjima Gin considered for a moment before telling Mo Bai about a hidden event. "Back then, when I had just been promoted to Special-Grade Nine-Star and was full of ambition, under the participation of the five great shrines of the Far East culinary world, I launched a private shokugeki with the Commander-in-Chief."
"The IGO does not assign star ratings to those above the Qilin-level. The Commander-in-Chief often says he has merely barely stepped onto the threshold of the Qilin-level."
"Special-Grade Nine-Star versus stepping into the Qilin-level threshold."
"I originally thought that even if I lost, I wouldn't lose too miserably."
"But the difficult process of the shokugeki exceeded my expectations."
"Under the oppression of the Commander-in-Chief's aura, my standard dropped drastically. Not only my body, but the Culinary Heart that I usually wielded like an arm felt as if it had fallen into a swamp, making it difficult to move an inch. If not for the Commander-in-Chief leaving immediately after completing his cuisine, I might not even have been able to finish my cooking."
"Even so, the final result still didn't have the slightest ripple."
"The Commander-in-Chief won a crushing victory of 5:0."
"During the time the Commander-in-Chief stood in front of the cooking station, I felt like I was completely a child who had just learned to pick up a kitchen knife, unable to resist at all."
To this day, Dōjima Gin's description still couldn't hide the tone of shock; one can imagine how much fear he felt at that time.
"When I didn't have the courage to pick up my chopsticks to taste that cuisine, I understood a fact."
"There is a fundamental difference between a Qilin-level Chef and a Special-Grade Chef."
"Unlike the adjectives, a shokugeki between chefs of that level is a genuine war." Pouring out the secret held in his heart for so long, Dōjima Gin felt much more relaxed.
"Don't think too much about it either. Your urgent task now is to accumulate and pass the IGO Special-Grade assessment first."
"That's all for now. I'll send you your Branch Hall Head Chef contract." Dōjima Gin seemed to remember something. "By the way, if you want to quickly pass the Special-Grade assessment within two or three years, bring out your full strength in this Five-Star assessment."
"Okay." Mo Bai hung up the call.
"...War?" Since his worldview collapsed, Mo Bai had been thinking about whether shokugekis between chefs would become demonized.
Actually, as early as the Divine Festival, he discovered that the dominance of the Culinary Heart: [Propriety] when stimulated to the extreme could extend to the entire venue.
Now, through Dōjima Gin's description, it was basically confirmed with a solid hammer.
The war between Qilin-level Chefs is definitely not as simple as 'you go up, I go up, everyone goes up'.
What is the relationship between Nakiri Senzaemon and Dōjima Gin? A solid direct lineage; even so, the latter almost couldn't complete his cuisine, which is enough to explain the brutality of a Qilin-level shokugeki.
"The Domain of the Heart's Manifestation must be used more cautiously."
Mo Bai understood that abandoning magic to pursue martial arts was inevitable.
"Miss Miyamoto, don't move! If you move again, we're going to fall!"
"But we can't hear clearly at all!"
Whispering from two girls came from above Mo Bai's head.
"...Get down here!" Mo Bai's old face turned black.
"Waaaaah!" With two screams, Miyamoto Yayako and Yukikawa Yukie fell from the tree along with a broken branch.
________________________________________
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