"Ah—"
A strange cry echoed in the arena, eerie as ghostly wails and wolf howls, while the overhead cara broadcasted the scene worldwide, causing 99.9% of the puzzled television viewers to burst into laughter after a brief pause.
The reaction was that intense? This must definitely be a plant hired by the event officials.
Online, social dia platforms and forums were abuzz with nurous posts, with so troublemakers even planning to edit the audience’s reactions into a GIF once the recording of this segnt was available—sure to be highly amusing.
The vast majority of the audience held their breath, fixated on the live broadcast.
In the shot, Lin Giant Lei Zhe twisted off the bottle cap, tilting it over the tray with five cocktail glasses—
Swoosh!
A blood-like red liquid instantly filled each clear glass.
The fragrance of the wine intensified, and suddenly the noisy arena fell deathly still.
The previously howling audience was srized, as if enchanted by a spell, dazzled and dazed.
In their vision, the cocktail glasses stirred ripples in the red liquid, and atop them appeared the silhouette of a winged dragon perched at the rim of the glass.
The drink itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy—a high-proof spirit mixed with the blood of the "Wine God Dragon".
The air was hot and dry, and slling the intoxicating fragrance, the male spectators made strange expressions. Those who weren’t already crossing their legs did so, tightly clenching the suddenly majestic totems between them; so outright covered their groins and awkwardly shifted.
The female spectators, however, had eyes like shimring pools.
"Ha—"
Below, Dojima Yin exhaled sharply, thump, thump, listening to his surging heartbeat, sharing an odd look with Saito Chiyokuro who was having the sa physiological reaction.
"I didn’t expect the ’Wine God Dragon’ blood to also have an aphrodisiac effect..."
"Aphrodisiac?"
Saito Chiyokuro twitched the corners of his mouth, "Isn’t it more than that!"
As they conversed, Lin Giant Lei Zhe had already placed the five glasses of drink before the judges.
"Such rich and llow fragrance!"
The first to speak was the red-haired judge who called himself ’Yoshitsune’. He anxiously grabbed a glass and drank it down, smacking his lips appreciatively: "Great drink!"
He shook his head from side to side.
"The alcohol content, is it very close to the spirits used for soaking deer blood?"
The second judge spoke; it was the central Chief Judge Nuliang, who likewise drank his glass in one breath, setting down the glass with curious eyes.
"60 degrees!"
Lei Zhe spoke indifferently: "This drink is actually a type of spirit, but while the process is similar, the ingredients and traditional sorghum or rice are completely different. Years ago, our research facility successfully cultivated ’Alcoholic Palm Fruit’ on a large scale and used the naturally sweet alcohol inside the fruits to fernt spirits and age them, going through multiple ticulous processes, finally producing ’Palm Fruit Spirit’!"
"Palm Fruit Spirit? No wonder there was a hint of intricate fragrance when I gulped it down!" the red-haired judge praised enthusiastically, slapping the table.
"The key here, is that you actually managed to master the ’Wine God Dragon’ blood!"
Nuliang pointed to the glass, noticing specks of fine blood particles left in the glass.
"No!"
The self-proclaid ’Yoshitsune’, the red-haired judge, corrected: "Not just mastering, but a perfect example of utilization! The ’Wine God Dragon’s’ whole body including blood, flesh, and bones contains alcohol, yet after all, it’s not an ordinary species. To use any part of its body in actual cooking, to turn it into edible food, we must talk about ’mastering’!"
"You’ve anesthetized the power factors in the ’Wine God Dragon’ blood!"
After saying this, he closed his mouth.
Anesthetized?
The remaining Lin Giants, even Zhu Qing and Lan Chuhai, slightly changed their expressions.
The so-called power factor is none other than the "Food Cells."
The key to a Food Tyrant Chef’s control lies in how they attack the "Food Cells" of exotic ingredients, using anesthesia and hypnotism as thods of attack.
Below the stage, Xia Yu glimpsed with uncertainty at Lei Zhe’s partner, the female special chef who had used an anesthetic gun to shoot down the "Wine God Dragon," seriously suspecting that this female chef had played a significant part in manipulating the ingredients.
Indeed.
Lei Zhe’s voice, spreading through the loudspeakers:
"Being able to so perfectly control the ’Wine God Dragon’s’ wildly aggressive blood was also thanks to my partner’s help!"
"Yes!"
Chief Judge Nuliang chid in, praising, "This is what cooperative cooking is all about!"
"After the change in competition format, there was no clear rule specifying what the Lin Chef and Special Chef in competing teams should do; it was all up to the contestants themselves to grasp. In any case, they needed to embody the elent of ’cooperation,’ and in a dish, the steps fostering cooperation are nurous—the ingredient control phase, the minutiae of cooking temperature control, seasoning, and so forth."
"You all, in the ingredient control phase, brought ’cooperation’ to its pinnacle!"
"Brilliant!"
Nuliang did not skimp on his praise. This was a fair Chief Judge, the silver-haired elder seed very experienced, and Xia Yu, watching from below, twitched his brows, as unfortunately, he knew this old man, having t him once in Tokyo before the competition.
Seeing that the other judges had no intention of adding further comnts, the host Kogawa Shinyiro said, "Now, please let the five judges score!"
Beep beep beep...
The scores on the screen fluctuated, and after two or three seconds, the results were displayed:
"18 points, 18 points, 20 points, 18 points, 18 points."
This ti, another female host, Dubian Yuuki, read the scores, her voice trembling, "The final score for Chef Lei Zhe is... 92 points! Congratulations!"
points!
When the total score ca out, the venue fell dead silent.
The audience, no matter how poor their mory, clearly rembered how just a few minutes ago, the Adams and Oraora pair had exited the competition with a dismal score of 39.
Who would have thought that the situation would completely reverse with the second dish?
"92 points?"
Lei Zhe, however, was not quite satisfied with the score, frowned, and was about to question the reason for the uniform 18 points when suddenly, with a "click," Zhu Qing, a step away from him, picked up a cocktail bottle from the tray and twisted the cap.
Not to be outdone, Lan Chuhai put down the tray and simultaneously lifted the lid.
Oh.
A gasp, as the lid was lifted, revealing a white plate arranged neatly with translucent shrimp.
"Drunken shrimp?" Zhu Qing glanced over and sniffed, her eyes flashing, "No, it’s not the traditional drunken shrimp; the aroma of the wine and the freshness of the shrimp are too intense!"
Relying on the Zhu family’s inherited "Hyper-Olfaction," Zhu Qing could analyze many details of her rival’s dish just by its sll. She thought to herself, "The usual sauce for drunken shrimp consists of wine, vinegar, garlic, and chili, but her dish has a hint of lemon, definitely lemon seasoning... Also, what exactly is this fragrant wine?!"
Lan Chuhai noticed Zhu Qing’s change in expression and smiled with a gleam in her eyes.
"Your nose has always been sharp, have you figured it out?" she asked.
Unable to figure it out, Zhu Qing simply shook her head, "Whatever!"
Click!
With a twist in her hand, Zhu Qing bared her teeth at Lan Chuhai, "Take a look at the Miracle Wine that Yu and I cooperated to create!"
At last, the bottle cap twisted open.
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