บท 48: An Eye-Opening Experience
Chu Fan looked over at Hun Lian and the others and shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know what was happening. The elders did not know how to score Chu Fan's contest entry. Su Chow stood up and faced Chu Fan.
"Disciple Chu Fan, you have four things to grade. Whereas Wang Zhinu has produced only one set of pills for us to grade. Would you be so kind as to choose a single dish that we can grade?"
Chu Fan shook his head and index finger.
"In the amount of time given to the two of us: she has created one thing, whereas I have created four things. Is it not fair to me, one who has been rather productive, to only get scored based on one of my dishes?"
The elders were shocked, Chu Fan's argument was simple but fair. And they had no power to argue with him in public as figures of higher standing; it would look like they were bullying him. They all turned around and began conversing secretly again.
Chu Fan shrugged and rolled his eyes.
"Fine. If you really want me to choose just one...Hmmmm...Ah! The noodles then."
Su Chow clapped his hands.
"Haha! The noodles then. Everyone, submit your scores for the noodles."
Fierce strokes of the elder's pens could be heard as they wrote with much heated passion. Entranced, they were happily writing in the designated area for number scores while filling out the comment section with poems and songs of praise when they stopped in the middle of their writing. It dawned on them that they had originally intended to give Wang Zhinu the better score; a good majority of the elders had it in their mind that Chu Fan needed a small lesson in humility and suffering. They pulled out Wang Zhinu's and made "minor adjustments" to their scores for both parties.
Looking at each other, the elders handed in their scoring sheets for Wang Zhinu and Chu Fan. They all smiled and winked at one another while sticking their thumbs up in approval. The scoring sheets were all collected by Su Chow and handed to Ye Qing, who had been given the task of keeping track of the scores.
Chu Fan knew what was going on, but he did not care. If others did not believe in his gourmet elixirs, they would simply miss out on the chance of a lifetime. He closed his eyes and began to speak as Ye Qing tallied up the average scores of all the votes.
"Before the results are announced, I'd like to talk a bit about my gourmet elixirs and compare them to alchemy. Would everyone be so kind as to hear me out?"
Chu Fan's words fell on deaf ears, many disciples were bored of waiting for the scores to be tallied and began talking about other matters; even the elders were distracted by their own chatter about how Chu Fan's disappointed face would look like. Ye Qing was not any better, as he lost count multiple times as Da Bao and Tian Han "helped" him calculate the average and argue over which method of calculation to use.
Amidst all the noise and commotion, only Su Chow and Vault Keeper Wang noticed that Chu Fan had something to say. The two of them pounded the armrest to the chairs that they sat on.
"Bam!" the chairs they sat on shattered to dust and rippled through the air, silencing the crowd.
"Speak, disciple Chu Fan. We would all love to hear what is you want to say." said Vault Keeper Wang.
Chu Fan nodded and continued speaking.
"In the time allotted to the both of us, Wang Zhinu has created eight of the same pills that any cultivator can use repeatedly. In that same amount of time, I have created four dishes that are totally different."
One of the female elders stood up to speak.
"Yes, but with alchemy ingredients must be prepared and refined many times before it can be used for pill crafting. One cannot risk the chances of harming themselves with impurities or worse, death."
Chu Fan nodded and continued with a rebuttal.
"Yes, ingredients must be prepared. I agree. But why must you stick with such arcane methods that are outdated? I can take a process that would take you days, if not years, and shorten it to mere hours or minutes."
"Huh!?" exclaimed many disciples.
"The galls this child has!" said an elder.
"This fatty has got some balls!" said Ye Qing as he went back to counting.
He had managed to anger and outrage many people in the crowd. He motioned his hands out, trying to calm everybody.
"Relax! Relax, let me explain myself. Elder Wang, is it right that the bones of a Crazed Lightning Wolf can only be used in pill refining when it is dried?"
Vault Keeper Wang stroked his beard and nodded. He was quite surprised that a mere chef like Chu Fan would know so much.
"Yes, the blood of the Crazed Voltic Wolf must be thoroughly cleansed away as it can throw cultivators into a berserk rage. What we aim to extract is the marrow that can fortify a cultivator's mind while giving them strength. It is washed of any blood, then air dried over three days before being safe to use."
All the other elders nodded in agreement.
"Well what if I told you that all that work was superfluous; and that I could do all that in one step?" claimed Chu Fan.
Everyone present blinked twice and looked at Chu Fan like one would a madman. Wang Zhinu wondered why such a child was making these claims.
"Chu Fan, are you serious? You can't go making crazy claims that aren't true." said Wang Zhinu.
"Hmph! Alchemy is not that far off from cooking. We process in ingredients in similar ways, it just depends on the attention and care the person cooking or refining puts into their work."
The crowd was still skeptical of him and squinted their eyes.
"Then how would you process the bone of a Crazed Voltic Wolf?" asked a member of the crowd
Chu Fan stuck his finger into that air with a smug smile on his face.
"Boil it."
The crowd went into a frenzy and some elders began pulling out their hair out of anger.
"Shut up you fatty! You have no understanding of the properties of this ingredient." shouted an elder.
"Who are to make these bold claims without any proof?" stated a member of the crowd.
Su Chow and Vault Keeper Wang had heard enough and stomped their feet, causing a slight tremor. Everyone fell silent.
"Enough of this! Let's move on with it and hear the results of this match. Ye Qing! What are the results?" said Vault Keeper Wang.
Ye Qing stood up as he finished his counting. He bowed and spoke.
"Disciple Ye Qing is done tallying the score. I shall hereby announce it."
He leapt onto the stage and presented a paper on which he had written the total scores.
"Each category was scored from 0 to 5 points, so the total amount of points each person can obtain is 60 points as we have four judges. First is Chu Fan, he had an accumulated score of 48 points. As for Wang Zhinu, through her hard work, she has acquired 50 points. This match was a rather close one...But I announce Wang Zhinu to be the victor of this match."
The crowd began to rejoice and cheer for Wang Zhinu. Fireworks and banners flew about in the skies announcing her victory to the heavens.
"Hooray! Our goddess is the best!"
"Congratulations to Vault Keeper Wang! Your granddaughter is truly talented. She has not disappointed you at all."
The elders began bowing and congratulating Vault Keeper Wang.
"Ah, this old man is lucky to have such a talented granddaughter. If only her father were as talented in alchemy as I was, he takes after his mother and devotes his time to the tiny bit of swordplay and music he knows."
The elders all hopped onstage to congratulate Wang Zhinu. She greeted them all with smiles.
"Grandfather, I won. But this has been quite an eye-opening experience for me. I did not expect the two of us to be so close in scores."
This was true, this match with Chu Fan gave her many insights into ways she could process magical ingredients as cooking processes also worked besides the archaic ways of preparation she was used to finding in old texts and records.
"Wang Zhinu, to celebrate your victory, is their any kind of special gift you want from this old man?" asked Vault Keeper Wang.
The elders all gave each other a slight glance and winked. They all looked over at Chu Fan expecting his face to be full of envy and scorn. They wanted him to feel the injustice of being the weaker person and for him to understand that he needed to be more humble in the face of some things he had no control over. Their jaws dropped as he held a rather neutral expression on his face, he was neither happy nor sad. Actually, he didn't care. This was in fact, just a part of his plan to advertise his Gourmet Elixirs.
"Recount! I demand a recount! There's no way that Chu Fan could lose to a single pill. His gourmet elixirs work better than that one pill." someone shouted from the crowd.
Onto the stage, Hun Lian leapt. She was promptly followed by Yao Lingyan, Tian Han, and Da Bao. They had been rather suspicious of the results that were announced. They had personally tasted and consumed Chu Fan's gourmet elixirs for over a month now and could very confidently say that Chu Fan's gourmet elixirs were the better choice compared to pill consumption.
"I am curious as to how they scored in each category." asked Yao Lingyan
Tian Han and Da Bao had seen the scores earlier and recounted the scores in each category.
"Ah! Chu Fan got a total score of 16 in taste while senior Wang Zhinu got a score of 12. What a shocking score for a pill." said Tian Han.
"Oh, yeah. I was scratching my head when I saw that. I was more shocked that Chu Fan scored a measly 12 in medicinal effect while Wang Zhinu scored a grand score of 18." stated Da Bao.
Hun Lian walked right over to the elders.
"How could you do this to Chu Fan, elders? You scored a pill so highly? Even you know that a decent tasting pill could be mistaken for poison sometimes? Have your taste buds been affected by a long period of closed-door cultivation?" ranted Hun Lian. The elders could not retort because they did not dare lecture Su Chow's granddaughter; rather, they held no right in teaching her manners and respect as they each spoiled her also.
"Hmph! So what! His gourmet elixirs could never offer the effects that pills do. With the pills, the effects were immediate. Chu Fan's cooking merely acted as a mouthful of sugar to ease the medicine down." said a female elder.
Yao Lingyan was about to speak but hesitated a little. She worked up the courage to speak against an elder.
"I..I wouldn't be too sure about that. Chu Fan's food tends to have a delayed reaction, especially towards people who are eating for the first time. Let's just say that it helps with digestion and expelling of impurities. How long do they have Chu Fan?" she said while turning towards Chu Fan.
He looked puzzled as he counted with his thumbs as if he was divining a great calamity upon the world. He could not do the math and began scratching is head.
"I don't know. I have never fed my gourmet elixirs to anyone in a higher realm of cultivation. I estimate that they would last much longer than you all did when you first ate. Hmmm....maybe about one and a half of an incense stick's worth of time since they ate?"
As Chu Fan finished speaking, thunderous rumbling could be heard. Many students looked up into the skies.
"Well that's odd? I hear thunder but their is no sign of any rainfall." asked a disciple in the stands.
"Oh, there's a storm coming alright." said Chu Fan.
Su Chow, Vault Keeper Wang, and the other elders looked at each other as the rumbling grew louder. They turned red and bowed. Without a word, they set off like rockets.
*Boom* They broke through the sound barrier as they all disappeared from sight.
A wind came gusting about and as soon as the students could breathe again, they began dropping to the floor and covering their faces. They knew the stench all too well and pointed at each other.
"It was you wasn't it!?"
"Dammit! I told you to stop eating those dammed sweet potatoes!"
"Who blew their trumpet?"
Onstage, Chu Fan and his closest friends had their noses plugged. He smacked himself on the forehead. In a way he had punished the elders slightly, but they would still benefit from this small suffering.
"Aiyoo! That's what I forgot to mention."
Everyone dispersed before they passed out and the matter of doctoring was forgotten altogether. Chu Fan was content with accepting a loss here. All the disciples returned to their studies and cultivating while Chu Fan returned to his kitchen for the dinner rush. That night, the area surrounding the Hall of Elders and Sect Vault reeked of boiled and/or rotten eggs.
"Chu Fan! You dammed fatty!" many of the elders shouted to themselves. The rascal had tricked them, they would no longer underestimate him and hold back given the chance to teach him a lesson.
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