Divine Beast Creator-Chapter 2133 - 2134: Culinary Competition

After waiting for a while, Qi Chen and his companions all gradually got up and met with Feng Yuan. Even Veronia, who had taken a walk outside and returned to the inn, saw Feng Yuan and Long Boduo eating and said somewhat puzzled,

"Aren’t you planning to go to the market district to eat? There’s a cooking competition going on there. I thought you’d be interested～"

"Cooking competition?"

Feng Yuan was taken aback. He hadn’t expected such a coincidence that Linqiu City was holding a cooking competition. Of course, this competition wasn’t so formal, since it wasn’t an official event but rather an informal contest agreed upon by the chefs operating in the market district.

Although it’s an informal event, its prestige is recognized by most Spiritual Medicine Chefs in the Divine Land Region, as every time it’s held, numerous industry-renowned masters serve as judges.

The judges are all the tourists present, who score the dishes themselves. Each person’s score is included in the total score for evaluation. Of course, to score, one must purchase and taste the corresponding spiritual medicine cuisines.

Doing so makes the competition more of a test of the chef’s sales ability. After all, piling on too many spiritual medicines would make the price skyrocket. No matter how delicious such food is, not many would dare to buy and try it, hence not achieving a high total score.

This is the characteristic of the market district cooking competition, which doesn’t solely pursue skills but requires chefs to find a balance between skill and accessibility to the average person.

Perhaps due to this competition rule, Linqiu City’s officials never considered turning it into an official event.

However, even though this rule is somewhat inelegant, the winning chefs of this competition are quite popular among ordinary people.

After all, those chefs adept at using a large amount of precious spiritual medicine may indeed be more skilled, as handling such spiritual medicines takes significant skill. However, it’s unlikely for the average person to easily eat that kind of food.

Nonetheless, perhaps due to the uniqueness of the judging content, each competition is scheduled by the organizing committee at a time they decide, without a fixed date.

Feng Yuan didn’t expect his luck to be so good that it was held during the National Day.

"Speaking of which, what stage is the competition currently at?"

Remembering something, Feng Yuan curiously asked, and Veronia gave Feng Yuan a peculiar look, saying,

"If I didn’t know you couldn’t do such a thing, I would have thought you found out the exact timing through some means."

"No way..."

Scratching the back of his head, Feng Yuan felt an omen of bad luck. Qi Chen, however, understood something and looked at Feng Yuan with a peculiar expression, saying,

"Just started?"

"It’s such a coincidence～"

Covering her face and chuckling, Veronia was delighted to see Feng Yuan’s awkward expression. Agunas flicked its tail and said,

"What strange luck."

Though Tamur didn’t say anything, it nodded slightly in agreement. Grabbing his hair, Feng Yuan was a bit troubled. He really hadn’t anticipated such a coincidence that as soon as they arrived in Linqiu City, the cooking competition started simultaneously.

Oh well, since it’s no big deal, he wouldn’t bother with it and just take it as good luck.

Deciding not to argue about it, Feng Yuan couldn’t care less.

Once everyone was ready, they headed to the cooking competition venue in the market district. Although Linqiu City wouldn’t interfere with their cooking competition, they didn’t do nothing. At least during the competition, the market district would allocate a separate area to serve as the competition venue. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

This venue only accommodates the stalls of cooking competition participants. Even if there are vacancies and other areas are fully booked, the market district managers wouldn’t let non-participants set up stalls in that area. Meanwhile, during the competition, the market district managers also waive the relevant fees for participants.

With most people coming and going in Linqiu City having considerable money on their hands, it wouldn’t be a loss for participants to come specifically for the competition.

At least, they could make a big profit even if they didn’t get a good ranking, unless their skills were subpar, then there’s nothing to be done.

Of course, participants generally have some sense of their abilities, so such an awkward situation is unlikely to occur.

Contrary to Feng Yuan’s expectations, although there were many people at the competition venue, it wasn’t as crowded as he imagined. Initially, Feng Yuan didn’t quite understand the situation, but after contemplating, he realized it probably had to do with Linqiu City’s uniqueness.

Due to its location deep within the Serene Forest Sea, except for Beastmasters attempting to gather resources in the Serene Forest Sea, few tourists choose this city as their travel destination.

It’s unavoidable, given the troublesome entry and exit and inherent dangers. After all, this city resides within the Serene Forest Sea, and should anything happen, prompt rescue would be challenging.

Because of this, even though it’s the National Day holiday, Linqiu City hadn’t seen much of an increase in tourists compared to usual.

This worked well for Feng Yuan, as he couldn’t endure long queues if there were too many people. Although there were still quite a few people, most were there for resources and money-making, so they wouldn’t spend too much time there.

"It’s just like the legend—a display of fresh spiritual medicine being used for on-the-spot creativity. Looking at this, it seems like the Serene Forest Sea’s recovery is going well."

Glancing at the small blackboards with dish names at the stalls, Feng Yuan smiled and commented. This competition’s major challenge lies in how to use the unknown, freshly gathered spiritual medicine for cooking.

Fixed recipes are useless here, testing the chef’s adaptability.

Based on the names and spiritual medicine labels in the recipes, Feng Yuan could roughly estimate the current state of the Serene Forest Sea.

Since the competition uses spiritual medicine harvested from the market district, the Serene Forest Sea’s yield directly influences these recipes.

Judging by the recipes, Feng Yuan estimated that the Serene Forest Sea had recovered to about eighty percent of its prime, with only minor issues remaining.

Given its distinction from regular resource sites and its designation as a hazardous area, its yield significantly surpasses standard outdoors locations. With diverse and unique forces there, Feng Yuan figured that during the period of resource depletion, the resources here merely stopped growing rather than experiencing decay or regression.

"Wow, everything looks delicious～"

Gazing over the menus, Feng Yuan said excitedly, turning to the group. Long Boduo seemed quite interested, joining Feng Yuan in discussing what to eat.

Though scores followed a total points system, during the competition, the organizers didn’t announce scores for each stall, avoiding a concentration of people on high-scoring stalls, which could skew overall ratings.

Even with counterbalance scoring, if scores were announced in real-time, it could lead to consumers unwilling to patiently sample fare merely purchasing based on score ranking.

This way, unless scored negatively, those stalls’ scores would continually rise, severely compromising the competition’s fairness.

Without score references, Feng Yuan and the others could only deduce based on the chefs’ cooking techniques. Of course, taste was also a crucial factor.

Like how Xiao Ji loved sweet foods but disliked bitterness. If Feng Yuan selected a chef skilled with bitter dishes, there would naturally be a problem.

"How about we split up? Since we all have different tastes, Long Boduo, shall we pair up?"

Turning to Qi Chen and the group, Feng Yuan suggested. With so many stalls, even Feng Yuan couldn’t claim to sample them all, so splitting up to choose what they liked would be a good strategy.

Moreover, they could share food they found tasty in the provided public dining area.

His proposal met no objections from Veronia and the others. Their tastes differed, and Tamur, lacking human currency, opted to join Veronia, to the surprise of Agunas and Feng Yuan.

Because Agunas had also invited it, but in the end, Tamur chose Veronia.

Maybe it viewed Veronia as closer compared to Agunas?