Chapter 6 Triggering Side Occupations

  "Gentlemen, this is the braised pork with fermented rice you ordered, please enjoy..."

  Zhu Xiaohua was wracking his brains, thinking of where to find such an unreliable job for Zhou Yi. A beautiful waitress walked over with a tray, placing a dish of thin slices of meat on the table. The aroma of wine and meat wafted up, making him sneeze uncontrollably.

  "Hmm? This dish looks quite appealing, and the taste seems pretty good too?"

  Looking at the dish of Jingbangcai with fragrant sauce and meat, both Zhou Yi and Zhu Xiaohua were somewhat surprised.

  Both of them are foodies at the level of "eating goods", Zhou Yi is a family heirloom, loving to eat is passed down from his grandfather's generation, it is said that three generations ago, his great-grandfather was also a famous chef; Zhu Xiaohua is not bad either, he has also been "tested by wine" and is the main eater of "proletarian revolutionary food", and has some knowledge of all eight major Chinese cuisines, and is an insider among insiders.

  "The old place" is actually a mid-range hotel, slightly better than a home-cooked restaurant. The two brothers met here, just for nostalgia's sake. To be honest, the chef's level here is just average. But when Zhu Xiaohua ordered earlier, she saw that today's special dish was actually the fragrant sauce meat from Beijing cuisine, which requires careful selection of ingredients and craftsmanship. She casually ordered a portion, not having high hopes.

  These days, many small hotels like to pretend to be big shots, and even a few second-rate chefs dare to put up the sign of "Man Han Quan Xi". Hoping to eat authentic Beijing cuisine here is about as difficult as finding a virgin in a red-light district.

  But as soon as the dish was served, both brothers were a bit stunned. 'Old place' isn't going to work anymore? A mid-range hotel actually hired a top-notch chef? This doesn't make sense!

  Let's not mention anything else, just look at the knife work. Each piece of meat is the same thickness and size, even a Japanese master chef specializing in sashimi can't do better than this; take another look at the sauce poured over the meat slices - it's translucent red, thick but not sticky, this must be made from top-quality sake lees. Just the selection, steaming, and brewing process of this sake lees is extremely complicated and meticulous, absolutely cannot be compared to low-grade sake that can be bought for three or five yuan per kilogram on the side of the road.

  "This time I managed to scrape by!"

  Zhu Xiaohua was the fastest to react, and with one swift motion of her chopsticks, she scooped up five or six pieces of meat, along with some shiny red sauce, and stuffed them into her mouth. As she chewed with her cheeks puffed out, she muttered indistinctly: "Delicious, delicious, it's so fragrant it's to die for..."

  "Let me try..."

  I Ching also moved his index finger swiftly, quickly picked up a piece and put it in his mouth, closed his eyes and savored it carefully...

  "Ding, in contact with high-end food, the system identifies it as level 8 standard, and can trigger a secondary occupation - culinary arts!"

  The Book of Changes didn't make him pause, triggering a side job? Then another system sound entered his ears: "Ding, side job triggered. According to the system program, the master can receive a new gift box, which may contain equipment, system currency, upgrade potential points, basic attribute distribution points..."

  "I didn't expect this system to be so comprehensive, and it even gives out a newbie gift box?"

  Overjoyed in his heart, he couldn't help but forget that he was still in a public place. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he quickly entered the system interface.

  Only to see at the bottom of the character attribute screen, a new option with two flashing words "Cooking" appeared; in addition, there is also a rectangular treasure chest floating in the middle of the screen, which should be the newbie gift box.

  As soon as the idea of Zhou Yi moved, the gift box disappeared with a flash of colorful light. The system prompt sounded again: "Acquired 100 basic attribute points, available for use at any time." Following that, in the item bar below the character attributes, a silk pouch marked with the Arabic numeral 100 appeared.

  "Basic attributes?"

  The attributes in the system are divided into two categories: basic attributes and practical attributes. Practical attributes refer to attack, defense, etc., while basic attributes include root bone, wisdom, strength, agility, and intelligence that can be increased by following the basic skill 'Linggen Xianti'.

  When the spiritual root and body of the fairy are upgraded from level 0 to level 1, these five basic attributes only increase by two points each, totaling only 10 points. However, the newbie gift box directly gave away 100 points! What concept is this? If we exclude the factor that the basic skills will amplify the basic attribute points in the later stage, it's equivalent to directly upgrading 10 levels.

  In the current living environment, even if Zhou Yi can perfectly maintain a leisurely life attitude, he can only get 2 upgrade potential points every day. That is to say, if you want to upgrade the Linggen Xianti from the current level 1 to level 2, it will take more than three months, and this newcomer gift box has saved him at least one to two years!

  "Culinary skills? This part-time job is great!"

  Compared to the 100 basic attribute points, the auxiliary profession of cooking is more interesting to Zhou Xing. The old Zhou family was a culinary heritage, and during the invasion of the Eight-Power Allied Forces, his great-grandfather was said to have even managed the imperial kitchen; by the time of his grandfather's generation, although they no longer worked as cooks, he was a famous gourmet in the 49 cities, and his father and he were both top-notch foodies. His second sister learned cooking skills that didn't resemble her family's style and went abroad to open a restaurant, where she similarly impressed the French people, who all wanted to give her a thumbs up and exclaim: "Good, ah!"

  With this origin, Zhou Yi thoughtlessly chose cooking as his secondary career. The system prompted again: "Secondary career cooking, a total of 9 levels, with two upgrade modes to choose from. Mode one: Gradual upgrade mode, the first level requires 2 points of root bone and 2 points of enlightenment, and each subsequent level will require more points. The advantage is that when the basic attribute points are low, you can quickly master this secondary career, and after upgrading, the basic attribute points remain unchanged, and can continue to accumulate. The disadvantage is that it consumes a lot of attribute points, such as upgrading to the 9th level of Great Round Cooking God, which requires accumulating a total of 100 points of root bone and 100 points of enlightenment!"

  "A part-time job requires this many basic attribute points?"

  Zhou Yi furrowed his brow.

  "2: One-time upgrade mode, directly upgrading cooking skills to full level, consuming 100 basic attribute points. This upgrade mode will completely consume the basic attribute points. If there is no extra point package, please be cautious when upgrading, as this will permanently lower the character's basic attributes..."

  The system has given out a second upgrade method. Zhou Yi understood that this second method consumes fewer basic attribute points, and can also directly upgrade the secondary occupation to the top level at once. However, there is a major drawback: if he doesn't receive the 100-point gift package from the newbie gift box and uses this method rashly, his character's basic attributes will be permanently reduced, and it cannot be reversed.

  However, this system is very considerate. When triggering the secondary occupation, it also gives away 100 attribute points, just like many games, which are intentionally helping players in the early stages.

  If it were someone else, they might still have to wait for another side job to be triggered before considering using the point package. After all, not everyone is interested in cooking. But Zhou Yi, this foodie, doesn't need to consider anything else. Just looking at Grandpa's share, this side job is also the first choice.

  After selecting a one-time repair for the secondary occupation, due to Zhou Xing's originally insufficient base attribute points, the system automatically called up 100 points from the item bar. Along with a flash of colorful light in front of his eyes, the character attribute screen's secondary occupation column displayed two red characters: "Cooking".

  Culinary Skills: Level 9, Great Round Perfect Cooking God, Knife Skills Level 9, Fire Control Level 9, Ingredient Identification Level 9, Ingredient Purification Level 9...

  Each item has a detailed explanation, such as the knife work category, which already includes red and white case knife work and carving skills; the fire control category includes various techniques such as stir-frying, boiling, steaming, etc. As for identifying ingredients, that's a must-have skill for chefs, but Zhou Yi's is even more subtle. If you give him a duck now, he can tell where it was born, where it lives, its actual residence, how old it is, its exercise level, whether it's in heat or not, whether it's a virgin or not, if it has any hidden diseases, and if it has any "packages" or not... This is called being thorough!

  Finally, the purification of this ingredient is an ability against heaven. With this skill, Zhou Yi can transform inferior ingredients into superior ones. For example, a fish that has been artificially fed with birth control pills can be transformed into a first-class wild fish after Zhou Yi uses this skill; another example is genetically modified soybeans, which can be transformed into pure biological and green healthy soybeans by Zhou Yi. With this heavenly reversal skill in hand, even if the chef only has a pile of smelly fish and rotten meat, he can still create a national banquet!

  However, the skill is against the sky, and the price to be paid is also astonishing. Using this skill, every time you process a catty of ingredients, 0.3 upgrade potential points are consumed, and according to the settings of the secondary occupation, Zhou Yi works hard to make a dish, and gets only 0.1 upgrade potential points, not only does he not earn money, but also loses out.

  So before getting a 5A living environment and fundamentally increasing the acquisition speed of upgrade potential points, this skill is still less used. Moreover, using this skill to purify ingredients can restore the color, aroma, and taste of top-grade ingredients and eliminate harmful components for the human body, but it cannot truly restore the nutritional composition of the ingredients, which is not as good as buying real top-grade ingredients.

  "Delicious, really delicious, refreshing! Eh? Old Three, why did you stop eating after just one piece? Are you trying to emulate Lei Feng's spirit and leave all this delicious food for your brother?"

  Zhu Xiaohua had almost finished a whole plate of fragrant dried meat before she realized that Zhou Yi was staring blankly into space.