Chapter 89: Truly Shameless

What Shen Mo admired most about Liu Yue was that she could watch everyone argue with great interest.

This argument finally ended because it was lunchtime. Liu Yue made the call: the subsidiary got seventy percent, the group headquarters got thirty.

At lunch, Shen Mo wanted to keep Qiang Ni around, but after confirming everything was fine, the guy went straight back to Baiyin Game Company.

In Qiang Ni's words, the food at his own place tasted better.

But Shen Mo felt the food at Liu Group was better.

Liu Group's head chef, Long Shu, had once taken part in the National Chef Competition.

Forty years ago.

Back then he contended for the Chef King title, but lost. In the end, the Chef King title was snatched away by a young lady from Jingcheng.

They say she was a descendant of an Imperial Chef.

Very impressive.

But Chef Long Shu was also very impressive.

Liu Group's chefs, as well as ninety percent of Jinghai's current chefs, were all taught by Long Shu.

Because Long Shu had once run a chef training class.

One had to admit, people with a skill can get by anywhere.

Take that skill far enough, and life will never be bad.

Take Long Shu. After placing in the National Chef Competition back then, he came back and ran a chef training class, made a fortune. In his old age, he lent his name to various hotels and restaurants and earned plenty. Slacking off here at Liu Group, he was doing quite well too.

Another reason Shen Mo stayed today was that Long Shu was making fried sauce noodles today.

The vegetables for the sauce were grown by Long Shu himself.

The old man had his own vegetable garden in the Jinghai suburbs, which he tended personally.

In Long Shu's words, if he sold these fried sauce noodles out there, a bowl would go for a hundred yuan.

But not everyone at Liu Group could eat them.

The best portion, the part Long Shu made himself, naturally went to Liu Yue, Shen Mo, and a group of executives.

Other employees ate what the other chefs made.

But the taste was all very good too. After all, the vegetables were the same. The only gap was the heat control.

Today's fried sauce noodles were Beijing-style, eaten with a layer of sauce and a layer of noodles.

Long Shu said he learned this back then from the Jingcheng young lady who took the Chef God title.

That person's noodle-making was second to none.

Fried sauce noodles were still not the most impressive thing. The real killer was plain broth noodles.

At the after-party when the Chef Competition ended back then, that person made a bowl of plain broth noodles everyone would never forget.

"A clean, fresh, yet nutritious texture. The smoothness of the noodles, the crystal-clear broth, paired with crisp baby bok choy—that flavor was absolutely divine."

Chatting after the meal, Long Shu's face was full of reminiscence.

HR Director Yan Jie couldn't help but tease: "Uncle Long, why don't you make us a bowl too so we can have a taste?"

Long Shu said self-deprecatingly, "I can't match that."

The operations manager laughed and said, "Uncle Long, in the movies they fight each other to the death over this stuff, all 'I'm the best in the world' attitude. How come when it comes to you, you're full of admiration?"

Long Shu shook his head and laughed, scolding lightly, "It's not all life-and-death fighting."

"Back then, when we took part in the Chef Competition, everyone tasted each other's food and scored it. As long as they weren't heartless, they'd give an honest evaluation."

"So who was high, who was low, who was strong, who was weak—it was all plain as day."

"Like that young lady who didn't want to leave her name—she was just explosively strong."

"A bowl of plain broth noodles could conquer everyone."

"In today's terms, she was the God of Heat."

Everyone laughed. But then Long Shu's face suddenly darkened: "But there were also the kind of life-and-death situations you mentioned."

"After the Chef Competition ended back then, some people who hadn't taken part said our group of contestants were all phonies, and they hurled all kinds of abuse at us."

"Back then, young as we were, we fired right back at them."

"Then both sides started fighting."

"They really did fight."

"Over a stubborn refusal to accept defeat, both sides arranged a private brawl. Several people were seriously injured."

Shen Mo was stunned and said in disbelief, "Old man, if they weren't convinced, why didn't they just enter the competition themselves?"

Long Shu smiled: "Because they lost when they entered the competition, so it led to physical contact."

Next, Long Shu told them about an unexpected turn of events.

Basically, it was a big battle between a group of people driven by jealousy—people who were skilled but had bad mindsets, performed poorly, lost the competition, and revealed their poor character—and a group of hot-blooded young people.

It was a real battle.

As the saying goes, with knives in hand, the killing intent rises.

Everyone was holding a cleaver.

Even the youngest was twenty-five, and that meant fifteen years of holding a cleaver, fifteen years of slaughtering chickens, ducks, geese, and fish in the kitchen. They were all people of absolute calm.

So after the brawl ended, some were injured and could never pick up a knife again, some went to prison.

It also destroyed the Chef Competition.

Of course, that wasn't what they told the public.

Long Shu said with a smile, "Our bunch can also be considered sinners. We destroyed a path of advancement for later generations of chefs."

"But time moves on, and we don't regret it."

This made Shen Mo unable to resist complaining inwardly.

"Nonsense, of course you lot won't regret it."

"A bunch of your peers got unlucky, and you lot became famous again. The chef competition got cancelled, so from now on culinary skill certification will be in the hands of you old-timers. You seized control of the promotion path in the chef industry in one fell swoop."

"Finally, dividing up territory—you went back to Jinghai, opened chef training classes, monopolized Jinghai's chef industry on the strength of your fame, and made a killing. Saying you'd regret it would be over the top, wouldn't it?"

Still, eating the noodles they had made, Shen Mo didn't have the heart to talk back to them to their faces.

Long Shu said one last line: "As the saying goes, if a man doesn't look out for himself, heaven and earth will destroy him."

"In those times, everyone just wanted to survive."

But a trace of dimness still flickered across Long Shu's expression.

A young manager listening nearby couldn't help asking, "Uncle, do you really not regret it?"

"In the dead of night, when dreams come back, don't you feel what you did back then was excessive?"

Everyone there was sharp enough to see through to the essence of Long Shu's words, just as Shen Mo had.

That final farewell banquet, cooked together by all the chefs, might well have been a victory feast.

A victory feast celebrating that this band of winners could watch the chef competition vanish, and return to their respective cities to pursue their own "careers."

After all, looking at history, in those days chef training classes and chef referral services were all money-makers.

Moreover, that whole batch of old men around Long Shu had all lived high off the hog—none of them were poor.

Even Long Shu coming to the Liu family was because Liu Yue's grandfather had invested in him back in the day; they were old friends, and he came here to retire.

But that didn't stop Long Shu from making money out there at all.

So everyone was genuinely curious—how could the eight words "if a man doesn't look out for himself, heaven and earth will destroy him" be spoken so simply and lightly?

Long Shu glanced at him and said, low and measured, "Not regretting means not regretting."

"If you, as the victor, the winner, still have to talk about regret, that's being precious about it—that's truly shameless."

(End of chapter)