The Game of Life

The Physics Department had a heavy coursework load and high difficulty, and Jiang Feng ran back and forth between school and the shop every day. Over time, even an iron body couldn’t take it.

What was crucial is that Jiang Feng would definitely inherit the Jiang Family’s generations-old tradition of cooking and become the main chef at the Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant.

Of course, dropping out was out of the question. That would never happen in this lifetime. After struggling through three years of high school, getting up earlier than chickens, and sleeping later than dogs, he had finally been admitted to UAL University. Only a fool would drop out!

UAL University didn’t strictly enforce attendance; as long as the final grades were high, teachers would usually turn a blind eye to low attendance and grant fairly good regular grades. Of course, if you could score full marks in every subject, the professors wouldn’t care even if you never attended class.

Last year, there was a legendary student who never attended classes, and ultimately got kicked out after failing eight courses in one term.

If Jiang Feng were to follow in the footsteps of that legendary student, the consequences…

Jiang Feng couldn’t bear to imagine what his fate would be under Mrs. Wang Xiulian’s ten-plus-pound heavy slap across his face.

After pondering for a long time, Jiang Feng felt he should progress gradually. Start with skipping a few classes on a small scale, then move on to missing more on a large scale, and finally achieve skipping all classes except for the final exams.

However—

Just a few days after the plan was implemented, even before he started missing classes on a large scale, Jiang Feng was invited to have a tea chat in the counselor’s office.

The counselor was a young teacher new to the job. Except for disseminating school notices in the class group and holding a class meeting at the beginning and end of the term, he was virtually nonexistent in daily life.

It was Jiang Feng’s first time being invited by a teacher to have a tea chat in the office, and he was a bit nervous.

"Jiang Feng, recently, the attendance monitor reported to me that your attendance rate isn’t very high,” the counselor began with a smile as soon as Jiang Feng sat down.

"Um, that, I…”

"We all know your family has difficulties, which can be resolved together. There are many ways, but neglecting your studies and skipping classes to work, or to help out in the shop, might be penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

“Teacher, I’m not…”

"For family hardships, you can apply for scholarships; don’t be too proud to ask for help, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You might think what you learn in school is not important, so you skip classes, but if you fail or get expelled like the student in the previous class, you’ll end up losing far more than you gain. Once you leave school, you’ll realize that what the teachers have taught you is very precious. If you don’t appreciate it now, it will be too late for regrets later.”

“I…”

"Hardships in life are temporary. Once you graduate, you’ll understand that these weren’t a big deal. If you don’t learn what’s needed now, the future…” The counselor, true to his political education background, spoke earnestly to Jiang Feng for a long time without giving him a chance to interject. In the end, he finally gave Jiang Feng a chance to speak up:

“Say what you want to say.”

“Teacher, I… I… actually, I’ve already self-studied all of this semester’s courses during the summer vacation, and I felt I was ready, that’s why…” Jiang Feng had already upgraded his mathematics to intermediate level with experience points before the system update. He was confident that not attending classes wouldn’t be an issue and that he could easily handle the final exams with a few days of studying.

"You’ve finished self-studying?” The counselor looked at him with a smile that was not quite a smile.

“If I remember correctly, your grades in electromagnetism and advanced mathematics last semester were because the teachers let you pass by being lenient. Self-studying—”

The counselor didn’t finish his statement in an absolute way. He himself was a product of UAL University, having completed his bachelor’s and master’s before staying on as faculty. He had seen his fair share of dark horses who suddenly excelled without prior notice. If Jiang Feng could successfully complete his studies without attending classes, the counselor had nothing to preach about.

Next door, at the School of Economics and Management, there was a student who was an entrepreneur with a net worth close to ten million and barely spent any time at school. He failed five courses at the end of last year, yet the professors just turned a blind eye and let him pass when they went a bit easy on him in the makeup exams.

If you want to skip classes, that’s fine, but you need to have the skills to back it up.

In the end, the counselor left it up to Jiang Feng to decide for himself.

Jiang Feng thanked the counselor and was about to leave the office when he suddenly heard the counselor say leisurely.

"Jiang Feng, Professor Li is very concerned about you, so don’t let him down.” Turning back, Jiang Feng saw the counselor looking down at his phone, as if the words just spoken hadn’t come from him.

Jiang Feng was left speechless.

Who could have imagined that our counselor was a bit of a drama king?

As for Mrs. Wang Xiulian and Mr. Jiang Jiankang, their combined education didn’t amount to one college degree, so they had no concept of university courses. Their understanding of university life was based on hearsay over the years. The belief that if you study hard in high school, university will be easy and you’ll just play every day without any classes.

They didn’t raise any objections to Jiang Feng suddenly having a lot of free time and staying in the shop all day.

After being invited for a tea chat by the counselor, Jiang Feng went to explain his situation to Professor Li. After writing a test paper in front of Professor Li, Jiang Feng was given permission to skip classes. He then replicated this approach with other teachers, impressing each one and bypassing the large-scale class-skipping phase to achieve the accomplishment of skipping all classes.

Everyone initially thought Jiang Feng was neglecting his studies due to his family’s huge debt, simply skipping classes to help with the family business. However, the young Mr. Wang, while joking with the students, took Jiang Feng as an example and spoke out about his permission to skip classes, making Jiang Feng a well-known figure in the Physics Department.

The downside was that Jiang Feng noticed Wang Hao’s gaze becoming strange whenever he looked at him.

"Cough cough, if you have something to say, just say it.” After being stared at by Wang Hao’s odd gaze for four days, Jiang Feng finally couldn’t bear it any longer and spoke up.

"Feng, you’ve been off this semester!” Wang Hao said thoughtfully.

"Not at all, I think I’m pretty normal!” Jiang Feng laughed it off.

"This semester it’s like you’ve received guidance from a master. You’ve been transformed, going from loser to winner,” Wang Hao analyzed calmly.

“Family troubles, exquisite cooking skills, academia possessed, achieving fame overnight. You’re practically the template for a city novel’s protagonist!”

Jiang Feng:

"Those family troubles happened all because of the rumours you spread. Now when I walk outside, people look at me as if they’re looking at an inspirational movie hero. And those stories about me storming in and out of the counselor’s office seven times, dueling with Professor Li, and slashing through five sets of papers from professors—are they all something you made up and spread around?” Jiang Feng turned the tables and interrogated him.

"Artistic license, artistic license,” Wang Hao said with a shameless smile, refusing to mention anything about the protagonist template.

"Jiang Feng, your spicy pork over rice is ready!” Ji Yue called out from outside.

"I don’t have time to chat, I’ve got cooking to do.” Jiang Feng put on an apron and grabbed the ingredients.

A few days ago, Jiang Jiankang found a meat supplier with exceptionally good quality meat, but the price couldn’t be negotiated down. He and Mrs. Wang Xiulian were running to the breeding base and supplier every day to negotiate, leaving the restaurant’s business in the hands of Jiang Feng.

After topping the steaming rice with the freshly stir-fried spicy pork, Wang Hao took the plate to serve, and just as Jiang Feng was about to take off his apron, he heard the long-missed system notification sound.

"Ding, game update complete.”

Jiang Feng was nearly moved to tears.

The update had taken over a month; from trading a light jacket for a sweater, and then layering a cotton-padded coat over that, from sunny skies to howling cold winds, the update progress bar hadn’t budged an inch in its own sweet time. Every time he checked the progress bar for the game update, Jiang Feng wondered if it had gotten stuck, especially in the past few days when it was just a tiny bit shy of being full, only for the completion to be dragged out to now.

Eager to open his attribute panel, he found a new tab for achievements. Achievement: Bitter Tears (slight increase in Seasoning skill when making wontons)

Title: None

Item: [A Piece of Li Mingyi’s Memory]

Recipe: Pure Meat Wontons (click for details)

Evaluation: An utterly ordinary novice

Pure meat wontons?

Bitter tears?

What were all these things?

When he clicked on the pure meat wontons, Jiang Feng was surprised to find that the recipe even came with pictures—though the picture he saw wasn’t very promising; it was a bowl of wontons with most of them spilled out, and the bowl itself was chipped and broken.

Wait, why does this bowl of wontons look so familiar?

[Pure Meat Wontons Grade FJ:

Creator: Wang Shitou

Details of the dish: Wontons that are terrible in terms of ingredients, cooking techniques, and Seasoning, but they are precious in the memories of Jiang Huiqin; consuming them can invoke the most bitter memories of one’s youth.

Can be made 3 times a day. (0/3)

Following are the specific instructions for making the wontons, complete with a video tutorial—quite thoughtful indeed.

However…

Ingredients, technique, and Seasoning all turned out terrible; not to mention, it would evoke the most bitter memories. Serving this to customers could get your restaurant smashed, right?

It would take a serious grudge to feed this to someone!

Jiang Feng stared at the recipe, Jost in thought.

"Jiang Feng, Jiang Feng!” Ji Yue called out a few times from outside but got no response, so she ran straight into the kitchen,

“Why are you staring into space? I need two servings of fish-fragrant pork slivers, one serving of stir-fried eggs with chives, and three plates of stir-fried noodles with pork slivers. Make the fish-fragrant pork slivers spicier, the chives well-done, and one plate of noodles without spring onions; the other two just mildly spicy.”

"Oh, I’m on it,” Jiang Feng snapped out of his daze and went to get the ingredients.

Mr. Jiang Jianguo, please come back soon—being the main cook at Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant is really tiring!

Jiang Feng bemoaned in his heart after a long day of stir-frying..