Chapter 37 Ready
Wen Shizhang also followed the crowd in and was surprised to find that the chef in the kitchen was actually a teenager in his teens. He was short in stature and his face still showed a hint of immaturity, but his techniques were so precise and skillful that they were even more refined and experienced than the old chefs who had been immersed in this craft for decades.

Seeing how young he is, I wonder how he learned it. Is it true that some people in the world are born with knowledge?

Soon the line was in front of him.

Wen Shizhang quickly followed the example of others and placed the bowl in his hand on the table.

Xu Qing lowered his head and took a look. The bowl in front of him was made of white porcelain. The porcelain was as white as jade, as clear as water, and as bright as a mirror. It was a top-quality porcelain that could only be enjoyed by high-ranking officials and nobles.

Xu Qing looked up again and saw a middle-aged man in elegant clothes. He was well-built and had an imposing manner just standing there casually. His face was elegant and gentle, and he was very approachable.

Xu Qing knew in his heart that the middle-aged man in front of him was the Governor of Sichuan, Wen Shizhang.

On the surface, Wen Shizhang seemed to be normal. However, if you looked closely, you could see that his eyes were dull and his gaze occasionally wandered left and right, making it difficult for him to concentrate.

And he also has some issues with his size.

Although in this era, being able to eat and be plump was a privilege reserved for the rich, obesity was a status symbol, meaning that the person had no worries about food and clothing, and that the oil and water in the food was so much that the body could not digest it all, so it could only accumulate as fat. It also meant that the person did not need to do heavy physical work or be exposed to the sun, so he could grow plump and white.

Therefore, obesity has a nice nickname - plumpness.

Wen Shizhang's body shape was considered too fat even among wealthy families.

From the perspective of the future, certain ingredients in food, such as sugar, salt and fat, will stimulate the brain. When people eat foods rich in these ingredients, the brain will produce a corresponding sense of pleasure, making people desire and rely on them.

Most chefs are very perceptive. Even if they do not have the knowledge of later generations, they can easily find out in their daily work and life what kind of food will make people happy and dependent, to the point that people can't stop eating it and even go crazy about it.

This is probably Wen Shizhang's current situation. Chang Lin controls his appetite by cooking large amounts of food that makes him feel pleasurable, cultivating his dependence on and desire for food, so that once he leaves this kind of food, he will have withdrawal symptoms like an addict, which is extremely painful.

Most of these foods have a clear side effect, which is obesity.

This is actually similar to what Xu Qing and Master Abei had expected at the beginning. After all, there are only a few methods that chefs use to control people, either through sensory stimulation or by adding banned drugs.

If it is a banned drug, the response is more complicated. First, you need to know what was added and then remove the toxins in a targeted manner.

Fortunately, Governor Wen did not look like he had taken any banned drugs.

Sensory stimulation is easy to explain. The simplest way is to cover it with another stimulation. In fact, Xu Qing has been doing something similar to Chang Lin these days, that is, cultivating Wen Shizhang's dependence and desire for food through the aroma of delicious food. At first, he will not feel anything strange, but gradually he will begin to be interested in this kind of food and desire to eat it. Once he loses it, he will immediately feel anxious.

Only by this means could Xu Qing fight back, and even cover up the traces left by Chang Lin on the Governor's taste buds. The taste buds that were only craving for the food made by Chang Lin gradually became interested in the food made by Xu Qing, and eventually this desire overwhelmed the other desire.

It stands to reason that Chang Lin's years of hard work, coupled with the special skills passed down from the dark culinary world, the power generated by the combination of the two is extraordinary and will not be broken so easily.

Xu Qing was able to do this because, on the one hand, he grasped the food that the governor wanted to eat but was not easy to eat, that is, Shanxi noodles. He kept teasing the governor with the food he longed to eat, and eventually made the governor's desire for noodles exceed his desire for Changlin's food.

On the other hand, or more importantly, it is Xu Qing's own strength and his understanding of the diners' minds. Because of this, the dishes he makes can touch the deepest desires of people.

Chang Lin constructs and piles up desires through the taste of food, just like locking people in a cage made of taste. The more food people eat, the stronger the cage will be, and the deeper people's desire for this kind of food will be.

Xu Qing uses the taste of food as an introduction to evoke the deepest desires in people's hearts. It's like he is holding a key to open the closed heart and release the beast called desire that is bound in the heart.

Now, Governor Wen was standing in front of him. Whether he could completely break the shackles cast by Chang Lin and release the beast called desire depended on this meal.

Xu Qing was serious and nervous inside, but he looked calm on the outside. He skillfully served a bowl of noodle soup, handed it to Wen Shizhang, and then didn't even look at him again.

His preliminary work has been completed, and all that is left is to wait.

Wen Shizhang took the soup bowl in his hand. The white porcelain bowl was filled with golden noodles. The color was golden, bright and transparent, and it emitted a soft light in the bowl. It was as if the sunlight was picked up, rolled into strips and put into the bowl.

Vegetables of different colors floated on the soup, some were light yellow, some were green, some were as red as flames, and some were dark green almost black. All the different vegetables were cut into thin strips and placed on the soup in an orderly manner, like a rainbow after the rain.

The light soup is like the sky washed by water, and the golden noodles are the sunshine after the rain, piercing through the dark sky and reflecting a brilliant rainbow.

The small noodle bowl is like a magic weapon in the hands of an immortal, which collects all the scenery that can only be seen in heaven into the bowl and transforms it into this bowl of noodle soup.

Wen Shizhang held the chopsticks in his hand for a moment, not daring to put them down, for fear of disturbing the stunning and beautiful scenery.

However, the aroma of the soup noodles teased him all the time, gently teasing his taste buds, pressing his hungry stomach, making his taste buds slightly numb in anticipation, and making his stomach continuously secrete excessive gastric juice in anticipation, constantly reminding him, stimulating him, and urging him.

Wen Shizhang swallowed hard, reached his chopsticks into the soup bowl with trembling hands, picked up the crystal clear golden noodles and put them into his mouth.

(End of this chapter)