Who gave this heretical practitioner permission to cook?

Chapter 42 Convenience Store Showdown: God's Nose vs. a Bowl of Plain Noodles
[This round's Hell's Kitchen revival match theme: Convenience Store]

[Introduction: Convenience stores are small retail stores located near residential areas, prioritizing customer convenience and offering self-service shopping options. Common items found in convenience stores include "basic seasonings," "packaged bread," "convenient instant food," "spicy cooked food," and "snacks."]

Thanks to the widespread availability of food delivery services, people can purchase the goods they need from convenience stores without leaving home. However, convenience stores are not wet markets or supermarkets. You won't find fresh vegetables, meat, or eggs there, let alone seafood, or even frozen goods.

Under such extreme constraints, what kind of dishes can these chefs, already fallen into hell, create using their ingenuity?

[Competition Requirements: Within a limited time, contestants must enter a convenience store, select the necessary ingredients, and then use them to create a dish that will impress the judges.]

Servings: 10.

[Convenience store purchase time: 3 minutes (excluding cooking time)]

Preparation time: 2 hours

Final number of resurrected: ?

[Judges' scoring criteria: Ten judges will evaluate the contestants' dishes based on three aspects: "creativity," "presentation," and "taste," and will rate them as "delicious" or "unpalatable." A chef will be revived if more than half of the dishes are rated as delicious.]

[Note: The judges will taste the dishes in the order they are completed. Once the final number of qualified contestants is reached, the revival competition will end early. So please pay attention to the time!]

Looking at the competition rules displayed on the surrounding screens, everyone paused for a moment.

"Convenience Store Showdown"?
Many contestants, including the chefs, were stunned when they heard this word.

For them, who are used to fresh ingredients, the ingredients in convenience stores are completely restrictive. Let alone fresh meat, you can't even find a cabbage as a side dish.

In this situation, only by using some of the food mixed in with the semi-finished products can one barely make up the basic ingredients for a dish.

What's even more frustrating is that the production team clearly wasn't going to let them off easily. They not only concealed the number of people who would be resurrected, but also added restrictions to the final judging requirements.

The official competition time is 2 hours, but according to the rules, it is basically impossible to finish in the end. The faster the food is served, the more spots are left. But conversely, the faster the food is served, the less time they have to prepare it. Finding a balance between the two is a kind of wisdom.

Yang Yanbin sighed as he looked at the big screen.

"Self-selection, self-restraint, self-breakthrough—the production team is really playing tricks!"

Jin Hongnan, standing to the side, looked quite serious. He couldn't remember the last time he had touched these snacks, and now he was suddenly asked to choose from them, which was indeed a bit difficult.

Xiaohua was already racing against time to create a dish in her mind. She didn't want to be the first, nor did she want to be the last. She felt that the contestants in the middle of the time frame should have an advantage.

Fish Fairy felt he could only get 8.6 points this game because he was really a bit dead (1.4). There were no live fish in the convenience store, so he was basically given a huge debuff at the start.

The innocent little chili pepper's eyes lit up, as if she had thought of a particularly suitable dish.

After understanding the rules, Chen Xiaodong shifted his gaze from the surrounding screens to the large screen, where he saw Xia Ming sitting at the dining table. He clenched his fist imperceptibly.

As the youngest chef in history to receive the "Black Pearl" award, he has a rebellious heart hidden beneath his seemingly gentle exterior. He has a certain obsession with the dishes he makes, which he does not show in front of people of higher status, but is often on full display in front of people of lower status.

Before the team competition, he looked at the Sichuan-Chongqing Ice and Fire Chef like a chick on the roadside. He didn't think his team had any chance of failing. As the head chef of the Black Pearl, at his age, he certainly had the right to be so dismissive.

But Xia Ming delivered a crushing slap in the face with a score of 91:9. An unrated chef, who believed he hadn't made any mistakes, had defeated him in the 100-person cooking competition. For someone who had been sailing smoothly all along, this was simply unacceptable. He had been holding a grudge about it in the losers' lounge, and now seeing Xia Ming back on the judging panel, his anger was simply uncontrollable.

"Sichuan-Chongqing Ice and Fire Chef, you just wait! I will definitely come back for you, and then I'll show you what Black Pearl-level strength is!"

Seeing Chen Xiaodong's expression, Yang Yanbin realized that the unfortunate kid was really going after Xia Ming.

It's understandable. After all, it's a virtue for a chef to stick to their principles, especially for a talented chef like Chen Xiaodong who's not even 26 yet. Being hit so hard like that is bound to make him resentful. To be fair, if we go back 5 years, he wouldn't have been much better off than Chen Xiaodong.

But now his mindset is much better. The defeat against Xia Ming's team did not make him feel humiliated. On the contrary, after figuring out Xia Ming's methods, he felt a sense of enlightenment.

"Now that things have come to this, the best course of action is to cook properly. I imagine everyone's first thought is to make noodles or rice noodles. How about I make a dessert?"

Just as he had this thought, the large metal cabinet in front of him suddenly burst open, revealing six familiar convenience stores.

"You have 5 minutes to look at the items in the convenience store, and then you have 3 minutes to choose what you need."

"Please note that these six convenience stores belong to six different chain brands, so the products inside are not exactly the same. When picking up your order, you can check if the item you want is available at other convenience stores."

"We would also like to express our gratitude to 'Meiyijia,' '7 Days,' 'FamilyMart,' and 'Luo Senlina' for their sponsorship of our products at 'Kangaroo Flash Delivery' convenience stores."

The audience completely ignored the host's final advertising remarks. At that moment, they were circling around several convenience stores outside the white line, hoping to find their favorite ingredients.
While everyone in Hell's Kitchen was desperately trying to gain an advantage, in the banquet hall, gentle singing and bright tableware created a scene of paradise completely different from hell.

The bald cook glanced at the group of chefs, mostly fathers and grandfathers, on his left, then turned to look at Xia Ming.

"Cook, what do you think we'll get to eat today?"

Xia Ming glanced at the dark, sealed-off house next to him and rubbed his nose.

It should be noodle soup.

"How did you know!"

The bald cook sniffed curiously, but he didn't seem to smell anything else.

Looking at the bald cook, Xia Ming glanced around again and found that only a few of the chefs looked enlightened, while the others still looked expectant.

At this moment, he was finally completely certain that his sense of smell far surpassed that of normal people in this city; before, he had thought it was just that the contestants were too weak.

It now appears that even among chefs who have passed advanced exams, there are still individual differences in innate talent.

"This nose is even more sensitive than when I was in the Nine Provinces Continent. If the Blood Gate were to open to the olfactory center, it would become a deadly weapon. According to the description in the comics I remember, it should be somewhat similar to the 'Nose of God.'"

"When I was selecting ingredients in the mainland, I drew a little blood from each piece of fresh meat. It turned out to be much fresher than the meat the production team gave me last time. After the banquet, I'll go back and try to open the second blood gate."

As Xia Ming was thinking about his return, the black building next to him opened, and two beautiful waitresses came out. On the cart they were pushing were several small bowls. A graduate student from the banquet who was standing nearby glanced into the bowls and raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Yangchun noodles?"

(End of this chapter)