Pokémon: Hard work pays off, moves can be upgraded infinitely.

After leaving the school gate, Mu Yun rode a shared electric scooter to the Asia-Europe Supermarket.

As the largest shopping mall in Songjiang City, it has all kinds of goods, including the ingredients that Muyun needs to make desserts.

After buying everything, Mu Yun returned home.

As soon as Mu Yun arrived home, he received a message from Liu Jianhao saying that he had already set off with the groceries he had bought and would arrive in about half an hour.

During this time, Mu Yun quickly made the jasmine melon cheese mochi fries that Nut Dumbbell wanted to eat.

The process wasn't complicated; the main thing was that steaming the mochi and cooling the filling took some time. While they were doing that, Mu Yun used the remaining materials from her storage space to make some other snacks.

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[Ding! The host has prepared some carefully prepared and varied snacks. Cooking skill experience points +3!]

【厨艺（LV2，998/1000）→厨艺（LV3，1/10000）】

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[Ding! Through persistent efforts, the host's skill—Cooking—has broken through to LV3!]

[Cooking Skill (LV3, 1/10000): Dish deliciousness +200%, a small chance for the diner to trigger a culinary illusion (a brief, magical hallucination caused by the dish's exceptional deliciousness), arm strength +50%, ingredient flavor enhancement (active).]

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As the system notification sounded, a warm current flowed through the muscles and bones of his arms, and then a clear current slowly flowed through his brain, bringing with it a wealth of knowledge about knife skills, cooking time, and seasoning.

Even without the added bonus of this entry, he is still an elite among chefs and can be considered a true master chef.

After the knowledge was loaded, Mu Yun focused his attention on the effects of the LV3 cooking skill attribute.

"The deliciousness has doubled!"

The first thing you see is still the dish's deliciousness rating, and its effect is simple and straightforward: it increases the taste by another 100%.

With three times the deliciousness, even Pokémon that don't like certain flavors might be unconsciously drawn to this taste.

Hmm, I've decided. I'll give the mochi fries to Bofeng to try later and see if he, who doesn't like sweets, will like them.

After "Deliciousness," the next item is "Gourmet Illusion," where the probability of triggering it has decreased from "extremely small" to "tiny." While this does seem like an improvement, the probability is still very low.

Unless you're an unlucky guy like Zhao Hailong whose taste buds have been tortured, the probability of triggering a culinary illusion is too low.

After the food illusion, the effect is a 50% increase in arm strength, which is probably due to the warm current flowing through the arms earlier.

Mu Yun wasn't too surprised by this entry. A chef, after all, flips woks and cuts vegetables, so it's normal for him to have superhuman arm strength.

Mu Yun's attention was mainly focused on the last newly added term - enhancing the flavor of ingredients!

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[Enhancing Ingredient Freshness: An active skill that consumes a certain amount of stamina to bring ingredients to their optimal freshness for consumption.]

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It seems to be a simple term for increasing the freshness of ingredients.

It feels somewhat useless.

Thanks to advancements in modern technology, most ingredients are quite fresh. Even if the freshness is slightly lacking, the presence of relevant information makes it less of a problem.

After all, cooking isn't like making energy blocks; stale berries will greatly affect the quality of the energy blocks...

Wait a minute, do tree fruits count as food ingredients?!

Although most tree fruits are not suitable for humans to eat on their own due to their extremely strong taste, tree fruit cakes can be made edible by humans after multiple processing steps.

"But it's no use. All my tree fruits were purchased from the system store, and the loaded products are the freshest tree fruits I saw in the Asia-Europe Supermarket. The quality is absolutely fine..."

The more Mu Yun thought about it, the less useful this new entry seemed.

"Forget it, there are so many skill attributes, it's normal to not be able to use them. As long as I have the Deliciousness rating, it doesn't matter whether the other attributes are useful or not." Soon, Mu Yun figured it out and stopped worrying about it.

"Knock knock knock~~"

Just then, there was a rhythmic knocking at the door.

Mu Yun strode forward and opened the door. The person standing in front of him was none other than Liu Jianhao, who was carrying a large number of bags and packages.

At a glance, the large bags contained various kinds of fresh meat, while the small bags contained various ingredients that had fallen from the elves.

For example, Moo Moo Milk, Three Bees Honey, Juice from Pot Pot Brew, Eggs from Cherry Eggs, and Green Onions from Farfetch'd Duck...

These are all legally renewable, but very expensive elf ingredients.

For example, the eggs of the Chansey are only the size of ostrich eggs, and each one costs a full 1000 Alliance Coins. Mu Yun wouldn't even dare to look at ingredients priced like that.

He wouldn't even give up his points to redeem them!

The cheapest of all the ingredients for this dish is the scallion from the green onion duck.

Of course, the scallions here are not the scallions that Farfetch'd uses for fighting, but rather the scallions that Farfetch'd cultivates himself. Although the taste is not as good as Farfetch'd's scallions, they are legal, compliant, and can be continuously recycled.

Clearly, Liu Jianhao was taking advantage of the opportunity of visiting for a meal to bring him some good things that he wouldn't normally be able to get his hands on.

To be honest, if the genders were reversed, this would be a typical romance plot in Japanese light novels.

Unfortunately, they were both men.

"Brother Yun, I bought some pork, beef, lamb, chicken, duck and goose. You can decide how to cook them. I'll pack up the leftovers and take them home to reheat tomorrow morning!" Liu Jianhao walked into the living room, grinning with his big teeth.

Despite his slender appearance, Liu Jianhao is a staunch carnivore.

I just don't know where all that meat went.

"Alright, my cooking skills have improved recently, I'll let you have a good taste tonight!" Mu Yun said with a smile as he took the ingredients from Liu Jianhao.

"You can still improve?" Liu Jianhao paused, looked Mu Yun up and down, and said, "Brother Yun, are you really not some unknown culinary prodigy?"

"If that's the case, I'll stew you first," Mu Yun said casually without turning his head.

"No way, Brother Yun, I'm a total fitness loser, lots of fat and little muscle, I don't taste good. If you're going to stew me, I suggest you stew Zhao Hailong first. That guy's meat is probably like a wild black boar, lots of muscle, it'll definitely be chewy!" Liu Jianhao analyzed seriously.

"I suggest you tell Uncle Ba this; he's an expert in this area." After sorting and putting away the ingredients, Mu Yun turned around and flashed him a set of neat teeth.

(Mr. Mads Mikkelsen, a master of human body cuisine.)

"Then forget it. I'm afraid Uncle Ba will develop feelings for me." Liu Jianhao crossed his arms, his body trembling slightly.

"Alright, go wait in the living room. Let Growlithe and Blue out too, we'll all eat together at the table later." There's no rule in his house that Pokémon can't be on the table.

"OK!"

Liu Jianhao made a gesture, then took a large bottle of iced tea from the refrigerator and walked into the living room.

This wasn't his first time visiting Mu Yun's home, so naturally he wouldn't wander around like a curious child.

Besides, there's really nothing much to see in a single man's home.

That's what Liu Jianhao thinks, but others might not.

Outside Mu Yun's house, on a tall tree, a figure about the same height as an adult male stood quietly, his deep eyes gazing across the space at the kitchen.

To be precise, it was Mu Yun staring at the kitchen where he was cooking.

Soon, a regretful female voice came from the shadows: "What? So they weren't secretly dating after all. What a pity!"

If Liu Jianhao were here, he would definitely recognize this figure and the voice coming from the monitor hanging around the figure's neck.

It was none other than his own sister, Liu Yingying, who served as an elf investigator, and her elf—the Sniper Tree Owl!

In the afternoon, Liu Yingying saw that Liu Jianhao had asked her for leave and then excitedly went to the Asia-Europe Supermarket to buy a lot of ingredients. She thought he was going to secretly have a love kitchen activity with his girlfriend over the weekend, such as wearing an air apron, and her curiosity was piqued.

After all, she knew her younger brother's appearance very well, and she also knew that he was determined to find a girl who was even prettier than him.

So Liu Yingying had the sniper tree owl follow her all the way, preparing to secretly see how beautiful her younger brother's girlfriend was.

It turns out I just came to my brother's house for a free meal, which is really disappointing.

Although the boy was quite handsome, she knew her own brother's sexual orientation.

She just didn't expect that her brother would be so happy just from coming over for a meal. It seems he's made some good friends in high school. It's heartening to see how much he's grown up.

However, as relieved as she was, Liu Yingying's interest in monitoring her brother diminished greatly when she saw that there was no more fun to watch, so she prepared to send the sniper owl home.

However, after Liu Yingying called out twice, the sniper tree owl did not react. Instead, it stared intently at the kitchen, or more precisely, at the ventilation duct that connected to the kitchen.

As Liu Yingying's ace after joining the patrol department and becoming an elf investigator, the Deviljho was specially trained with hearing, sight, and smell.

Even though they were several hundred meters apart, the sniper owl could still smell a faint fragrance in the drifting air.

It was very faint, yet incredibly alluring, as if someone were tickling his heart.

Could it be that there are soldiers here?!

No, for the safety of my master's younger brother, I, the Tree Owl, must bravely step forward and be the first to taste—no, I mean, to test it!

"Whoosh~! Whoosh whoosh~!"

The sniper owl emitted a rhythmic chirping, a coded signal between him and Liu Yingying, indicating that they had made a discovery and requested permission to proceed.

"?"

On the other side, Liu Yingying, who had been watching the monitor the whole time, looked puzzled.

No, what did you suddenly discover?

How come I didn't see it?