AGN -Chapter 313 Three-Legged Golden Toad

As soon as Qin Huai left the dreamscape, a system notification sounded in his mind.

“Ding! Congratulations, player, you have discovered a new main quest: 【Refine and Perfect】. Please check the quest panel.”

Qin Huai: …

Right, after completing the previous main quest, a new one should normally trigger immediately. That’s how it had always been. But this time there was a delay. On top of that, Qin Huai had been too focused on the recently obtained memories of the spirit creatures and almost forgot there was a new main quest waiting.

Without any hesitation, he opened the game interface and checked the newly received quest.

Main Quest:

【Refine and Perfect】: As a rising pastry chef, how can you not have a signature pastry of your own? A B-rank signature pastry is too low, A-rank is not enough, A+ is just right. The player must create at least three different A+ rank pastries that can trigger buffs, achieving true refinement and perfection.

Quest Reward: 【A Dream Fragment of An Youyou】 (Claim: Yes/No)

Once again, the reward was a dream from An Youyou.

Qin Huai briefly studied the main quest and quickly realized it couldn’t be completed anytime soon.

He had previously made A+ rank pastries before—the unexpectedly excellent pastry eaten by Xu Cheng (though Qin Huai felt it was mostly Huang Shengli’s “unexpected performance”).

However, after accepting the quest, the progress still showed 0/3, which meant that previous “lucky breakthrough” creations did not count.

Qin Huai guessed that the A+ pastries required by this quest must be independently made by him alone. Assistance from others likely didn’t count.

That raised the difficulty significantly.

With his current skill level, he felt that only crab roe shaomai had a chance of occasionally reaching A+ quality. Unfortunately, crab roe shaomai was seasonal, and crab roe wasn’t fatty enough yet—it couldn’t be made right now.

As for the rest of the pastries, even something like the “Four Happiness Tangyuan” didn’t seem likely to reach A+ level.

Through this main quest, Qin Huai only saw four glowing words in front of him:

“Just practice more.”

Bold. Black. Underlined.

It felt like most of the system’s quests were flashing those exact words at him.

Qin Huai: …

He stopped thinking about the main quest. Thinking wouldn’t solve anything anyway. If it couldn’t be completed, it simply couldn’t. This was a technical issue, and technical problems could only be solved through practice—not imagination. If good food could be made just by dreaming, then chefs wouldn’t need years of hard training; they could just sleep more and dream dishes into existence.

Qin Huai scrolled down the game interface and opened the illustrated catalog to check the newly obtained recipe.

An Youyou’s entry had also changed.

Name: An Youyou
Species: Three-Legged Golden Toad
Status: Awakening
Memories: 1/?
Dishes: Vegetable Meat Bun (click for details)
Gift: None

Seeing that An Youyou’s species was actually displayed, Qin Huai froze for a moment.

Three-Legged Golden Toad—he knew this creature.

It often appeared in films and TV dramas, especially fantasy and mythological ones, usually as a villain’s wealth-hoarding pet: a huge golden toad that devoured money.

To be cautious, Qin Huai even searched for “Three-Legged Golden Toad” online.

It matched his memory. In legends, the Three-Legged Golden Toad was originally a demon. Later, it was subdued by Liu Hai, a disciple of Lü Dongbin, and used to help distribute wealth to the people. Because of this, it was barely considered an auspicious beast, symbolizing fortune and prosperity.

As for how such an auspicious beast ended up like this…

Qin Huai could only say that An Youyou’s mindset was probably different from other spirits. She also seemed quite capable in a fight. A golden toad like that should theoretically have decent defense even if it wasn’t offensive—but she simply preferred begging for food.

From the dream memories, she seemed quite successful at it too, with decent income.

Perhaps, in An Youyou’s worldview, begging and working were both just jobs—no difference in status. Earning money was what mattered.

After all, in her understanding, the only ways to earn two British pounds a day were either begging or robbery. And robbery wasn’t an option she could realistically choose.

Qin Huai planned to ask Luo Jun later why the Three-Legged Golden Toad liked begging so much—whether frog-type spirits had such traditions.

But for now, the priority was the recipe.

He opened it.

【Vegetable Meat Bun C-rank】

Creator: Jiang Weiguo

Recipe Details: Jiang Weiguo, a retired chef from a state-run restaurant, was once displaced by war in his youth and became a beggar. During that period, he made this humble pastry. Although to this day he still does not understand the mindset of the “boss” he followed while begging, he deeply appreciated the life-saving kindness. Whenever he cooked for the boss, he never slacked off—even with salted fish porridge or vegetable meat buns—always doing his best to ensure the boss ate happily and would stop persuading him to abandon cooking for begging. If consumed after nightfall, this dish grants double satisfaction and happiness. As the boss once said: one begs all day just to eat a delicious vegetable meat bun at night.

Daily Production Limit: (0/999)

Qin Huai: …

C-rank vegetable meat buns were easy to make. Jiang Weiguo’s skill level was something Qin Huai had seen clearly in the dream. His knife work far surpassed Qin Huai’s, and his seasoning wasn’t bad either. The only weakness was dough kneading—a very typical issue when a “red-cooking” chef suddenly tries white-cooking techniques.

Not to mention, the version of Jiang Weiguo in the memory looked only thirteen or fourteen years old—a teenager.

Cooking is a profession that requires experience and accumulation. No matter how talented a youth is, they can’t compare to a seasoned middle-aged chef.

Unless they’re truly abnormal, cheat-level geniuses.

The vegetable meat bun itself was only C-rank, but its buff effect was quite good: double happiness and satisfaction, extremely suitable for office workers. The recipe was simple, ingredients were cheap, output was high-speed—perfect for Yunzhong Cafeteria.

Most importantly, it didn’t require waking up early to sell it at night.

Qin Huai was generally very satisfied with this recipe.

It was just that…

Who exactly was supposed to survive making 999 baskets a day?

He had noticed a pattern: the production numbers of his new recipes were getting more and more outrageous. The previous tangerine peel tea had 1314x daily output, which already felt absurd—but it ended up becoming so popular that they couldn’t keep up with demand.

Then came the fruit pastry at 520 pieces a day. At first, he thought it was impossible—but during peak business days at Huang Ji, even more than that had been produced.

The 999 servings of angelica-and-pigeon soup were even more outrageous. At this point, that dish had basically become medicinal food. People didn’t eat it for taste anymore, but for buffs. Since returning to Yunzhong Cafeteria, he had been preparing a bowl for Chen Huihui every day, treating it as a small gesture from “Big Brother Qin.”

Children these days are under a lot of academic pressure—some therapeutic nourishment for the eyes didn’t seem like a bad idea.

As for why Qin Huai didn’t prepare a bowl for Qin Luo every day…

Qin Huai had full confidence in his younger sister. With Qin Luo’s current study intensity, there was absolutely no need for something like angelica and pigeon soup to nourish her eyes and calm her mind. Eye exercises would be more than enough.

If she really overused her eyes, it could only mean she was secretly playing on her phone—and probably hiding under the blanket late at night to do it.

The later recipes he had obtained, such as crab roe shaomai and “Three-Diced Bun,” both came in absurd quantities of 1111. Both were S-rank dishes. Qin Huai couldn’t even produce their buff effects, so he had never bothered worrying about the excessive output.

As for the rice cake soup (555 servings per day) and glutinous rice cakes (120 servings per day) from Qu Jing’s memories…

The former’s tutorial video was too terrifying, so Qin Huai didn’t dare watch it carefully and thus never really made it. The latter was too difficult to make at all, so he only studied it without practicing.

Other dishes like “Four Happiness Tangyuan” and green bean cake didn’t need to be listed one by one—otherwise it would just be unnecessary word padding.

Although previous dishes also came with high quantities, as long as they were doable, Qin Huai could basically meet the demand. The Three-Diced Bun also had an absurd output of 1111 servings (one serving equals one steamer basket), and Qin Huai didn’t feel much about it.

Only this vegetable meat bun—with its 999 daily output—felt like the system was deliberately targeting him.

It felt like the game system was criticizing him for slacking off lately, becoming lazy, no longer working as hard on pastries as when he was running a breakfast shop.

So it gave him an easy-to-make, high-yield bun with a decent buff effect, perfect for cafeteria sales, as a reminder: don’t forget your original intention, don’t forget you were once a breakfast chef.

Four Happiness Tangyuan was good, but simple steamed buns were still his true battlefield.

As for this, Qin Huai…

He didn’t even open the tutorial video. Instead, he took out his phone, found the group chat “A Warm and Loving Family,” and started a video call.

This was something Qin Huai had learned from Chen Huihong. Before meeting her, he had never imagined people could casually initiate video calls at any time of day. After meeting her, he had become very used to it.

Luo Jun picked up instantly.

On screen, Luo Jun was clearly sitting on his sofa at home, probably watching TV. Seeing that the caller was Qin Huai instead of Chen Huihong, he frowned and said irritably, “What are you learning from Chen Huihong? Of all things…”

“And why do I feel like you’re in a toilet?”

Qin Huai nodded. “I just finished looking at a dream memory. I’m in the cafeteria restroom stall.”

“Staff restroom. Our cafeteria staff have manners—no one comes in while someone’s using it.”

Luo Jun’s silence was deafening.

At that moment, Chen Huihong joined the call and said excitedly, “Dream memory? Whose dream? Old Wang’s? Did you finish his side quest? That bun thing?”

“Not Old Wang’s. It’s An Youyou’s.”

Chen Huihong and Luo Jun: ?

Luo Jun asked, “Who is An Youyou?”

Chen Huihong exclaimed, “So Xiao An is also a spirit creature?!”

Qin Huai then briefly explained the dream he had just seen.

While he was talking, Qu Jing and Chen Gong also joined the video call one after another. At this point, all the spirit-related members were present.

After he finished, before anyone else could speak, Qin Huai continued, “Mr. Luo, I remember you once said that Chef Jiang Weiming had been searching for his younger brother. Jiang Lixiang, also known as Jiang Weijin, is his second brother. Did he also have a younger brother named Jiang Weiguo?”

Even though Luo Jun had failed his tribulation and lost his divine powers, becoming an ordinary person—and sometimes even had poor memory—what he did remember, he never forgot.

He nodded. “His youngest brother was Jiang Weiguo. I remember what you’re talking about.”

“At that time, Jiang Weiguo was renting a house from a Chen family. That family’s main trade was carpentry. I was the one who introduced them when they moved to Shanghai, and that house was mine.”

“Back then, the Chen family was being conscripted due to war in Sichuan. Mrs. Chen had already learned that her parents had moved to Chongqing, and I was preparing to go there as well with Liu Tao. The Chen family wanted to relocate to avoid the draft.”

“In gratitude for Chef Jiang’s food and pastries during that time, I bought the Chen family’s house and farmland and gave them to him.”

“Liu Tao was close with Mrs. Chen, and she felt Shanghai was safer, so she asked me to help the Chen family obtain household registration in Shanghai. It was a small favor, so I had others handle it. I also happened to have a property in the suburbs that someone had given me, so I gave that to them as well.”

“As for food being delivered by farmers, I don’t know about that. After moving to Shanghai, the Chen family lost contact with us. It was only a brief acquaintance.”

“Judging by the timeline, the Jiang Weiguo you saw in the memory should indeed be Jiang Chef’s younger brother. The ages match.”

Chen Huihong sighed. “What a coincidence. Xiao Qin, you’ve basically collected the whole Jiang family’s recipes. From Jiang Chengde to his sons, so many of your dishes come from their lineage.”

Luo Jun added, “That’s normal. Jiang Chengde was a famous chef in Beiping. You spent years there back in the day—you should know his skills best. That era didn’t have culinary schools; skills were passed down from father to son or master to apprentice. Famous chefs were all related or connected somehow.”

“It’s normal that the high-tier recipes you’ve obtained come from the same lineage.”

Chen Huihong accepted this explanation.

Qin Huai nodded. “That does make sense.”

“When I heard Jiang Weiguo’s name in the dream, it already felt familiar. And when I saw his knife work, I was basically certain he was Jiang Chef’s younger brother. His grip, his cutting style—it’s exactly the same as Jiang Weiming’s. It’s clearly a single lineage.”

Luo Jun interrupted impatiently, “So what? You called us just to tell us you found Jiang Weiming’s brother? If you had seen this sixty years earlier, maybe I could’ve told him. But now? It’s been decades. The private investigator I hired still hasn’t found anything—completely useless.”

Qu Jing weakly defended him, “He’s actually pretty capable…”

“No, that’s not it,” Qin Huai quickly said. “The reason I called was to ask about the Three-Legged Golden Toad. I feel like it should be an auspicious beast, but why did An Youyou’s first life turn out like that…”

Chen Huihong immediately cut him off. “Because that’s exactly what Three-Legged Golden Toads are like!”

Qin Huai: ?

“In human terms, begging might seem undignified. But Three-Legged Golden Toads originally live in ponds. Their favorite thing is covering themselves in mud, basking in the sun, and collecting anything they think is valuable—gold, silver, treasures—and swallowing them. They also raise frog-like subordinates and line them up to sunbathe.”

“For them, begging is actually the most natural and comfortable profession.”

“And it’s also very easy for them to gather followers.”

“During tribulation, Three-Legged Golden Toads basically choose begging. They form gangs of beggars. An Youyou’s scale is actually small—mainly because the times are dangerous and development is hard.”

“In her first life, she was even shot dead by bandits. So her concerns are actually quite reasonable—ordinary spirits can’t dodge bullets.”

Qu Jing nodded. “That’s right. I’ve also heard of this. Frog-type spirits usually choose beggar life for their tribulation. They especially like transforming into half-grown boys or girls, dressed in rags for convenience.”

Chen Gong also agreed, “Indeed.”

Luo Jun said expressionlessly, “So that’s it? That was your question?”

Qin Huai: …

He looked at the group in silence, his head full of question marks.

Wait—

Are your spirits really this… diverse?