AGN -Chapter 344 Boss Shi

Cao Guixiang was still preparing the stuffed yellow croaker. The fish had already been air-dried in advance, and the shark fin had been soaked and prepped earlier as well, but the ham, sea cucumber, and abalone were all being sliced and handled on the spot.

Qin Huai felt that Cao Guixiang was doing this on purpose—deliberately not preparing these ingredients beforehand, just so she could slice and dice them in front of him and let him see what higher-level knife skills looked like.

How should he put it? Plain and unadorned, yet extremely difficult.

When cutting things like shredded radish or radish slices—ingredients that are relatively simple and more suitable for practice—knife work can look flashy. You can go very fast, so fast it leaves afterimages, or make exaggerated movements as if the next second a close-up shot will zoom in on the blade.

But Cao Guixiang didn’t do that when handling sea cucumber, abalone, and ham. Her cuts weren’t fast—if anything, they were a bit unhurried. The force wasn’t heavy either; everything felt gentle and soft, almost like a beginner who had just learned to cut vegetables and didn’t quite dare to apply pressure, making every movement light, slow, and cautious.

Of course, there was no hesitation in Cao Guixiang herself. She calmly and gently processed all the ingredients, arranging them neatly together. On closer inspection, every shred she cut was evenly thin and uniform, and every diced piece looked as though it had come from the same mold.

Knife skills that nourish silently, like spring rain.

After finishing the ingredients, Cao Guixiang began mincing the shrimp into a paste. Her movements were still slow and gentle, though this time the force of the knife was stronger, producing a steady, rhythmic chopping sound against the cutting board.

She spoke at just the right moment:

“Cutting should pursue speed, but not speed alone.”

“When you were cutting radish before, I told you to go faster because you hadn’t even reached the beginner stage yet. At that point, what you need is speed, accuracy, and decisiveness. You need lots of practice to build familiarity, to bring your speed up, to reach the point where it feels natural.”

“Of course, you’ve now entered the beginner stage, but you still need to practice speed. Being a beginner doesn’t mean you understand—it just means you can start building your foundation. As for how long that foundation takes, even I can’t say.”

“Once your basics are solid and you’ve handled all kinds of ingredients, you can start challenging more difficult tasks. Like deboning a whole chicken, vegetable carving, or even dishes like Wensi tofu that exist purely to showcase knife skills—you’ll need to learn to slow down.”

“For dishes like those, you must be slow—not just in movement, but in mindset. Haste makes waste. If you’re impatient, you can’t cook well. Slow doesn’t mean unskilled; often, it means meticulous.”

“That’s also why many masters don’t like impatient apprentices. It’s not that impatience is inherently bad, but once it becomes a habit, it leads to mistakes. And those who seem slow and mild don’t necessarily lack intelligence—they may simply be more careful and detail-oriented.”

Hearing this, Qin Huai suddenly thought of Gu Li.

Gu Li cooked very slowly—sometimes so slowly that people around him couldn’t stand watching, even Tan Wei’an found it hard to tolerate. But no matter who urged him, Gu Li always maintained that slow pace. His cooking rarely had small mistakes, but often had bigger ones.

This wasn’t criticism. Many big mistakes came from lack of skill and were unavoidable. But small mistakes could be avoided, and within his ability, Gu Li avoided every minor issue he could. What remained were purely limitations of skill.

Qin Huai asked thoughtfully, “Master, then when I cut ingredients or make dim sum in the future, should I slow down a bit?”

Cao Guixiang shook her head while seasoning and mixing the shrimp paste:

“You’re not an impatient person. You don’t need to change your natural habits just for the sake of being ‘better.’ Everyone has their own personality and style. No one is perfect—but when your skill reaches a high enough level, you become perfect.”

“Right now your knife skills are just at the beginner level, so naturally there are many flaws. But if your knife skills reach the pinnacle, even if you have strange habits or minor quirks, people will just call it the style of a master.”

“Back when I worked as a chef in Qiu County, my boss praised me like that every day,” she said, heating oil and beginning to fry shrimp heads, slowly extracting the flavor over low heat while pressing them with a ladle. “Even when I messed up or forgot an ingredient, the boss would ask if I had invented a new recipe.”

Qin Huai was stunned. “That works too?”

Cao Guixiang multitasked effortlessly—chatting while never slowing her hands, frying scallions and shrimp heads, stir-frying ingredients, constantly moving the spatula, yet keeping the same relaxed expression as if she were just talking.

“Of course. What time do you think I was a chef? Qiu County was just a small county—how abundant could supplies be? You eat what’s available locally. Seafood wasn’t lacking, but vegetables and seasonings weren’t always available every day. Forget ginseng, deer antler, or bear paw… In my early years there, we could still cook bear paw dishes, but sometimes even high-quality millet was hard to find.”

“My boss back then was a good man—generous too. My salary and profit share were both high. At that time, Chiyuan—my son—would come to the restaurant every day after school and do his homework at the counter. The boss never minded. Every time he came, he’d bring snacks for him—sunflower seeds, preserved plums, candy. Later, when Old Zhang and I bought a house in the city, the boss even helped us financially. As a person, he was impeccable.”

“Just not very capable. Back then several restaurants tried to poach me—they even stuffed cash envelopes into mine and Old Zhang’s hands, and my boss didn’t notice a thing.”

“When competitors sabotaged him or cut off ingredient supplies, he couldn’t handle it well either. The most famous restaurant in Qiu County was constantly short of ingredients—it drove me crazy. Sometimes I had no choice but to improvise dishes randomly. It was almost like making kung pao chicken without the chicken.”

With simple words, Cao Guixiang described a fierce business struggle, and Qin Huai listened with great interest—so much so that he didn’t even notice she had already finished stir-frying the abalone, sea cucumber, and other ingredients.

Calling it “stir-fried and removed from the wok” wasn’t entirely accurate. These ingredients formed the “soup” to be stuffed into the fish. After stir-frying, she added clear broth, scallop soaking liquid, and the shrimp oil she had just made, then lightly thickened it. By the end, it reduced to a small bowl—fragrant, rich, golden, with visible chunks of sea cucumber, abalone, scallops, and shrimp. At first glance, it even resembled Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

With the soup ready, all that remained was the yellow croaker.

Cao Guixiang heated another pot of oil to fry scallions, removed them, then ladled the hot oil over the fish to tighten its skin, continuing her story as she worked:

“Looking back, it really was absurd. Being a chef in peacetime felt like living through a famine—this missing, that missing. One moment substituting this ingredient, the next using something else as a replacement. If the pay hadn’t been good, I would’ve quit long ago.”

“But it did train my skills. Before working in Qiu County, I had been a sent-down youth in the countryside for years, and my skills had grown rusty. If my boss hadn’t been so incapable—making things more difficult for me—I wouldn’t have improved so quickly. As you young people say, it really ‘raised the difficulty level’ for me.”

As she spoke, the oil-ladling was done.

She stuffed the prepared “soup” into the belly of the yellow croaker, sealed it with shrimp paste, laid shark fin, shredded ham, and dried shrimp on top, seasoned it lightly, and placed it in the steamer.

“There, at this point the stuffed yellow croaker is basically done. Just steam it over medium-high heat for about fifteen minutes and it’s ready,” Cao Guixiang said. “Sometimes you can’t blame me for not wanting to cook these grand dishes—the final cooking process is actually simple, but the preparation beforehand is just too complicated.”

“For the sake of those 15 minutes of steaming, you have to spend 15 hours preparing.”

Qin Huai smiled. “Master, it’s the same for white-dough dim sum too. Steaming buns only takes a few minutes, but the preparation beforehand takes a long time.”

“When my parents ran their breakfast shop, they had to get up at around two in the morning every day.”

“True, having that kind of awareness is good—you’re not afraid of trouble.” Cao Guixiang nodded with a smile, habitually setting a little “trap” with her words, and moved on to the next dish.

Qin Huai: …If Zhang Chu practiced fishing techniques with Cao Guixiang more often, he’d have caught a big fish long ago.

For the remaining dishes, Cao Guixiang had already made them in front of Qin Huai before, so she didn’t explain further. To be precise, even if she did explain, it wouldn’t help much—Qin Huai wouldn’t understand anyway.

“Master, after you quit, did your boss keep running the restaurant?” Qin Huai asked curiously.

From what she’d described earlier, Qin Huai felt that her boss had been extremely lucky.

It didn’t matter that the boss himself was like a low-tier card—his employee was an SSR with maxed-out loyalty, carrying him the whole way.

“Of course not. Old Shi wasn’t even in the restaurant business at first. He used to be a fisherman, going out to sea every day. Back then they were poor—when cooking, they lacked seasonings and even hesitated to use oil. Fishermen like him would eat fish and seafood mostly steamed, barely using any oil at all.”

“They say that’s enjoying the original taste of seafood. It’s fine once or twice, but eating like that every day? Anyone would get sick of it—just smelling it would make you want to vomit.”

“His family had been fishermen for generations, eating like that since childhood. All they ever dreamed of was having enough white rice to eat their fill. Later, when policies loosened, he didn’t want to fish anymore. He started doing business like others, trading seafood. He wasn’t good at business, but he was lucky and made quite a bit of money. At first, he was just selling seafood.”

“He was already in the seafood trade, and after opening a restaurant he still got his supply cut off?” Qin Huai was shocked.

Compared to Boss Shi, even Huang Anyao seemed somewhat capable—at least a young master wouldn’t get his supply cut off like that.

“That’s why I say Old Shi didn’t know how to do business. He was just too honest. At the beginning, he believed whatever people told him. Only after being taken advantage of several times did he slowly learn. But it’s precisely because he was so honest that I was willing to work as a chef in his restaurant.”

“At that time, neither Old Zhang nor I had a quota to return to the city. We’d already wasted years in the countryside, and our two kids were growing up and needed to go to school. The village secretary pulled some strings to get Old Zhang a temporary job at a lumber factory in Qiu County, but that salary wasn’t enough to support a family of four. I was even planning to borrow money to set up a stall selling big-pot dishes in Qiu County when Boss Shi showed up.”

“My cooking skills were good, but in that situation, being skilled didn’t mean much. We were in rural areas, only known in a few villages. Your Grandpa Zhang’s carpentry skills were top-notch too, but without money, connections, or opportunities, even the village secretary couldn’t do much—he could only get him a temporary job.”

“At that time, Old Shi had also been encouraged by others to open a restaurant in Qiu County. He thought since he dealt in seafood, he wouldn’t get cheated on supplies. But after securing the shop, the chef he had lined up suddenly quit. Your village’s Old Qin, the secretary, heard about it and told our village secretary, who then introduced me to Old Shi—that’s how I got the job.”

“Who would’ve thought I’d stay for so many years? The restaurant business got so good that Old Shi even quit his seafood trade and just stayed in the restaurant every day waiting to eat.”

Qin Huai: …

Was this Boss Shi somehow related to Han Guishan? How were they both so lucky?
Did he also have some kind of magical assistant fish?

Zhang Chu, who had been sitting on the sofa playing on his phone, joined in when he heard them mention Boss Shi: “Old Shi really is a great guy.”

“He didn’t just help me use connections to turn my temporary job at the lumber factory into a permanent one—he also introduced me to a lot of private work. Later, when we transferred Chiyuan and Siyu to schools in the city, he even handled their student records. I heard it cost quite a bit, but he refused to admit he spent any money—insisted it was all connections.”

Cao Guixiang shook her head with a smile. “What connections could he possibly have? Just stubborn pride. He’s still like that now.”

“This batch of Lutong Yellow Croaker obviously wasn’t his stock—he must’ve bought higher-quality ones from someone else. Yet he insists it’s newly arrived premium goods from his own supply and wants to sell it to us at his usual price.”

Qin Huai was stunned. “Wait… the Lutong yellow croaker came from Boss Shi?”

“Of course.” Cao Guixiang nodded. “After I quit, the restaurant closed down. Old Shi didn’t have much talent for running a restaurant anyway, so he went back to the seafood business. Over the years, business has been decent—not extremely rich, but he’s made quite a bit.”

“When I want to cook big or elaborate dishes, I get my ingredients from him. Otherwise, since I don’t run a restaurant and don’t need large quantities, there’s no way regular suppliers would sell me such high-quality goods.”

“Oh right, Guixiang,” Zhang Chu added, “when I went to pick up ingredients the other day, Old Shi asked why we suddenly bought so much. I think he’s planning to come over and freeload a meal.”

Cao Guixiang replied, “Tell him to wait a couple of days—let him come on the day Xiao Qin leaves. These days Xiao Qin needs to practice knife skills and thickening sauces, no time to make him shredded shark fin soup.”

Zhang Chu scratched his head. “I really don’t get it. Braised shark fin is so delicious—why does he insist on shredded shark fin?”

“Oh, right, Old Zhang—when Old Shi comes over to eat, remember to pay him the difference for the fish. We paid for regular yellow croaker, but he gave us two four-jin wild ones. The price difference is huge—we need to make it up to him.”

Qin Huai: …

Who said Boss Shi didn’t understand social dynamics? Isn’t he quite savvy? The best hunters often appear as the prey.