AGN -Chapter 448 Daily Enlightenment Life

Before long, July arrived.

Ever since Shi Dadan returned to Guangdong Province, he became very active in the group chat “Mutual Love Family”. Every mealtime, he would dutifully ask what everyone was eating that day. Only after confirming that everyone, like him, was just eating ordinary home-cooked food did he feel relieved.

This irritated Luo Jun so much that he would erupt in the group every day. He didn’t even bother typing anymore—just sent voice messages, cursing Shi Dadan loudly. Shi Dadan, however, remained unmoved. He didn’t engage, and instead earnestly advised Luo Jun to maintain regular meals.

He even suggested Luo Jun stop eating so chaotically—having breakfast at 10 or 11 a.m., lunch at 3 or 4 p.m., dinner at 9 or 10 p.m., and sometimes even midnight snacks.

“Even though kudzu and pigeon soup is good for you, you can’t drink it every day. That kind of nourishment in the morning is too much for the body. Besides, that soup isn’t even made by Qin Huai—it doesn’t have any buffs.”

He also told him to eat less of Zheng Siyuan’s pastries and fresh meat mooncakes—the former was bad for teeth, and the latter wasn’t even available in Guangdong.

Shi Dadan would be leaving in mid-July to accompany his two troublesome kids abroad for a month-long trip. In late August, he would then accompany his wife on a shopping trip overseas. The earliest he could return to Shanshi would be September, to rejoin everyone for their tea gathering.

He very much wanted all the spirits to gather together for a lively meal. Because of this, he felt Luo Jun—whose “death clock was already ticking”—should stop living recklessly like before and start taking care of himself to try to survive a couple more months.

“At least make it to September. Otherwise, I can’t arrange the schedule.”

Chen Gong found Shi Dadan’s suggestion quite reasonable. He himself would also be busy before September and encouraged Luo Jun to live more regularly so he could last until then.

Luo Jun’s response to this was:

“Kui Niu and Wen Yao Fish, I @%&/#!”

Of course, Qin Huai did not participate much in these chaotic conversations in the group. While others were arguing wildly, he was busy at work, constantly grinding proficiency. Occasionally during breaks, he would catch a drama unfolding in the chat, but he never joined in—just watched for amusement.

For him now, nothing was more important than increasing his skill proficiency.

And that proficiency was difficult to raise.

Qin Huai wanted to upgrade another skill to master level, but the gap between “wanting to” and “achieving it” was enormous.

Under his random training, all his skill proficiencies were increasing at different rates—fairly evenly, and overall very promising.

However, the jump from advanced to master level was painfully slow.

As for heat control, Qin Huai had already given up hope. For it to surpass knife work or dough fermentation and reach master level first, he’d have to abandon white pastry cooking entirely, declare it hopeless, and take a train straight to Suzhou to join the Huang family kitchen as a red-cuisine chef.

If that happened, everyone would think his brain had been kicked by a donkey and that his condition had become serious enough to require medical intervention.

Among dough fermentation and knife skills, fermentation was clearly closest to upgrading. But this kind of training had a bottleneck—the closer you got to leveling up, the slower it became.

Before reaching 90,000 proficiency points, Qin Huai’s fermentation experience had been rising rapidly without pause.

As long as he made pastries—except for rice cakes or rice noodles, which didn’t count under the system definition—most items would increase his fermentation proficiency.

For someone like Qin Huai, who was constantly grinding proficiency without discrimination, it was as effortless as breathing.

However, after reaching 94,000 points, the “breathing rate” suddenly slowed down—and it even became difficult to breathe, as if he was suffocating.

He tried increasing difficulty. Normally, he made basic pastries like plain steamed buns, fermented rice buns, shumai, buns, and baked buns. Among these, fermented rice buns gave the highest fermentation gains.

When he noticed progress slowing, he deliberately started making more complex pastries requiring higher dough skill, such as triple-stuffed buns, five-ingredient buns, and double-crab buns. Even “Guo’er” pastries were included—though the initial shaping was done by Tan Weian and Zhao Cheng’an.

This drove Zhao Cheng’an almost insane, making him wonder if Qin Huai should read a few books on aesthetics—because his sense of design was truly terrible.

“Brother, when you go out in the future, don’t tell people we’re on the same path. I can’t take that embarrassment.”

But the results were not ideal.

Although these complex pastries slightly improved efficiency, the time cost increased significantly.

Normal pastries also increased fermentation proficiency, and in large quantities they were far more efficient overall. Complex pastries, while high-quality, were low in volume. If he were focusing on a single skill like before, complex pastries would be ideal.

But now Qin Huai was trying to improve everything at once, so focusing on complex items would slow down other skills.

In the end, fermentation progress stagnated again.

This left Qin Huai unsure how to proceed. He wasn’t particularly obsessed with reaching master level fermentation—it wasn’t urgently needed.

As a system user, he still considered tasks when grinding skills.

If it were knife skills, however, he would gladly focus entirely on a single pastry to grind it to death.

This contradiction left him conflicted. He wanted to reach another master-level skill as fast as possible to see what two master-level skills combined could achieve, yet he also knew that this mindset would only reduce efficiency. In truth, he should just continue grinding as before without overthinking.

But theory and reality were different.

Which gamer could resist checking their stat panel? Which gamer could ignore a skill on the verge of leveling up?

Who could possibly pass that test?

“Haah.”

After finishing a batch of fermented rice dough, Qin Huai sighed deeply.

“What’s wrong?” someone asked. “You’ve been sighing for days. Something going wrong? Your pastries are doing fine—our Zhiwei Residence hasn’t seen this many customers lining up at 6 a.m. for steamed buns in years.”

“We haven’t sold buns like this in years.”

“Or is it Tan Weian spreading gossip again? Saying you’re planning to open a community cafeteria and seize control of the neighborhood, sending your trusted lieutenant An Youyou to conquer the apprentices and unify all gossip factions?”

“I heard a new version yesterday—that An Youyou now has extremely high prestige among apprentices, even though her skills aren’t great. Many apprentices have stopped focusing on tea skills and instead try to get close to her so they can be closer to you when you guide her in the mornings.”

“It’s only noon. Even if there’s a new version today, Tan Weian wouldn’t finish inventing it until afternoon.”

“Or did something happen with Shi Dadan? Did his wife finally realize forcing kids to study is pointless and banned him from eating pastries? So he’s asking you for help renting a refrigerated truck again?”

“Wait—your sister’s about to be on break, right? Or already is? Exam results came out? If that’s it, then sighing makes sense.”

Qin Huai: “…”

“Wait… this ‘I’m going to establish my own faction’ version has already become this outrageous?” Qin Huai said. It was the first time he experienced having so many complaints that he didn’t even know where to start, so he could only pick the most absurd point to question.

“Not really,” Zhao Cheng’an said lazily as he pressed pastries with a mold. “It’s not that outrageous. After all, you go over to An Youyou’s side every morning to give guidance, and each time you end up guiding a whole group of apprentices. Now An Youyou is basically a celebrity in Zhiwei Residence. Everyone says she’s actually your disciple, and you placed her among the apprentices to temper her will.”

“Wanting to improve is normal. I even heard she doesn’t need to make her own tea anymore—people just make it for her whenever she wants.”

Qin Huai: “…”

He had only intended to help An Youyou become a leader—but he hadn’t expected her to succeed this well.

“This morning I even saw Master Hua wandering over there,” Zhao Cheng’an continued. “He muttered all morning about how people from the same place, why is the talent gap so huge, and how exactly did Xiao Qin end up favoring Xiao An.”

“You ran into Master Hua there in the morning?”

Zhao Cheng’an chuckled. “Because I was there too.”

“This can’t be blamed on me. I was really too curious. The version Tan Weian spread was so realistic that I almost believed An Youyou really was your disciple.”

Qin Huai said seriously, “I might as well tell you the truth. An Youyou isn’t my disciple. The reason I pay attention to her is because she’s not human—I have her main storyline quest.”

Zhao Cheng’an burst out laughing. “Qin Huai, your game system story is getting more and more ridiculous. Side quests, main quests—fine. But now you’re saying she’s not human? What, spiritual energy revival? So in your system, am I human or not? We’re pretty close, after all.”

“You’re not either.”

Zhao Cheng’an laughed even harder, laughing for over a minute until his stomach hurt. “Alright, I’m not talking about this nonsense anymore. Why are you sighing, really?”

Qin Huai explained all his recent worries, including the difficult choices in grinding proficiency.

Zhao Cheng’an listened for a while, then asked, “I get the idea of grinding proficiency, but I’ve never really understood your grading system. What exactly counts as ‘master level’?”

“My filling technique is master level,” Qin Huai said simply.

Everyone here was a professional white pastry chef, so they all understood Qin Huai’s filling skill level—it stood far above his peers and was proof of his exceptional talent and his famously sensitive palate.

“So you want your dough fermentation skill to reach the same level as your filling skill this month?” Zhao Cheng’an asked.

“Yes,” Qin Huai admitted. “It was rising pretty fast before. I thought I could reach master level by late July, but at this rate… I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

Zhao Cheng’an went silent. He didn’t even feel like joking anymore.

“Sometimes I really want to fight people like you super geniuses,” he said blankly.

“Your filling is better than mine, your dough is worse than mine—you’re basically trying to surpass me in every aspect.”

“So I’m just a minor boss on your system protagonist leveling path? You’re just going to step over me without hesitation?”

Qin Huai thought for a moment and said earnestly, “Don’t think of it like that. You’re not a minor boss.”

“By numerical standards, you’d at least need to be at Brother Jiayi’s level to count as a minor boss.”

Zhao Cheng’an: “……”

Damn it. I was kindly asking about your mood, and you just emotionally damaged me like this?

Sometimes, I really want to fight geniuses like you.

The conversation ended with Zhao Cheng’an’s frustrated pastry-making session, but it also cleared Qin Huai’s thoughts.

Zhao Cheng’an’s words reminded him of something: he had been struggling over whether to push fermentation to master level as quickly as possible, but he had overlooked what “master level” actually meant.

Reaching master level meant surpassing Zhao Cheng’an in strength.

Right now, the two of them were roughly equal—or if anything, Zhao Cheng’an might still be slightly ahead, each with their own strengths.

When Qin Huai first arrived at Zhiwei Residence, Zhao Cheng’an had definitely been stronger. But after watching Jiang Chengde’s tutorial videos and upgrading his steamed rice buns to A-minus level, their strength had truly become comparable.

If Qin Huai accidentally advanced further…

Then Zhao Cheng’an really would become something like a “minor boss” to be beaten, not a person at all.

Although… he technically wasn’t human anyway.

Qin Huai’s progress was already very fast. Wanting to improve even faster was unrealistic—no one becomes fat in one bite. The further he progressed, the slower it naturally became.

Instead of obsessing over one bottleneck, it would be better to spread out his effort and grind everything evenly.

After all, he would surpass Zhao Cheng’an sooner or later. There was no need to focus only on fermentation.

Once he understood this, Qin Huai felt the tension in his heart disappear. Everything suddenly became clear.

“Zhao Cheng’an, thank you,” Qin Huai said sincerely.

Zhao Cheng’an: “…?”

We’ve been sitting here for forty minutes without you saying anything—what exactly are you thanking me for?

Thanking me for not disturbing you so you could grind proficiency in peace?

Or…?

He looked at Qin Huai with a slightly terrified expression, suddenly fully empathizing with Tan Weian.

No way, bro… you’ve enlightened again?

What exactly are you enlightened about? How many things does a person need to realize in one lifetime?

Can you share some of that enlightenment with me? Those 88 paintings at home are completely useless—I’d rather trade them for the one you bought.