Restaurant kitchen.

"I'll give you ten thousand! Just stay and compete!" Li Bing said angrily. "This ten thousand is more than your monthly salary."

"If you can beat our chef, I'll also give you ten thousand," Manager Huang said.

The prospect of twenty thousand yuan made Li Tian and the others somewhat envious, wishing they could compete on Jaxon's behalf.

For Jaxon, this amount of money was also significant, far more than what he could earn from a night of barbecuing. After a brief moment of consideration, he agreed.

"Alright, since you're all so sincere, I'll stay and have a friendly competition with your chef," Jaxon said with a somewhat reluctant demeanor.

Seeing the money, Li Bing and Manager Huang were both annoyed by Jaxon's attitude.

"If this guest loses, you must apologize to me and our chef formally," Manager Huang said.

"And you won't get my ten thousand either!" Li Bing added.

"Deal!" Jaxon agreed without hesitation: "But who will be the judge? You can't be the judges, right? What if there's bias?"

Indeed, the quality of cooking cannot be quantified and can only be judged subjectively, which leaves room for cheating.

"Let's have the guests in the restaurant tonight be the judges," Manager Huang said. "You and our chef will each make three dishes. You can choose what to cook. After the dishes are done, you can designate one guest as a judge, we can designate one, and the last one will be designated by Miss Geng. Best of three, how does that sound?"

"No problem, that sounds fair," Jaxon said.

Jaxon trusted Geng Yafei to some extent, at least she was not on Li Bing's side.

"Since you have no objections, let's head to the kitchen now," Manager Huang said.

Led by Manager Huang, the group made their way to the kitchen.

"Why are you so impulsive? Manager Huang was clearly called by Li Bing to embarrass you. Can't you see that?" Geng Yafei whispered to Jaxon.

"Who will be embarrassed is still uncertain," Jaxon said with a smile. "But thank you for your concern, Teacher Geng."

"You don't really think your cooking skills are better than those of the chefs here, do you?" Geng Yafei looked at Jaxon in surprise.

"Why not?" Jaxon replied.

"Don't joke around. The chefs here are no ordinary people. Even if you have some cooking skills, you definitely can't compare," Geng Yafei said.

"The chefs here may be better than many people, but not better than me!" Jaxon said confidently.

His excellent cooking skills had also greatly improved Jaxon's ability to appreciate food. By tasting the dishes, he could discern the skill level of the chefs here.

Compared to ordinary people, the chefs here were indeed at a high level, but in Jaxon's eyes, his cooking skills were at the peak of the intermediate level, just one step away from breaking through to the advanced level. However, this one step was not easy for everyone to break through, and the gap between the two levels was still quite obvious. As long as the restaurant did not have the opportunity to cheat, Jaxon believed that he would be the winner!

However, Jaxon was also puzzled. The chefs at Kaillemen were supposed to be among the best in Goldenleaf University, and their skill level should not be low. Why were they only at the intermediate peak level? Before coming here, Jaxon had thought that the chefs here would be at the master level, but he did not expect that they had not even reached the advanced level.

"Could it be that master-level chefs in the real world are even rarer than in the game world?" Jaxon speculated.

"You're very confident," Geng Yafei said, looking at the confident Jaxon with a hint of surprise.

It is often said that confident people are the most charming, and Geng Yafei was now experiencing the truth of this saying. Jaxon, who had seemed ordinary in her eyes, now seemed exceptionally charming and attractive.

This made Geng Yafei blush slightly and turn her head away, feeling a bit embarrassed to look at Jaxon.

"Not bad, haha," Jaxon laughed, not wanting to dwell on the topic.

Li Bing, walking ahead, saw Geng Yafei deliberately fall behind to talk with Jaxon and was consumed by jealousy. He silently vowed that after Jaxon lost, he would mock him thoroughly and spread the word around the university, making sure all the teachers and students knew about it, so that Jaxon would have no face to stay at the university!

The kitchen of a restaurant is generally not accessible to the public, especially the kitchen of a starred restaurant like Kaillemen. During busy hours, even the restaurant manager is not allowed in, let alone outsiders like Jaxon and his group.

So, as expected, when Manager Huang brought Jaxon and the others into the kitchen, they were met with resistance from the head chef.

"Manager Huang, what's going on? Don't you know it's working hours? How can you just come here with outsiders? Get out, all of you," a chef dressed in a chef's uniform and wearing a chef's hat came forward to drive everyone out, not even sparing a good face for Manager Huang.

"Chef Liu, please don't be angry. I know this place is not to be entered casually, but there's a reason today," Manager Huang said. "This guest claims that the dishes you cook are not good enough and that his cooking is better. He pointed out flaws in every dish you made. So, I brought him here to compete with you and clear your name."

Chef Liu was the restaurant's head chef, hired at great expense and rumored to be a successor of a certain culinary tradition. He had significant authority in the kitchen, where all matters were under his control. Even Manager Huang did not have the right to interfere. After all, while the restaurant manager could be replaced, the head chef was not so easily changed. He was the guarantee of the restaurant's ability to attract customers.

The kitchen naturally had a team of chefs, not just one. Chef Liu was the head chef, the main chef, who usually only prepared food for guests in the private rooms. As for the guests in the dining hall, their dishes were cooked by other chefs, whose skills were naturally inferior to Chef Liu's. However, compared to chefs in other restaurants, they were still somewhat superior.

"Get out, all of you. I don't have time. If I agreed to compete with everyone who wanted to challenge me, I wouldn't be able to cook at all," Chef Liu said, still wanting to drive everyone out.

"Just this once! Just this one time!" Manager Huang pleaded. "This is also for the image of the restaurant, it's official business. I'll trouble Chef Liu just this once. I won't bring anyone else into the kitchen in the future to trouble you."

Unable to bear Jaxon's words and driven by Li Bing's request, Manager Huang was determined to see Jaxon humiliated and made to apologize.