Chapter 22: Head Chef

“Wasting the Lord Head Chef’s intentions… is an unforgivable capital crime!”

The waitress’s voice was bone-chillingly cold.

The next second, she lunged forward with her white-gloved hand, grabbing the back of the man’s head. With an explosion of Supernatural Strength, she slammed his face into the basin of scalding, foul-smelling Dark Green Thick Soup.

“Ugh! Glug, glug…”

The man struggled frantically, his body making the Golden Chair creak and groan, but the waitress’s hand remained motionless.

A few seconds later, the struggling grew weak, and his limbs went limp. His face was held firmly in the basin of black water where fingernails and hair floated, drowning him alive.

*Hiss—*

Everyone in the Main Hall sucked in a breath of cold air.

Little Frost subconsciously gripped the handlebar of White Night’s bike.

White Night lowered her voice, her words sounding right in Little Frost’s ear. “Don’t panic, Auntie Frost. Let’s see what the others do first.”

White Night’s voice steadied Little Frost’s panicked mind a bit. She nodded slightly, her gaze quickly sweeping across the entire Main Hall.

At the neighboring table, someone moved. To the frozen crowd, he was exceptionally conspicuous. Everyone’s eyes, including those of the Waitresses who were about to act, turned toward him in unison.

The first person to pick up their chopsticks was actually Wang Ziming. He wore a pair of cracked Gold-rimmed Glasses. Usually, he looked respectable and shrewd, but now his face was expressionless. Without hesitation, he picked up the golden chopsticks and, from the table of foul-smelling dishes, precisely selected a relatively clean piece of undercooked meat.

The meat was bloody and still twitching with nerves. He shoved it directly into his mouth.

*Crunch… crunch…*

He was chewing. Everyone stared at him in horror.

Wang Ziming’s brows were tightly knit, and the muscles in his cheeks twitched violently from disgust. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced himself to swallow the foul, raw meat. The moment he swallowed, his face turned deathly pale, but he suppressed it, not even gagging.

After finishing the bite, Wang Ziming stood up. He picked up a napkin from the table, elegantly wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and turned to face the waitress beside him.

“This dish… the taste is very unique.” Wang Ziming’s voice was terrifyingly calm, even carrying a hint of admiration. “If possible, I would like to meet your Head Chef. I wish to ask him in person how such a delicacy was prepared.”

The entire hall fell into a deathly silence at his words.

Was he crazy? He was definitely insane. The man from before had been drowned in the soup for eating just one bite, yet he was actually asking to see the Head Chef behind the scenes?

However, the cold-blooded waitress actually froze. For the first time, her stiff smile cracked, and a hint of complexity and hesitation flashed in her pure black eyes.

“Please… please wait a moment. I will go ask for Lord Head Chef’s opinion.”

The waitress’s tone became rigid. She gave Wang Ziming a long look before turning and walking quickly toward the transparent Central Kitchen.

Seeing the first step completed, Wang Ziming slumped into his chair and exhaled a long breath of turbid air. The reason he took such a risky gamble was that he wanted to leave this godforsaken place as soon as possible. In his eyes, sitting here waiting for death was also a dead end.

The other Waitresses stood by the tables like stakes, their icy gazes sweeping over the others. “Why aren’t you eating? The food is getting cold.”

Seeing the unlucky man who had been drowned, and then seeing that Wang Ziming hadn’t died on the spot after eating a bite, some of the quick-witted survivors nearby immediately realized. No matter how disgusting it was, as long as they forced it down without vomiting, they could live.

Enduring tears and surging stomach acid, they reluctantly extended their trembling chopsticks, imitating Wang Ziming by reaching for the plate of undercooked meat. They chewed with ashen faces, weeping silently.

To White Moon’s surprise, the waitress at their table didn’t urge them to eat again.

“The Head Chef must be one of the people in the photo. He saw what White Night is wearing and gave us special treatment. We don’t have to eat this disgusting food,” Little Frost analyzed.

“That’s great. I really didn’t want to eat such disgusting food. But we still can’t leave. I wonder what Wang Ziming is trying to do?” Mu Yingying frowned as she looked at Wang Ziming at the neighboring table.

“He likely learned a lot of information from the photos as well.” White Night’s attention was also focused on Wang Ziming.

The others present felt the same way. Since they couldn’t hear any sound, they all wanted to find a way to escape by watching Wang Ziming’s actions.

A moment later, the heavy glass door of the Transparent Kitchen was pushed open. Accompanying dull, dragging footsteps, a hunched man slowly walked out. He wore a sophisticated, white chef’s uniform and a tall chef’s hat. But wearing those clothes, he exuded an aura of death.

His frame was severely hunched, his face was so thin it was just skin and bones, and his eye sockets were deeply sunken. A few tufts of hair peeking out from under the chef’s hat were as messy as dried grass.

The moment Little Frost and Mu Yingying saw him, their pupils constricted. The facial features of this Head Chef were strikingly similar to the young man on the left side of the Black and White Photo on the wall. Except he now looked over ten years older, filled with gloom and decadence.

The Head Chef walked with dragging steps directly to Wang Ziming’s table. Within his sunken sockets, his eyes stared intently at Wang Ziming, sizing him up for a long time. The air seemed to freeze.

“You were looking for me?” The Head Chef finally spoke, his voice hoarse and ear-piercing, dripping with undisguised violence. “Why are you looking for me? Do you really like my cooking… or are you looking for death?”

A powerful sense of pressure instantly enveloped the small space. However, Wang Ziming didn’t back down in the slightest. His gaze didn’t linger on the Head Chef’s terrifying face. Instead, it slowly drifted downward, landing on the chef’s hands.

They were a pair of hands covered in scars, calluses, and even somewhat deformed. Wang Ziming looked silently at those hands and suddenly made a move that no one expected. He took a step forward, reached out with both hands, and solemnly grasped the Head Chef’s scarred hands.

“I was just wondering what kind of person the chef who could make such a dish would be.” Wang Ziming’s voice was calm, his gaze resting on the crisscrossing scars. “Now I see. These hands… to make this table of food in such a short time, they must have gone through countless trials. Every single one of these scars is proof of your hard work.”

As he spoke, his thumb naturally and gently pressed against one of the Head Chef’s rough scars.

The moment his hand was grasped, the gloomy Head Chef froze.

“Get out!”

The Head Chef let out a shrill roar and violently threw off Wang Ziming’s hand. He staggered back two steps. In his originally lifeless, pitch-black eyes, an extreme amount of pain and frenzy boiled over.

He thought of his Senior Brother, who was always willing to help him in the kitchen.

‘Senior Brother liked me, but I’m straight. I detested him. I liked Junior Sister.’
‘But did I really hate him…?’
‘Senior Brother is dead…’
‘I’m sad too…’
‘And everyone else is dead…’

The temperature of the air around the Head Chef dropped suddenly due to his emotional fluctuations. A thin layer of frost condensed on the edges of the soup bowls on the table.

The surrounding survivors were all dumbfounded. They didn’t understand why Wang Ziming, a normally calm and cunning man, would go and hold a monster’s hand. This was simply courting death.

At this moment, a pained expression appeared on the Head Chef’s haggard face. He widened his pitch-black pupils and grabbed his head with both hands, crumpling his chef’s hat.

Wang Ziming appeared calm on the surface, but sweat had already broken out on his forehead. This place was too dangerous; a single wrong step meant death. He had taken a risky gamble, and he didn’t know if it would work.