Chapter 744 - Failing Again
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Each day, Yuan Zhou would practice sculpting. For him, there was no end to the path of knife skills. This was an outlook similar to what many wuxia novels would have.
His skills might be good now, but he could always be better.
In fact, Yuan Zhou’s knife skills were absolutely top tier. Therefore, when outsiders saw him practicing, they would think that he was simply showing off his skills while he was still constantly improving.
An example was the new goal Yuan Zhou set for himself yesterday: to create a sculpture that would either look like a Guanyin or an Arhat from different angles.
Simply put, when one looked at the sculpture from the front, it would look like Guanyin, and when one looked from the right, the sculpture would look like Arhat. Extreme attention to detail would be required.
For example, when sculpting the model of Guanyin, he needed to be careful to not ruin the model of Arhat. After his training yesterday, Yuan Zhou was already able to sculpt that perfectly. Today, he had a new goal for himself: to sculpt a sculpture that looked like a monkey and a snake at one sitting.
When Yuan Zhou was serious, he would be at full concentration, looking quite like a great master.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
The knife moved like a fluttering butterfly and slowly, the radish took shape into what he was sculpting.
He failed his first attempt as the monkey’s eyes did not look lively enough. Yuan Zhou was an extremely obstinate person. For him, if the eyes did not look lively enough, it was because his knife skills were too lacking to express what he wanted.
The subsequent three attempts all ended with an unsatisfactory result for Yuan Zhou. He started rubbing his nonexistent mustache before deciding to change his approach.
In the first four attempts, he had sculpted the monkey first. However, there would be some detail he was dissatisfied with each time. Now, he decided to start with the snake.
Coincidentally, just as Yuan Zhou was about to start his fifth attempt, the guy with the slickback and Tom returned.
When Tom saw the knife Yuan Zhou was holding, his face remained expressionless yet his mind started spinning.
“He is too unprofessional. Using a kitchen knife to sculpt? How can he even improve with this? He does not even have a basic sculpting knife,” Tom complained inwardly.
In Western cuisines, there were many types of knives such as the bread knife, boning knife, trowel, scraping knife, and so on. In Chinese cuisine, only a kitchen knife would be used. Whether it was for slicing tiny ingredients, to dice ingredients, to slice meats, or to cut vegetables, a kitchen knife would be used. That was too unprofessional.
Yuan Zhou could sense that someone had arrived. However, outside business hours and when he was practicing sculpting, Yuan Zhou would ignore everyone.
The knife he was holding was, in fact, the kitchen knife of the Master Chef Set. Without a doubt, he wanted to use a knife unsuitable for sculpting for practice so he could greatly polish his sculpting skills, to reach a point where he could sculpt with any type of knife.
After formulating a plan for his fifth attempt, Yuan Zhou started sculpting again.
Tom was about to say: “Do you need us to provide you a professional set of knives for you?”
Before he could speak, he saw blade lights shining out from Yuan Zhou’s knife.
This was not a blade light that could injure someone like what they had in wuxia novels. Rather, the blade light was actually the reflection of the sunshine from the rapidly moving knife in Yuan Zhou’s hand. The knife was moving like a miniature person that was dancing atop his hand.
Tom’s suggestion was immediately stuck before he could utter them. He started wondering how could one move such a huge knife so nimbly.
He felt like he had just seen a 500 pound fatty dancing like a graceful ballet dancer, doing numerous difficult rotations.
Yuan Zhou first sculpted a coiling snake before using the outline of the snake to sculpt the body and tail of a “monkey stealing the peach”. He could not afford even a tiny bit of mistake at this stage of sculpting.
Sculpting two feelings into a single sculpture was extremely difficult. The monkey needed to be mischevious and lively, while the coiling snake needed to be lazy and resting instead of a dead snake.
After several minutes, the radish slowly took form.
The guy with the slickback had done a lot of research previously and was aware that Yuan Zhou had very good knife skills. After all, the incident where Yuan Zhou sculpted the coilia ectenes was found during his research.
But what he was witnessing here was way too terrifying.
Tom watched with his eyes opened wide, as if his eyeballs were going to fall out of his eye sockets. Had this guy fully maximized his knife skills?
“What a lively snake (monkey).”
The guy with the slickback and Tom said at the same time before exchanging a gaze.
“It is obviously a monkey(snake).”
They exchanged glances again, seemingly having understood something. They switched places in silence and looked at the sculpture again to see a completely different sight.
A witty looking monkey and a silent yet dangerous snake.
“This… is way too shocking,” the guy with the slickback said after a short moment of silence.
“Cough, cough,” Tom coughed yet his eyes were still fixed on Yuan Zhou.
This was no longer about knife skills. From this sculpture, it was obvious that this Boss Yuan’s dish decorating skills were top notch as well.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! The knife whipped about as the pieces of radishes landed into the basket. Finally, Yuan Zhou reached the finishing stage of sculpting.
While he was sculpting, both Tom and the guy with the slickback stayed in complete silence and watched on in stupefaction.
This sculpture was already a work of art. From the left, it looked like a monkey stealing the peach and from the right, it looked like a coiling snake.
Even more importantly, there were a lot of details sculpted into the sculpture. Even the snake scales could be clearly seen.
“Is this really something sculpted with a kitchen knife?” Even though Tom had personally witnessed it, he still found it hard to believe.
This was clearly a work that could only come out of tools specialized for sculpting.
“Hu.” Yuan Zhou exhaled softly before putting his knife down and started studying the sculpture he was holding.
“This time, I manage to fuse the tail of the monkey and snake. But the furs of the monkey tail still feels somewhat lacking. Their eyes look good enough this time,” Yuan Zhou analyzed as he studied the sculpture. He was obviously still dissatisfied with it.
“What a sight,” muttered the guy with the slickback. The sculptures here were good enough to be sold for money.
“This is too unbelievable. Too unbelievable,” Tom repeated again and again in his mind. Could anyone do something like this in Western cuisine?
Numerous master chefs of Western cuisine appeared in his mind but all of them were promptly removed. He kept muttering the word “unbelievable” without stop.
Just as Tom and the guy with the slickback were in stupefaction over Yuan Zhou’s knife skills, what happened next shocked them even more.
Yuan Zhou tossed the sculpture that was an “art piece” into the trash can. He moved in a straightforward manner before they could stop him in time.
They both sank into silence.
Both Tom and the slickback guy looked at each other, wondering why Yuan Zhou was throwing away such a good piece of art.
Why was he throwing away something this amazing?
“Something is still wrong,” Yuan Zhou inhaled deeply as he muttered. Animals were indeed much harder to sculpt than Guanyin and Arhat.
“And a lively animal is even harder,” Yuan Zhou muttered.
With a solemn and serious expression, Yuan Zhou frowned as he stared at the tail of the sculpture he had just thrown into the trash can.
When Yuan Zhou did this, Tom and the guy with the slickback finally understood that Yuan Zhou was dissatisfied with his sculpting.
He was actually dissatisfied!
“You’re not even satisfied with this? What do you want?” Tom muttered inwardly while he trembled.
When he recalled his actual reason for returning to watch Yuan Zhou sculpting, he started to feel uncomfortable.
