Chương 41: The Cruelest Potato-Peeling Contest in History

"Peel… peel potatoes?" In the second-floor gallery, Sarah let out a disbelieving cry. She even wondered whether exhaustion had made her hear things.

"Eight hours… peeling potatoes? Is this for real?" Owen's eyes went wide too. As the Blue Team's knife specialist, he knew exactly how horrific eight straight hours of that repetitive, mechanical labor would be on a person's wrists, arms, back — and on their will.

"This isn't a cooking competition… is he recruiting assembly-line workers?" Jessica frowned, plainly unable to grasp Vane's intent. Only Chris, after the initial shock, immediately turned grave. He stared hard at the six sacks of potatoes below and the six Red Team members, despair already written on their faces. He knew this was no simple feat of stamina. This might be the cruelest elimination challenge in Burning Kitchen history, and the one that best tested a chef's fundamentals and nerve. Peeling potatoes.

It sounded simple, but a professional chef's potatoes should come out smooth, no pits, no wasted flesh. It tested the steadiness and precision of knife work. Eight straight hours. That tested a chef's endurance, focus, and the ability to hold a consistent standard through high-intensity, mind-numbing work. It was exactly the baseline quality a top kitchen demanded, day after day. And that last line — whoever peels the most, and cleanest, survives — turned the test into a naked, gimmick-free hunger game.

"He's a devil… Vane is a devil through and through…" Below, Leo looked at the sack before him, nearly as tall as he was, and let out a groan of despair. He'd rather face the most complex French cuisine than this damned, endless mountain of potatoes. Captain Ethan said nothing. He silently picked up the little peeler, hefted it in his hand, and drew the first potato from the sack. The defeat was gone from his eyes, replaced by the ferocity of a man cornered to the edge.

"Clock starts now!" At Vane's command, this unprecedented potato-peeling marathon officially began. The six Red Team members threw themselves into battle at once. They didn't talk much. Each took a counter, two big buckets before them — one for unpeeled potatoes, one for peeled. Ethan's movements were the fastest and steadiest. Potato in his left hand, knife in his right, a slight turn of the wrist and a long curl of skin came off in an arc. He barely needed to look; the motion was muscle memory now.

The peeled potato spun fast in his hand and within seconds became a smooth, pale-yellow sphere, tossed into the water bucket beside him. David's style was completely different. He used a small bird's-beak knife, as if carving a work of art. He'd first dig out each sunken eye with precision, then start peeling. His speed was slow, but every potato he produced was like a polished river stone, flawless. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The others struggled, more or less.

Maria, the pastry chef, plainly wasn't used to this rough work; her movements were slow and she wasted a great deal of flesh. And Leo had fallen into agitation from the start. He tried to mimic Ethan's speed, but his fundamentals weren't solid enough; the peeler nearly caught his fingers several times. The potatoes he produced were pitted and wretched. Time passed, minute by minute. The Blue Team members in the gallery shifted from their initial shock and spectator's mood into silence too.

They watched the six "colleagues" below fight a lonely, brutal battle under the bright lights. In the kitchen, beyond the shhh of peelers against potatoes, there was no other sound. An hour passed. Everyone began to feel the fatigue. Their wrists ached, their backs couldn't straighten. But no one dared stop. Because they could clearly see the gap, in number, between their bucket and the next — the gap between life and death. Two hours passed. Leo's psychological line broke first.

"Aaagh—!" He suddenly let out a scream and hurled his peeler hard to the floor.

"I'm done! I'm not peeling! This isn't a competition at all! This is abuse! Torture!" Like a madman, he roared at the cameras, at the empty judges' table. Vane walked out from some corner and looked at him coldly.

"What did you say? I didn't catch that."

"I said! I'm done!" Leo bellowed, throwing caution to the wind.

"Good." Vane nodded.

"I'll grant your request." He beckoned to the crew at the door.

"Throw his things out. From now on, I don't want to see this face in my kitchen again." Leo froze. He'd thought his protest would at least win some attention, or a chance to change the rules. He hadn't expected it to win such a clean, hesitation-free expulsion. As two big crew members hauled him out of the kitchen, Leo finally realized what an idiotic mistake he'd made. He'd ended his run in the worst way possible. He hadn't even earned the right to wait for dawn.

Leo's exit was a bucket of ice water over the remaining five. They didn't even look in the direction he'd been dragged. They only buried their heads lower and worked faster. They understood. In this game, there were no rules to negotiate, no shortcuts to take. The only way to live was to keep peeling. Peel. Peel. Upstairs, Chris quietly watched it all. He saw that in the third hour, Maria, out of stamina, began to lose her form — her peels growing thicker, the wasted flesh growing more.

He saw that in the fourth hour, David, the relentless perfectionist, abandoned his "work of art" method too and started chasing speed. Because he'd found that his perfect potatoes had fallen a huge distance behind Ethan's in number. He saw that in the fifth hour, blisters had risen on everyone's hands. Blisters broke, blood and potato juice mixing, but no one stopped to bandage them. They only wiped a hand on their apron and kept going. This was no longer a competition about cooking. It was a contest of willpower.

Chris's gaze finally settled on Ethan. From start to now, a full five hours, Ethan's rhythm had barely changed. He was like a machine running a set program — not fast, not slow, but never stopping. No expression showed on his face — no pain, no agitation — only a near-numb focus. Chris knew this man was terrifying. He'd lost to Chris today, but his inner strength was far greater than what he showed. Give him one chance, and he'd climb back out of any mire of failure.

A man like that, as a rival, would be an enormous threat. Chris quietly opened the system panel and made a decision. He spent 50 Arena Points to redeem the long-coveted Gareth Vane Taste-Preference Analysis Report. Then he spent another 100 Arena Points on a second report.

["Burning Kitchen" Season Ten Top-Contestant Ability Analysis Report (live-updating edition)] [Includes: ability radar charts, technical traits, psychological assessments, and latent-weakness analysis for all eleven contestants — Ethan Cole, David, Sarah Jenkins, and the rest.] He wanted to understand every one of his rivals. He would dissect them like precision machines — analyze them, study them, and then find the way to beat them.

Because he knew that when the sun rose, when this brutal potato-peeling contest ended, the man who crawled back from hell would become the first true nemesis of his run in this competition.