Chương 61: The Data Eye Fails in the Market

The next day, the ten contestants were hauled straight to the entrance of Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles by a black bus. When the doors opened, a wave of heat rushed at them—the smell of grilled meat, the sweetness of fruit, the bitterness of coffee, all braided through the noise of the crowd. Unlike the bright, orderly recording kitchen, this was a living world, brimming with vitality.

Vendors hawking their wares, tourists talking, chef's knives clacking against cutting boards, food sizzling on grills... all of it came together into a chaotic, harmonious city symphony. The production team hadn't cleared the place out ahead of time the way everyone had imagined. The whole market was still open for business as usual. Which meant the contestants weren't just racing the clock—they had to weave through the crush of the crowd and haggle with shrewd vendors.

"My god, how are we supposed to compete in this?" Owen looked at the sea of people and felt a little daunted.

"This is the real challenge." But Ethan's eyes glittered with excitement. Vane led them to an open space in the center of the market, where ten simple mobile cooking stations had been set up—each with a single gas burner, one work surface, and a limited set of tools.

"Welcome to your battlefield." Vane spread his arms like a king introducing his domain.

"You already know the rules. Each of you has a fifty-dollar budget to buy whatever ingredients you want in the market. Remember—the theme is, use one dish to prove who you are."

"Your seventy-five minutes start now!" If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. At Vane's command, the ten contestants shot off like arrows from a string, charging into every corner of the market. Chris didn't go blundering around blindly like the others. First he drew a deep breath, forced himself calm, then tried to start up his Data Eye for a macro scan of the entire market. But the next second, he found the problem.

[Warning: current environment information overload detected; data stream extremely chaotic. Scan precision sharply reduced.] [Scan result: 347 analyzable targets detected (and rising), including ingredients, equipment, tourists, vendors... unable to achieve effective lock-on.] Before Chris's eyes, it was as if a screen had filled with snow. Countless data tags flickered through the stream of people, flashing past, impossible to catch.

In the relatively enclosed studio, with clear targets, the Data Eye was an unbeatable weapon. But here, in this open, chaotic environment with an explosion of information, its efficiency had dropped to its lowest point.

"Damn—I forgot about that." Chris immediately realized he could no longer lean on the system. He swiftly changed tactics. He gave up using the Data Eye to scan, and pulled all his attention back to his own senses. It was the first time, in a competition, that he had voluntarily given up the system's assistance and chosen to return to a cook's most primal instinct. His eyes observed the color and sheen of the ingredients at every stall. His nose picked apart the complex aromas drifting through the air.

His hands felt the texture of vegetables and the firmness of fruit. The Advanced Ingredient Theory Manual just instilled into his mind began, in this moment, to show its true use. He passed a seafood stall and saw the sea bream laid out on ice—their eyes still fairly bright, but the color of the gills already dulling. He judged at once that these fish were only at the passing line for freshness, not worth buying.

He passed a vegetable stall, where the vendor was enthusiastically pushing a kind of very pretty-looking tomato. Chris picked one up and gave it a squeeze, and felt the flesh was a bit too soft, lacking spring. He knew this tomato looked good but had already begun to lose its flavor—only fit for sauce, not for salad. Like a seasoned gourmand, he patrolled the market in the most traditional and most reliable way, searching for the one thing that would spark his inspiration.