You got your marriage certificate and then abandoned me? I'll feed the richest woman in the wor

Chen Yuan lowered his head and rubbed his chin against the top of her soft hair.

"I never imagined that the ruler of the dark web would one day spend three sleepless nights in the kitchen just figuring out how to chop a few scallion skins."

Shen Wanzhou turned her head away.

A hint of curiosity flashed in her cool eyes.

In her mind, when Chen Yuan knocked on her door on the first day with that bowl of Wensi Tofu porridge, he was already a master chef with superb knife skills and precise control of heat.

"Do you ever have times when you can't cut vegetables well?" Shen Wanzhou asked.

Chen Yuan wrapped one arm around her waist and gently scratched the bridge of her nose with his index finger.

"Of course. I'm not a god. My hands, used to holding machetes and keyboards, almost set the base on fire when I first picked up a kitchen knife."

Reverse the timeline.

Back in New York ten years ago, in the underground base of the dark web "Abyss".

It was a basement that never saw the light of day and was filled with the smells of instant noodles and engine oil.

The walls were covered with various types of heavy weapons, and several servers were humming.

Back then, Chen Yuan's life was as rough as sandpaper.

He relies on high-calorie compressed biscuits and black coffee to maintain his vital signs every day.

Even heating a quick pizza in the microwave can cause sparks to fly and blow up half of the kitchen counter because the aluminum foil was forgotten to be removed.

until that day.

He intercepted a special medical record in an encrypted frequency band on the dark web.

The owner of the file is a girl who is hailed as a "financial genius" on Wall Street.

But every line in the file exudes a suffocating coldness.

Patient Name: Shen Wanzhou

[Symptoms: Severe anorexia nervosa, accompanied by severe social anxiety.]

[Diagnosis: The patient has been on intravenous glucose for a week. If unable to eat independently, their organs will fail within a month.]

The light from the computer screen shone on Chen Yuan's cold and stern profile.

He looked at the photograph that was attached to the file.

The girl in the photo was so thin she looked unrecognizable, her eyes vacant like a delicate puppet without a soul.

That was the only little girl in the orphanage who had ever given him half a piece of moldy bread many years ago.

The mouse casing made a creaking sound as it struggled to keep up with the strain.

"Bang!"

He slammed his fist on the metal keyboard, and the screen went black instantly.

"Eagle, cancel the job with that European arms smuggling network."

Chen Yuan stood up and grabbed the black jacket from the back of the chair.

"Don't contact me for the next month."

The eagle, with half a lit cigar in its mouth, stared wide-eyed.

"Brother Yuan, that deal is worth two hundred million US dollars! Why aren't you going to kill someone?"

"Go learn to cook."

The eagle dropped the lighter from its hand.

Day 1, Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute in France.

Three Michelin three-star chefs stood in front of the worktable, looking tremblingly at the menacing-looking Eastern man before them.

"Mr. Chen... this French consommé needs to be simmered over low heat, and your current heat is too..."

The chef hadn't finished speaking.

With a "thud," the boning knife in Chen Yuan's hand plunged deep into the solid wood cutting board.

The hilt of the knife was still trembling violently.

On the cutting board, the top-grade Wagyu beef that was originally intended for making broth was chopped into minced meat using the same technique he used to cut the major artery.

Chen Yuan's hand broke open and bled from excessive force.

Fresh blood dripped from his fingertips onto his snow-white chef's uniform.

He didn't look at the injury on his hand.

He just stared intently at the broth in the pot, which had become cloudy due to the high heat.

"Too greasy."

Chen Yuan poured the whole pot of soup down the drain.

"Her current appetite makes her vomit at the smell. Redo it."

One month.

Thirty days in total.

The man who could move freely within the NORAD system locked himself in the kitchen.

French clear soup, Japanese kaiseki, and lost Chinese imperial cuisine.

He painstakingly etched all the secret recipes of top chefs into his muscle memory with the same frenzied passion he used to decipher national defense codes.

Cut the potatoes into shreds.

The thickness of each wire must be accurate to 0.1 millimeters.

Because only that specific thickness can produce the crispest texture when blanched in boiling water, without irritating Shen Wanzhou's delicate esophagus.

Chen Yuan's finger was cut by the kitchen knife seventeen times.

The blood stained two whole baskets of potatoes red.

Prepare medicinal cuisine.

A pot of clear soup requires hen, ham, and dried scallops, simmered over low heat for eight hours.

Chen Yuan moved a cot next to the stove.

Every ten minutes, he would use a slotted spoon to precisely skim off the wisps of oil that floated to the surface of the soup noodles.

I stayed up for three consecutive nights until the soup was as clear as a spring, but I could not smell any fishy or greasy smell.

Thirty days later.

When the eagle saw Chen Yuan again.

The back of this max-level human's hand was covered with countless burns and knife wounds.

But the ordinary kitchen knife in his hand danced with a chilling rhythm.

There was no murderous intent, only ultimate gentleness and precision.

A bowl of Wensi Tofu.

Thousands of strands of tofu, as thin as hair, float in the clear broth like a blooming white chrysanthemum.

Chen Yuan took off the apron that was soaked with sweat and oil.

He put the bowl of soup into a top-of-the-line insulated container.

"Eagle, book me a domestic flight."

Chen Yuan picked up the insulated box, and for the first time, a light appeared in his eyes, which had been devoid of any emotion.

"Go apply for a housekeeper position."

In the real world, on the rooftop terrace of the Star Hotel in Beijing.

The memories faded away in the night wind.

Shen Wanzhou leaned against Chen Yuan's chest and listened to this long-buried past.

Her hand unconsciously touched the back of Chen Yuan's hand.

Those knife wounds that were once so deep that the bone was visible are now just a few very shallow white marks, but they still feel hot under Shen Wanzhou's fingertips.

"So, the bowl of porridge you brought to that interview wasn't part of the headhunting firm's test at all?"

Shen Wanzhou's voice trembled, and her usually cool eyes reddened slightly.

"The headhunting firm's test was to prepare a Western-style light meal."

Chen Yuan took her hand in his own and kissed it.

"But I know you can't eat it at all."

He remembered that day.

He stood in front of the tightly closed door, holding the bowl of porridge.

Inside the door was Shen Wanzhou, huddled in a corner, resisting all food and human contact.

He didn't knock on doors to persuade people like other psychologists, nor did he use any commercial means to coerce or entice them.

He simply pushed the bowl of porridge gently through the vent under the door.

Then, I leaned against the door and sat there all night.

Until the next morning.

He heard a faint swallowing sound coming from inside the door.

At that moment, in the "Abyss," a place where corpses and blood never blink in the dark web, he leaned against the cold wall, his eyes reddening.

He knew he had snatched her life back from the jaws of death.

Shen Wanzhou buried her face in Chen Yuan's neck, and a warm tear silently fell onto Chen Yuan's collarbone.

She wasn't feeling sorry for her past illness.

Instead, she felt sorry for this high and mighty man, wondering how much untold humiliation he had endured for her sake.

Chen Yuan felt a dampness on his neck.

He sighed softly, tightened his arms, and pulled her into his very bones.

No empty words of comfort.

He simply patted her back clumsily and gently with the hand that had once chopped countless potatoes.

Chen Yuan looked across the terrace and up at the night sky.

In his mind, the image of the dragon-scale kitchen knife, which he had sealed in a transparent glass cabinet in the kitchen of the Chen family manor, came to mind.

That was the highest honor the Dean of Le Cordon Bleu presented to him with trembling hands on the day he graduated.

But he never took it out to use.

He felt that a regular kitchen knife was sufficient for chopping vegetables for his wife.

Chen Yuan looked at the night sky, a proud smile curving his lips:

"There are no born chefs, they just want their loved ones to eat more meat."