Compared to women, it wasn’t that complicated when men needed to put on makeup. Lin Qiusheng finished his makeup after around ten minutes. Meanwhile, Xiao Zhao and the other assistants had already prepared the ingredients on the stage.

Lin Qiusheng walked on the stage and talked to his beautiful co-host. Facing the camera, he smiled tenderly.

I found a place nearest to Lin Qiusheng as I was afraid that something would happen during the broadcast. The camera didn’t capture me in this corner.

As the cooking show started, Lin Qiusheng began to introduce each of the ingredients, including their nutritious values and how to cook them. From time to time, he joked with his co-host and gave more interesting touches to the show.

After the introduction of the ingredients came the part I was worried about the most – the review of dishes! There were three dishes that the program crew had prepared. To increase the effectiveness of the show, they had sent three staff who didn’t have outstanding appearances to bring out the dishes. They placed them in front of Lin Qiusheng and said that they were cooked by the audience.

Lin Qiusheng took a bite of every dish and gave some comments. This section was finally over.

After that, Lin Qiusheng wanted to cook a dish right on the stage. Since he had to process his ingredients, the crew members moved the previous three dishes away and made more room for him. Seeing the staff carrying the food out of the screen, I thought I could heave a sigh of relief.

But when the staff was taking his last step out of the screen, Lin Qiusheng, who looked normal in the previous second, suddenly dashed forward and snatched a dish out of the staff’s hand. He grabbed the food and shoved that handful of it into his mouth. I immediately went to pull him. My left hand wasn’t within the camera frame, so I held the red chopsticks and grabbed his middle finger.

Unexpectedly, this trick didn’t work. Lin Qiusheng struggled harder and harder. He had almost swallowed all the food in his hand. I immediately threw the chopsticks aside, took out a painting of Taotie, and stuck it on him!

Taotie was the name of ancient mythological creatures famous for their greedy and gluttonous character. They were big foodies as they were the ancestors of all foodies. Legend said that only Taotie’s head remained because it had eaten its own body! That was enough to see how gluttonous it was.

I had borrowed this painting of Taotie from Chuyi a long time ago. I thought that if the spirit was something that liked to eat a lot, it would be afraid of Taotie or show respect to Taotie at the very least!

Indeed, it worked. As soon as I had stuck the Taotie painting on him, Lin Qiusheng shook as if he was a sieve. After a few seconds, he returned to his senses. He immediately knew what had just happened. His face grimaced.

I wanted to comfort him, but I caught a glance at Xiao Zhao’s signal. I followed her instruction and pulled Lin Qiusheng away from the camera’s frame.

As soon as we got off the stage, the MC of the show immediately took the stage and made a joke about Lin Qiusheng’s awkward situation, driving the audience to think that it was the bridge section the show had planned. One of the dishes he had tasted was deliberately prepared with spices they shouldn’t have used for the dish. The show producer wanted to see if Lin Qiusheng could recognize it.

Previously, they said that the food was cooked by the audience and now they said that it was planned by the program crew. Although the loophole was obvious here, they could cover Lin Qiusheng’s awkward situation. It wasn’t too difficult for him to get back to the stage later.

For the latter part of the show, Lin Qiusheng introduced nutritious foods that could be great supplements during the wintertime. The show was able to finally end smoothly. Since he had the painting of Taotie with him, he could continue and finish his show without any new problems. After the show was done, I wanted to go to Lin Qiusheng’s house to see if there were any clues.

“I’m tired. Can you visit me another day?” suggested Lin Qiusheng.

I remembered the conversation between him and Lin Xia in the hospital. I knew he was afraid that I could find something in his house. I wanted to go and see, but if he said so, I had to give up on that thought. “All right, if you encounter something, call me immediately.”

After Lin Qiusheng left, I remembered that my car was still at the hospital. When I was about to leave with Li Mazi, Xiao Zhao honked at us to go with her.

After getting into the car, Li Mazi teased her. “Why didn't you leave with your boss? You don’t want to see your salary reduced, do you?”

Xiao Zhao had a faint smile. “How could it be? My boss asked me to see you off.”

I chuckled. Liu Qiusheng was interesting, quite the attentive type. However, he still didn’t want to tell me the truth.

I asked Xiao Zhao to take us to the hospital. After Xiao Zhao left, we immediately drove after her. Li Mazi sat in the passenger seat and asked, “Why do we have to follow Xiao Zhao?”

“Do you still need to ask? Of course, we want to know what Lin Qiusheng has messed with!” I rolled my eyes at him.

I then told him what I had eavesdropped on this afternoon in Lin Qiusheng’s patient room. Li Mazi’s eyes opened wide. “It’s no wonder I felt that Lin Xia looked strange. He knew everything right from the start! He knew his father had a problem!”

After around half an hour, Xiao Zhao drove into a high-end residential area. In these luxurious neighborhoods, non-registered cars weren’t allowed to enter. I stopped at the entrance and got out with a pack of good cigarettes. I wanted to make friends with the security guard.

The security guard was a middle-aged man around forty years old. He looked nice, but he was tough to entice. I had offered him several packs of cigarettes, but I got nothing from him. Feeling helpless, I had to drive away.

Li Mazi was somewhat mad. His foul mouth moved fast. “I was an idiot to get involved in this case. There’s nothing good about this, only a lot of troubles!”

I thought it wasn’t that bad. Although Lin Qiusheng hadn’t told me the truth, he was willing to let me help him. I kept thinking about it for quite a long time, but I hadn’t figured out how to make him tell me everything.

Since I had a lot of things on my mind, when I turned my car into the alley of my antique shop, I had almost run someone over. I craned my neck to check and saw that it was Lin Xia. The young man looked pale as he had been out in the cold. It seemed he had been here right after the cuisine show ended. When he saw me, he looked both touched and excited. “Master Zhang…”

I waved my hand and motioned that he should go inside the shop to talk. It was freezing outside. I didn’t want to become a human ice cube by standing here with him.

Li Mazi was mad at Lin Xia, so he went directly into the shop after getting out of the car. He poured himself a cup of hot tea and quickly gulped it down. After I brought Lin Xia to the shop, Li Mazi slammed the cup on the table and dashed upstairs, leaving Lin Xiao with an embarrassed face.

I poured Lin Xia a cup of hot tea and comforted him. “Li Mazi is a straightforward man. You don’t need to overthink it.”

“No, don’t worry.” Lin Xia shook his head. He held the cup of tea and looked reluctant. After a long moment, he made up his mind and started to talk. “Master Zhang, I guessed you heard our quarrel this afternoon.”

I almost spat out the sip of tea I had just drunk. It turned out they had seen right through my performance this afternoon. Even Lin Xia, an immature young man, got it. It would be strange if Lin Qiusheng didn’t get it.

Feeling embarrassed, I nodded. “Yeah, I overheard you guys. If you know anything, you better tell me. That’s how I can help your father.”

Lin Xia sighed. Slowly, he started to talk. “I don’t know how it started. All I know is that one week ago, my father mysteriously told me that he bought something very nice. After that, he has turned into this…”

When he said that, I got an idea in my head, more or less. The “nice thing” he mentioned could be an otherworldly item. It seemed Lin Qiusheng also knew that it wasn’t something normal. But still, he wanted to use that item to achieve his purpose!

As I had kept silent for quite a long time, Lin Xia got anxious. “Will something bad happen to my father?”

I nodded. “If he continues this way, bad things will happen soon. Let alone other complications, your father’s body won’t be able to endure his wolfing habit of eating.”

“Do you know how to help my father?” Lin Xia’s eyes reddened.

I patted his shoulder to comfort him. “Don’t worry. If you are too worried, you will make mistakes. Anyway, I need to know what this thing is and gather more details about it to know how to deal with it.”

Lin Xia implored me. “You must help my father!”

Then, he placed the cup down onto the table and rushed outside. I was left with a puzzled face.

Li Mazi came down. He sat opposite me then said despicably, “That young man must have gone to see his lover. He ran even faster than a rabbit.”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. “Don’t think that everybody is like you. I think Lin Xia’s a good man.”

Li Mazi laughed and asked, “Now, what is your plan?”

I pretended to be surprised. “Oh, I thought you wanted to ditch this case.”

Li Mazi made a fake cough and cleared his throat. “How could I do that? I was just angry when I faced some injustice…”

Lin Xia’s appearance tonight made me somewhat worried. I always felt that something would happen. After chatting with Li Mazi, I went upstairs to prepare some magic tools I would possibly use. After preparing everything well, I eased my mind and went to bed.

I thought that I would be able to have a nice sleep that night. However, at the break of dawn, I was awoken by Li Mazi’s screaming downstairs. I thought something big had happened. After putting on more warm clothes, I hurried to go downstairs, but then, I saw that Ru Xue was chasing after Li Mazi around my house.

I leaned against the handrail of the staircase and watched the fun for a while. Eventually, I knew what had happened. Rue Xue had come home last night from her mother’s house. She knew Li Mazi was at my place since he wasn’t home. Early this morning, she came to my shop to find him and found him drooling at a beauty wearing a bikini in the magazine.

Li Mazi threw me a send-help-look. I waved at him and signaled that he should pray for his welfare. Then, I went out to have breakfast. I rarely went out to have breakfast but today, judging from the fact that it would take a lot of time for Ru Xue to calm down, I quickly made up my mind to go out to have some peace and fresh air.

I slowly moved along the antique street to find a restaurant and order something. When I had finished half of my meal, I saw someone anxiously rushing past the restaurant. That person looked like Lin Xia. It was weird that he had come here so early in the morning. Feeling worried, I placed the money for the breakfast on the table and left the restaurant. I dashed after him.

However, when I ran in his direction, I didn’t see him. This street was straight and there was one turn two hundred meters ahead of me. It was just a short moment, so he couldn’t have just disappeared that fast!

Did he visit a nearby shop? With that thought, I walked along the street and checked each shop. Still, when I reached the turn, I hadn’t found him yet. I knew it was strange, so I decided to call Lin Xia. The phone rang twice before the line went through.

“Good morning Master, have you figured out a solution?” greeted Lin Xia.

I found an excuse and hung up the call. I guessed my eyes were just blurred for a moment. After this interruption, I was in no mood to eat my breakfast outside. I bought some fried dumplings and returned to my antique shop.

Li Mazi and Ru Xue were sitting on the sofa, showing their affection to each other. I gave Li Mazi a pack of dried dumplings. Then, I started to search for Lin Qiusheng’s information on my phone in hopes that I could find the reason why Lin Qiusheng had to depend on an otherworldly item.

After two hours of staring at my phone screen, I finally found a clue amongst a bunch of fake and real information about him.

Three months ago, there was a blog post about Lin Qiusheng on Weibo, which gradually became a hot topic. The blog was written nicely and had pictures. It was about a cooking show that had invited Lin Qiusheng as a special guest. To enliven the show, the program crew had prepared a bowl of braised pork rib with three spoons of sugar added as a prank to Lin Qiusheng.

Unexpectedly, Lin Qiusheng didn’t change his face when he ate two bites of the braised pork. Moreover, he gave an excellent assessment of the dish. People assumed that Lin Qiusheng’s sense of taste had a problem.

Anyway, this blog post did not affect Lin Qiusheng’s career that much because Lin Qiusheng’s company timely posted an explanation that it was just part of the show.

However, Lin Qiusheng had another strange performance in a few shows afterward. The news that he had lost his sense of taste spread out fast. The other cuisine shows he had attended were willing to pay the compensation and break the contract with him. Lin Qiusheng’s career had plunged to the bottom…

Until one week ago, he had signed a new TV program with a small company. After the first episode, his reputation was slightly recovered.

Lin Xia had said that Lin Qiusheng had gotten the otherworldly item one week ago. The times matched. It seemed his report was true. Now, I knew why Lin Qiusheng didn’t want to tell me his real situation. A gourmet without a sense of taste was like a deaf musician. Not many people could accept this shocking news.

I decided to call Lin Qiusheng. I thought it was the right time to talk to him. Before I could make a call, my phone rang. It was a call from Lin Qiusheng.

Oh well, as soon as I mention Cao Cao, Cao Cao comes!

I picked up the call. Before I could speak. Lin Qiusheng’s panicked voice came from the other end of the line. “Master, my son is missing!”