Chapter 3: What a Miraculous Restaurant!
The four rules were stated clearly and plainly.
Yet it was precisely because they were so plain that the two sisters hardly dared to believe them.
Lina swallowed hard and asked, “Is it really… not poisonous?”
Ling Jing nodded, her demeanor composed and frank.
This also confirmed one thing for her: with the system’s help, she could communicate with the locals without any barrier. They understood both her spoken words and written characters.
It was as if an invisible force was translating for her in real time.
That certainly made things much more convenient.
A short distance away, the two sisters began murmuring in low voices, seemingly discussing what to do.
After the mutation, the fruits of all plants had ceased to be food for humanity—they had turned into enemies.
Yet this smell was simply too intoxicating!
The rich aroma surged into their noses, carrying a mild, earthy fragrance—the scent of earth from before the Great Mutation. Sniffing carefully, beneath that gentle scent lay a faint, delicate sweetness and the irresistible char of baked potato skin.
Saliva flooded their mouths uncontrollably, not to mention that the two had gone without a single bite of food for two whole days.
Survival instinct demanded that they take the gamble just this once.
“Hello… I would like one roasted potato, please.”
In the end, the shorter girl tiptoed over timidly, carefully fishing out four City Coins from her cloth pouch as if parting with treasure, and set them down in front of Ling Jing.
“Thank you for your patronage.”
Ling Jing turned around and dropped the coins into the cash box. Seeing the counter display [4/100], she handed over the scalding, paper-wrapped roasted potato. “Careful, it’s hot.”
“Th-thank you.” The girl took it, clutching the piping-hot potato to her chest as she scampered back toward the other girl, who was visibly struggling to stay on her feet. “Sister! Sister, the potato is here!”
“Let me eat it first. If it’s poisonous, don’t you dare touch it.”
“No way! I bought the potato, so I should test it for poison first!” Hearing her sister’s words, the girl quickly pulled the outstretched potato back toward herself.
“Be a good girl, do as I say. Consider this the last thing I can do for you.”
“Sob… Sister…”
“Come on, let me have a taste.”
The girl’s eyes brimmed with tears. Cupping the potato carefully, she tore off a small piece and blew on it for a long while. Only when the morsel had cooled a bit did she offer it to her sister’s lips.
The roasted potato entered her mouth. The golden skin was lightly crisp, while the inside was soft, fluffy, and dense. The rich, mellow potato flavor rolled across the tip of her tongue, forcefully awakening taste buds that had gone dormant over days of starvation.
The rations distributed in the city each day were nothing more than rock-hard black biscuits. They filled the stomach, but their taste wasn’t worth mentioning.
Lilin had no idea how long it had been—how many months, how many years—since she had last tasted something so delicious.
She savored the morsel in her mouth, chewing with immense reverence, hot tears welling in her eyes.
Even if this roasted potato is poisonous, to eat something this good once before dying… it makes it all worth it.
She thought to herself.
“How is it, Sister?” Lina stared anxiously at her, fixing her eyes on her sister’s pupils.
When infected by toxins, the most noticeable change occurred in the eyes.
“It seems… fine?” Lilin savored every bit before swallowing the mouthful of potato and said.
“Huh? Sister, your eyes… the green seems to have faded just a tiny bit?” Lina rubbed her eyes, peering intently into her sister’s gaze.
The change was extremely subtle; the girl wasn’t even sure whether it was her own wishful thinking or something that had actually occurred.
“Oh, right, I forgot to mention.”
Ling Jing spoke up. “The roasted potatoes from our restaurant can remove a trace amount of toxins.”
She offered a small smile.
Had she said this before they made the purchase, the two sisters—already suspicious—would have thought she sounded like an outright con artist.
As soon as her words landed, the sisters froze.
They were ten times more shocked than when they had first caught sight of her.
“…What?!!!!”
“It can remove toxins?!!!!!”
Seeing the sisters’ sheer disbelief, Ling Jing got a pretty good read on the situation: this world likely lacked food capable of purging toxins.
Or rather, even if it did exist, it was almost certainly not circulating among common folk.
That meant the food from her restaurant was bound to be extraordinarily competitive.
…Assuming this mobile street cart could even be called a restaurant for now.
She just wasn’t sure about the quality and prices of the food sold inside those towering walls.
The sisters’ hurried exchange quickly confirmed her suspicions.
“I’ve only ever heard of the expensive anti-toxin serum that can neutralize the poison… and that only circulates among the Three Great Cities, with priority supply given to Awakeners… An injection that costs thousands of crystals to trade for… and a roasted potato we bought for four City Coins can detoxify us, too?”
Lilin stared blankly at the steaming potato in her sister’s hands.
She was the one who could feel it the most clearly. It felt as though… as soon as that piece of potato hit her stomach, the excruciating agony of the emerald venom gnawing at her body truly receded just a tiny fraction.
The effect was remarkably slight, almost like a placebo.
Yet all along the trek back to the city, her heart had been tearing with severe pain, each step worsening by the second. Now, though that piercing ache still lingered, it had noticeably stopped escalating.
A dying person was always the most attuned to the subtlest shifts in their own body.
This roasted potato could really purge poison.
The shopkeeper wasn’t lying.
Snapping out of her daze, Lilin immediately nudged Lina’s hand, shoving the potato toward the girl’s mouth. “Eat, hurry! This roasted potato actually works!”
Caught off guard, Lina had a mouthful of roasted potato stuffed into her lips. She winced from the heat for a split second, but the moment the flavor registered, she smacked her lips in wonder… It had such a charred, savory fragrance, and the inside was rich and hearty. It tasted incredible.
A hundred times better than the rock-hard black biscuits in the city.
Yet it was obvious her sister needed this potato far more than she did!
“No, Sister, you eat it!” Lina hurriedly pushed it back toward Lilin.
A single four-coin roasted potato was shoved back and forth between the sisters, treated as if it were the most precious treasure in the world.
“It might not be quite as miraculous as that anti-toxin serum of yours,” Ling Jing interjected at this point, seizing upon the stray information they had let slip. “To be precise, one roasted potato only purges one percent of the body’s total toxins. Just a trace amount.”
She then casually pointed toward the Restaurant Rules. “You might feel the effects so strongly because of the second rule.”
—2. Diners within the premises of this restaurant are guaranteed absolute safety.
What did that mean?
Lilin and Lina looked toward the board. Absolute safety?
Wait… actually…
Looking closely, the space surrounding the little cart seemed to be veiled in a faint, warm white light, subtly holding the eerie green mist at bay.
Come to think of it, ever since they had stepped up to this vendor’s stall, an indescribable sense of ease and comfort had washed over their entire bodies.
A wild, almost absurd deduction suddenly struck Lilin. “Could it be, Boss… that your stall can completely block out the corruption of the emerald mist?!”
Ling Jing didn’t answer in words, merely giving a simple nod.
The phrasing in the Restaurant Rules sounded fairly broad, but its specific effects were something she had only tested out while foraging for ingredients earlier.
When she had pushed her tricycle toward the farm to gather potatoes and sweet potatoes, the surrounding emerald mist had literally parted around her.
Not only that, but a few other minor incidents had occurred along the way.
—How could this be possible?!
The sisters were thrown into an even greater shock.
Even the towering city walls could only keep out a portion of the emerald mist. How could there exist a space that repelled it entirely?!
What’s more, for such a precious, miraculous haven, they hadn’t been charged an astronomical sum of City Coins. It had only cost them… a mere four coins?
What kind of miraculous place was this? What kind of miraculous person was she? What kind of… miraculous restaurant!
It felt completely like a dream.
—Just when they were on the brink of losing all hope, she had descended before them like a godsend.
