Chapter 30: [Congratulations! Your Business Establishment Has Upgraded to ‘Rudimentary Restaurant’!]
Behind the central plaza, deep inside the towering, gray vaulted complex.
A city guard clad in a black uniform knocked on the dark brown wooden door.
“Enter.”
A deep, commanding voice carried from within, rasping with a gravelly edge.
“Commander, here is today’s summary of municipal affairs.”
The guard set the compiled dossiers onto the desk.
Seated behind it was a man wearing an identical black uniform, though upon closer inspection, the material and cut differed slightly.
What differed far more were the insignias pinned to their collars.
The guard wore one large star paired with a smaller one, while the Commander bore one large silver star flanked by two smaller ones.
The man was getting on in years.
A scar the length of half a finger marked his left cheek. Broad-shouldered and powerfully built, he had silver-white hair and a gaze that was both razor-sharp and immutably calm.
He set aside the paperwork in his hands and picked up the ledger submitted by the guard.
The first sheet recorded the morning tallies for crystal and ration exchanges.
A footnote at the bottom noted that total conversions over the past two days had entered a steady downward trend.
Dropping well below this year’s baseline average.
The second sheet detailed the headcounts for those exiting and re-entering through the walls.
Across all three gates combined, two individuals failed to return—presumed casualties.
The Commander of Seed City paused his gaze over the metrics from the West Gate.
The guard reported, “Over the past two days, more and more people have been leaving through the West Gate. The reason remains unverified. The patrol at the gate reported that Rong Na’s crew went out that way today as well.”
The silver-haired Commander asked, “Did the scanners pick up any major anomalies in the pollution readings?”
“No major spikes. However, over the past three months, the rate of pollution index growth at the gates has accelerated. Today’s reading is up eight points compared to the start of the year. At this rate, we’ll breach the critical red line in two months.”
“I see.” Commander Yves continued turning the pages in his hand.
When his eyes landed on the monitoring data from the Black Fields, his brow furrowed hard.
“The casualty rate here has exceeded regulation limits.”
“Yes, sir. The Black Fields have been highly unstable these past three months for reasons unknown. The conscripted labor force is already critically short-handed.”
“The fresh conscripts arrived at the Black Fields two months ago?”
“Correct. Counting today’s numbers, nine people have been discharged due to incapacitating injuries.”
Yves pulled open his desk drawer and drew out a small, black rectangular console.
Opening the console, a screen glowing with an ethereal blue light flickered to life.
Pressing his lips into a tight, severe line, he typed in a sequence.
Beep—
A reply pinged back.
Reading the message, Yves’s expression darkened even further.
He remained silent for a long while before finally snapping the black console shut.
Reaching back into the drawer, Yves pulled out an official requisition decree, signed it, and handed it to the guard.
“Announce it tomorrow morning. Routine draft lottery tomorrow evening for Black Field labor service.”
“Yes, sir!”
The guard snapped a crisp military salute, collected the documents from the desk, and turned on his heel.
Ling Jing was tidying up the tricycle.
Operations for the day had concluded, with profits setting another all-time record.
She hadn’t caught a second of breath all day, churning out three full woks of the one-pot hodgepodge stew.
Between chopping ingredients, doing prep, and wrestling the spatula, her arms felt noticeably sore.
To be fair, this level of intensity wasn’t absurdly brutal—it didn’t even match how grueling her early days had been when she had to push carts through alley after alley back on Earth.
Yet the payoff was magnificent.
A net profit of 1,024 City Coins.
The cumulative revenue displayed on the Cash Box had smashed past the milestone once again.
[2397/1600]
Ling Jing upgraded the recycling capabilities of the Item Exchange Box, adding “Inedible Mutated Fauna.”
The numbers shifted, ticking over to [2397/3200].
Yesterday’s leftover balance was 922 points. Over the course of the day, Ling Jing had spent sixteen points restocking seasonings and daily expendables.
Leaving her with 906.
Claiming the 40-point reward for completing today’s daily quest…
Ling Jing now had a whopping 1,970 disposable points in her hands.
Nearly two thousand.
She opened the Management Interface and tapped into the [Shop Expansion] tab.
At long last, she pressed down on the upgrade button for ‘Rudimentary Restaurant.’
[Are you sure you wish to upgrade to Rudimentary Restaurant? (Upgrading the restaurant will bring changes to establishment attributes, daily required revenue quotas, and more. Please ensure your current operational capacity is sufficient before proceeding.)]
[Confirm / Cancel]
The confirmation pop-up even came with a thoughtful cautionary disclaimer.
Operational capacity?
A Rudimentary Stall demanded a daily revenue quota of 200, and she had pulled in over a thousand today alone.
It was more than enough, no matter how one sliced it.
Ling Jing tapped [Confirm].
[Congratulations! Your business establishment has upgraded to ‘Rudimentary Restaurant’!]
[Congratulations! Please claim your establishment upgrade rewards!]
[Congratulations! Having completed the establishment upgrade within four days, please claim your Rapid Progression Bundle!]
[The Rudimentary Restaurant has been deposited into your ‘Assets.’ Please select an appropriate plot under ‘Shop Decoration & Layout’ to place it!]
Notifications chimed and tumbled across her vision one after another.
Instead of rushing to claim the rewards, she opened the [Assets] tab first.
Following the upgrade of her shop, subtle adjustments had taken place across the system interface.
In the lower right corner, nestled right beside Settings, an extra [Assets] button had appeared.
Ling Jing tapped it open.
Host: Ling Jing Points: 970 Business Entity: [Rudimentary Restaurant] Equipment Owned: Tier 3 Roaster, Cash Box (Item Exchange Box), Standard Tricycle Cart, Large Stovetop and Wok Unit x 1. Ingredients: Potatoes (5,620 catties), Sweet Potatoes (4,817 catties), Chinese Cabbage…
Quite comprehensive.
It kept a meticulous ledger of all the raw provisions she currently possessed.
What was this supposed to mean—why hadn’t this feature been available before?
Was it because her holdings had been too pitiful to justify reviewing her own assets?
Ling Jing had a strange hunch.
Before earning her first hundred coins, she had been under the novice protection umbrella, while running the [Rudimentary Stall] had essentially been her tutorial zone.
Upgrading to a genuine brick-and-mortar restaurant was the real departure from the beginner village.
Hence the newly unlocked functionality.
Tsk. This system sure loved keeping its cards close to its chest before every upgrade.
Tapping into [Shop Decoration & Layout], an illuminated icon for [Rudimentary Restaurant] stood out boldly on the screen.
Ling Jing reached out a finger and pressed [Rudimentary Restaurant].
The visual display on the panel suddenly shifted.
Transforming into… a 2.5D pixel-art interface?
It appeared to be a stylized 2.5D rendering of the exact clearing where she was standing right now.
The tricycle on screen had morphed into a chibi model, and she herself was rendered as a little sprite with a large head and a tiny body.
She took a test step forward, and the pixel sprite on the display mirrored her movement in real time.
Fascinating. It looked just like the layout screen of a management, idle, or farming sim.
Ling Jing surveyed the bird’s-eye map on the panel, then tapped along the edge of the sprawling open clearing.
The [Rudimentary Restaurant] occupied nine grid tiles on the grid map.
[Do you wish to place the main structure here?]
[Yes / No]
This clearing was a location Ling Jing had vetted with great care from the start. She decisively tapped [Yes].
Pop.
The confirmation prompt vanished, and right over the tiles she had selected, a neat, square-timbered building materialized on the map.
Rendered in a charmingly adorable art style, the signboard hanging across the top read: “Chinese Restaurant.”
Ling Jing lifted her eyes to look beside her.
The exact instant her finger pressed the screen…
A gorgeous, handsome building appeared with a soft, resonant thud, settling right onto the coordinates she had designated in the physical world.
