Chapter 63: It Sounded So Lively
Ling Jing sat on a chair behind the cashier counter, taking her sweet time munching on an ear of corn.
Though the menu offerings had expanded, the proprietor herself hadn’t become any busier.
All credit went to the upgrades she had unlocked the night before. Right after adding the new items, she had upgraded the roaster, the corn boiler, and the porridge cooker in one go.
Auto-refill, auto-dispense—just like the potato roaster, the entire lineup ran on a fully automated pipeline.
Even the floor expansion was designed to make purchasing food as seamless as possible for the patrons.
Every functional zone was cleanly divided. The flow was smooth for the customers, and immensely pleasing to the eye for the boss.
When points were rolling in, spending them didn’t require second thoughts.
Investing in upgrades was just the smartest way to make more money, after all.
She had only managed about four hours of sleep last night.
Since the daytime lull gave her a breather, Ling Jing carried a chair out from her bedroom, setting it behind the counter so she could rest and snack at her leisure.
The only station requiring her personal attention was the Malatang skewer table.
At the moment, seven newly arrived diners had just settled around the skewer pot. Ling Jing had already served their dipping plates and was now happily enjoying her own “afternoon tea.”
This was sweet corn—plump, crisp, and bursting with rich natural sweetness with every bite.
Even back in her old world, Ling Jing had always had a soft spot for sweet corn.
Not that she disliked waxy corn either; though not quite as sugary, it had an earthy, chewy fragrance all its own.
Business remained booming today.
The early morning wave had brought in roughly fifty to sixty patrons, followed by another fifty or sixty mid-morning.
Foot traffic dipped slightly around noon, settling at around thirty or forty diners.
Every fresh wave that walked through the doors reenacted the exact same four-step routine:
Gasp: Whoa, the shop got bigger!
Shock: Whoa, new items! And the rice porridge isn’t limited today!
Deep inhale: The new sugar-roasted chestnuts and boiled corn smell heavenly! Look at those menu descriptions!
Immediate scramble: Get in line and grab some before it’s gone!
After so many days of steady scavenging, the regular customers didn’t care about a difference of one or two coins anymore.
Plenty were eager to try the new dishes, and the rice porridge was selling exceptionally well.
Sitting near the entrance, Ling Jing overheard diners scattered across the tables debating which pairings worked best with the porridge.
“The pickled white radish, hands down! Salty, spicy, crunchy radish paired with silky, fragrant rice porridge—hiss—that flavor is pure magic!”
Auntie Yun made zero effort to conceal her passionate devotion to the pickled daikon.
“It’s wonderful with a roasted sweet potato too. The potato is rich and sweet, so when you chase a bite with a mouthful of porridge, it melts together just like sweet potato congee,” a mother sitting beside her young daughter shared softly.
“The one-pot stew is where it’s at! It doubles the effects of the porridge, plus meat and veggies over grain—that’s the gold standard!” a dark-skinned young man declared with a grin.
“Everything you guys say sounds delicious! I’m trying every single combination over the next few days. Right now, I wish I had three more mouths just so I could eat it all!” chimed in a man with a faint scar tracing his jaw.
“Haven’t you pocketed plenty of coin today? I saw you haul in over forty coins this morning—your sack of greens was practically bigger than you were. You could afford to try all of them right now,” Auntie Yun teased with a chuckle.
“No, no, that’d be too wasteful! Good things ought to be savored slowly,” the scarred man stammered, rubbing his neck sheepishly. “Besides… what if Boss rolls out more delicacies tomorrow? I have to save coin so I’m ready to buy!”
Outside, snatches of conversation from the bench area drifted in through the open doorway.
“Little Yao, did you get taller?”
“Auntie, I’m twenty-one already. How could I still be growing?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Before the cataclysm struck, twenty-something was prime growing age!”
“Er… maybe a tiny bit? I’ve been eating much better these past few days, and my cheeks feel a bit rounder,” the young man said, pinching his own cheek.
“Not that fast, you silly kid… But putting on weight is a blessing! A thicker frame gives you the muscle to dig up wild crops twice as fast.”
“Auntie, that hoe you use looks remarkably handy. Where’d you pick it up?”
“Brought it all the way from Cloud City; you can’t buy these anymore. Jack used to be a carpenter, though. Why not offer him some coin to fashion one for you? Just make sure the price is fair—he won’t lift a finger for pennies, not with how hooked he is on digging vegetables these days.”
“Got it, thanks Auntie!”
Inside and out, the air was thick with cheerful, buoyant energy.
Behind the counter, Ling Jing smiled quietly to herself.
Things had genuinely changed.
During the first couple of days she ran the street stall, people had talked, but almost exclusively within their own tight-knit circles.
Survival in the wasteland was nothing like a peaceful era; suspicion and razor-sharp vigilance were life jackets everyone wore at all times.
The overly naive and gentle simply didn’t survive long out here.
Yet now, whether seated elbow-to-elbow inside or sharing benches out front, strangers fell into effortless chatter over a shared meal.
They talked about the food, their “jobs,” and the small, mundane trivialities of daily life.
Ling Jing felt as though she had returned to the early days of opening her first diner back home.
Listening to patrons vent about demanding bosses, celebrate an exam score, or gossip about a neighbor’s kid.
It sounded so lively.
You could feel people yearning for a future again.
Or at the very least, looking forward to tomorrow.
Back in her old home, there was an ancient saying: Food is the paramount necessity of the people.
Eating well was the ultimate antidote to life’s bitter pill.
A restaurant was always meant to be a haven of warmth for weary souls.
Seed City, inside the towering stone clock tower.
Keith set a dossier firmly onto Yves’s desk.
“The toxic corruption had reached their irises, yet receded on its own?” Flipping open the folder, Yves looked up with an expression of sharp disbelief.
“Yes, sir. Overseer Nine reports that both were newly inducted conscripts. They were mauled by a mutated stalk of iron black wheat right as their shift began. One sustained a Grade Three exposure laceration, while the other suffered a Grade Six bite wound to the lower calf. Both received field treatment.”
“Grade Six? What the hell were the overseers doing to allow a wound that severe?! Did nobody spot the anomaly ahead of time?!”
“…It occurred during shift turnover, Commander. The overseers likely missed the subtle signs in the transition.”
“A Grade Three laceration indicates a mutation threshold exceeding E-rank! How could they fail to catch it beforehand?!”
Keith’s expression tightened, his Adam’s apple bobbing before he managed to speak: “Commander, Chief Overseer Nelson is currently chairing an emergency briefing. The core agenda… is the strong possibility that the mutated iron black wheat has learned to conceal its presence.”
Yves’s hand clenched hard around the edge of the document.
His brow knitted into deep furrows as he barked, “Tell Nelson to report to my office the second his meeting concludes.”
“Yes, sir!”
With that command given, Yves returned his gaze to the dossier, meticulously combing through the field notes detailing how two conscripts mauled by mutated iron black wheat had staged a miraculous recovery.
Gender, height, weight, detailed biological markers.
Both female. One in her early twenties, the other in her late forties.
One possessed a sturdy constitution, while the other was visibly frail.
Yves immediately dismissed his initial suspicion. Across these two wildly divergent baselines, neither exhibited the slightest hallmark of an imminent awakening.
“These packaging scraps were recovered from their private quarters. Though stripped of identifiable markers, forensics suspects they were containers used to store external food.”
“External food?”
The phrase was completely foreign to Yves’s ears.
“Commander, there is one more matter, though I am uncertain whether it bears any connection to this…”
Noticing Keith’s hesitation, Yves cut in flatly, “Spit it out.”
“A group approached the gate guards on duty earlier, demanding an audience with you.”
“Who?”
“A street gang known by the populace as Mad Dog, led by a man named Rong Na. They recently absorbed the remnants of Scarface’s old crew.”
Yves frowned. “What business could a pack of street thugs have with me?”
“They claim… the common scavengers harbor a secret they have concealed from the administration—specifically regarding the heavy traffic passing through the West Gate over the past several days. They suspect it connects to the anomalies in the quarantine sector.”
“Get to the point.”
“Yes, sir.” Keith snapped to attention, repeating the lunatic tale Rong Na had spewed.
Even uttering the words felt completely absurd.
—”He claims that beyond the West Wall… someone has opened a restaurant.”
