Chapter 6: A Restaurant… Really?!
The fragrance of a fresh batch of potatoes and sweet potatoes wafted out from the roaster.
The items from the first batch had already been packed into paper bags and arranged neatly across the platform in front of the machine.
Ling Jing had always felt that the small tricycle provided by the system resembled a mobile street stall, mainly because it looked so much like the food carts from her previous world.
A rudimentary canopy was mounted over the cargo bed behind the tricycle.
Underneath the canopy sat the square roasting machine, two large woven baskets brimming with potatoes and sweet potatoes, as well as the tent and lantern provided by the system.
The cash box was set to her left, right next to the roaster.
In front of the canopy was a flat wooden counter, which was currently packed almost full with roasted potatoes and roasted sweet potatoes.
The restaurant signboard and the Restaurant Rules stood upright at the edge of the counter, ensuring that any arriving customer would spot them at first glance.
Excluding the potato she had eaten herself and the one potato and one sweet potato just sold to the two sisters, there were still thirteen potatoes and fourteen sweet potatoes left.
When baking the first batch, Ling Jing had relied on experience and placed fifteen of each inside.
Sweet potatoes took up more room, while potatoes occupied less.
At that time, she hadn’t known what effects these two foods would produce once roasted.
While roasting the second batch, she had wanted to test whether this machine had a capacity limit.
As it turned out, it certainly did.
To start, she had picked out forty small potatoes and packed them in tight. There was clearly visible space remaining.
Yet she couldn’t shove in even one more. Despite the extra room, the roaster spat it right back out.
A line of gray text appeared over the machine: Maximum capacity reached. Please upgrade.
Ah, so this was an item that could be upgraded.
Without turning on the heat, she scooped out all the potatoes and tested the sweet potatoes instead.
It could hold thirty sweet potatoes, spitting out any beyond that number.
A ratio of thirty to forty.
After some thought, Ling Jing ended up loading twenty-six potatoes and ten sweet potatoes into the second batch.
Any more, and it would just bounce them back out.
Potatoes were visibly cheaper than sweet potatoes.
Unless there was an urgent need to purge toxins, the humans here were far more likely to choose potatoes.
When customers had limited currency on hand, they naturally gravitated toward cost-effective goods.
Ling Jing wasn’t sure how many people that little girl could bring back, nor was she certain whether the prepared food would spoil or how long it would keep.
She decided to stop after finishing this batch.
Either way, it would be plenty to sell for a while.
After checking the heat on the sweet potatoes and potatoes inside the roaster, Ling Jing looked up toward the older girl leaning against a large boulder in front of her stall.
She was already sound asleep.
After the little girl ran off, Ling Jing had chatted briefly with her.
Perhaps due to sheer physical exhaustion, or perhaps because she had finally eaten something filling after being pushed to her absolute limit.
This girl, who introduced herself as Lilin, soon grew drowsy.
Even though she propped herself up with her hands against the ground and blinked hard to stay awake, enveloped in the intoxicating aroma of food, she simply couldn’t hold out.
She had fallen asleep right when the potatoes started roasting, and now that they were nearly done… it had probably been twenty minutes?
She didn’t know how far the walk to that high wall actually was, but the younger girl, Lina, had been gone for almost half an hour.
Just as the thought crossed Ling Jing’s mind, she caught the sound of hushed voices.
“Sister Ya, Auntie Qian, the restaurant boss and my sister are right over there!”
A short while earlier.
“Lina, why did you two head in this direction?”
Having stepped outside the west wall, Long Qian asked as she followed behind Lina.
“Sister found a locked building earlier, so our plan today was to search for canned goods. But then she got bitten. We lost our way on the trek back, so we just headed straight for the wall.”
The sisters hadn’t eaten yesterday since they hadn’t scavenged enough to trade for City Coins, leaving them unable to exchange for rations.
Today, they still had to venture out to hunt for small crystals to earn money. If luck was on their side, based on what Lilin had spotted before, they might have even scavenged some canned food.
Canned goods were worth a fortune. Handing one in would cover their rations for the next ten days without worry.
Yet when the sisters rushed over, they discovered the half-dug wall had already been forced open by someone else. The wooden crate they had peeked at through the cracks in the masonry was completely emptied out—not a single thing remained.
On the return trip, her sister had been bitten by a mutated insect.
They didn’t even have time to retrace their original route, thinking only of rushing back toward the safety of the walls.
“Who would have thought we’d stumble onto that miraculous boss and her restaurant by accident!” Lina said excitedly.
“…Right.”
The two people trailing behind exchanged a glance.
They hadn’t believed a single word about roasted potatoes or sweet potatoes in the first place, simply feeling pity for the girl.
Seeing Lina lead them this way only deepened their dread that Lilin had already passed away.
Before the apocalypse arrived, this area had been a suburban farm. There were almost no places left to scavenge pre-apocalyptic supplies—only various crops left to rot in the fields.
Once the emerald mist began its corrosion, all flora seemed to lose any concept of time. They refused to die, and even the crops in the fields didn’t decay.
They only turned greener and greener, their toxicity growing ever more potent.
Scavengers from the city almost never came to the west.
During the first two years after the high walls were erected, the west had been the single most dangerous direction. Mutated plants were the densest here, claiming lives if one let down their guard for a fraction of a second.
Later on, Awakener squads from the Three Great Cities swept through once a year to suppress the vitality of the mutated flora and fauna beyond the west wall, driving the danger level down considerably.
Yet it also meant there were virtually no crystals left to scavenge.
Everyone in the city knew the yields outside the west wall were abysmal. If your luck was poor, you might even cross paths with ferocious mutated variants that sprouted up after the Awakeners finished their sweeps, losing your life in an instant.
Most preferred heading north or east. To the north lay the ruins of the old city, while the east held an abandoned industrial complex.
There were far more usable items to salvage there. With good luck, one could find well-sealed food like milk powder, canned goods, or compressed rations. Even with average luck, one could bring back scrap metal or plastic to exchange for City Coins.
The mutated plants there were also relatively “tame” ornamental greenery—highly stable, good for harvesting crystals, and far less likely to suddenly mutate and kill people.
Only… those in the city with weaker combat strength, or desperate souls who couldn’t compete for scraps in other directions, would ever take the gamble of heading out here.
The route Lina was leading them along was particularly desolate. Aside from oversized, dormant plants, there were only a few sickly green farms, weren’t there?
Hardly anyone ever walked this way.
“Dammit, the plants out here have grown this bad? It pisses me off just looking at them. I wish I could burn every last one to the ground.”
Long Ya despised these mutated plants and beasts from the bottom of her heart, cursing under her breath as she followed along.
“Can you pull off something even the Awakeners couldn’t manage? It took an immense effort just to keep the inside of the city completely clear of vegetation. If you set these things on fire, the resulting emerald mist would be thick enough to choke you to death on the spot. It’s not like some idiots haven’t tried that before.”
“Like I need you to tell me that?” Long Ya snapped back. She swept a fierce glare across the surrounding vegetation before asking Lina with dwindling patience, “Are we there yet? Lina, you didn’t lose your way, did you?”
“No! You can find it just by following the scent! Can’t you smell that wonderful potato and sweet potato aroma?”
Compared to Long Qian’s grim group, Lina was plainly vibrant and energized.
“Where on earth is there any…”
Someone started to object, wanting to bring the little girl back to reality.
Yet halfway through the sentence, his nose caught something.
Wait… this scent… could it really be roasted sweet potatoes?
Sweet, mingling with the charred fragrance of roasted potatoes!
This couldn’t be a hallucination, could it?!
He looked toward those in front, only to see Auntie Qian and Qiu Jie exchanging a glance, their expressions concealed beneath their face cloths.
Even Long Ya furrowed her brows. “It really smells like it… Could this be a trap set by some mutated plant?”
“It’s not!” Lina tugged at Long Ya’s sleeve, pulling her forward. Pointing toward a spot not far ahead that was partially obscured by a massive boulder, she whispered in excitement: “Sister Ya, Auntie Qian, the restaurant boss and my sister are right over there!”
The group followed the little girl’s finger, their pupils dilating in unison.
—How was this possible?
Instead of Lilin’s corpse, what met their eyes was…
A person wearing neither hood nor face cloth, standing by a canopied tricycle?
There wasn’t a trace of emerald mist around the tricycle; a gentle, warm white barrier held the mist at bay just a short distance before them.
Behind the cart, that human—utterly untouched by any sickly green—was busy tending to something as billowing steam rose from beneath the canopy.
The fragrance tickling their noses grew even richer.
It was the aroma of fully roasted potatoes, and a genuine food fragrance that they hadn’t smelled in ten whole years.
It felt like a dream.
From within the group, someone uttered in a daze.
In a dry, strained voice, he asked: “There really… is a restaurant?”
Aside from Lina, who dashed happily toward her sister, no one else made a sound.
All of them remained rooted to the spot in utter disbelief, unable to snap out of their shock.
