Chapter 89: Handing Over the Goods, Taking the Cash, and a New Ingredient—Bullfrog
With forty portions of the one-pot stew finished, she whipped up another ten stir-fries.
The Malatang was ready as well, so Ling Jing had Caicai help her pack all one thousand skewers into takeout containers.
Adding in the rest of the order—the roasted sweet potatoes, boiled corn, pickled vegetables, chestnuts, and everything else—it was past eight in the evening by the time every last box was neatly packaged.
“Your order is ready.”
Ling Jing laid out all the boxed food across the tables on the ground floor.
Packed to the brim, the spread completely took up four tables.
“It’s past the agreed-upon time.” Yves glanced at his wristwatch and asked, “Should this be… charged at double the rate?”
His attitude was remarkably courteous.
“Give me a second.”
Ling Jing walked behind the cashier counter, pulled open the drawer, and brought out the supplied calculator.
“Cleared.”
“120 x 6 + 40 x 15 + …”
The buttons clattered in rapid sequence.
“Two thousand six hundred.”
The mechanical voice read out the total.
“This covers yesterday’s pre-ordered items, coming out to exactly two thousand six hundred,” Ling Jing explained. “The delay was primarily due to the dishes added at the last minute today: five orders of braised meat, five of braised offal, five of braised vegetables, five of garlic broccoli, three of shredded pork with runner beans, two of Di San Xian, and ten bowls of steamed rice.”
“Understood.”
“The braised platters and steamed rice were already on hand, so they didn’t take much time. It was tossing the ten stir-fries that pushed us past the cutoff. I’ll bill the braised goods and rice at regular menu prices, but the ten stir-fries will be billed at double rate. Any objections?”
Business was business, and Ling Jing considered herself quite reasonable.
Catering clients naturally deserved some leeway, but the surcharge for her overtime labor had to be factored in.
“None at all,” Yves nodded.
“Alright. The tally for the added dishes comes out to: 5 x 50 + 5 x 45 + …”
Another flurry of clacking keys.
“One thousand two hundred and nine.”
Adding that to the previous sum.
“That brings the grand total to three thousand eight hundred and nine City Coins. How will you be paying?”
Ling Jing tilted the calculator display toward Yves and asked.
“One moment.”
Yves walked over to the entrance and beckoned to Keith.
Holding a small metal case, Keith stepped through the doors with an utterly bizarre expression plastered across his face.
The two men conferred in hushed tones near the doorway.
“Commander.”
“Did you run all the beast and plant cores through the exchange? How much did they yield?”
“Fourteen hundred.”
“Good.” Yves nodded.
They had brought nine beast cores and five plant cores, all C-rank.
They were indeed far more lucrative than ordinary crystals, redeeming for a flat hundred City Coins apiece.
“What about the mutant carcasses?”
“…Commander, those mutant carcasses were worth vastly more than we anticipated.”
That was the sole source of Keith’s bewildered expression.
He reached into his tactical pocket and pulled out the full currency payout from the exchange.
—Five banknotes bearing denominations of one thousand, and three banknotes marked with one hundred.
“Plus another fifty-four coins,” Keith added, patting the pouch secured at his hip.
Yves: “?”
What did that mean? The total payout was 5,354 City Coins?
The mutant carcasses they had hauled over weighed a little over eight hundred catties.
Excluding the beast and plant cores, those carcasses alone had redeemed for 3,954 City Coins?!
And buying this massive haul of food from the Chinese Restaurant only cost 3,809 City Coins.
“Commander, these high-denomination banknotes… they practically never circulate among the common populace. They’re reserved strictly for inter-city transactions between settlements. Yet the bills dispensed by this exchange box are genuine legal tender.”
Keith couldn’t disguise the shock written all over his face.
Even the Seed City administration held very few high-value bills, which was precisely why they had hauled several heavy, clanking chests of coins out here yesterday.
After the cataclysm, the only way ordinary citizens could earn currency was through the daily exchange at the plaza.
With minuscule yields, they naturally never saw large-denomination paper bills; everything was counted in loose coins.
—Little did the authorities know that among the common folk of Seed City, certain scavengers were already carrying around crisp hundred-denomination banknotes.
All earned through honest, backbreaking labor.
Yves, however, digested the revelation swiftly.
The capabilities Boss Ling had put on display had long surpassed their baseline comprehension. Producing currency circulating between the Three Great Cities and the frontier outposts was hardly something to lose their heads over.
Right now, he cared about only one thing.
“Boss Ling, the currency we just redeemed from the exchange box—can we use it here?”
He fanned out the banknotes in his hand for Ling Jing to see.
“Naturally.”
Ling Jing couldn’t fathom why he was even asking.
“However, the sum we redeemed is quite substantial. It exceeds the amount required for our order,” Yves stated frankly.
The reserve funds they had hauled out from the city hadn’t been touched at all.
“Whatever the box paid out is yours to keep; your catering order is a separate transaction entirely. Two different matters.”
“Operating this way… won’t you take a loss?”
“That is not something a customer needs to worry about.”
While the two were conferring earlier, Ling Jing had already sneaked a peek at her [Assets] tab.
Good heavens: 274 catties of bullfrog, 59 catties of marsh green bullfrog, 96 catties of tiger frog, 65 catties of round-spotted frog, 88 catties of yellow catfish, 40 catties of whitebait…
Along with an assortment of species whose names she had never even seen before.
On top of that, the farm section had logged an influx of nine beast cores and five plant cores.
And the order itself had netted her over thirty-eight hundred points.
This garrison officer might think his side had made out like bandits, but Ling Jing hadn’t lost a single copper.
The payouts disbursed by the exchange box weren’t deducted from her personal account anyway.
…
Before long, the guards hoisted their massive parcels of food and departed under Yves’s lead.
As he stepped out into the night, the Commander still wore that stunned, how can such a windfall be real expression.
On that front, he was the spitting image of the first-time patrons who had redeemed their wild harvests at the exchange box earlier today.
Ling Jing had been restocking skewers for the Malatang back then, but the gasps of sheer wonder echoing outside the entrance had carried straight into the kitchen.
Smiling softly, she pulled the front doors shut and turned the lock.
With that, today’s operations were officially over.
Ling Jing threw her arms back, stretching out the kinks in her back.
A day of this unrelenting intensity… felt strangely nostalgic.
Back when she first rented her tiny storefront, every cent had gone toward the lease and commercial kitchen equipment, leaving zero budget to hire help.
For the first two months, she had shouldered the entire workload alone.
Things were most frantic about two weeks in, right as word-of-mouth caught fire and customer lines began snaking down the sidewalk.
There were no automated appliances back then. Ling Jing had hauled herself out of bed at four in the morning to snag the freshest cuts at the wholesale market, prepping ingredients nonstop until the doors unlocked at seven-thirty.
Grinding straight through to eight or nine at night had been an everyday reality.
Once the shutters rolled down, she still had to balance the books, wipe every table, mop down the tiles, haul out the kitchen grease traps, and log her dry-storage inventory… It was usually well past ten by the time she wrapped up.
Wolfing down whatever leftovers were within arm’s reach, she would take a lightning-fast shower, drop onto her mattress before eleven, and drag herself out of bed at four the next morning to do it all over again.
Her nest egg had been chiseled out through that exact brand of relentless hustle.
Truth be told, Ling Jing had no idea why this management system had plucked her out of all people to drop into this bizarre, desolate world.
Nor did she know whether the end of this endless chain of system quests would lead to the outcome she suspected.
She only knew that before waking up in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, she had died. Clean and final.
And when her eyes fluttered open, she was already bound to this apocalyptic management system.
Ling Jing had no other choice.
She was never one to dither or drown in second thoughts anyway. As long as a road lay open before her—smooth paving or jagged thorns—she would charge straight down it.
Throughout her past life, constrained by harsh realities, choices had always been a luxury she couldn’t afford.
There had been no safety net below, and certainly no helping hand from above.
Every inch of path she walked had been hacked out with her own two hands.
Only by pushing forward through the mud did the ground beneath her boots gradually pack down, growing smoother and wider with every stride.
Ling Jing seized every opportunity that drifted into her orbit, gripping it with white knuckles and never letting go.
Given enough time, even a drowning person’s reed could grow into a towering tree.
Options weren’t handed down by charity.
Only when you built your own foundation did you earn the right to choose.
Just like right now.
Total Revenue: [23,407 / 12,800].
