Chapter 77: Braised Chicken Chunks and Stir-fried Pork Belly
A group of aunties and uncles surrounded Xu An, their faces wreathed in kind smiles. "Young man, are you a delivery driver for Xu’s Fast Food?"
Xu An nodded instinctively and asked, "Yes, I am. Can I help you with something?"
"Young man, could we see what dishes are in the boxed meals today?"
The request was a bit strange, but not unreasonable, so Xu An simply showed the meal to the crowd.
"Ooh, today’s dishes look good. Braised chicken, mu shu pork, and a smashed cucumber salad. Tsk, tsk, not bad at all."
"The mung bean soup looks great, too. Look at it, it must have been simmering for hours."
"Mhm, not bad, not bad."
"This must be for Ye again, tsk tsk."
"Building One, the one on the left."
"..."
The aunties and uncles were still chattering away, so Xu An found an opening and slipped away.
’The people in this complex are way too friendly!’
He walked to the sixth floor, found apartment 601, and rang the doorbell. The door opened, the meal in his hand vanished, seventeen yuan appeared in its place, and the door closed again.
The whole exchange took less than three seconds. Xu An didn’t even get a clear look at whether the person who took the food was a man or a woman.
"Hello, I’m the owner of Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. I’m so sorry we missed your order yesterday."
Xu An finished speaking and waited for a moment, but there was no response. Not a single sound came from the apartment, and it was so quiet that he began to wonder if the whole exchange had just been a hallucination.
’Okay, they must have extreme social anxiety. I probably shouldn’t bother them.’
As he turned to leave, he suddenly noticed a bag of trash by the wall. After a moment’s hesitation, Xu An picked it up. "I’ll take this trash down for you!"
With that, he carried the trash downstairs.
Only after the footsteps faded into silence did Ye Ning, who had been standing frozen stiff behind the door, finally move again and return to his desk.
’That was terrifying! That guy actually tried to talk to me!’
After silently grumbling about Xu An for a few moments, Ye Ning opened the plastic bag. After taking out two boxed meals, he found two canned drinks inside as well.
’Haiquan Apple Vinegar? What the heck is this? Never heard of it.’
He casually placed the two cans of apple vinegar with his stash of soda, picked up his chopsticks, and started to dig in.
Full and satisfied, Ye Ning slumped in his chair and pulled out his phone. He opened up his Qzone feed to check his friends’ updates—his daily post-meal ritual for "catching up on world events."
As he scrolled, he suddenly saw someone had posted a request: ’Seeking a programmer to design a restaurant order page. Compensation negotiable. If interested, please add QQ number XXX or call XXX.’
’Huh? The poster is Xu’s Fast Food?’
Ye Ning glanced at the lid of the lunch box he had just scraped clean. Printed on it were the three large words: Xu’s Fast Food.
’The owner of this restaurant is pretty on top of things. Food delivery is just starting to take off in other cities, and he’s already jumping on the bandwagon. The moment he realized he’d missed an order, he started looking for a solution.’
Ye Ning searched for "food delivery" online, and so many pages for various services popped up that he scrolled through more than ten pages of results and still hadn’t reached the end.
’Tsk, tsk, the competition is terrifying.’
He clicked on a random page to take a look. After getting a feel for the basic requirements, Ye Ning realized that this kind of page wasn’t hard to design. ’If I do it myself,’ he thought, ’I could finish it in three days at a normal pace. A rush job could probably be done in two.’
He went back to his Qzone feed and looked at the post from Xu’s Fast Food again. Then, he opened a chat window with them.
’Regarding the request for a restaurant page design, what’s your budget?’
After waiting a moment without a reply, Ye Ning put his phone aside and went back to browsing the food delivery websites on his computer.
As he scrolled, Ye Ning suddenly felt a little thirsty.
He reached out and grabbed one of the two ice-cold cans, assuming it was the soda he’d bought. He popped it open and took a big gulp before realizing something was wrong.
’Why does it taste sweet and sour? Did it expire and go bad?’
He looked down at the can in his hand. ’Haiquan Apple Vinegar. Isn’t this from Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant?’
Frowning, he took another sip. ’Hmm, the taste isn’t unacceptable.’ He took another. ’It’s actually okay...’
When Xu An got downstairs, the group of aunties and uncles who had been chatting earlier had already dispersed. Only two or three people remained under the tree, playing cards.
After leaving the residential complex, Xu An headed toward the Hai City Library.
What he didn’t notice was an electric scooter following him from a distance, perfectly matching his route.
The scooter followed Xu An to the street opposite the Hai City Library. The auntie on the scooter watched the two of them from across the road.
’Didn’t the flyer say it was a restaurant? It even had a picture of the storefront. How come it’s just two tricycles? Were they lying? Is there no restaurant at all?’
The auntie stared at the two tricycles across the street, confused. ’Well,’ she thought, ’since I’ve followed them this far, I might as well see this through.’
’If these boxed meals are from some fly-by-night operation, I’ll have to persuade Ye to stop eating their food when I get back.’
She waited for nearly forty minutes, watching the delivery drivers across the street load up with boxed meals, leave, and return several times, before she finally saw them start to pack up and head back.
The auntie tailed them just as before. When she saw Xu An and the others stop in front of a restaurant, she got off her scooter, locked it, and walked straight toward where they had stopped.
Arriving at the entrance, the auntie looked up and, sure enough, saw the sign for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant.
’So they really do have a storefront. They weren’t trying to fool anyone.’
She peeked inside. The restaurant wasn’t very busy. Near the entrance, a father and daughter were sitting and eating happily.
The auntie went over, gently tapped the man’s shoulder, and asked in a low voice, "How’s the food at this place?"
"It’s pretty good. I’ve been eating here for days. The owner’s kids eat the same food," the man said, pointing to a table in the corner.
Xu Kang and Xu Le were sitting at the table, holding soup bowls and drinking mung bean soup.
’The owner’s own family eats here, so it must be safe. Maybe I’ll give it a try?’
"Auntie, do I order here?" the woman asked loudly, turning to walk to the cash register.
"That’s right. Pay first, then go over there to get your food," Granny Xu said with a nod. She took the bill the woman handed her and passed back the change and a tray.
Tray in hand, she walked up to the hot food counter, where Zhou Qi asked with a flourish of his ladle, "Today’s main dishes are braised chicken and stir-fried pork belly. Which one would you like?"
「Fishermen’s Hotel.」
For several days in a row, Zhang Daoyi had come to the hotel around noon. He always ate in a private room and left alone afterward.
Today, he once again came to the Fishermen’s Hotel to eat.
This time, however, ten minutes after he entered his private room, a middle-aged man in a business suit walked into the Fishermen’s Hotel and went straight to Zhang Daoyi’s room.
The two men stayed in the room for a total of two hours. Zhang Daoyi was the first to leave, walking out of the hotel’s main entrance.
Half an hour after Zhang Daoyi left, there was still no movement from the room. Just as the men stationed by the front entrance were about to go check, the other man came out and headed straight for the back door.
The person waiting at the back happened to be Lin Xu Yang.
Lin Xu Yang tailed the man all the way to the front of a supermarket. A huge sign above the entrance read: Victory Supermarket.
’Victory Supermarket... that’s a subsidiary of Qiansheng Group, isn’t it!’
Lin Xu Yang’s eyes narrowed. A blurry figure appeared in his mind’s eye. That figure had spoken two words to him—Qiansheng Group.
’So it really is... Qiansheng Group?’