The Game of Life

The next day, which was the first day of the new term for Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant, Jiang Feng almost died of sudden exhaustion in the back kitchen.

Even though the new term hadn’t officially started, business at Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant was surprisingly booming.

It wasn’t just during meal times, from morning to night, each and every moment, the restaurant was filled with eager customers as if no one had indulged in feasts during the Chinese New Year at home but had starved for a whole month instead.

In the restaurant there were only Wang Hao and Liu Zixuan, the rest hadn’t returned to school yet, and it was impossibly hectic. Jiang Feng turned off the WeChat delivery service, and those UAL University students, who originally wanted to stay at home, made journeys to the restaurant to pick up their orders.

Later, the waiting students really couldn’t stand just watching, and started helping out voluntarily, cleaning tables and collecting dishes, offering themselves a self-service dining experience.

For Jiang Feng, the exhaustion from that single day surpassed that of the previous ten days learning to cook.

Jiang Jiankang was also wiped out, dinner was made casually, just cobbled together enough to be edible. The two elderly men were dragged out by Jiang Jianshe for clothes shopping since the weather would soon warm up and it was time to buy some new spring outfits.

“Feng, I didn’t realize how delicious your dad’s tofu was last semester, but today I suddenly discovered that your dad’s tofu is really great!” Wang Hao, with tears in his eyes, ate as if this meal was his New Year’s Eve dinner.

“Yes, yes, yes, I also think today’s tofu is exceptionally tasty!” Liu Zixuan echoed, “This eight-treasure tofu is even better than what I had on New Year’s Eve.”

“Your mom knows how to make this?” Wang Hao was amazed.

“No, my mom can’t cook, we ate at a hotel for New Year’s Eve,” Liu Zixuan said, “But no offense, the New Year’s Eve dinner at Yipin House was so perfunctory. It didn’t taste as good as before.”

“I cooked this tofu, not my dad,” Jiang Feng said leisurely.

Wang Hao was instantly shocked and after a pause, he didn’t forget to pick up some braised pork, saying, “Feng, your culinary skills have undergone a transformation!”

“It’s like a different person!” Liu Zixuan exclaimed.

Although they were complimenting him, Jiang Feng couldn’t feel happy, “Was my cooking really that bad before?”

“It definitely wasn’t bad tasting, but it wasn’t exceptionally delicious either, just a bit better than the cafeteria,” Liu Zixuan was extremely honest, “Feng, your main thing is that your dishes look good. Plus, the rib rice dish smelled great, and it was really impressive when posting it on friends’ circles.”

Jiang Feng:…

But Liu Zixuan was right, Jiang Feng was indeed the one in the Jiang Family who liked to plate his dishes the most. During his freshman year, even when he cooked tomato and egg noodles in the dormitory, he made sure to arrange them beautifully to create an appealing design between the tomato and the egg-

“You know, Feng, something’s not right,” Wang Hao suddenly put on a thoughtful expression, even miming scratching his chin, “I still feel like you’re like a character with a protagonist’s template from a novel.”

“Look, facing a family crisis, owing a huge debt, suddenly becoming a top student, excelling academically, taking a trip back home, culinary skills improving, about to compete, and then instantly win the championship. You’re just short of a grandpa in a ring or a system falling from the sky, and a few reclusive masters passing on their skills to you. Then you’d have luxury cars and beauties throwing themselves at you, corporate families at your disposal, hidden sects encountering troubles, a global shift with the revival of spiritual energy, and an earth crisis with an alien invasion…”

Wang Hao’s first few sentences made Jiang Feng feel a bit sheepish, but the more he listened to the latter part, the stranger it sounded. It seemed like he had blended all the novels he had read together.

“Alright, alright, Mr. Hao, stop rambling. Why don’t you also say Feng was bitten by a spider and got superpowers, met with Lighting Hero and Captain China, and then defended the world from an alien invasion with their combined forces,” Liu Zixuan also began to talk nonsense.

“Why the Lighting Hero and not a Maoshan Taoist priest?” Jiang Jiankang, now cleaning the table, suddenly asked.

Jiang Feng:…

Dad, be normal, I’m scared.

However, Wang Hao hadn’t mentioned the system from the sky, which was fine, but once he did, Jiang Feng remembered that damn game of his, with poor internet connection, unreachable customer service, and minor issues like game glitches. Recently, he had finally managed to update the progress bar to 60%, but for some bizarre reason, the next day he saw it had dropped back down to 20%.

What, network connection failed, please update again?

Then the game continued the update from 20%, slower than before, and even a bit capricious, making it impossible for Jiang Feng to find any pattern. Sometimes it rose by 6% in one day, sometimes by 0.3%, and now it had barely crested over 70%; internet speed in the global village was frustratingly unstable.

Today, with more customers in the restaurant, there was more garbage and cleaning up was even more troublesome. Wang Hao and Liu Zixuan stayed to help clean up, and the group kept busy until ten o’clock before they were all utterly exhausted and returned to their dorms to rest.

Jiang Feng still had to attend classes the first two days before school started because, after all, he had to go through the motions. Although, as of now, his name in the Physics Department was already universally known.

Last semester, Professor Li made the Signal and System final exam excruciatingly difficult, and the grades turned out to be ruthlessly poor with a fail rate as high as 40%. Jiang Feng, because of his game cheats and being accustomed to the difficulty, accidentally scored in the nineties, with the second-highest score merely 82. It certainly made a splash and scared him enough to consider being more low-key this year, making sure to leave at least two major questions blank on every test, ensuring he’d never score above 80. In the following few days, Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant was extraordinarily busy, though it was more manageable with the help of Wu Minqi in the kitchen. Poor Ji Yue, the only one paid as a part-time jack-of-all-trades, was so exhausted each day that she didn’t even feel like drawing anymore, posting “Gugu gugu” in her friends circle everyday.

By the way, Mrs. Wang Xiulian finally had a stroke of conscience and gave Ji Yue a raise, no longer exploiting student workers for cheap labor at 1500 a month, but increasing it to 2000 a month.

With an extra 500 a month, Ji Yue could draw a few fewer illustrations and procrastinate a bit more.

This bustling trend continued until the 9th, when the students who hadn’t eaten at Healthy Stir-fry Restaurant over the winter break finally regained their senses, recognized the constraints of their wallets, and returned to the cafeteria.

Strangely enough, it was also from the 9th that Liu Qian stopped coming to the restaurant for meals..