The Game of Life

Taifeng Building was located in a bustling business district, surrounded by many malls and commercial streets, greatly enriching the entertainment life of Taifeng’s employees during their break time between the lunch and evening shifts, but also adding to the burden on their wallets.

“Hu Li, the young boss is looking for you,” said Lin Ling, who was sitting at the entrance, as soon as she saw Hu Li.

“The young boss is looking for me? Where is he?” Hu Li asked.

“Seems like he’s on the second floor,” Lin Ling replied.

No sooner had Hu Li gone upstairs than the female employees who had come with her surrounded Lin Ling and asked with gossip-laden faces, “Lin Ling, what’s up with Hu Li? Why did the young boss suddenly want to see her?”

“Did she do something wrong? Or did she make a mistake that got a customer to complain about her?”

“Could it be that she’s going to be fired? The few who were let go during the last settlement, I heard Manager Fan had talked to each of them individually beforehand.”

“Fired? Getting fired before the end-of-month settlement, that’s really losing face, and she probably won’t even get her bonus,” said an average-looking waitress, not hiding her Schadenfreude.

Lin Ling: …

“I don’t know, he might just ask her something trivial,” Lin Ling finished speaking and went to tidy up and leave.

On the other side, Jiang Feng was studying the attribute panel in the men’s restroom on the second floor.

With so many things to do and being busy all the time, he hadn’t had much time to go to Li Mansion to cook pig food for Da Hua to earn experience, and Da Hua’s meals were basically entirely prepared by Chen Suhua. As a result, Da Hua hadn’t eaten stir-fried dishes for a long time. Chen Suhua’s pig food was very traditional. It was always cooked in the simple manner she had used when she was young before she moved to the city with Professor Li, just mixing pigweed with rice bran or sweet potatoes in one pot. It was a slurry that was neither appealing nor flavorful, but it smelled good, which was very consistent with everyone’s usual impression of pig food.

As for how she managed to buy pigweed within the second ring road, Jiang Feng didn’t know.

Jiang Feng looked at the attribute panel, and a sense of crisis welled up within him, not for any particular reason other than he was close to leveling up.

The recent practice had been extensive, and all the dishes he made were sold as discounted specials. What couldn’t be sold became staff meals, leading to a rapid increase in experience even though Jiang Feng wasn’t deliberately grinding for experience.

The numbers on the attribute panel had now changed to:

Name: Jiang Feng

Level: 24 (205489/240k)

Knife Skills (Master Level): Your knifework has reached the level of top chefs. (Proficiency: 419853/1 million)

Fire Control (Master Level): Your fire control has reached the level of top chefs. (Proficiency: 58742/1 million)

Seasoning (Master Level): Your seasoning has reached the level of top chefs. (Proficiency: 35214/1 million)

Lies (Advanced): Your lies can convince most people. (Proficiency: 67785/100k)

Food Testing (Intermediate): You can distinguish ingredients, and that’s it. (Non-upgradable)

…

Ahem, I’ve been telling quite a few tales lately, after all, we’re all adults now, living in the adult world.

The stark contrast to the soaring proficiency in various basic attributes, under the special training of the two old masters’ sea cucumber dishes, was the completely empty task panel. It had been a long time since Jiang Feng had seen such a vacant task panel, with only two main tasks, one of which couldn’t be completed because the level wasn’t high enough to unlock the disciple recruitment feature, resembling a mascot main task. The other main task was just one step away from completion.

Life without side quests was lonely as snow.

Jiang Feng took one last look at the experience column, which was 35k away from leveling up, and silently closed the attribute panel.

35k experience could be grinded out in just two days of hard work.

There was no game in this world that couldn’t be solved with hard grinding.

After all, he was once a hardcore gamer.

Once I reach the 35,000 experience points before completing the main quest, it means that the game will enter another long round of updates, the short ones lasting a few days, and the long ones several months. During the update, unless the game glitches as it did before, all skills and functions will be unusable. I won’t be able to use the Appraisal Skill to determine the specific problems with the dishes, view the tutorial videos in the recipe column, or settle the newly discovered characters and completed quests until the update is over.

In another month, it will be the season when oranges and crabs come to market, and Jiang Feng had wanted to take this opportunity to practice cooking crab stuffed oranges.

Not just crab stuffed oranges, he also wanted to be the first to know what the rewards for the current main quest were. This main quest was probably the most difficult task he had faced so far, and Jiang Feng had been looking forward to knowing what the specific rewards would be for a long time.

Jiang Feng now had the urge to go around asking friends and family, “Which do you think is the number one restaurant in the world?”

With so many members of the Jiang Family, he couldn’t believe he wouldn’t get Taifeng Building as an answer from at least one of them.

Preoccupied, Jiang Feng left the bathroom.

Hu Li had been wandering around the second floor and had looked into each private room without finding Jiang Feng. Just as she was about to go downstairs and ask Lin Ling if she had remembered incorrectly, she ran into Jiang Feng at the staircase.

“Boss, I heard from Lin Ling that you were looking for me,” Hu Li called out to Jiang Feng.

Jiang Feng suddenly realized and exclaimed, “So her name is Hu Li!” He only had a vague memory of Hu Li’s face, and no recollection of her name at all. It seemed that her skills weren’t particularly outstanding nor were they particularly poor, otherwise, he wouldn’t have no memory of her name.

“Yes, I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember the customer who ordered the all-meat wontons yesterday?” Jiang Feng asked.

“Yesterday’s customer?” Hu Li thought for a moment, “The table I was in charge of yesterday did have a customer who ordered all-meat wontons. He came alone and seemed to be a student of fine arts; I saw him carrying a drawing board with him.”

“Student of fine arts?” Jiang Feng asked further.

“I think so, or possibly just an amateur enthusiast who planned to sketch after eating. I remember he brought a drawing board,” Hu Li replied.

Jiang Feng thought for a moment and then came up with an idea.

“Could I trouble you with something?”

“Boss, just tell me,” she said.

“I’m going to make a survey form when I get back home today and print it out. At noon, please distribute these forms to the customers and ask them to fill them out, offering a free juice as a reward. Make sure you give it to the customers who order the all-meat wontons and ensure they fill it out themselves. Please mark their forms and bring them to me tomorrow noon, okay?” Jiang Feng proposed.

Hu Li immediately agreed. Helping out was an easy way to get noticed by the boss, so why not?

“Of course, that’s fine.”

“Thanks so much.”

With her task in hand, Hu Li went straight downstairs. Jiang Feng originally wanted to go downstairs and find a spot to catch up on the latest episodes of the annual hit drama that had evolved from a love triangle to a square, but he reconsidered, noting the peculiar nature of the drama’s theme, and instead chose an empty private room on the second floor to watch the show alone.

As soon as Hu Li reached the ground floor, her colleagues, with whom she had been shopping, surrounded her with questions.

“Li Li, what did the young boss want with you?”

“Are you okay? Did the young boss pick on you?”

“I’m fine, the young boss asked me to help with a survey,” Hu Li replied.

“A survey? Why did he ask you and not us?” a waitress with average looks asked.

Hu Li glanced at her, “Maybe because my section is all two-seater tables. The boss probably wants to survey those sitting at two-seater tables, I guess. I’m going to the changing room to get something.”

With that, Hu Li walked away.

“Psh, what’s so great about that? It’s just a survey; anyone can do it.”

“Exactly, why the pride? It’s not like she got a promotion or a raise.”

Turning the corner, Hu Li looked back at the group of three behind her and curled her lips into a smile.

“Psh.”