Yan Yifei placed his plate on his lap and calmly retrieved a knife and fork from his Space Ring. Using his knees as a table, he ate with utmost elegance. Amidst a crowd of rough, slightly messy eaters, he somehow made it look like he was dining in a high-end restaurant!
Gan Lan also noticed the anomaly that had infiltrated her squatting line of customers. "Tsk, he’s remarkably exquisite," she thought. To instantly draw attention even among a crowd of handsome men and beautiful women proved just how outstanding his looks were!
Unable to resist, she took a few extra glances, only to see the exquisite young man look up and meet her gaze. What kind of eyes were those? They were beautiful and unique, as if they could suck a person right in.
"Junior! Junior! Stop staring! The barbecue is about to burn! Besides, I’m very good-looking too! Look at me!" a senior student reminded Gan Lan with a grin, pointing at his own face.
Snapping back to reality, Gan Lan rolled her eyes at him. "Senior Wu, you are handsome indeed! But I see you every single day now. I need a change of pace, don’t I?"
"Are you saying you’re already tired of my face? I don’t believe it. I’ve been coming here for days, and you’ve only stood on your tiptoes to look up at me once. How could you be tired of it?" Wu Mingyu touched his face and glanced at Yan Yifei, still feeling that he was the more handsome and charming one! "Hmph. She has no taste," he thought.
Gan Lan was speechless. "Personal attack! That’s a personal attack, isn’t it!?" she thought. Later, she would brush a few extra layers of spice on his food to let him know that a chef was the last person anyone should ever offend!
She pointed at the warm reminder on her sign, gesturing for Wu Mingyu to read it. "Senior Wu, to maintain your beauty, you’d better eat less or not eat at all. It wouldn’t be good if you got acne or something."
Wu Mingyu was struck dumb.
Immortal Barbecue: [Hahaha, let me see what the warm reminder says. Hmm... She added something new: "Eating too much barbecue is harmful to your health. It is recommended to eat less or abstain entirely to reduce health risks!"]
Barbecue Bibimbap: [Hahaha, this treasure of a junior is too excellent! Is this a kind reminder or is she mocking Ming!? So cute hahaha!]
After closing the stall, Gan Lan checked the time; it was only four in the afternoon. She had specially set aside a portion of pork elbow, pig trotters, two Choubeis, and thirty barbecue skewers to take to Counselor Ye for a tasting. Her main goal, of course, was to show gratitude. Her secondary goal was... well, to cling to a powerful backer while she was at it.
KNOCK KNOCK.
She knocked on the office door. "Huh? Is she not here? Tsk," Gan Lan muttered, patting her head. She had been so busy she completely forgot it was the weekend. "Forget it, I’ll give it to her tomorrow," she decided.
Back in her dorm, she took a shower and lay down, planning to browse the school forum. After all, every time she logged on before, it was just to notify her regular customers that food was ready; she had never scrolled through it properly.
As soon as she entered, she saw a trending post on the front page with a full ten million comments! Gan Lan was shocked. Ten million was roughly equivalent to the population of an entire city on Earth, and this was just a school forum!
Title: [What comes to mind when you see a scene like this?] (Image Attached)
The picture showed Gan Lan turning her head, looking gently and contentedly at the rows of squatting customers gnawing on pork elbows. Among the ravenous crowd, one person stood out like a crane among a flock of chickens.
To think such a photo could actually go viral. Were the students of this future era really this bored!? She scrolled through the comments.
Original Poster (OP): [I’ll go first, I’ll go first! The image that comes to my mind is a mother pig looking tenderly at her piglets. Seeing them stuff their faces with the food she made, their mouths dripping with oil but looking so happy, Mama Pig feels blissful and satisfied!]
Comment 1: [Hahahaha, it really is like that!!! Too accurate! I also want to be a... you know. I’m already in line.]
Comment 2: [What are they eating? They look like they’re about to ascend to heaven!?]
Comment 3: [Um... I want to ask, is the guy in the middle holding a knife and fork the genius commander from next door, Yan Yifei!? And is the guy squatting next to him, gnawing away with oil all over his mouth, the little prodigy from the Manufacturing Department next door, Gao Haiyang?]
Comment 30: [Ahhh! It really is Yan Yifei and Gao Haiyang! They’re so down-to-earth!]
After reading the comments, Gan Lan finally understood what had happened. It turned out those two military academy students were very famous, and they had inadvertently made her stall go viral!
Now knowing the whole story, she backed out of the post. Was she supposed to find out the identity of every person who came to eat and tailor her service according to their status? Gan Lan couldn’t do that. If she had to kiss up to everyone based on their background, she would probably have to treat every single customer with extreme caution. After all, anyone who could get into the Comprehensive University wouldn’t have a poor background. Students who came from a poverty star like her were exceptionally rare. Wouldn’t she die of exhaustion if she lived like that?
The best approach was to treat everyone equally. If you come, I will welcome you with open arms; if you leave, I will raise a glass to see you off.
Continuing to scroll through the forum, she unexpectedly saw a thread that tagged her username!
Title: [A scum has appeared in our Culinary Department! @Come and have some barbecue! Please stop spreading your junk food!]
OP: [Yes! I’m talking about that so-and-so from the freshman class, the one who first started selling barbecue at the small market! @Come and have some barbecue!]
OP: [Do you know that your barbecue is slowly harming the students’ bodies? I took your barbecue in for testing and actually found a ton of problems! It makes you susceptible to parasitic infections, contains hidden carcinogens, damages the digestive tract mucosa, disrupts bodily equilibrium, and causes internal heat!]
OP: [I urge everyone to boycott this kind of harmful food! Firmly boycott it! I ask the school to deal with this trash! Ban @Come and have some barbecue! Make the food she cooks disappear! It would be best to expel her! She has already seriously endangered the students’ health, and her food is going to become a source of infection! Seeing students disregard their health to stuff their faces with her food fills me with fear!]
Comment 1: [Tsk, hearing you put it like that, it does sound serious. But while the hazards you listed look scary, they’re actually just minor issues. Buying a single Recovery Potion solves all of them. By the way, Junior Gan Lan’s newly released braised pork elbow and pig trotters are so delicious and fragrant! I just came back from stuffing myself!]
Comment 2: [Agreed with the above. Junior Gan Lan’s barbecue is always paired with green vegetables! She also writes warm reminders on the side. We know all of this already; we don’t need the OP to remind us! The pork elbow is so good! The lamb skewers are also delicious! Anything produced by Junior Gan Lan is a masterpiece!]
Comment 3: [Isn’t the Culinary Department also teaching how to make barbecue? Plus, there are tons of dark cuisines from the Culinary Department that make people vomit and send them to the infirmary. What about those? If anyone is getting expelled, it should be them, right? You want to expel Junior Gan Lan, who actually makes normal, delicious food on the Food Street? What kind of logic is that?]
Comment 4: [So the OP is a classic case of sour grapes?]
OP: [Those dark cuisines only spread on a small scale. Most people stop after trying them once. But Gan Lan’s case is different! Haven’t you seen the alumni lining up every day just to eat? The food she makes is already spreading on a massive scale!]
This was probably a peer in the same industry. Unable to compete fairly, they had resorted to slinging mud. She had seen this kind of trick a lot on Earth. She hadn’t expected to still see it in the future, which made her feel oddly nostalgic. She even thought that the original poster was a bit stupid.
Although everything the poster said was technically true, these problems wouldn’t severely affect the evolved people of the future. Even if there were a slight issue, chugging a Recovery Potion could solve any minor ailment.
However, Gan Lan still planned to go deliver some warmth to Counselor Ye. After all, if posts like this multiplied, what if some brain-dead teacher actually agreed with the poster’s claims? For a nobody like Gan Lan with no background and no money, it would be extremely troublesome.
In layperson’s terms, any random person from the school could step up and easily crush her like a bug. Therefore, clinging to a powerful backer was absolutely necessary.