That evening, at Longxing Pavilion Residential Complex.
As soon as Brother Feng returned from his evening stroll in the community park, he noticed a plate of steamed spotted grouper on the dining table.
A spotted grouper weighing more than two pounds had been deboned, sliced, and arranged across a large plate. It was garnished with shredded scallions and ginger, while a thin layer of steamed-fish soy sauce had been poured beneath the fish.
Brother Feng was stunned. It wasn’t a holiday or festival today, so why had his wife bought such a large spotted grouper?
Sister Feng beamed.
“I’ll tell you about it in a moment. Come in and help me bring out the dishes.”
Ten minutes later, four dishes had been laid out on the Feng family’s dining table. Besides the steamed spotted grouper, there was also a pigeon purchased from a roast-meat shop, stir-fried celery with lily bulbs, and an eggplant casserole with minced meat.
Sister Feng poured two glasses of Tiandi No. 3 before beginning.
“Remember how I told you that I was helping that girl surnamed Xia sell her breakfast items? Guess how much I made this week?”
Brother Feng picked up a piece of eggplant.
“So that’s why you’re so happy? I suppose you made quite a bit. Let me guess…”
He held up one finger.
“Five hundred?”
Sister Feng shook her head with a smile.
“If I’d only made five hundred, would I have been willing to buy all these good dishes? Guess again.”
“Could it be… fifteen hundred?”
Sister Feng took a sip of Tiandi No. 2 and proudly announced, “Double that! Three thousand three hundred!”
Brother Feng was shocked when he heard this.
“Three thousand three hundred? So many students actually came to buy them?”
Because of his wife’s repeated failures with her previous attempts to open businesses, he hadn’t had much hope for this venture at first. He had simply thought that having something to keep his wife busy would be a good way for her to pass the time.
But now, it seemed this really could make money.
Sister Feng’s face was glowing as she happily told her husband all about the sales arrangement. She was feeling wonderful inside. Although the 3,300 yuan wasn’t entirely hers—she had to give seventy percent to Xia Yongen—she would still receive nearly a thousand yuan from her thirty percent share.
By that calculation, she would earn at least another four thousand yuan a month.
Moreover, the breakfast business at the stationery shop had only just begun, and many students still didn’t know about it. The number of students coming to buy breakfast would certainly increase in the future. By then, her share would be more than just a thousand yuan.
The only unfortunate thing was that this business could only operate from Monday to Friday. There would be no customers during public holidays or the winter and summer vacations.
Sister Feng felt it was a bit of a shame, but she knew that as long as she worked hard alongside Xia Yongen, her future would definitely be bright!
When Xia Yongen received Sister Feng’s call, she was happy for her as well.
Of course, what made Xia Yongen even happier was the more than two thousand yuan she had earned from Sister Feng.
If it weren’t for the school business providing a safety net, she might have had trouble even covering the cost of purchasing ingredients for the following week.
After finally completing the week’s stage mission, the system unlocked two new recipes for Xia Yongen: Salted Egg Yolk Lava Buns and Fresh Meat Buns.
Naturally, the new recipes came with a new system mission.
[Stage Mission: Achieve a weekly turnover of 3,000 yuan.]
Looking at the two new recipes, Xia Yongen was too excited to think about the mission requirements.
The shop’s selection was still not varied enough. In particular, the fried snacks contained a lot of oil and could easily make people feel overheated, so many customers preferred steamed pastries. However, there weren’t many steamed options available at the shop right now.
Therefore, it was normal that business hadn’t really taken off during the first week.
But now that she had mastered the recipes for steamed buns, business would definitely improve considerably.
After all, compared with malai cake and white sugar cake, steamed buns were much more universally appealing. Who wouldn’t want to come by in the morning for a soft, fragrant, freshly steamed bun?
And with fresh meat buns on the savory side and salted egg yolk lava buns on the sweet side, she could satisfy the preferences of different customers.
The problem was that she had only barely managed to complete the 2,000-yuan mission last week. This week’s target had risen to 3,000 yuan, presenting a new challenge for the breakfast shop.
Although she now had new recipes, Chen Ji Zao Xi offered a greater variety of pastries than her shop. Increasing her turnover significantly in such a short period of time would probably not be easy.
Therefore, simply adding salted egg yolk lava buns and fresh meat buns wasn’t enough to guarantee success. She still needed to find another way to increase her turnover as much as possible.
After thinking for a while, Xia Yongen decided to start by studying Chen Ji Zao Xi.
As the saying went, know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated in battle. If she wanted to expand her business, she first had to study her competitors.
During her previous market research, she had deliberately recorded the types of breakfast foods sold by Chen Ji Zao Xi and their prices. She had even drawn an extremely crude sketch, marking out the various arrangements inside Chen Ji Zao Xi’s shop, including the lettering on its signboard.
Comparing the sketch in her hand, she stood at the entrance of Rongxing House and looked for quite a while.
Sure enough, she discovered a problem.
The breakfast shop was operating on the open space in front of Rongxing House. In reality, all she had done was place the glass display counter and dining tables outside.
It wasn’t much different from setting up a stall at the food plaza.
It was precisely because of this that she had overlooked the most important thing during the entire week—the breakfast shop didn’t have a sign!
Imagine a passerby happened to walk by and was drawn to the crowd lining up in front of the breakfast shop, causing them to stop and take a look.
At that moment, they would naturally want to know what exactly the shop was selling.
So they would look around, only to realize that aside from the signboard of Rongxing House, there was nothing else to be seen. They would become even more confused.
What exactly are they selling here?
If there weren’t many people in front of the breakfast shop, passersby could still walk closer and take a good look. But once the crowd grew, they certainly wouldn’t be able to squeeze their way in.
Naturally, these puzzled passersby wouldn’t continue waiting around.
Xia Yongen took a measuring tape from the storage room and measured the dimensions. She decided to put up a large illuminated sign in front of the entrance with just two words on it: “Breakfast.”
After recording the measurements, she went to a nearby lighting store to choose an illuminated sign. She discussed her requirements with the shop owner before finally returning to Rongxing House.
Lai Meizhen came out of the kitchen carrying two plates.
“You came back at just the right time. I just finished cooking.”
The plates contained curry beef rice. Six stalks of choy sum were arranged beside the rice, with two nicely browned fried eggs on top.
After a long day of work, Xia Yongen ate with particular relish.
She couldn’t help sighing inwardly.
Things really are different now.
With Auntie Zhen around, she no longer had to eat steamed buns every day.
After a week of working together and getting accustomed to one another, Auntie Zhen was now generally familiar with the entire process of making all the pastries currently sold at the breakfast shop.
Therefore, Xia Yongen felt that it was time to redistribute their responsibilities.
She took a stack of papers from the drawer. They were covered in densely written characters—all the recipes provided by the system.
“Auntie Zhen, I think we’re working too slowly right now. So I’ve divided all the pastries currently sold in the shop into two categories. One category is steamed pastries, and the other is fried pastries and everything else. From now on, I’ll be responsible for the steamed pastries, while you’ll handle everything else. That way, we can improve our efficiency.”
Lai Meizhen stared at her in astonishment. For a long time, she didn’t even raise her hand to take the stack of papers.
“A-En… How could I possibly know these recipes?”
At Rongxing House, the dim sum department was divided into four main stations: filling preparation, dough preparation, frying, and steaming. In addition, the dim sum department had a separate congee, rice-noodle, and noodle station, which was overseen by an experienced master chef. Congee, rice noodle rolls, and stir-fried rice noodles were all handled by him.
Although Lai Meizhen was the head of the dim sum department, her responsibilities were limited to arranging the day’s production schedule, overseeing the quality of the finished dim sum, and managing the staff in the department.
As for how each pastry was actually made and what fillings went into them, only members of the Fang family and Sun Yuelong knew.
It wasn’t just Lai Meizhen—even the master chefs working at each individual station couldn’t possibly know the complete recipes.
The filling master only knew the ingredients and proportions used for the fillings, but didn’t know how the pastry skins were made.
The dough master was skilled in making all kinds of pastry skins, but didn’t know how the fillings were prepared.
The frying and steaming masters knew the precise cooking times, temperatures, and techniques required for frying and steaming the pastries, but they had absolutely no idea about the actual recipes.
Although Old Master Fang prohibited the recipes from being leaked, he couldn’t prevent people with ulterior motives from trying to figure them out.
Lai Meizhen had been the head of the dim sum department for many years, and she had once tried to analyze Rongxing House’s recipes bit by bit based on the flavors she tasted. In the end, however, she still failed.
Therefore, when she saw the recipes Xia Yongen was handing her, the shock in her heart was indescribable.
Throughout the past week, she had simply worked as an assistant beside Xia Yongen, just as she had always done. Whenever they reached a crucial step, she would automatically step away. Yet Xia Yongen would instead casually call her over to help.
At the time, Lai Meizhen had thought Xia Yongen was simply too innocent.
But today, she finally understood.
She had completely misunderstood the situation!
Xia Yongen smiled.
“What’s wrong with it? There’s nothing particularly special about these recipes. Besides, you’re the only elder in this world I’m close to now. Why would I keep things from you every day?”
In the future, the number of pastries unlocked by the system would only continue to increase. If they continued with their current arrangement, where Xia Yongen did most of the work and Auntie Zhen merely assisted her, there was no way they would ever be able to make all those pastries.
That was why she had specifically asked the system whether the unlocked pastry recipes could be taken out and shared.
She had been worried that if she did something like this, she might be subjected to some mysterious force’s punishment, just like in those television dramas.
Unexpectedly, the system told her that the recipe itself was actually not important. What mattered was the process of putting it into practice.
It was just like reading a book. Although everyone might read the same book, each person would have a different understanding of it. Through countless rounds of practice in the Boundless Space, Xia Yongen had already completely grasped the principles behind the recipes.
Therefore, only the pastries made by Xia Yongen herself would truly be the century-old pastries passed down by the Fang family. No matter who else made them, there would always be some deviation in flavor and texture.
Only then did Xia Yongen feel reassured. After all, she had gone to the trouble of bringing Auntie Zhen back to work with her. She couldn’t possibly have her do nothing but assist her. That would be a terrible waste of talent.
Besides, with Auntie Zhen’s experience, even if the pastries she made tasted slightly different from Xia Yongen’s, they would certainly still be delicious.
The people coming to the shop now were ordinary customers. Their requirements were simple: the food had to be tasty, affordable, and filling. At this stage, subtle differences in flavor weren’t particularly important.
When she saw the recipes, Lai Meizhen let out an exclamation.
“Oh, you silly girl…”
In the end, Auntie Zhen accepted the stack of recipe papers. But instead of putting them away, she placed them on the family shrine, laying them in front of Fang Ping’s memorial portrait.
She lit three sticks of incense.
Thinking about how much hardship she had endured in the past for those seemingly weightless sheets of paper, she couldn’t help feeling emotional. She had never imagined that she would ultimately be driven out of the place.
The three sticks of incense were inserted into the burner before the memorial portrait. Wisps of white smoke slowly rose as someone murmured softly behind them.
“A-Ping, don’t worry. I’ll take good care of A-En.”
On Monday, the breakfast shop opened as usual.
The illuminated sign Xia Yongen had ordered still hadn’t arrived, so she went to Sister Feng’s stationery shop and bought several sheets of A3 poster board. She joined them together and wrote the two large characters “Breakfast” across them, then placed the makeshift sign beside the glass display counter.
Without any trouble, it was ten o’clock again.
Xia Yongen stretched and prepared to return to Rongxing House to “sleep” and practice making the salted egg yolk lava buns and fresh meat buns.
But just at that moment, her phone rang.