POEIL

Chapter 3: Do you need a waiter here?

Three days later. Ning City.

Ning City was a metropolis with considerable historical and cultural heritage. It was more prosperous than Xing Cheng and was far from Xiao Qing Shan. Ji XiaoYu had traveled for three days on foot to reach the place.

Although Xing Cheng could be reached in a day, the hotel incident left Ji XiaoYu with an unbearably bad impression. After half a year, the money he had hidden away must have disappeared. Even if the door was more or less open to come back, it wouldn't be good to have the blame from before put on himself, so he ruled out that place and chose the farther away Ning City.

Big cities had more job opportunities and more money to earn, so Ji XiaoYu was more confident about his future.

When he departed, he left a message on the stone wall in his nest, so that the old monkey wouldn't worry when he suddenly found him missing.

After entering Ning City just as evening came, Ji XiaoYu, with his little white egg in his pocket, stood on a busy street with high-rise buildings. Momentarily confused on the direction, his pair of phoenix eyes1, containing an ability to distinguish right and wrong and filled with a strong aura, reflected the colorful roadside neon signs like the glare of light off gla.s.s.

Then a soft "guuuu" sound came from his belly and Ji XiaoYu couldn't help but frown. He had finished the dried food he had brought out from Xiao Qing Shan at noon and he was little hungry at the moment.

On either side of the main road were all kinds of luxuriously-decorated high-end shops. There was no need to say that Ji XiaoYu, who didn't have even half a coin in his pocket, wouldn't have enough money to feel confident going in, so he turned and walked into the row of buildings behind, to a small street called Silk Street, intending to find a small restaurant to try his luck.

Thanks to the past year's work experience of the hotel in Xing Cheng, Ji XiaoYu had a few skills, from serving people tea to washing the dishes and the floor, as long as the job could solve his immediate problem of accommodation and food, he could do anything without any concern and find something else to do in the long run eventually.

There are all kinds of shops on Silk Street, selling milk tea, selling fruit, selling squid cooked on an iron plate. The street was bustling and crowded, showing Silk Street more popular than that prosperous street before. Ji XiaoYu walked all around to look and soon found a small restaurant called "Old Li's Home-cooked Dishes." Although the decorations were old, and the storefront wasn't s.p.a.cious enough, the business was very popular. The two rows of tables and chairs in the shop were full and there were even a few people waiting for seats on the plastic stools outside. Looking at this sight, it was clear the food in this restaurant must be delicious.

Ji XiaoYu swallowed back his mouthful of saliva and lifted his foot to go in.

The restaurant was small in size, the total s.p.a.ce of forty square meters divided into inner and outer halves. There were six sets of simple tables and chairs outside and inside was a semi-open kitchen with man in his 40s or 50s stir-frying with an iron cooking pot.

In the outside dining area, a girl in her twenties wearing a floral ap.r.o.n was running around serving the guests their dishes and, although the store was air-conditioned, she was still sweating heavily. When she heard the automatic bell at the door call out "Welcome," this girl named Zhang QiaoYan turned her head to look. Her eyes were bright and she warmly greeted him, "What does this handsome boy want to eat?"

Ji XiaoYu hadn't yet answered when a man with a beer belly sitting by the door, protested in dissatisfaction, "Hey, waiter, why did you start treating everyone unequally? This kid just came, but I've been waiting for a long time, shouldn't it be 'first come, first served'?!"