The five-member team left, and the area around the blind box store fell into silence.
Lu Yao stood in front of the store for a while and felt that two benches could be placed at the door.
The place was so spacious that it particularly inspired her to add to and renovate it.
Lu Yao made a note of this in his mind, turned around and put the two extra hot drink blind boxes in the warehouse into the blind box machine, then turned around and went to the snack bar.
The tables and chairs for the blind box store are not ready yet, and there are not many customers. It’s boring to stay there, so it’s suitable for placing plays. It’s okay to leave them alone for the time being.
The snack bar will open for late night dining tonight, and she wants to go check out the dishes.
The first floor of the snack bar closes promptly at 4 p.m., and Quan Shengju, Bai Ming, Xingzi and Xiaoqie are in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Night food mainly consists of barbecue. The meat and vegetables are cleaned and cut into pieces. The meat needs to be marinated in advance and then put on skewers made by magic. You can start grilling when the shop opens in the evening.
The only meats available at the moment are pork belly, lean pork, chicken wings, chicken skin, chicken gizzards, tiger skin chicken feet, beef, and Warcraft meat from the Alexandria continent, with 100 skewers of each available.
Vegetarian dishes include green peppers, enoki mushrooms, green beans, cucumbers, lotus root slices, dried tofu, sweet potato skins, thousand-leaf tofu, stinky tofu and cabbage leaves, with fifty strings of each available.
Lu Yao likes to eat grilled oysters and grilled prawns, but Yaoguang City and Emerald Town are both small inland cities, and seafood ingredients are either expensive or simply unavailable.
The store didn't prepare any seafood, so they only ordered twenty fresh crucian carps.
Lu Yao tried the barbecue ingredients made by Quan Shengju and found them to be very tasty.
There is a small pickle jar in the store, which contains some crispy and sweet carrots.
Lu Yao asked Xiaoqie to scoop up some of the fish. She cut some carrot cubes and roasted a few skewers of sweet potato skins.
The thick and hard sweet potato skin is roasted and becomes soft and sticky. The surface is brushed with chili oil, sprinkled with salt and cumin, and wrapped in the middle with chopped pickled radish and chopped green onions. It is rolled up with two skewers and tastes sticky, sour and appetizing.
Quan Shengju ate a skewer. The sweet potato skin was slightly crispy on the outside, but sticky on the inside. You had to bite it with some force. The sour and crispy kimchi and the fragrant chopped green onions made it a simple yet rich experience.
"We don't have this way of eating over there. This tastes really good."
Bai Ming and his friends tasted the roasted sweet potato skin and gave it unanimous praise.
Lu Yao also introduced that roasting the dried tofu like this and then wrapping it with condiments is also a great dish.
Compared to the chewy and sticky taste of sweet potato skin, dried tofu is dry and fragrant, making people want to eat more and more.
Quan Shengju learned from Lu Yao how to roast sweet potato skins, and said he wanted to add two kimchi jars in the kitchen to pickle radishes.
At five o'clock, the second and third floors close on time.
Qi Chen, Chi, Mo Cheng and Yu Cai also came downstairs to help.
The shop assistants discussed among themselves and decided to have four people in a group for night meals, and to change a group every seven days.
Starting from tonight's night snack business, Bai Ming, Xingzi, Xiaoqie and Quan Shengju will be the team working.
However, on the first day of opening, the people of Chiji were curious and decided to stay.
At seven o'clock in the evening, the snack bar and barbecue stall opened, and the two brothers Du Chen and Du An had been eyeing this place for a long time.
When we saw the sign light up, we came together with some guests who were staying at the hotel.
These guests queued outside the snack bar during the day and missed the deadline, so they checked into the hotel next door and planned to queue again early the next morning.
They didn't expect that the snack bar would quietly open for night snacks, and they were caught unawares. They were so happy.
They were the first wave of customers and ordered all the dishes on offer, including a whole case of beer.
Five or six people sat around a table, eating barbecue, drinking and chatting, and in a trance they seemed to have returned to their previous life.
After a while, guards Chang Bai Jian and Qing also arrived, and with them came many NPCs from the park.
I heard that the chief guard invited his employees to a barbecue.
The NPCs filled four or five tables, and the scene was extremely lively.
Soon, guests from the nearby KTV, dance studio, and art studio smelled the aroma and ran out, only to find out that the snack bar had opened for late-night dining, from sunset until the early morning.
"I knock! I just came out from singing, had a barbecue and went home to sleep, wouldn't that be great?"
"This smells so good. The people at that table are leaving. Hurry up and take a seat!"
"Oh my god, it's barbecue! I can actually eat barbecue again in my life, it's worth dying for!!!"
"But you are already dead..."
"It's none of your business. Stop talking nonsense and go get the food!"
"I like this kind of grilled fish with a crispy and dry skin the most. It smells so good!"
“Beer and grilled fish are simply amazing!”
The news that the snack bar was opening for late night dining spread quickly and many people rushed over.
Not only was the store full, but there were also more than a dozen tables set up in the open space outside the store, and they were almost full.
On the first day of opening the store, customers flocked to it because it was new and exciting.
Lu Yao helped grill skewers in the kitchen, while Qi Chen, Yu Cai and others also joined in to receive the guests.
-
In the impermanent world, the abandoned corner of Shenghong Building.
Lu Yuanfan held the hot drink blind box in his hand, steam rose up, and a faint aroma of tea mixed with milk spread.
The air suddenly became silent. Zhou Yan, who had been honking for more than twenty minutes, finally stopped and stared blankly at the jar in Lu Yuanfan's hand.
The team member who came out with Zhou Yan to look for someone came over and said, "What a nice smell! Does it smell a bit like coffee?"
"No, it smells a bit like tea to me?"
Zhou Yan took the hot drink from Lu Yuanfan's hand and raised the crystal core closer.
The green crystal core emitted a faint green light, and he couldn't see what was in the cup at all. He leaned in to smell it, then lowered his head and took a small sip.
The bitter and fragrant taste is blended with the refreshing fragrance of tea and a hint of milk.
Zhou Yan frowned slightly. This smell was familiar yet strange. It should have a formal name, but he couldn't remember it. In the end, he just said, "It should be a drink mixed with tea powder and coffee."
Xing Shan came over and said, "Captain, let me have a taste."
Zhang Lewei and Wang He came over, took a sip each, and smacked their lips to savor the drink.
Zhou Yan is 28 years old this year, and his teammates are around 24, 25 or 26 years old.
When the Day of Impermanence came, they were only a few years old, but they knew a little more than the children born after the Day of Impermanence.
They all felt that they must have seen or tasted this drink when they were children, but they could not remember its name.
It's been so long that there are few opportunities to come into contact with this kind of thing nowadays.
Zhou Ying came over and asked quietly, "Is it called Matcha Latte?"
Lu Yuanfan, Zhang Bai and other team members were a little excited, "A new flavor?"
Zhang Lewei clapped her hands and said excitedly, "Yes, that's the name! Matcha, I just tried to think about it for a long time but just couldn't come up with the name."
Zhou Yan looked at his sister, "How do you know this name?"
Zhou Ying pointed at the jar and said, "There's a description of the style here. I heard you say it smells like tea, so I guessed."
She took out a square box from her arms and said, "Brother, we also drew a few blind boxes of instant noodles in that store, but we don't know what flavor it is yet."
Instant noodles
Not only Zhou Yan, but also Xing Shan, Zhang Lewei and Wang He were all moved, this thing really touched their memories.
When I was a child, I would do everything I could to act cute and throw a tantrum to adults just to have a bowl of instant noodles.
In the past few years, you could occasionally get instant noodles that had expired many years ago at the base, and they would even cost you a lot of money.
In the past two years, I have hardly seen anyone taking it out to exchange.
The days are getting more and more unpredictable, and life is hard to bear. If we have any food, we have to hold on to it tightly and dare not take it out.
Secondly, the Day of Uncertainty lasted too long.
Industry has been shut down, and what was produced before the day of death has long been consumed.
Today the land is polluted and cannot grow normal crops.
Animals and plants are still mutating, there are fewer and fewer things to eat, and the living space left for humans is getting smaller and smaller.
Zhou Yan took the blind box, and Xing Shan and Wang He each held a crystal core to help with lighting.
Zhou Yan did not hesitate and tore open the box. The items inside were all individually packaged. He touched the surface and knew that the largest package was bread.
He pressed it twice, but couldn't bear to tear it open.
Zhou Ying, Lu Yuanfan and others came closer and counted the ingredients, finding only three packages, and were slightly disappointed.
"This is the regular version. What the owner said is true, only hidden ingredients are so rich."
Zhou Yan didn't pay attention to what they were talking about. He immediately took Zhou Ying's hand and urged, "Take me to see the small shop you found there."
Zhou Ying immediately turned around and led the way, with a little pride in his tone: "It's in the Fairy Tale Square. The store is very bright and you can see it when you walk over. Brother, do you have crystal cores with you? We brought too few and couldn't draw many."
Xing Shan, Wang He and Zhang Lewei looked at each other. They didn't quite understand what the kids meant by blind boxes, but finding food was a pleasant surprise, and they were all very excited.
However, the area around Fairy Tale Square used to be a big shopping mall before the Day of Impermanence, with large chain supermarkets, clothing stores, and snack streets. There were abundant supplies in the past, and many people came here to hunt for treasures.
Over the years, it has been ransacked by countless people; even the floor looks as clean as if it had been licked.
In the past two years, people with common sense would not come here to search for supplies.
Only a child who knows nothing would come here and find something good by accident.
Zhou Ying stopped and pointed to the brightly lit blind box store not far away, "Brother, it's right there."
Zhou Yan and his companions finally understood what the child meant by "very bright". The sign of that store was too glaring, and the street lights on both sides were all pure white, completely different from the colorful light they stimulated with the crystal core.
They heard from Zhou Ying and others that there was only a young woman in the store who claimed to be the owner, so they had no concerns.
The group broke into the blind box store directly, but found it empty.
Zhou Ying walked in the front and introduced it to his brother and his teammates like he was presenting a treasure: "This is the blind box machine. We put the crystal core into the blind box coin exchange machine over there, and then put the coins here, and we can draw hot drinks and instant noodles."
Zhou Yan and a few others walked around the blind box machine and came up with the same idea at the same time, but they still decided to take a look at what was inside the machine first.
Several people took out a few small crystal cores from their pockets and exchanged them for 15 yuan blind box coins each.
Zhou Yan was more interested in the instant noodles blind box, and without hesitation, he directly drew a box of instant noodles.
Xing Shan and Wang He also thought that instant noodles were more cost-effective, so they each bought a box.
Zhang Lewei touched her stomach and felt a pain and heaviness in her abdomen, which was very uncomfortable.
She wanted to drink a hot drink to relax, so she chose a blind box for hot drinks.
Zhou Ying weighed the instant noodle boxes of several of his brothers one by one and was a little disappointed: "They are all very light, they look like ordinary ones."
Xing Shan was surprised: "What can you weigh?"
Zhou Ying puffed out her chest proudly: "The store manager said that only hidden dishes have special ingredients. I pulled out a spicy pork ribs flavored hidden dish, which has fragrant pork ribs and crispy vegetables. It's especially delicious. Hidden dishes have meat and vegetables, so they should be heavier than ordinary dishes."
"Yingying is lucky. She got the hidden one on the first try."
"Now when I think of the taste of that meat, I can't help but swallow my saliva. It's so delicious."
"The vegetables were delicious, too, crunchy and fresh. I never knew vegetables tasted like that."
The members of Lu Yuanfan's team talked a lot and reminisced about the hidden instant noodles they had eaten not long ago.
Several members of Zhou Yan's team were really surprised. How could there be mutated meat and vegetables in instant noodles
They couldn't remember how long it had been since they had eaten normal meat and vegetables. Listening to Zhou Ying and the others' descriptions, it didn't sound fake.
Xing Shan looked at the instant noodle blind box in his hand and suggested faintly: "How about trying another one?"
Hidden instant noodles, want it!
They didn't plan to open the ordinary model they had, they just wanted to see what the hidden model looked like first.
Meat, vegetables, this ** is too big.
Xing Shan just smoked a box of cigarettes. Zhou Ying weighed it and shook his head.
Wang He also drew a new box. Without Zhou Ying weighing it, he could feel that it was about the same weight as the previous one.
It was Zhou Yan's turn to draw, and Zhou Ying raised his hand and said, "Brother, let me help you draw!"
Zhou Yan was actually quite interested in drawing boxes. This way of playing gave people a strange sense of relaxation when they were struggling to survive in the unpredictable days.
But since his sister wanted to smoke, he didn't stop her. He took a step back and handed her the coins in his hand.
The small red light next to the blind box machine lit up, and Zhou Ying squatted down to take it. As soon as she picked it up, she smiled: "Brother, I got it!"
"Oh my god, is that true?" Wang He found it unbelievable.
Lv Yuanfan squeezed over and said, "What did the owner say Yingying is... ah, the European Emperor!"
Zhang Bai added: "There's one more shot!"
Zhou Yan took the so-called hidden blind box and weighed it. It was indeed heavier than those he had drawn before, very obviously.
But when it is placed in the blind box machine, it cannot be seen at all.
"Captain, shall we open it?" Xing Shan stared at the hidden instant noodles in his hand, eager to try.
"Tear it down!" Zhou Yan said.
Zhou Ying: "There is hot water over there, you can make instant noodles directly."
Several members of Zhou Yan's team turned around to look, thinking that this was very thoughtful, even hot water was prepared.
A few people started to study the water heater again, and it felt like peacekeeping was going on everywhere.
“This machine is so new.”
"It doesn't seem to be generated by the crystal core? Is it generated by electricity?"
“The water is also very clean, not turbid.”
They began to wonder: Who opened a store like this here
Zhou Yan suppressed his thoughts and tore open the hidden instant noodles, and sure enough, there were two extra packets of toppings inside.
"What kind of noodles is this?"
Both the big and small team members were curious about this.
Zhou Yan took out a small piece of paper and handed it to them: "Yi Yi Seafood Noodles."
"Seafood? Is it fish?"
"What's the hidden secret?"
"I've never eaten fish before, I really want to know what it tastes like."
Zhou Yan tore open the dough and saw the snow-white round noodles, which smelled of wheat. They were completely different from the moldy instant noodles he had used at the base before.
As soon as the seasoning packet and soup packet are torn open, the rich flavor of seafood soup spreads out, and the side dishes also include dried onion leaves and corn kernels.
Finally, I tore open two packets of hidden condiments, and poured out three cooked prawns directly from one packet, and two crab sticks from the other packet.
"Oh my God, it's really shrimp!" Zhang Lewei exclaimed while holding her blind box of hot drinks, and even felt a little regretful in her heart.
This instant noodle is so worth it!
After the noodles were soaked, Zhou Yan took a bite and drank the soup. The usually serious man's eyes lit up and he praised, "Delicious!"
"Captain, let me have a taste!" Xing Shan couldn't help it at all.
One box of instant noodles is definitely not enough, so they launched a few more regular instant noodles, including mushroom chicken soup noodles, pickled pepper beef noodles and spicy pork ribs noodles.
Nine people from two teams shared four bowls of instant noodles. Although none of them were full, it was the most delicious thing they had eaten in the past ten years and also the most normal food.
Zhang Lewei was given a small portion of seafood noodles and a small bite of shrimp meat. She sat on the ground and tore open her hot drink blind box. She took a sip and said in surprise: "I think I got red dates and ginger syrup!"
The warm and cozy flavor of brown sugar, with a hint of spicy ginger, and topped with thinly sliced red dates.
The others tasted it and reacted calmly, but Zhang Lewei was very happy.
When she was fourteen or fifteen years old, she drank brown sugar water once in an old base that has now been destroyed.
She was on her menstrual period at the time and was in great pain. She lay in a tattered tent and a kind sister fed her some brown sugar water.
Now, the base no longer exists and no one knows where the sister has gone.
Zhang Lewei was in great pain during her period today, but she had to come out to complete the mission.
At this moment, all emotions were soothed by this cup of ginger and sugar water. My cold and painful abdomen felt warm and a sweet aftertaste remained in my mouth.
It seemed like she could hold on for a while longer.
After eating, Zhou Yan and his team members stared at the two blind box machines, and the deep meaning in their eyes was self-evident.
Xing Shan said: "This machine is quite interesting. It would be a pity to just smash it."
Wang He said: "If we don't break it open, we can't take it away because it's so big. We must take all the food inside back. This batch of supplies is very important."
Lu Yuanfan and his team members were somewhat confused when they heard the adults' discussion.
Zhang Bai said: "Why smash the machine when you can exchange it with crystal cores?"
It’s so fun to draw blind boxes.
Xing Shan said: "The Eternal Night has been extended, and supplies are in short supply. If we don't take this good stuff, others will find it and come to grab it. Although there are not many things, everyone can get a little bit, and maybe we can survive until the Eternal Night ends."
Zhou Ying couldn't help but ask, "But this store has an owner. If we want food, we can exchange it with crystal cores. Why do we have to rob it?"
Children are so naive after all. Xing Shan and his friends surrounded the blind box machine and started looking for an angle, ready to try to smash the machine.
Zhang Lewei walked to Zhou Ying's side and sighed in her heart.
She used to be similar to Zhou Ying, innocent and naive, and no matter how difficult life was, she wanted to stick to her bottom line.
But if you want to survive in this unpredictable world, you should abandon these things as soon as possible.
No matter what the purpose of opening this store here is, and no matter who the owner is, if he/she puts these things here and does not have sufficient ability to protect them, he/she should be prepared to be robbed.
Seeing Zhou Ying sad, Lu Yuanfan walked up to her and whispered, "Yingying, since Zhou Yan and the others have made the judgment that these things must be taken away, you have to get used to this. No one knows how long the eternal night will last. With this batch of supplies, many people may be able to survive."
But when raising supplies in the base, they would exchange crystal cores or other things with others.
The things in this store are not ownerless materials. Zhou Ying feels that this is not right, but she is well aware of the value of these materials.
I felt very upset, but I couldn't stop it, so I could only stand there and sulk.
Over there, three young men have started smashing the blind box machine.
Suddenly there was a sound at the door and everyone turned around.
Lu Yao pushed the door open and came in. "You smashed my blind box machine and you want to steal my things? This is not good."