Chapter Twenty-Seven: Preparing to Unlock Targeted Intelligence
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It was rare for Chen Taotao to realize, because of a cat, that leaving food uneaten was something shameful.
Mrs. Lin naturally would not let such an excellent opportunity for education pass her by.
She squatted down and said to her daughter, “You mustn’t leave food on your plate in the future, Taotao. Remember to finish everything, all right?”
“Okay!”
“We mustn’t waste food, and we should also take care of the environment.” As she lectured Taotao, Mrs. Lin tossed the bun skin left by the cat into the trash can.
Then she continued, “Daddy was only feeding the cat just now. He wasn’t trying to litter, was he, Taotao?”
“No!”
Chen Zhou smiled as he looked at mother and daughter. “On that point, Daddy can testify.”
As for the fact that his daughter occasionally left food uneaten...
According to the First Law of Leftovers:
Leftovers neither appear out of thin air nor vanish into thin air.
All Chen Zhou could say was that in this world, there was no such thing as losing weight for no reason—and even less such a thing as gaining weight for no reason.
...
After returning home, Chen Zhou discovered that someone on WeChat had sent him a message.
The first was Comrade Wang Meng.
He sent Chen Zhou the edited video, followed by a long voice message in which he complained about his predicament.
The gist was that the video had turned out quite well. Wang Meng had been praised to his face by his superior and transferred to a position writing reports and handling publicity.
As a result, he had begun working overtime that very evening.
“I only wanted to show my face, but somehow I ended up getting myself dragged into it.”
Chen Zhou smiled as he watched the video. Captain Wang had so many friends helping out that, indeed, there was strength in numbers, and the result was excellent.
There was practically no traffic on Chen Zhou’s own TikTok account, and the video about obtaining a permit to set up a street stall had received very few views.
Besides, Chen Zhou was not a professional in this field.
By handing it over to Wang Meng, he could make use of the urban management bureau’s publicity platform. For Chen Zhou himself, that meant the matter had reached a satisfying conclusion.
He only hoped it might help someone... That had been Chen Zhou’s modest original intention.
It was just that Captain Wang himself was suffering a little, still working overtime and writing reports.
People said that writing reports was a more promising position. Chen Zhou did not know whether he ought to be happy for him or feel sorry for him.
The other message came from his former colleague, his junior coworker Zhao Yilin—
“Engineer Chen, July is almost here. Remember to come in next week to resign and collect your wages!”
Last time, she had reminded him to use up the remaining annual leave at the company so that he could receive his full June salary.
These past few days, Chen Zhou had been busy setting up his stall and selling steamed buns.
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He had nearly forgotten all about it.
It was a good thing his wife had previously reminded him that once he stopped working for the company, he would become a flexible worker and have to pay his own social insurance contributions.
Chen Zhou replied to Zhao Yilin:
“Received. [Fist salute]”
His junior coworker replied quickly.
She sent him a rambling wall of text:
“Senior, the thirty-year deadline has arrived. Don’t look down on a poor middle-aged man. Bring your buns to the company and slap everyone in the face! [Crooked grin]”
Chen Zhou seriously suspected that she had been reading too many novels.
There was also a chance she was simply craving steamed buns.
Remembering the bet she had made with their colleague, Chen Zhou asked whether she had won herself any milk tea.
Zhao Yilin replied, “Don’t mention it. Old Song insisted on betting with me that your business would be booming. He said that as the senior colleague, you would surely want your junior brother to succeed in starting a business, so he stood firmly on the moral high ground.”
At the thought of Old Song, Chen Zhou could easily imagine the expression and manner in which he had said those words.
Chen Zhou replied, “All right, it’s getting late. Good night.”
His junior coworker showed no intention of ending the conversation. Instead, she asked:
“Senior, can you take me along in this business venture? I can barely afford to eat on two thousand five hundred a month.”
She really was rather pitiful—
Not long after starting work, she had ended up in a sunset industry that had suffered a massive pay cut.
As for colleagues like Old Song, some had earned enough money years ago and already paid off their mortgages, leaving them with little financial pressure. Others, like Chen Zhou, had sought a different path.
And here was this poor young woman, paying rent every month and perhaps even having to pay for the privilege of going to work.
But Chen Zhou currently had only a small food cart.
The cart was already a little cramped when his wife came over, and he was not yet in any position to solve the employment problems of college graduates.
Chen Zhou replied, “I’m very sorry, but there aren’t any suitable positions available at the moment.”
“But the next time I go to the company, I can certainly bring you a few steamed buns.”
Zhao Yilin replied, “That would be wonderful! [Thanks] Could you come in the morning? Then I wouldn’t have to buy breakfast myself. The earlier the better, of course. Coming in the afternoon would work too. In that case, I’d have to save the buns for breakfast the next day, but the company doesn’t have a refrigerator. I wonder if they’d spoil... I’m guessing you’re going to ask why I don’t eat them for dinner. I don’t eat dinner.”
She really was exceptionally talkative...
Seeing such a long, unbroken block of text made Chen Zhou’s scalp prickle.
He could not help typing a reminder:
“With text this long, you should learn to break it into paragraphs. A well-spaced layout makes for a better reading experience.”
Zhao Yilin learned her lesson:
“O”
“K”
...
Though it felt as if she had not learned it at all.
At that moment, Mrs. Lin’s voice rang out beside Chen Zhou:
“Who are you chatting with? A man or a woman?
“I saw that ‘Zihan’s Mom’ in the residents’ group praising your steamed buns again for ages! What’s going on between the two of you?”
...
There were both men and women chatting with him—but who was Zihan’s mom?
Facing his wife’s suspicions, Chen Zhou could only let out a soft sigh.
There was no point saying more.
He might as well prove himself through action.
“What role were you pretending to be in the group again? An ordinary customer? From now on, call me Boss Chen!”
Lin Yifan pushed away Chen Zhou’s hands, which were busy shaping buns.
Her face displayed equal parts disdain and disgust.
“Get away from me! Keep your hands to yourself, Boss Chen.”
...
The night passed without further incident.
The next day, Chen Zhou continued with his little business.
The latest intelligence he had received contained nothing particularly important, only one troublesome cat.
Combined with the fact that he had taken a day off the day before yesterday, Chen Zhou felt, for the first time, how leisurely running a stall could be.
He was his own boss.
He did not have to clock in at work, and it was rather comfortable.
What was more, business was going well, and he had considerably more money on hand. He could enroll his daughter in swimming lessons, take the family out for a meal, or wander around the shopping mall.
Perhaps this intelligence was also part of the transitional phase after he had just reached Level 3.
He could now spend points to obtain targeted intelligence.
For the moment, Chen Zhou’s goal remained expanding the scale of his business.
Thus, within the Food Ingredient Flash News category of Intelligence Enhancement, he found the targeted option called Price Fluctuations.
He spent five hundred points to lock it in ahead of time.
“Once the intelligence refreshes tomorrow, I’ll be able to see whether there are any opportunities to make a little money.”
Returning to the business at hand, Chen Zhou increased the quantity of vegetarian buns only moderately.
Judging from the customers’ feedback the previous day, the signature status of the fresh-meat buns remained unshakable.
People found the vegetarian filling novel and gave it favorable reviews, but more often than not, they merely bought one while picking up the rest of their order.
Perhaps in an age when recipes could be found online with the tap of a finger, the secret techniques of veteran cooks still possessed something uniquely their own.
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