Eight tables, thirty-two chairs…

Qi Huan leaned against the metal tree at the entrance, his left arm in a half-dozen splints, silently calculating his current assets. The slanting wind swept through the treetops, making the metal branches rustle and showering him with rust and sand.

“Cough! Cough!” He turned his head, hastily covering his mouth and nose, coughing awkwardly a few times.

Next to the tree stood a two-story building with a double-eaved roof. The stone bricks and columns had a texture similar to white jade, giving it an initial impression of a grand palace with carved railings. However, upon closer inspection, it was extremely old, with walls covered in a layer of gray dust, crisscrossed with cracks, and signs of weathering and erosion everywhere. The originally dark green iron window frames had paint peeling off in many places, revealing the rusted dark red underneath.

As the wind blew, dust filled the air, iron flakes flew, and the windows and worn-out tables and chairs creaked noisily, making one’s head throb.

From afar, it looked like a palace; up close, it was a rundown shack.

Despite its dilapidated state, a vertical sign hung to the right of the main entrance, with the words “Human World Restaurant” written in large, wavy characters.

The uneven door panels were plastered with payment notices, with two even stuffed into a finger-wide crack in the pillar to the left of the door. All the addresses read “No. 9, Jinwan Street, No. 3 Base, No. 7 Waste Star,” fluttering in the wind, giving the impression that the owner had already fled due to debt.

And Qi Huan was the “new” owner of this rundown little restaurant.

The so-called Waste Star was actually an abandoned garbage planet.

This world was called the Alliance, formed by the union of the Ninefold Star Domain, with its main energy source coming from various gemstone energies. Purchasing gemstone mining stars and the subsequent series of mining and processing was naturally the hottest money-making industry.

High-energy gemstones required various extreme conditions to form, and most resource-rich planets had harsh environments. They were bustling when mining companies moved in to develop them, but after a hundred years, when the mining was done and the companies moved elsewhere, they gradually became deserted and abandoned, eventually turning into garbage disposal areas.

There were currently more than a dozen such planets in the Ninefold Star Domain of the Alliance, and this was the one numbered seven.

From the dense clusters of buildings around and the sporadically remaining colorful street landscapes, one could vaguely glimpse the base’s former glory as a city.

Today, due to the vast deserts surrounding it and severe sand erosion, the entire street and base were already in disrepair, with ruins everywhere. It was like an ancient tree about to wither, with signs of decay crawling all over it, decrepit and dilapidated.

The setting sun was like fire, and in the plum-colored evening glow, a red airship roared past, injecting a heavy post-cyberpunk vibe into the abandoned film set-like building complex before him.

Qi Huan looked up at the airship, then at the white desert in the distance, and sighed. Wasn’t life supposed to be a vast wilderness? How did it turn into a desert?

Clearly, this was a world more technologically advanced than Earth, yet he ended up in such a remote, backward place with scarce resources and harsh conditions, lacking even the most basic safety guarantees. Opening a restaurant here, what kind of fairy tale-level task was this?

Life restarted, and the opening was in apocalypse mode.

That’s right, restarted.

More than forty hours ago, he was still living in Suzhou and Hangzhou in eastern Earth.

As a popular weekly food content creator, Saturday was the regular day for releasing new videos.

The day before yesterday evening, he uploaded the latest episode of his series recreating Southern Song Dynasty cuisine, “Crab Roe Skewers,” and then hurried out to the bookstore. The few books he bought last time, “Suiyuan Shidan,” “Tiaoding Ji,” and “Yushi Pi,” were almost finished, and he thought of picking up a few new ancient recipe books for inspiration.

Perhaps because he was in a hurry and forgot to say his usual goodbye to the cabinet full of his “husbands and wives” in the living room, or maybe he stepped on bad luck when getting out of the car, he unfortunately encountered a gas explosion at a street-side restaurant while walking from the parking lot to the bookstore.

Just as his fan count was about to break the two million mark, the wheel of fate didn’t just stop spinning; it reversed, wasting over twenty years of effort.

After a thunderous explosion, he instantly lost consciousness, and when he opened his eyes again, he was already lying in a medical cabin at the base.

It was said that he was severely injured and passed out in the hunting area outside, but fortunately, someone rescued him and brought him back to the base, saving his life.

This place was like a parallel universe derived from some era of ancient China, familiar yet strange.

For example, the houses around him, with their high concentration of ancient architectural elements, vaguely reminded him of the “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” painting; for example, the black outfit he was wearing, similar in style to a judo uniform, also resembled the short clothes commonly worn by the working class in ancient China; for example, time here was also measured in hours, but a day only had twenty-two hours; for example, there was a concept of weeks here, but instead of seven days, a week was ten days, more like a “decade” than a “week.”

The only thing he could be sure of was that the technology of this era was more advanced than Earth’s, at least the capsule-like medical cabin in the base’s medical area, which could rapidly heal various wounds in just over twenty hours, was something he had never seen before.

A metal leaf wobbled and fell onto his knee, the uncorroded half reflecting half of his face like a mirror.

It was a thin face, with a yellowish complexion, clearly somewhat malnourished. Because his cheeks were sunken, his almond-shaped eyes appeared disproportionately large, but they were clean and clear, with a beautiful amber hue. His lip line was very soft, naturally giving off a gentle and harmless appearance.

At the moment, there were still traces of sand and rust on his cheeks that he hadn’t brushed off, adding a bit of confusion and desolation to his already thin and haggard face.

Qi Huan helplessly pursed his lips. This face resembled his by six or seven points, but it was much more frail and youthful.

When he was a child, he got splashed by hot oil while cooking, leaving a peanut-sized scar above his right eyebrow. Even after all these years, it still had a red mark, so every time he got a haircut, he would ask the stylist to cover that spot. The bangs on this face were two centimeters shorter than he was used to, boldly exposing a smooth and unblemished forehead, with no trace of a scar.

Besides, “he” was wearing a blue spherical earring on his left ear, while he himself didn’t have pierced ears.

The knife scar on the pad of his left index finger was also gone, but there was a noticeable Z-shaped red mark on his wrist under the sleeve.

In short, he could be 100% sure this wasn’t his body.

After waking up, he had almost no memory of the original owner of this body, so he pretended to have amnesia. Through the explanations of medical staff and neighbors, he learned bits and pieces about the base and the original owner’s situation.

It was now New Star Year 13235. The original owner was named Qi Huan, pronounced the same as his name, seventeen years old, and a survivor of a starship accident that crashed on No. 7 Waste Star many years ago. He was later adopted by an uncle named Lin Sen at the base.

This small restaurant was opened by Uncle Lin Sen. Half a year ago, the uncle passed away due to illness, leaving the original owner to struggle on his own until a few days ago when he unfortunately lost his life in the hunting area.

Thinking it over, he figured the most likely scenario was that he had “traveled” here, a legendary soul transfer, or what they called “borrowing a corpse to return a soul.”

Could he go back? Judging from the explosion at the time, his body was probably long gone, right? Qi Huan gloomily fiddled with the metal leaf in his hand. If only Song Ci were here, thinking wasn’t his strong suit.

As time passed, the plum-colored evening glow in the sky grew darker, making his heart feel sour and astringent.

“Squeak,” came a piercing sound from the house with the yellowish window opposite him. The door half-opened, and a skinny blue-haired youth came out holding an old helmet.

The youth’s name was Quan Hai, a long-time neighbor of Uncle Lin Sen and the original owner. It was he who brought Qi Huan back from the medical area last night.

He wore a light blue outfit similar in style to Qi Huan’s, with black stains on the sleeves and pant legs. Because he was so thin, the clothes looked a bit baggy, and compared to the skin-and-bones Quan Hai, Qi Huan could almost be considered healthy.

“Eat something,” Quan Hai said, handing the rusty, mechanical-looking helmet to Qi Huan.

The people at the base didn’t speak Mandarin, but Qi Huan had no trouble communicating, just like he could understand the sign at the restaurant entrance even though it wasn’t in simplified characters, probably because the original owner understood it.

After taking the helmet, Qi Huan saw that it had been converted into a basket, containing four green tubes the thickness of sausages and two bottles of purified water.

The main food at the base seemed to be this kind of nutritional agent. Since waking up, every meal, including those in the medical area, had been this stuff. He had also seen it on the way back yesterday; every street vending robot sold it, and the green one was the cheapest, ten tubes for one silver coin.

His stomach was indeed hungry, so he didn’t hesitate. After thanking Quan Hai, he picked up a tube of the nutritional agent and, amidst the heavy metallic smell in the air, took a sip.

It had a texture similar to fruit jelly with pulp, the flavor was mild, not hard to swallow, but definitely not tasty either. It was the kind of meal that maintained vital signs, with a strong sense of fullness.

But at this point, he really wasn’t in a position to be picky.

“I’ll make you a big meal once I’m healed,” Qi Huan promised, half-jokingly, half-seriously, waving his arm in the metal splint at Quan Hai.

The terrifying wounds on his body had mostly healed in the medical cabin, but issues like fractures still needed time to heal. The nurse told him to return for a check-up in about twenty-five days, and if everything was fine, they would remove the splint.

“No need, no need, I appreciate the thought,” the youth hurriedly waved his hand, the patched sleeve flapping back and forth with his skinny arm at a high frequency.

From his evasive attitude, Qi Huan sensed something was off.

Quan Hai hesitated for a moment under Qi Huan’s probing gaze, then finally made up his mind and gestured with his mouth towards something behind him.

Qi Huan turned to look at the metal tree behind him.

Probably because the desert climate made it hard for plants to survive, the greenery on the street was all made of metal. To be fair, the craftsmanship was exquisite, but over time, without maintenance, the metal tree had mostly rusted to a dark red, exuding a sense of decay and desolation after prosperity.

But what did this have to do with their previous conversation? Qi Huan examined the metal tree in the dim light, full of confusion.

“The back,” Quan Hai coughed lightly, continuing to prompt.

Qi Huan leaned over to look, and saw a red “sign” nailed to the side of the tree facing outward:

[Alliance Interstellar Food Rating: Rotten Egg Rating, Six Eggs, Recommended to Close Down.]

Qi Huan: …

Was the original owner’s cooking really… that bad?

“Don’t worry, I’ve been secretly learning recently, it’ll definitely taste good, and we’ll definitely upgrade the rating in the future,” Qi Huan vaguely made an excuse, full of confidence about upgrading the food rating.

He was a culinary prodigy who could stand on a small stool and cook noodles at the age of four. His sister Qi Qing’s colleagues at the research institute, and those genius scholars in his university dorm, all were conquered by his cooking skills.

Quan Hai looked slightly surprised, “Did you get the certificate?”

Qi Huan: ???

What certificate?

Wait, in this Waste Star place, do you need a certificate to invite someone over for a meal?