Chapter 6: Rice Porridge with Sliced Beef and Soft Eggs 

That morning, Nan Tu was handling the freshly bought ingredients.

For a restaurant that did not serve breakfast, the entire morning was a non-business period.

Only during this time would Nan Tu let the system open the Plane Door.

The guests from the apocalypse plane seemed to have some misunderstanding about the sudden appearance of the Nanlai Restaurant, and their emotions were always quite intense. Nan Tu did not want to scare off normal customers.

A crisp chime of the wind chime sounded. Nan Tu suddenly stood up and looked toward the back door. The sudden movement made her a little dizzy. When her vision cleared again, in front of her—there was nothing.

“System, this wind chime seems broken. Isn’t it supposed to only ring when guests from other planes arrive?”

The system reminded her: [It is not broken. Please look down.]

Nan Tu lowered her gaze and was shocked to see someone lying on the ground. To be exact, she had crawled in.

It was a young girl. Nan Tu estimated she could not be more than twenty years old. Her condition looked very bad. Her hair was covered in dust and sand, her lips were cracked, her face ashen. Most seriously, she seemed to be barely conscious.

Nan Tu, who was somewhat familiar with the environment outside the Plane Door, believed the biggest issue for this girl was dehydration. There might be other problems too, but she was not a professional doctor and could not judge immediately.

People from other planes definitely could not go to doctors here.

Nan Tu quickly poured a cup of warm water, added some sugar, stirred it, then squatted down and propped up the girl’s back. The moment her lips touched the warm water, she instinctively began to suck on the sweet liquid.

After drinking half the cup, the girl opened her eyes. She still seemed a little dazed.

Because she looked at Nan Tu and said, “Mom, did you come to pick me up?”

Nan Tu stood up, planning to get her something to eat. The girl struggled to sit up and grabbed the hem of Nan Tu’s clothes. She said weakly and urgently, “I want to go with you, Mom. Don’t leave me…”

Her clothes being grabbed, Nan Tu had no choice but to turn back and gently pat the girl’s back. “I’m not going anywhere. Do you want to eat something?”

After comforting her for a while, the girl finally let go of her hem.

Nan Tu quickly served a bowl of rice porridge with sliced beef and soft eggs that she had made in the morning. The porridge had thickened a bit by now but was still warm. Xin Huan gulped it down. The tender beef and warm rice aroma mixed in her mouth, and the occasional threads of egg were silky smooth. It was a flavor she had never tasted before.

After Nan Tu helped Xin Huan finish about half the bowl and drink a large glass of water, her strength slowly recovered. What appeared before her eyes was something she could never have imagined.

The light around her was so gentle, unlike the desert where everything reflected the glaring sunlight from the sky, making it impossible to open one’s eyes.

On a long narrow table not far away were several pots of lush green plants. Beside them was a small glass vase with three or four delicate pale yellow flowers. A round radish, still covered in water droplets, had been hastily placed there.

To her left were many neatly arranged tables and chairs. There were some decorative paintings hanging on the wall. It did not look like a residential place, because there were simply too many tables and chairs.

So close, right within reach, was a fair and clean face, looking at her with concern.

What made Xin Huan feel both regretful and slightly relieved was that it wasn’t the face of her deceased mother that she had seen in a daze. It was not yet the day her mother would take her away.

“Where is this place?”

“A restaurant. I’m the owner here,” Nan Tu said.

“A restaurant.” Xin Huan repeated in confusion, “But I don’t understand…”

“Good child, not all questions have answers.” Nan Tu skipped over the question and asked in return, “What about you? What happened?”

Xin Huan said in a low voice, “It’s like this…”

Strangely, faced with such a stranger—although Nan Tu had saved her life, today was indeed the first time they had met—Xin Huan was able to calmly tell everything without holding back.

Although Xin Huan believed that this mysterious female owner, who had the ability to run a restaurant in the Anjin Desert, must know far more than she did, she still needed to briefly explain the background to give a complete picture of the entire incident.

Extreme weather and disasters, forests growing wildly, farmland turning into swamps, cities buried under yellow sand, the appearance of mutant beasts… in short, this was a catastrophe for humanity.

For Xin Huan, only the pain of a small individual remained in her memory.

Her parents died in an earthquake, and she was sent to a base at the time, which later became the rebuilt Tianling City. Here, many such orphans were raised, given some education and physical training. The conditions weren’t luxurious, but they had done their best.

Except for a few times when beast tides approached Tianling City and the roars of wild beasts lasted all night, keeping young Xin Huan awake in fear, that period was relatively carefree.

However, after reaching adulthood, Xin Huan had to fend for herself. Most orphans chose to become mercenaries as their path, and Xin Huan was no exception.

Because an excessive number of mutant beasts would trigger a beast tide, Tianling City constantly monitored the situation of the beasts in the Anjin Desert.

Reconnaissance missions to various areas were regularly issued. Some mutant beasts had research value, so the mercenary guild would post missions to acquire their materials. Simply collecting crystal cores could also be exchanged for survival supplies.

Every year after the breeding season of the mutant beasts, the authorities would release more hunting missions and increase the purchasing power of crystal cores to encourage more mercenaries to go out.

This period made entering the Anjin Desert more dangerous, but also offered high returns.

Xin Huan had been a mercenary for seven months. Last month, the mercenary team she belonged to encountered an accident, and only she and two others returned alive to Tianling City. One of them even died shortly after returning due to serious injuries.

Besides directly facing the cruel and bloody reality, another issue lay before Xin Huan. After more than half a month of recovery, she urgently needed to join a new mercenary team to earn crystal cores. Otherwise, she would soon not even be able to afford food. This was not difficult. There were always personnel gaps. Tianling City never had a surplus of manpower.

The problem was that mature mercenary teams wouldn’t lose members frequently, so there were no positions for Xin Huan to compete for. The teams that did often have vacancies had high casualty rates for their own reasons.

In front of her were only two choices: bad and worse.

Between certain starvation and possible death in battle, Xin Huan chose the latter.

And the result proved her worries were valid.

The newly joined mercenary team lost a lot of supplies during battle, not only weapons and ammunition but also the essential water needed for survival in the desert.

Even if they turned back immediately, the remaining water wouldn’t be enough to get all of them back to Tianling City safely.

Either they all died of thirst, or… someone gave up their share of water.

In the Anjin Desert, this situation was not uncommon.

It had even formed an unspoken solution. A vote would be taken to select one or two members to be expelled from the team and left to survive on their own, so that the rest could live.

Having joined not long ago and with no connections to any other members, Xin Huan was undoubtedly chosen.

When she was expelled, all she had on her was a pitiful amount of water and food thrown to her by the team leader.

This was merely to ease the remaining guilt of the rest of the team. This way, when they thought of Xin Huan in the future, they could comfort themselves like this: she wasn’t driven away with nothing. Maybe, with that bit of food and water, she could hold on and luckily run into other mercenaries willing to help her out of the desert.

In fact, everyone knew very well that there was no such possibility.

What followed was Xin Huan dragging her exhausted body to wander around, discovering the Nanlai Restaurant and using up the last of her strength to crawl inside.

In reality, this was the first time Nan Tu had heard about what residents of the post-apocalyptic world had experienced from one of their own. After all, Xin Huan was only the second guest Nan Tu had met from that plane.

“I thought it was a hallucination before death. Suddenly a building appeared, with water, food, and…” Mom.

She looked at Nan Tu, her gaze carrying a sense of yearning that even she didn’t notice herself.

Nan Tu slowly said, “This isn’t a hallucination. No matter what you think, in short, there is a restaurant here that receives guests like you. There will also be other guests…”

A flash of panic appeared on Xin Huan’s face. She denied, “Guests? I’m not. No, I mean I shouldn’t be treated like a guest.”

She said without holding back, “I’m really poor. I don’t have a single cent. I know I’ve already drunk a lot of water and eaten some food, but I really don’t know how to pay the bill. Maybe you can throw me out or beat me up.”

From the bottom of her heart, Xin Huan believed that in the desperate place that was the Anjin Desert, a restaurant that offered cool drinking water and delicious food would make anyone willing to trade its weight in gold for things that could save their life.

But she had nothing at all.

“Throw you out? Then wouldn’t I lose even more?” Nan Tu subtly looked Xin Huan over.

There was still some childishness on her face, but she was already a young woman. Her skin was a healthy wheat color. Her limbs showed clear muscle lines. The exposed skin was slightly rough from the wind and sand, but her eyes were very bright.

People from the apocalypse plane all have pretty good physical fitness. After such a setback, although Xin Huan’s body was still weak, her spirit had already recovered by more than half in a short amount of time.

It’s hard to tell whether it was the disaster that shaped them, or the looming threat of disaster that forced them to change.

“I have a bit of a dilemma.” Nan Tu tilted her head as if troubled. “There are a lot of customers at the restaurant, and maybe there will be more in the future. Some of the guests, I mean, aren’t from the Anjin Desert. I hope everyone can leave each other alone.”

“But some customers, not only are they visiting the restaurant for the first time, they also think there shouldn’t be a restaurant here. After discovering our place and walking in, they may get suspicious, ask a lot of questions, and even stay on high alert, affecting other guests. If it were you, what would you do with such people?”

Xin Huan thought for a moment and said, “I’d just tell them ‘This is a restaurant. If you’re not here to eat, get out.’”

She had a kind of straightforwardness that was quite unique, maybe because the environment she grew up in never taught her unnecessary politeness or courtesy.

Nan Tu slightly raised her head. She did intend to hire a waitress, but Xin Huan didn’t have any personality traits suitable for the service industry. Patience, gentleness, sweet talk — not a single one.

The way she said that was exactly like a little lion.

But Nan Tu actually liked it quite a bit.

“If you can’t afford to pay for food and have nowhere to go, why not stay and help out at my shop? Food and lodging included…”

Nan Tu frowned slightly. “As for salary…” The currency here held no value to Xin Huan, and she didn’t have any crystal cores. How should she pay her?

Xin Huan belatedly realized that she had just finished an interview. Her eyes lit up, and she quickly said, “I don’t need a salary, please let me stay!”