Inside the hot pot and barbecue buffet restaurant.
It was dinnertime, and the restaurant was packed to the brim. The place was lively and noisy, with people constantly moving through the aisles to pick out food. The bubbling of hot pots mixed with laughter and chatter, while the smoky aroma of grilled meat filled the entire restaurant.
"So this is an all-you-can-eat hot pot and barbecue buffet..."
Long Yue stood at the entrance, watching the crowds coming and going, and could not help sighing softly.
In the end, she honestly faced reality, gave up on that upscale restaurant, and chose a buffet restaurant with decent reviews instead.
She had only just earned her first pot of gold and still owed rent and money for the computer. A restaurant where a bowl of plain porridge cost a hundred yuan was truly beyond what she could afford...
Besides, there was still a full month until next payday. She did not want to spend all her money on one meal and live on dirt for the rest of the month.
Compared to the magnificent restaurant from earlier, this buffet lacked some of that upper-class extravagance, but it had a little more of the warmth of everyday life.
This kind of lively, down-to-earth atmosphere was clearly quite nice too...!
"Hello, how many people?"
The hostess standing at the entrance approached with a smile and asked.
"Three," Long Yue replied.
"Alright. It's 288 per person here. The hot pot base costs an additional fifty, and there's a fifty-yuan deposit per person. It will be refunded after your meal as long as there's no waste."
The hostess smiled as she led Long Yue and the others to the cashier.
"Oh, okay... Do I need to place an order somewhere?"
Standing before the cashier, Long Yue pointed at the phone in her hand and asked in confusion.
This was her first time buying something outside.
Previously, she had always bought things online, with the charges automatically deducted from Lin Fan's bank card.
Now that her money was all in her own bank card and she had not brought any cash, she had no idea how to pay for a moment.
The cashier was taken aback by the question and pointed at her phone.
"No need, ma'am. Just open your payment code and scan it here."
"Payment code...?"
Long Yue furrowed her delicate brows and instinctively turned to Lin Fan for help.
This was clearly beyond her level...
Lin Fan stepped forward and slowly showed her where to tap to open the payment code.
"First, open this messaging app. Then tap the plus sign in the top right corner. There's an option for payments and collections."
"Right, open it. That messy thing that pops up, the one that looks like a maze, is the payment code. Just show it whenever you buy something in the future."
"Oh! So that's all it takes? That's so convenient!"
"This Empress is becoming more and more impressed by the mortals here."
Long Yue could not help voicing a heartfelt sigh of admiration.
In the Immortal Realm, buying things required either spirit stones or bartering. Being able to pay with nothing more than a pattern like this was simply too convenient and too magical!
When going out, she did not need to carry money at all. A phone was all she needed!
The cashier was utterly baffled by Long Yue's behavior. Her eyes kept curiously studying her as though she were some rare species.
This lady was so pretty, and she was dressed reasonably well. She did not look like some child from the mountains, so how did she not even know about payment codes...
These days, she had thought only elderly grandmas and grandpas in their seventies or eighties would not know how to pay with QR codes...
Zhou Yan, standing nearby, was equally shocked.
If you can't find a book by searching its title, try searching for the author instead. It may have simply been renamed!
Sister-in-law did not even know how to pay with a payment code...
Sure enough, sister-in-law had never used her phone to pay for anything herself. She had to be the daughter of some great aristocratic family!
Beyond his shock, he became even more convinced of his earlier guess.
Precisely because she was a wealthy young lady, she had never needed to go out and buy things herself, so naturally she did not understand payment codes!
Beep!
Long Yue held up the payment code on her phone and scanned it on the machine. 1,064 yuan was automatically deducted from her bank card.
It was her first time completing an offline payment with her phone herself. For some reason, her heart stirred, and she suddenly felt proud, as though she understood this world a little better and had mastered another skill...
In the past, if more than a thousand yuan had vanished at once, her heart would have bled. But this time, she did not even blink.
Compared to that upscale restaurant where ordering casually would cost tens of thousands, this thousand-plus yuan was practically dirt cheap!
After paying, the three of them entered the restaurant together and instantly seemed to melt into its noisy, lively atmosphere. The music and the mingled conversations of the diners filled their ears.
The first thing they saw was the seafood section by the entrance. All kinds of fresh fish, shrimp, shellfish, and other seafood were neatly arranged in water or on beds of ice.
A few steps farther in came the layered meat section, where all kinds of beef steaks and lamb chops were arranged in orderly rows, while the refrigerators were packed with rolls of beef and lamb.
Farther back were the fruit section, dessert section, cold dish section, alcohol and beverage section, and the cooked food section that children loved most. Everything imaginable was available, dazzling the eye.
Long Yue's eyes darted back and forth across the various foods around her as she asked in disbelief,
"Lin Fan, can... can we really eat all of this however we want?!"
"Of course. As long as you don't waste food, you can eat however much you want."
Hearing that, Long Yue dashed in front of Lin Fan, looked up at him with an urgent expression, and pressed on,
"Even if we eat all of it, it's okay?"
The moment those words came out, the nearby diners could not help laughing.
It was their first time hearing someone say they wanted to eat every last bit of food in a buffet restaurant.
If those words had come from a child, it would have been one thing. Children said innocent things, after all, and it was normal for them to be a little naïve. But hearing them from a young woman made it far too amusing.
"Miss, if you can eat everything here, that's your ability."
"At a buffet, eat as much as you can. As long as you don't waste food, no one will say anything."
"I'm not looking down on you, but with your appetite, you'll probably be full after two slices of bread. Hahaha."
"..."
Listening to everyone's teasing, Long Yue furrowed her delicate brows, her face full of confusion.
Had she said something that funny?
"As long as you can eat it, you can eat whatever you want here."
Lin Fan smiled and gently placed a hand atop Long Yue's head, leading her straight toward the condiment station.
"But before that, let's mix up a dipping sauce first."
As everyone knew, whenever hot pot was involved, the first thing to do was mix a dipping sauce you liked.
A tasty dipping sauce basically determined how the whole hot pot meal would taste.
As the saying online went, with a good dipping sauce, even slippers would taste delicious dipped in it!
Looking at the dozens of different condiments before her, Long Yue found herself at a loss.
This was her first time eating hot pot, so she had no idea how to mix a dipping sauce.
At present, the only seasonings she recognized were things like firewood, rice, oil, and salt from the kitchen. She had not even heard of many of the others...
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