Shredded Cucumber Salad

The new restaurant's decor and layout were far better than Jiang Jiankang had imagined. The unease in his heart vanished at once, and fired up with fighting spirit, he abandoned his son and dragged Comrade Wang Xiulian off to the nearby farmers' market to scout things out.

For such a large restaurant, they had to choose their ingredient suppliers carefully.

Having been abandoned by his own parents, Jiang Feng was used to it. He headed back to the dorm with Wang Hao first.

"Brother Feng, I saw a dish called Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices on the first-floor menu just now. What kind of dish is that?" Wang Hao asked curiously.

"It's a dish my dad put on the menu to make the place look good. He can't make it at all," Jiang Feng said. Seeing Wang Hao blank out, he explained, "That dish uses white bird's nest as its main ingredient. My dad can only talk about it on paper; he's never actually made it. Only my grandpa made it back when he was a head chef at a State-run Restaurant."

Wang Hao suddenly understood. "No wonder you're so good at cooking. It runs in the family."

When they reached the supermarket beside the school, Jiang Feng suddenly stopped.

"Want some Shredded Cucumber Salad?"

He had dried chilies and Chili Oil in his bag.

Wang Hao was famously fond of food too. Cooking for him would definitely earn a lot of experience points. If he made something for Wang Hao after he tasted Comrade Jiang Jiankang's cooking tonight, Wang Hao probably wouldn't be as easy to impress as before.

Of course Wang Hao knew what Shredded Cucumber Salad was. "Brother Feng, you can even make that? Come on, the supermarket has cucumbers. Once you're done, I'll post it on WeChat Moments and make those guys next door die of envy."

Jiang Feng's eyes lit up. "They've all come back to school?"

"They all came early to welcome the new students. That whole pack of animals is here. Brother Feng, we'd better lock the door tight this time. Last time they smelled the braised pork ribs and rice, and they didn't leave me a single bite." Wang Hao grinned.

"It's fine. Cut a few extra. Go ask them if they want some." Jiang Feng would never turn away willing customers. To him, these people were simply gleaming piles of experience points!

Since Jiang Feng had said so, Wang Hao took out his phone and asked in the group chat. Sure enough, he received an enthusiastic response from the boys who had returned to school early.

Jiang Feng bought ten cucumbers.

The cucumbers at the school supermarket weren't very fresh. One look told him they had been force-grown. Since none of them were particularly good, he couldn't be bothered picking through them. He grabbed ten that looked decent enough, weighed them himself, and went to pay.

When the cashier auntie saw him buying ten cucumbers, she gave him a few extra looks.

"Don't buy vegetables at school. They're all grown with hormones." Perhaps because Jiang Feng was rather handsome, the auntie offered him an extra reminder. "There's a small vegetable market behind the wholesale market. A lot of the vegetables there are grown by the sellers themselves. No pesticides, and they're really fresh."

"Thank you, Auntie." Jiang Feng thanked her sweetly, then took out his phone and sent the information to Comrade Jiang Jiankang.

Wang Hao was waiting for Jiang Feng at the supermarket entrance. When he saw him come out carrying a huge bag of cucumbers, he was startled. "Brother Feng, I don't think our dorm has a kitchen knife, does it?"

There was only one sharp fruit knife in the dorm. That was also why Jiang Feng usually didn't like cooking there. Cutting meat with a fruit knife took forever and was too much trouble.

"A fruit knife will do," Jiang Feng said.

Shredded Cucumber Salad depended on knife skills. The seasonings were secondary. Every household had its own preferred taste, but none of them could go too far wrong.

As for knife skills...

Jiang Feng had been able to cut a complete Shredded Cucumber Salad cucumber since fifth grade.

Their dorm was on the fifth floor. By the time Jiang Feng carried a bag of seasonings on his back and a bag of cucumbers up to the fifth floor, he nearly thought he had gone to the wrong dorm building.

From the stairwell all the way to Room 501, the corridor was packed with people. Tall, short, fat, thin—at a rough glance, there were at least a dozen.

Anyone who didn't know better would have thought they were gathered there to block someone's path for a group fight.

"Damn, I only said one thing, and all of you actually came." Wang Hao couldn't help swearing at the sight.

There were Jiang Feng's classmates, people from his department, and regulars who often bought things from Wang Hao's convenience store and frequently hung around Room 501.

"Brother Feng's family restaurant is opening, so we came to show our support!" Li Jian, one of his classmates, joked.

"My family restaurant opens the day after tomorrow. Remember to come support us." Jiang Feng smiled, and Wang Hao opened the dorm door for him.

The fruit knife was on Jiang Feng's desk. Jiang Feng went to the balcony to wash the cucumbers and knife while Wang Hao swiftly began wiping down the table. Their plastic cutting board had broken last semester and they had never bought a new one, so if they wanted to cut cucumbers, they could only do it on the table.

After washing the cucumbers, Jiang Feng picked up the knife and skillfully made diagonal cuts first, then straight cuts. His movements were so practiced that it was as though he were holding not a fruit knife, but one of the miraculous knives from Little Chef.

The people standing at the doorway stared wide-eyed.

Jiang Feng's cooking was only considered good compared to students at A University.

If one looked for a somewhat larger restaurant in A City, there were plenty of head chefs more skilled than Jiang Feng.

These people were all fairly close with Jiang Feng. After seeing Wang Hao's WeChat Moments, they had assumed Jiang Feng's family had gone deeply into debt to open their restaurant and was already struggling to get by, so they came to show their support.

They had already discussed it among themselves. Each person would eat a few bites of cucumber, then use the price of the dish as an excuse to give five or ten yuan apiece, so Jiang Feng wouldn't be strapped for cash right at the start of the semester. The Shredded Cucumber Salad wasn't the point. Showing their support was.

But now, everyone at the door was unconsciously staring at the fruit knife in Jiang Feng's hand.

Slice, slice, slice, slice.

His movements were as fast as something out of a television drama.

Because Room 501 often had hot pot in winter, it had a good supply of seasonings, plates, and the like. Jiang Feng took out two plates and arranged the sliced cucumbers into circles. He added salt, sesame oil, and sugar, then took out vinegar personally brewed by his grandpa, sun-dried chilies, and homemade Chili Oil from the bag he had brought back.

In his younger days, Grandpa had learned vinegar brewing from a master in Shanxi. In his eyes, most of the vinegar sold on the market these days had no soul.

The moment the jars of Chili Oil and vinegar were opened, the aroma spread out.

"Do you like it sour or spicy?" Jiang Feng first asked the people at the door.

"Spicy, spicy!"

"Sour! Sour is better!"

"Either is fine, either is fine."

Four people gave three different answers. At this point, how could they remember that they had come to show their support? Their eyes held only the two plates of cucumbers.

Jiang Feng added extra dried chilies to one plate and kept the other at a normal ratio.

Ten cucumbers looked like a lot, but divided among more than a dozen people, there wasn't much to go around.

Using his advantage of being closest to the food, Wang Hao tried to claim an entire cucumber for himself, only to be fiercely condemned by everyone else and forced to give up three quarters of it.

Grandpa's Chili Oil had quite a kick afterward. Several classmates who couldn't handle spicy food were nearly crying from the heat, yet they still fought on at the front lines of the food grab.

The doorway of Room 501 was filled with the tangy, spicy aroma.

Some people had originally wanted to politely compliment the cucumbers, but by the time they had that thought, all they could see were plates of vinegar floating with dried chilies.

A student from the sixth floor came down to throw away trash. Seeing so many people gathered on the fifth floor and smelling the delicious tangy, spicy scent in the air, he curiously asked, "What are you all gathered here eating?"

"There's nothing to eat, nothing to eat. Some vinegar spilled, and we're helping clean it up." Everyone spoke in unison. What if one more person came to share the food?

Ten plates of Shredded Cucumber Salad were wiped clean by the crowd like ravenous wolves pouncing on prey.

During that time, Jiang Feng heard, "Ding, obtained 111 experience points."

"Ding, obtained 167 experience points."

"Ding, obtained 109 experience points."

His mood was simply beyond wonderful.

Once they had finished dividing up the food, everyone eagerly began competing to wash the plates.

"Ah!" A junior from Jiang Feng's department slapped his thigh, looking as though he had suddenly remembered something. "Brother Feng, I almost forgot to pay for the Shredded Cucumber Salad. I'll just scan the QR code by Brother Hao's bed and pay Brother Hao first. Brother Hao, remember to give it to Brother Feng!"

"Ah, how did I forget?"

"Ah, look at my memory. Haozi, I'll send the money to you too."

Everyone put on expressions of sudden realization. Their acting was so terrible that Jiang Feng was embarrassed to expose them.

The most important thing was that they all ran off as soon as they paid. It was far too deliberate.

Wang Hao stared blankly at the stream of payment notifications on his phone.

"Since when do they pay when they come over to mooch food?"

Jiang Feng smiled and began putting away the seasonings. "Isn't it because you keep posting false advertising on WeChat Moments every day? They probably think I'm so poor I can't even afford food."

Wang Hao: ...

"Then what do we do with the money?"

"Keep it for now. When they eat at my family restaurant, we'll give it back as a discount." Jiang Feng said.

After putting everything away, Jiang Feng specifically picked out the seasonings and packed them into a bag, intending to take them to the restaurant that evening.

Thinking back on the Shredded Cucumber Salad they had just eaten, Wang Hao asked, "Brother Feng, how does your dad's cooking compare to that plate of cucumbers?"

Jiang Feng thought for a moment, then said seriously, "That plate of cucumbers was delicious because we used the vinegar and Chili Oil my grandpa made. It was probably around my dad's usual level."

"The dishes my dad makes tonight will definitely be his specialties. They'll absolutely be better than that plate of cucumbers."

"Gulp."

Wang Hao swallowed involuntarily.