You've Been Buffed-Now Go Feed

Lu Li stood in the long line and entered a restaurant, carefully observing everything.

This was the restaurant he had seen earlier from the car, the one with the long queue outside.

The restaurant was small, with only seven or eight tables. Unlike other restaurants, it was not crammed full either; each table was spaced far apart.

There were three particularly unusual things about it.

First, the restaurant had no waiters—only the owner. So after finishing their food, every customer had to clean up their own table.

Second, the dishes here were outrageously expensive. A simple plate of egg fried rice, for example, cost 1,888.

Third, each customer was only allowed to order once. Takeout and leftovers were not permitted; everything had to be eaten here. If someone ordered too much and could not finish it, the restaurant would never serve them again.

Yet despite these three rules, the restaurant was packed every day, as though its food had been laced with poppy husks and was addictive.

As Lu Li sat down, he heard a bald middle-aged customer at the next table suddenly shout upon seeing the menu, "You forgot to put in the decimal point, didn't you? It's just a plate of egg fried rice, and you're charging 1,888? You must be crazy for money. Eighteen would be more like it."

"Another idiot who actually dares question the Little Food God." At a table not far from Lu Li, a middle-aged man with the air of an artist, wearing slippers, shook his head and said this.

Judging by how he was dressed, he probably lived nearby and clearly saw this sort of thing often. Then again, people were naturally influenced by crowds and curiosity. At lunchtime, seeing such a long line outside a restaurant, they would naturally want to