"Boss, a bowl of cold noodles, please."
A deep voice interrupted He Ao's concentration.
"Sure thing," He Ao replied, deftly opening a cabinet while glancing at the visitor—a familiar face. It was the man who had brushed past him at the police station today. He didn't ask further but softly inquired, "Handsome, do you want a large or small bowl, sweet and sour or spicy?"
"How much does it cost?"
The man glanced at He Ao but didn't linger his gaze on him, instead looking off into the deepening night.
"Eight for a large, six for a small, same price for sweet and sour or spicy."
He Ao lowered his head and replied softly.
"Give me a large, sweet and sour, to eat here."
The man said offhandedly, then walked over to a small foldable table set up nearby.
There weren't many of these foldable tables, about five or six, with several cylinder-shaped plastic stools haphazardly placed around them. Some young people were sitting, eating cold noodles and chatting. These were night shift workers from the nearby industrial district.
The night shift started at eleven-thirty. Usually, they would come here to grab something to eat before eleven to fill their stomachs.
The young people looked up at the man, curiously eyeing his attire before lowering their heads to continue their conversations.
He Ao took out a wide-mouthed stainless steel scoop, held the handle in one hand, and with the other, he lifted a large amount of cold noodles into the scoop. He then swiftly added salt, MSG, chicken powder, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, minced garlic, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and roasted sesame.
The key to the sweet and sour flavor lay in achieving a balance of tanginess and sweetness. Too sour, and it would detract from the taste; not sour enough, and it wouldn't stimulate the appetite. The sugar would neutralize the tartness of the vinegar, giving a sweet aftertaste following the initial tang, creating a pleasing sensation that not only tasted good but also enhanced the appetite.
Normally, one wouldn't add chili to a sweet and sour dish, but He Ao liked to add just a tiny bit. The combination of chili and minced garlic provided a fragrance and heat that would stimulate the taste buds and help dispel the body's chill during the night. However, it was important not to add too much as it could easily overpower the primary flavors of sweet and sour.
After adding the seasonings, He Ao mixed the cold noodles quickly, even flipping the scoop in the air, causing the noodles to fly out against the side of the scoop and perform a 180-degree turn in mid-air.
A crucial factor in the taste of cold noodles was whether they were mixed evenly.
Anyone who's eaten pasta knows that with dry noodles, getting the sauce to coat each strand evenly is what makes the dish either delightful or a combination of too salty and bland.
Once each noodle strand was evenly coated with the glossy sauce, He Ao stopped, opened a small box of side dishes, and added boiled kelp strips, blanched fresh bean sprouts, chopped green onions, and crispy fried soybeans in sequence.
These sides and green onions were quickly mixed into the bowl the moment they were dropped in.
However, this time the mixing was less vigorous than before since the bean sprouts were now in the mix.
Some people like to add cucumber strips to cold noodles for a refreshing, crunchy, and grease-cutting effect.
But He Ao preferred bean sprouts, which were similarly refreshing and crunchy, yet not as unyieldingly firm as cucumber strips. They were firm on the outside but tender inside, bursting with juice at the slightest bite.
The boiling water He Ao used for the bean sprouts had lemon slices steeped in it, offering not just a grease-cutting effect but also a unique tartness different from vinegar.
Such treated bean sprouts, mixed in the noodles and eaten, provided a moment when the teeth sunk in—with the tender yet chewy noodles, the crisp bean sprouts, the freshness of sweet and sour, and the slight tartness of lemon melding together under the tongue's mixing and the teeth's grinding—like a bittersweet first love, coy and flirtatious.
Irresistibly memorable.
Of course, bean sprouts also have their drawbacks. After blanching, they spoil easily, so any unsold sprouts must be discarded. They are also rather troublesome to prepare, which is why fewer people use them nowadays.
After this series of dazzling moves, only two or three minutes had actually passed. He Ao took out a small paper bowl, packed the cold noodles neatly, stuck a pair of disposable chopsticks in, and placed it on the small table in front of the man.
"Boss, you're doing pretty well here,"
The man hesitated for a moment, then asked somewhat stiffly.
"Hmm, it's not bad," He Ao couldn't figure out what the man wanted to say; he handed the payment code to the man, "Eight yuan."
"You seem to be having a hard time," the man took out his phone, scanning the code to pay while speaking in an awkward and stiff tone as if unaccustomed to this kind of work, "And you sell so cheaply, your income must be low..."
"Payment received: eight yuan."
The voice prompt came from the phone.
"You're still in school, right? I have a part-time job..." the man continued, gaining a bit of confidence as the conversation went on, ready to elaborate further but was interrupted by He Ao's voice.
"Indeed it's not very high, I set up my stall for thirty days a month, selling seventy to eighty bowls each evening. I can make six to seven hundred yuan a day, which adds up to eighteen or nineteen thousand a month, not quite twenty thousand. After all the costs, there isn't much left, just hard-earned money..."
As He Ao was speaking, he suddenly realized that the air seemed to have quieted down. He looked at the man in front of him, who, without knowing when, had started silently eating his noodles, right about when he mentioned 'twenty thousand a month.'
He decided to keep asking,
"So, about that part-time job you were talking about..."
"No, no such thing," the man hastened to wave his hands, "That job isn't suitable for you."
"Oh."
He Ao returned to his stall feeling a bit puzzled, but if the other person didn't want to say more, it wasn't his place to pry. Besides, his long experience looking for part-time jobs told him that when strangers come up offering 'I have a part-time job for you,' they were either shady brokers or scammers.
He Ao had been scammed back in high school with promises of 'high pay and stability,' 'work from home,' and 'earn tens of thousands a month,' but you had to pay a security deposit of 399 yuan to start.
He Ao paid, and then there was no after.
That month, he lived on cold steamed buns.
There are many good people in the world, and many bad ones too.
Sitting on the small stool in front of his stall, He Ao looked at the [Martial Arts: Qi Induction (F-rank)] on his character panel, playing back in his mind the book 'Introduction to Sword Immortals in Thirty Days' he saw in the Copy World.
That book might have been an exaggeration and not enough to make one an immortal, but according to the system's label, it seemed to belong to something called 'Martial Arts.'
After all, 'Qi Induction' was annotated after the words 'Martial Arts,' and He Ao felt that the 'qi' generated by the energy of the Vermilion Fruit was the same 'qi' in Qi Induction.
Though it was called Qi Induction, his body was now as empty as a rice bin that couldn't even feed a mouse, let alone 'qi'; he didn't have even a bit of energy.
He wondered if there was any way to generate that energy. Did that little book contain methods to naturally generate energy?
While He Ao was immersed in studying those images from the book, which he could barely understand, and the text which seemed like gibberish,
sudden rapid footsteps approached from the darkness, followed by a somewhat familiar voice, "Boss, a bowl of cold noodles, please."
He looked up, and a familiar face came into view—the young man who had almost demolished his home that afternoon.
The young man saw He Ao, paused, and then turned and ran.
He Ao didn't move, because someone else was quicker; it was the man in the trench coat, who flashed by He Ao's stall like a streak of light, chasing after the young man.
"If you need us, contact us."
His words were as cool and composed as they were smooth, a stark contrast to the awkwardness of his earlier attempts to sell the part-time job.
And what landed in front of He Ao along with his words was a plain white business card with black lettering, the cheapest kind on the market, it showed a simple organization name.
[Central Earth Folk Institute for Abnormal Human Studies (Xidu City Branch)]