7. Fermented Glutinous Rice Milk Ice

The second floor of the restaurant also belonged to Nan Tu. It was a little smaller than the first floor, and with no more customers than it had, there was never any need to open it to the public. For a long time, it had been used as a storage room and a place to rest at night.

Before, when the couple who ran the noodle shop rented it, they stayed upstairs because their shop was open very late into the night.

Nan Tu herself usually lived in the house her grandfather had left behind, and seldom stayed at the restaurant. That made it perfect to clear out for Xin Huan to live in.

Even though Xin Huan insisted she could simply put a few chairs together on the first floor and lie down on them, and that it would not affect her sleep at all, Nan Tu still prepared soft sheets and bedding for her.

She was a little curious whether Xin Huan, who came from another plane of existence, could live in her world. The system told her that if the range was limited to the restaurant, then as long as Nan Tu allowed it, Xin Huan could stay for as long as she wished.

But once she stepped beyond that door, in less than half an hour she would be repelled by this world and sent back to her own. And there was a strong chance she would be injured while crossing the spatial barrier.

That was a little stifling for Xin Huan, being able to stay only within the tiny territory of Nan Lai Restaurant.

Still, it solved a worry that Nan Tu had carried for a long time. If a visitor from another plane slipped out through the front door while she was not paying attention, would their world not be filled with many unregistered intruders? And when investigated, everyone would be found to have come from Nan Lai Restaurant, leaving her to stumble into trouble without even realizing it.

Nan Tu was not overthinking things. Anyone who wanted to flee the apocalypse and come here would not be few, even if only to live as a vagrant. Who would want to dance forever on the edge of a blade, fighting savage aberrant beasts for an entire life until the yellow sands buried them?

She told Xin Huan the limits of her movement. "I’m afraid you can’t leave here. If you feel bored, I’ll think of something."

Xin Huan shook her head. "I’ve always been rushing around everywhere, but all I ever did was the same single thing, and all I ever saw were the same repeating scenes. This is very good."

She had already rested for two days, which Nan Tu had insisted on. Originally Xin Huan was going to start working the very next day, but Nan Tu closed the restaurant for a day and used the excuse of going out to buy some necessities for Xin Huan, making her rest properly instead.

What Xin Huan saw through the transparent glass of the front door shocked her deeply. She had already guessed that this was not her original world. It looked like an ordinary street untouched by disaster, with snack shops, pharmacies, fruit stores, and more.

The memories that had grown too distant were already hazy, but this was faintly how she remembered it.

Then where exactly did Nan Lai Restaurant exist? In the cracks between worlds? In the places where they overlapped? To accomplish such a thing would require power no less than divine, so why would Nan Tu, who possessed such power, choose to open a restaurant?

Xin Huan twisted the rag in her hands and let her thoughts wander.

She turned to look at the busy figure in the kitchen and confirmed one thing: Nan Tu truly loved running a restaurant.

Then Xin Huan thought that, as an employee of the restaurant, as the only person helping Nan Tu shoulder her burdens, the one thing she could do was keep all troubles far away from her.

A little later, Nan Tu waved Xin Huan over. "How is your body recovering?"

Xin Huan immediately said, "I’m completely fine now! Is there anything you need me to do?"

Nan Tu shook her head. "I made a small dessert. Since it’s cold, I wanted to ask whether you can eat it."

"Can I have it too?" Xin Huan said at first with delight, then seemed to remember something and looked troubled. "But it’s work time now..."

"There aren’t that many rules. There aren’t any customers right now." Nan Tu simply pressed a bowl into Xin Huan’s hands. Fine beads of water had condensed on the outside of the bowl.

"Fermented rice milk ice. Try it."

Though her words had been refusing at first, once the bowl was in her hands and she caught the faint sweetness drifting up to her nose, Xin Huan still broke into an expectant smile.

She stirred it with a spoon. Besides the scent of milk, a faint osmanthus fragrance also emerged, thanks to the osmanthus honey Nan Tu had added. She hurriedly scooped up a spoonful and sent it into her mouth. The delicate smoothness of the milk and the light alcoholic fragrance of the fermented rice spread through her mouth, cool and sweet at once.

There were also many tiny rice dumplings, each no bigger than a fingernail, springy and moist, playfully dancing between her teeth.

The fermented rice had been made by Nan Tu herself. The brewing method was simple enough, but the degree of fermentation had to be carefully controlled; otherwise the liquor flavor would be too strong and the taste far less pleasant. Controlling it herself also reduced the chance of the milk and fermented rice separating into curd-like clumps when mixed together. The finished fermented rice had a clear, sweet flavor, suitable not only for milk but also for dishes like fermented rice egg-drop soup, fermented rice white fungus soup, and more.

When making today’s dessert, Nan Tu had specially added some heavy cream to make the milk taste richer and more fragrant. She also added a spoonful of osmanthus honey, letting different layers of sweetness intertwine thread by thread, giving the flavor more depth.

Spoon after spoon, Xin Huan ate until her eyes narrowed with pleasure.

As she ate, the tide of memory swept her under.

Cool and sweet. In the imagination of her childhood, the crystal snowflakes that fell every winter should have tasted exactly like this. But snow actually had no flavor, and the city of Heavenly Spirit had not seen snow for many years.

A fleeting sadness passed through her.

But Xin Huan was naturally openhearted, and soon thought that during a trek across the desert, to be able to eat such a bowl of icy sweet dessert would be such a blissful thing indeed.

Suddenly struck by inspiration, she carried half a bowl of fermented rice milk ice to the back door and asked Nan Tu, "Sister Nan Tu, if I open this door, is the Aijin Desert right behind it?"

Nan Tu had already noticed that Xin Huan sometimes stared at the back door she had come through. At times she was curious, at times she avoided it as though it were something dangerous, as if she feared the door might suddenly unleash a tremendous force of suction and drag her back to her original world.

Seeing that she was no longer afraid, Nan Tu nodded. "That’s right. You can open it and take a look. It’s fine if you step outside too. You can come back any time. The restaurant is right here."

Sure enough, Xin Huan happily opened the door. She did not go far, merely crouching by the threshold and lightly kicking at the sand beneath her feet, feeling the scorching air wrap around her.

Then she took a bite of the fermented rice milk ice.

That felt right.

So happy.

That noon, Yu Qing and a friend appeared outside Nan Lai Restaurant.

A few days earlier, her husband had brought her some beef sauce from a roadside shop, and Yu Qing had frowned after seeing it.

"Which shabby roadside stall sold you this no-name product?"

It was not that she was being picky, but the packaging was far too crude. There was not even a proper jar, just a food container with a thin layer of sauce at the bottom. If one were not careful, one might have thought it was takeout leftovers.

Yang Xinzhi shook his head with the air of a seasoned man. "What no-name product? It’s proper freshly made beef sauce. Don’t look down on the packaging. I had to come up with a ghost of an idea to bring it back. Otherwise you’d never have had the chance to enjoy it."

Yu Qing had meant to say she had never cared for that chance in the first place. But then Yang Xinzhi opened the lid and waved it under her nose.

Why did it smell so good?

"I was just saying... since you already brought it back, I might as well try it." Seeing his teasing expression, she stubbornly added, "Wasting food is shameful!"

She happened not to have eaten yet. She quickly boiled a handful of noodles, rinsed them under cold water, then scooped in two large spoonfuls of beef sauce and mixed everything together. At once, the fragrance she had just smelled grew several times stronger, making her swallow.

By the time she came back to herself, the bowl before her was already empty.

With this beef sauce, Yu Qing, whose appetite had been flagging because of the heat, improved considerably. In the morning she would mix a little into plain rice porridge; at noon, when takeout did not suit her taste, a spoonful of beef sauce would be just the finishing touch, and even plain rice became delicious with it.

The result was that she finished all ten jars of beef sauce Yang Xinzhi had brought back in just two days.

Recently, Yang Xinzhi had been too busy to fetch more for her, and he said with some regret, "It’s a pity that restaurant isn’t near our place. I can’t go every day. If I get the chance, I’ll bring you some again."

Yu Qing glanced at him. "Bring what? I have two legs for walking. Send me the address already, and tomorrow I’ll go eat there with my friend."

And so today, she had come.

But once she reached the entrance, Yu Qing began to hesitate.

Because her friend said, "This is the restaurant you said was especially good? And at noon, there are barely any people? That does not look promising."

Yu Qing also felt inexplicably uncertain, so she hurriedly contacted Yang Xinzhi. "Honey, I’m at the place you said had amazing beef sauce. Something feels off. Did I go to the wrong place?"

Yang Xinzhi picked up almost at once. "Isn’t it Nan Lai Restaurant?"

Yu Qing said hesitantly, "Yes, it is called Nan Lai Restaurant, but there are far too few customers. Only two or three. I’m afraid I came to the wrong place." With a chef this skilled, should the restaurant not be packed beyond the doorway?

"Haha." Yang Xinzhi laughed instead. "That means business has really been getting better lately. When I went, there were no customers at all!"

"That makes no sense!" As a devoted supporter of the beef sauce, Yu Qing firmly defended its power to attract diners.

"Probably because the restaurant is a bit out of the way, and the owner is too young. People who have never eaten there probably do not trust the cook. Try it and you’ll know."

That was true enough. Yu Qing recalled how she had found the place, winding this way and that along the road, passing many shops selling all kinds of food. Each time she had gone to read the signs with high hopes, only to find none of them matched. It was not until she reached the depths of this street that she finally found Nan Lai Restaurant.

If she had not come specifically for Nan Lai Restaurant, she might have simply picked any shop along the way and sat down to eat. She would never have discovered this restaurant, which from the outside looked so ordinary.

The two of them went straight inside. Just then, a customer was leaving with a takeaway box in hand, and as she passed by them, a light, sweet fragrance drifted over.

"What would the two of you like to order? Here is today’s menu." Xin Huan came over at once.

Yu Qing asked hurriedly, "What did that customer just take away?"

"It was fermented rice milk ice," Xin Huan said.

"Is it good?" Yu Qing’s friend asked casually.

"Delicious!" Xin Huan did not know how to use flowery language to describe food. She only said frankly, "I ate three bowls in a row, and in the end the boss was too afraid to let me have any more and chased me out of the kitchen."

The two of them looked at Xin Huan and immediately laughed. So she was still just a half-grown child.

"Then bring us two servings of fermented rice milk ice, two servings of cold noodles with meat sauce, and one serving of shredded chicken with lemon. Also," Yu Qing lowered her voice mysteriously, as though speaking some kind of secret code, "I’d like ten extra portions of beef sauce, packed separately."