When Lu Lingxi arrived at the place Wang Shuxiu mentioned, Wang Shuxiu wasn’t alone. Xiao Feng was also by her side.
“Mom, Brother Feng.” Lu Lingxi called out with some hesitation.
Wang Shuxiu saw him and slapped him affectionately, “Little bastard just comes over, I’ve been waiting for half a day.”
Lu Lingxi was a bit embarrassed. He always felt uncomfortable in front of Xiao Feng. Xiao Feng nodded at him lightly, “The storefront is nearby, I’ll take you there.”
He didn’t talk much and led the way. Wang Shuxiu dragged Lu Lingxi behind her, asking who was in the shop now and where Dahei was. Lu Lingxi dutifully answered the questions and also wanted to ask Wang Shuxiu how Xiao Feng could be here. But then he thought of what Yan Yue had told him last time, that his mother was so strong that she would definitely not be bullied. He felt as if there was something strange if he asked about Xiao Feng,.
Xiao Feng said it wasn’t far, and it was just around the corner. After turning around the corner at the intersection, there was a small two-storey restaurant facing the street. However, only the lower floor could be used; the roof above was too short and the place there could be barely used as a place to rest. The owner of the restaurant was waiting for them there, and when he saw Xiao Feng coming, his face immediately broke into a smile.
“Yo, Brother Feng is here, come and take a break and have a drink.”
Xiao Feng reacted lightly to his enthusiasm and gestured to Wang Shuxiu, “She’s the one I said was renting your house.”
“No problem, no problem. I’m absolutely at ease with the people Brother Feng brings.” The boss looked at Xiao Feng with a flattering smile.
Xiao Feng was not impressed and turned his head to look at Wang Shuxiu, “Do you want to take a closer look?”
Wang Shuxiu was very satisfied with the place without having to look at it. She had eaten here before, and the customer flow was indeed quite good. The owner’s craftsmanship was also good. The most crucial thing was that the prices here were very fair. Wang Shuxiu was not someone to dilly-dally, and simply made her decision. “Let’s do it, boss we’ll sign the contract.”
Once the boss heard that there was no problem, the smile on his face grew even bigger. He stole a glance at Brother Feng, who looked calm, without either joy or sorrow on his face. But the person who could make Brother Feng personally accompany her was certainly not an ordinary person. The boss had already offered a lot of discounts on the price and simply included everything in the back kitchen to give it to Wang Shuxiu. He couldn’t take these things with him back home anyway, and it was a waste to lose them.
Both sides were sincere and the contract was signed in no time at all. Wang Shuxiu was a little excited with the thin piece of paper in her hand. Having spent half of her life with Lu Yishui and not having a good life, now that she was old she had a future. The contract was ready, and thinking of Xiao Feng’s kindness, Wang Shuxiu wanted to invite Xiao Feng to dinner. Xiao Feng lacked interest, “Forget it, it’s just a little thing. Besides, I’m tired of eating out every day.”
Wang Shuxiu heard his meaning; he didn’t want to eat out. So she didn’t act hypocritically and said, “My cooking is not bad, if Brother Feng doesn’t mind, we can eat at home.”
s
Xiao Feng glanced at Wang Shuxiu and nodded, “Fine.”
Lu Lingxi: “……”
Wang Shuxiu was really happy today. Everyone said that opening a restaurant was hard, but she was not afraid of hardships. She had suffered a lot in her life. When she was a child, her family was poor and there was not enough food. She couldn’t afford to go to school and left early to make a living. Later, when she married Lu Yishui, her life was better, but Lu Yishui was such a jerk, so her life was still hard. Sometimes she felt she couldn’t beat it anymore and only after thinking of the little bastard did she manage to survive. She never thought that when she was getting old, life would start to look up again.
Wang Shuxiu waved her hand and said quickly, “Xiao Xi, you can call Yan Yue and we can have lunch together. Tiny Garden will be closed for a while, just to celebrate the opening of our restaurant in advance.”
“Good.” Lu Lingxi was very cooperative; it was rare to see Wang Shuxiu so happy. He was also very happy in his heart.
When he received Lu Lingxi’s call, Yan Yue was a little surprised, but more than anything else, he was happy. Whatever Wang Shuxiu’s reasons for calling him for dinner in this situation were, it was in a way an approval of him. He quickly packed up his things, closed Tiny Garden and took Dahei back to the community, only to find that the person who came to open the door for him was Xiao Feng.
The two of them looked at each other, both of them silent. Lu Lingxi poked his head out of the kitchen, his hands still wet and dripping with water, “Big Brother Yan, are you here?”
Yan Yue looked past Xiao Feng and smiled at Lu Lingxi. Dahei, who was following, gave Xiao Feng a wary glare and slowly walked to the corner and squatted down, maintaining a state of being able to pounce at any time. Xiao Feng’s attention shifted from Yan Yue to Dahei; he looked at Dahei with interest. Dogs are highly intelligent, and black dogs in particular are somewhat extraordinary. He saw that Dahei didn’t look like an ordinary dog but was much smarter.
Lu Lingxi saw Yan Yue come in and continued to help in the kitchen with some relief. Yan Yue and Xiao Feng were left in the living room for a while, as well as the Dahei in the corner.
Xiao Feng was focused on Dahei, but also looked at Yan Yue out of the corner of his eye. He was somewhat curious about Yan Yue and Lu Lingxi’s relationship, but he never liked to talk too much, not to mention that he and Yan Yue had a common little secret.
Xiao Feng nodded meaningfully at Yan Yue, who hooked the corners of his mouth, and the two reached a tacit understanding.
The atmosphere of the lunch was very good. Xiao Feng looked a bit quiet but didn’t spoil the fun. Yan Yue didn’t say much either, but every time he did, he got it just right. Wang Shuxiu, on the other hand, said the most over the course of the meal. She was spirited and quick to speak, and with Lu Lingxi supporting her, always nodding in agreement with whatever she said, Wang Shuxiu felt very comfortable and thought that her family hadn’t been this lively for some years.
While Lu Lingxi was happy, Xue Yongtong had a problem with the begonias he had bought.
Luxuan Gardening had developed well over the years. In addition to undertaking various greening projects, it also steadily supplied ten percent of Fengcheng’s flower needs. But Xue Yongtong was not satisfied and kept trying to develop new sales channels.
Just a year ago, Gao Yongliang, a classmate of Xue Yongtong’s from university, approached him and offered to cooperate with him. Gao Yongliang had been working in a cosmetics company abroad for years and had somewhat made a name for himself. This time, he came back to China to start his own business, because he wanted to build his own cosmetics brand with his years of experience.
Originally, this kind of thing had nothing to do with Xue Yongtong, but didn’t Xue Yongtong have a plant nursery? Gao Yongliang’s market positioning was spot on. Nowadays, people are pursuing health, including cosmetics, the less chemical ingredients the better, the more natural and plant-containing products the more expensive they are. Gao Yongliang found the right market niche, and Xue Yongtong’s plant nursery became the most suitable place for him to get raw materials.
Xue Yongtong calculated that as long as Gao Yongliang’s cosmetic products were successfully developed and made a name for themselves, the plant nursery would become a regular supplier to the other side and the annual sales would make up a large part of his profits. The two of them hit it off immediately and started working together right away. However, Gao Yongliang was good at everything, except that he was too picky and had a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder, demanding everything to be perfect. He himself came from a perfume development background, and the new product he wanted to launch into the market also had to be a perfume flagship. For this perfume, he had been working on the recipe for half a year and had refined the essential oils of almost all the flowers in the plant nursery, but he had never found a scent he was satisfied with.
Only when Gao Yongliang smelled the begonia that Xue Yongtong was holding in his arms was he truly amazed. He pulled Xue Yongtong along with some excitement, “Lao Xue, can you smell it? That’s the smell. Delicate, clear and elegant, but different from the elegance of jasmine, with a dark, ethereal fragrance as the bottom note.”
s
“Lao Xue, you’re good, ah!” Gao Yongliang patted Xue Yongtong’s shoulder hard, “Where did you get this pot of flowers? Why didn’t you show it earlier? Where did you plant it in the plant nursery? Can it be grown on a large scale? Is the fragrance stable? This scent will be definitely unique when it comes to the market.”
The more Gao Yongliang praised this pot of begonias, the more helpless Xue Yongtong’s expression became. Finally, when the other party had finished, he said, “This is not grown in our plant nursery, it was bought in another gardening shop. Elder Qian liked it, so I bought a pot for him.”
“Another gardening shop?” Gao Yongliang pondered, “Are they big? Are they mass-producing? Is the flower fragrance stable?”
Xue Yongtong: “……”
Gao Yongliang was not trying to abandon Xue Yongtong, but the scent was just too seductive. He patted Xue Yongtong’s shoulder in a serious manner and said, “Lao Xue, you need to be flexible in business. What is the scale of the other party? Can we cooperate with each other?”
When he mentioned cooperation, Xue Yongtong got somewhat serious. The various plants inside Tiny Garden flashed through his mind and he really started to consider the possibility of cooperating with Tiny Garden.
Lu Lingxi didn’t know that someone was thinking about the evolved begonias and was busy with the opening of Wang Shuxiu’s little restaurant. The former owner of the restaurant left quickly, vacating the place in less than two days, leaving all the miscellaneous things inside for Wang Shuxiu. Wang Shuxiu picked and chose, calculating that painting the walls, changing the signboard and buying a new batch of tables and chairs would be almost enough to open. As for the vegetables and fruits for the cooking, Lu Lingxi proposed to buy them from the village where the plant nursery was located.
Ever since the big willow tree had purified the land in the village, the plants in the village started to grow like crazy. The beans in Uncle Li’s yard were growing all over the place, and the day before yesterday Uncle Li even asked someone to send a bag of beans to Lu Lingxi. They couldn’t eat all those beans at home, they grew and grew, it was going to be a disaster. Apart from the beans, there were also cucumbers, egg-plants, potatoes and sweet potatoes. The whole small yard was covered with vines of beans and cucumbers and some of them even reached outside the yard.
Uncle Li’s family was not the only one like this. Unlike in the city, basically every family in the countryside grew something in their yards for their regular meals. In the past, because these vegetables were eaten by the family, nothing chemical was used. Although the vegetables were tasty, the yield was not much. This time, who knows what happened, but the yield was many times bigger. What the village was worried about now was what to do with the vegetables. It was a pity to leave them rot on the ground, but to sell them? There were villages like theirs nearby and no one would buy their vegetables. And if they went far away to Fengcheng, it would not be worth it.
Lu Lingxi thought that the vegetables were truly natural and much tastier than those bought in the vegetable market. If a small restaurant wanted to do well, Wang Shuxiu’s skill was one thing, but it was also important for the ingredients to be tasty.
When he said this, Wang Shuxiu immediately agreed. But Wang Shuxiu didn’t have time to collect the vegetables, and Lu Lingxi thought of Yi Hang. Yi Hang was resting anyway, and usually had nothing to do except go to the plant nursery. Zheng Tan and Bai Yuan had been sent away by their families soon after Lu Lingxi was discharged from the hospital. One went to learn how to repair cars and the other went to learn cooking. Lu Lingxi was busy with the shop and the plant nursery every day, and Yi Hang alone was left with nothing to do.
Lu Lingxi spoke seriously, carefully planning these things for Wang Shuxiu. Wang Shuxiu was so happy in her heart that she held Lu Lingxi’s face and gave him a kiss on the head.
“Little bastard has grown up and can hold things up in the family.”
Lu Lingxi moved his face away somewhat uncomfortably, looked at Wang Shuxiu and smiled faintly.
