The first thing I did was to find out

Chapter 537 Obsessed with Making Desserts

Thanks to Qin Huai's breakthrough, Qin Luo enjoyed a few good days. Every morning, she managed to take away more than she could eat, carrying two large bags of breakfast to school to distribute to her close classmates. For a time, Qin Luo became the most popular person in the entire class, without exception.

The direct consequence of this was that the usually quiet morning business hours around 6 a.m. suddenly became very busy with personal shoppers. Qin Luo's classmates are mostly wealthy and don't care about money. They didn't know the snacks at the Cloud Cafeteria were so delicious before, but now that they do, of course they have to order delivery services to eat them every day.

Because of this, Zhao Cheng'an asked Qin Luo curiously, "She's already in her second year of high school, don't her classmates know what her family does?"

Qin Luo said that the students knew, but reality wouldn't be as exaggerated as depicted in TV dramas.

Yunzhong Canteen is indeed a relatively well-known community canteen in Shanshi, but it's just that—a community canteen. In this era of ubiquitous marketing, people who don't live or work nearby and have the means to eat there every day won't specifically come to the community canteen to buy breakfast or snacks.

If you haven't even tried it, you naturally won't think that the snacks from a community canteen can be that delicious. Even if people rave about it online and on their friends' social media, everyone just takes it as normal online sharing. After all, the average person on the internet is a graduate of a top university and earns a million-dollar salary. Even if the food is so delicious that it's like a 360-degree Thomas spiral to heaven, everyone will just take it as a normal description.

Qin Luo's classmates live near the Cloud Cafeteria. Those who live nearby just eat there quietly every day without telling anyone—Qin Huai's breakfast and snacks are already hard to buy normally, so why bother promoting them everywhere and increasing the competition?

Those who don't live nearby don't have the opportunity to eat there.

The business at Yunzhong Canteen is very good, it has been good since it opened, but the customers are mainly from nearby residential areas and office buildings.

Most of the delivery orders came from the hospital where Qu Jing worked. This was because Qin Huai had brought snacks to Qu Jing at the hospital many times, and Qu Jing kindly shared them with her colleagues and patients. Through word of mouth among doctors, nurses, and patients, the hospital where Qu Jing worked became one of the most loyal customer groups of Yunzhong Canteen.

The area served by the Cloud Canteen is limited to this.

Because Qin Huai often complained that Yunzhong Canteen was doing too well, he never did any marketing. He even went so far as to hide his identity from the readers of "Zhiwei" magazine, so that they would not know that the mysterious Chef Qin who made fruit was actually secretly running a community canteen in Shanshi. When asked, he said that Chef Qin was actually the chef of Huangji.

What? You're saying that Master Qin only stayed at Huang's for a few months before disappearing without a trace.

Never mind, that's just Master Qin's style. Master Qin just likes to disappear without a trace.

Under this business philosophy, Qin Huai doesn't buy any promotions, doesn't even want to be on review apps, and certainly won't offer group-buying deals. When the canteen first opened, Qin Huai had Huang Xi try out some package deals and monthly subscriptions, but those have all been cancelled now. The community canteen is being run like a breakfast shop.

So what's the right approach to opening a breakfast shop?

I just don't have a clear idea. The most important thing about opening a breakfast shop is simply opening it. All you need to do is open for business every day, wait for customers to come, sell out the breakfasts you've prepared, and then close up shop and rest.

Because it doesn't do any marketing, the promotion and recommendations for Yunzhong Canteen all come from the spontaneous efforts of its customers. While this kind of marketing is highly credible, its reach is limited and it doesn't attract many local diners. Only tourists from other places, after seeing related posts online, will travel a long distance to Yunzhong Canteen to buy some snacks and have breakfast, thinking, "Since I'm already here."

Then, amazed, I posted a recommendation online that this community canteen was truly a hidden gem, and then left the city.

As for the locals...

When Qin Huai lived in Qiu County, he had heard about many time-honored restaurants hidden in the alleys. Unless these restaurants were within a 3-kilometer radius of his home, Qin Huai would never go out of his way to eat there.

The answer is that locals never visit the tourist attractions near their homes.

In short, Qin Luo's behavior of taking responsibility for her own problems has made the competition for breakfast at the Cloud Cafeteria much fiercer, and the elderly folks who used to enjoy a leisurely breakfast are no longer so relaxed. But the elderly folks can't possibly blame their beloved Luo Luo, after all, their beloved Luo Luo is Qin Luo's half-sister!

The elderly folks could only get up earlier and storm the Yunzhong Canteen at 6 a.m. sharp, then try to win over Chef Qin with some unorthodox methods, hoping to become the second Wang Gensheng to eat his way into the kitchen.

Qin Huai noticed these subtle changes.

But Qin Huai didn't care.

Qin Huai is now obsessed with making locust flower steamed buns every day and can't tear herself away.

The locust flower steamed buns were the first snack that Qin Huai spent time researching and had outside help to make at the Yunzhong Canteen. It was very difficult to make, but it was through Wang Gensheng that he met Zheng Da and Zheng Siyuan, which led to his later connection with Huang Ji.

Locust flower steamed buns were the first dessert that Qin Huai seriously studied, but she didn't finish the research at the time because it was too difficult. It can be said that she only studied the beginning and barely got into the basics before stopping there.

Qin Huai at this time has improved significantly in every aspect compared to then; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he's completely different now. If Qin Huai were to study locust flower steamed buns now, he could confidently say to them, "I'll let it go if you called me 'Little Qin' back when I was a novice, but what should you call me now?"
Of course, we'll still call him Xiao Qin.

Even the Qinhuai River area, which is not what it used to be, can no longer produce S-grade locust flower steamed buns.

Being able to understand instructional videos doesn't mean you can make locust flower steamed buns.

Xiao Qin still has a lot to learn when it comes to mastering the art of making locust flower steamed buns.

But this didn't stop Qin Huai from becoming obsessed with making locust flower steamed buns, making them with great enthusiasm every day. If Qin Huai didn't still have a shred of rationality left in his mind, remembering that the most urgent task was to make potato dumplings that met Wang Gensheng's requirements, complete Wang Gensheng's side quest as soon as possible, look at his memories, find the recipe, and get Wang Gensheng to wake up and ask about the promised matters, Qin Huai would have loved to spend all day making locust flower steamed buns.

Qin Huai felt that locust flower steamed buns were his favorite snack.

First of all, locust flower steamed buns are steamed buns.

Steamed buns are breakfast. Qin Huai, as a breakfast chef who never forgets his original intention, even though he has seen the glamorous world of pastry chefs, still has a pure land in his heart reserved for breakfast. In Qin Huai's mind, he can always be a breakfast chef.

Secondly, making locust flower steamed buns is very difficult.

Once you've built up your basic skills to this level, making simple pastries becomes almost pointless for leveling up your proficiency. Both dough preparation and filling now require 1 million proficiency points to upgrade. If you were to use all those points to make basic breakfast items, even if Qin Huai made pastries 24 hours a day for 100 years, she probably still wouldn't reach that 1 million proficiency points.

To improve your proficiency in advanced skills, you must make challenging desserts. They not only need to be difficult, but also require skill, and ideally, they should be desserts that Qin Huai likes.

The locust flower steamed bun perfectly meets all the above criteria. It even has an instructional video that's more textbook-like than any textbook, making it a perfect steamed bun tailor-made for the Qinhuai region.

No breakfast chef could refuse such steamed buns.

Before, Qin Huai felt a little pain and numbness when eating glutinous rice cakes and other snacks every morning, but now she feels only joy.

I would be happier if I didn't have to make potato dumplings.

In stark contrast to Qin Huai's happiness was Zhao Cheng'an.

As much joy Qin Huai had experienced these past few days, so too had misery and fear Zhao Cheng'an.

As a responsible and dedicated teacher, Master Zhou became obsessed with making videos every day after discovering that a modern teaching method of remote learning could be achieved by shooting instructional videos.

We shoot at least two sets of videos a day, one specifically for Qin Huai and one specifically for Zhao Cheng'an.

Qin Huai's set of finger-specific teaching videos is better than Zhao Cheng'an's, which is more balanced, and Zhao Cheng'an has to submit assignments every day.

The assignment was simple: film a video of Zhao Cheng'an making pastries and send it back to Master Zhou so that Master Zhou could see how Zhao Cheng'an's pastries were doing and whether he had been having a wild time in Shanshi lately.

So how are Zhao Cheng'an's pastries doing now? Actually, they're not too bad.

Zhao Cheng'an came to Yunzhong Canteen to work as a pastry chef. Even if he wasn't particularly keen on it, the canteen's high customer traffic and the enthusiastic praise from the elderly customers were undeniable. Even with an iron will, Zhao Cheng'an couldn't possibly do absolutely no work. His daily workload was almost identical to that at Zhiweiju, except for the occasional tea party at Luo Jun's house.

Logically speaking, Zhao Cheng'an's ability to maintain such a high workload without supervision is commendable.

But reality doesn't follow logic.

In reality, there is a control group.

Zhao Cheng'an's colleague, a shining example of someone else's perfect child, was standing right next to him, making rapid progress, leaping ahead, and advancing by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, his own child, seemingly not slacking off, made no progress, remained stagnant, and continued to make mistakes.

There is no harm without comparison.

In theory, a master can love his apprentice, but only if the apprentice's deskmate doesn't consistently rank first in the city, let alone break records.

It's hard for Master Zhou not to be sarcastic and eccentric.

Under his master's urging, Zhao Cheng'an reluctantly began eating glutinous rice cakes. At first, Qin Huai was a little hesitant to let Zhao Cheng'an eat them, fearing that the mayflies would get distracted and become so engrossed in catching fish that they forgot everything else.

It turns out that Zhao Cheng'an was still quite afraid of his master. After eating a few pieces of glutinous rice cake, his work efficiency increased dramatically, and his enthusiasm for work had to rise even if he didn't want to. The situation where Qin Huai forced himself to work hard by eating two pieces of rice cake every day was perfectly replicated in Zhao Cheng'an. The mayfly finally experienced the hard life of a male protagonist in a system novel.

However, Qin Huai endured such hardship for more than 10 days, while Zhao Cheng'an could not bear it for more than two days.

"Qin Huai, are you even human?" Encouraged by the glutinous rice cake buff, Zhao Cheng'an was making pastries while asking the question.

I can't not do it; I'll feel guilty if I don't.

"What's wrong?" Qin Huai hummed cheerfully. "Was my humming off-key? Or was it too loud and disturbed you? Sorry, I'll stop humming then."

At this time, Qin Huai was still considerate of his colleagues and tried his best not to let his own happiness affect Zhao Cheng'an.

"Is that the point?" Zhao Cheng'an's voice rose, filled with the despair of encountering a colleague of the "King of Curry". "If all else fails, let's switch places. You can go to Zhiweiju and become my master's apprentice, and I'll stay at Yunzhong Canteen and be the boss. I think you're much more suitable for Zhiweiju than I am."

"How could I have ever thought you were like me and didn't love baking as much? Where did I get that illusion? I think you love baking even more than Guli!"

Qin Huai casually replied, "You're dreaming. My Cloud Cafeteria is worth nearly eight figures. You're trying to get something for nothing."

Zhao Cheng'an: ...

Qin Huai smiled and said, "I was just joking. I didn't love making desserts as much as I do now. It was quite painful to grind for skill points a while ago. But now that I've leveled up, I'm in a better mood."

"And I've discovered that making desserts is also a lot of fun." Qin Huai's face was beaming with a smile that Zhao Cheng'an couldn't understand. "Actually, I've always felt that making desserts is a very happy thing. The happiest time I ever made desserts was when Luo Luo wanted to eat something, and I would make it for her. When Luo Luo was happy, I was happy too."

"Now I feel that locust flower steamed buns are simply my soulmate. I never thought there could be such a perfect steamed bun for me in this world. I have been neglecting it before, which is a real sin. Now I feel that if I don't make locust flower steamed buns for four or five hours every day to make up for what I missed before, I would be letting down the locust flower steamed buns."

Haven't you ever felt this way?

Zhao Cheng'an shook his head, very firmly and quickly, as even a second of hesitation would be disrespectful to his mental state.

Qin Huai looked regretful: "That's a real shame. You'll understand if you've ever experienced it. If I had the chance to get up early, I would be getting up at 3 a.m. every day to make locust flower steamed buns."

After finishing her sentence, Qin Huai continued humming a song while making locust flower steamed buns.

Zhao Cheng'an: ...

Zhao Cheng'an silently took out his phone and sent a message to Tan Weian: I'm sure, Qin Huai has gone mad.

Zhao Cheng'an: Qin Huai must have gone mad from making steamed buns. He's completely lost his mind. Quickly send me the doctor you contacted in Hangzhou. I need to take Qin Huai to Hangzhou for treatment.

Just as Zhao Cheng'an was kneading the dough and questioning his life, Wang Gensheng, who had been quietly sitting at the small table for the past few days, serving as a background figure while eating potato dumplings, quietly walked to the Qinhuai River and whispered his report:
"Master Qin, could I ask for a day off the day after tomorrow?"

Wang Gensheng truly treated the tasting of potato dumplings as a mission. During the intense period of making locust flower steamed buns in Qinhuai, Wang Gensheng managed not to eat a single locust flower steamed bun, only potato dumplings.

And I insist on writing two food reviews of potato dumplings every day, even though they're not very good.

But their spirit is commendable.

Qin Huai paused humming again: "Uncle Wang, are you tired of eating potato dumplings? Would you like me to make you some other snacks to change things up?"

"No, no," Wang Gensheng quickly waved his hand. "It's only right that I make potato dumplings. I promised you, Chef Qin, that I would help you taste the dishes and find the perfect potato dumplings."

"I'm going to accompany my wife to the hospital for a check-up the day after tomorrow, and I'll probably be busy all day, so I won't have time to come."

"Oh, oh." Qin Huai nodded repeatedly. "Uncle Wang, you must prioritize your own affairs. How about this, tomorrow I'll make you some crab shell pastries, which you like, and pack you two bags of locust flower steamed buns and fermented rice steamed buns. You can take them home and eat them the day after tomorrow."

Wang Gensheng smiled sheepishly and said, "That's so embarrassing."

"One bag of locust flower steamed buns and one bag of fermented rice steamed buns are enough; we can't finish any more."

"Row."

Qin Huai continued making locust flower steamed buns.

After kneading another batch of dough, Qin Huai belatedly realized that the day after tomorrow seemed to be Sunday, and Qin Luo wouldn't be attending classes or evening self-study.

It seems like Yunzhong Canteen hasn't held a team-building event in a long time; the whole store is closed.

Why don't we give the whole store a day off and go to an amusement park for team building?

If Zhao Cheng'an isn't allowed to rest soon, my buddy might really go crazy.

If the mayfly's last incarnation was due to the immense pressure of making pastries, leading it to abandon its pastry-making work and escape reality by committing suicide, then Qin Huai would become the eternal sinner who drove the mayfly to its death.

Guilty sin.

(End of this chapter)