this chapter is brought to you by mio
as translator, proofreader and editor!
In the earlier interviews, there had been someone subtle hinting at being a relative of a certain base leader, and Jiang Ci had promptly dismissed them. Seeing this, even if they had connections, the other survivors dared not bring them up anymore.
In the end, seven people were selected: Mo Yun, Guo Tang, Pan Cheng, Wei Bin, Yang Ting, Qiao Ran, and Su Xing.
Jiang Ci assigned Aunt Mo Yun, Wei Bin, and Qiao Ran to the barbecue restaurant, while the others stayed at the hotpot restaurant.
After all, the barbecue restaurant’s space was still too small, and the hotpot restaurant currently had the highest foot traffic. Relying solely on Mao Qianqian and Song Jinchuan for the hotpot restaurant was still quite taxing on them.
Now with four more people, Jiang Ci assigned one to assist Mao Qianqian, another to help Xue Yi, and the remaining Guo Tang would also lend a hand in the main hall, with his primary task being to replenish the condiment station and the self-service milk tea condiment station. Qiao Ran, who was an accountant before the apocalypse, was responsible for collecting crystal cores in the main hall.
Aunt Mo Yun went to the kitchen of the barbecue restaurant, while Wei Bin helped out in the main hall. Su Xing, who had been a teacher before the apocalypse, also stayed at the barbecue restaurant to collect crystal cores.
Everyone was assigned a suitable position, and the two shops immediately became livelier.
This way, Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan could step away from the stores and wouldn’t have to stay there assisting them all the time. After all, she still had deliveries to make, and there probably would be new shops in the future too.
As a boss, one must learn to understand and utilize people wisely.
Of course, Jiang Ci couldn’t be completely at ease with these people since she barely knew them, but fortunately, there was the system’s omniscient “monitoring,” with every move in the shop able to be under Jiang Ci’s watchful eye.
Once the survivors violated the rules, they would be immediately expelled.
The survivors learned about this during the application process and all patted their chests, assuring her that they had no ulterior motives.
After arranging the specific work for the hotpot restaurant, Jiang Ci specifically wrote two price lists for the two shops yesterday and gave them to Su Xing and Qiao Ran, asking them to try to remember all the prices to avoid being overwhelmed when collecting crystal cores.
Aunt Mo Yun followed Jiang Ci to the barbecue restaurant. Aunt Mo Yun felt a bit uneasy seeing the clean shop, the bustling popularity of the place both inside and outside, as well as the envy in the eyes of the survivors towards them.
Jiang Ci took her to the kitchen and explained how to use each piece of equipment.
Aunt Mo Yun quickly mastered the usage and then swiftly got to work.
With so many people hired, the workload in Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan’s hands suddenly became much lighter.
As the number of employees increased, efficiency also improved significantly. When Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan had nothing to do, they would go and help sell mineral water to other bases, which was also another substantial stream of income.
With the expansion of the shops, the warehouse area became much larger than before, and now more things could be stored inside.
“Boss Jiang, can I buy a wheelchair from you?” a survivor asked Jiang Ci.
Jiang Ci was taken aback. She could sell items like wheelchairs from her personal mall’s daily necessities, and the system wouldn’t interfere with those transactions. However, selling them wouldn’t count towards her total turnover, and the crystal cores she gained from such sales wouldn’t be able to be used when Jiang Ci brought them back to her own world. Therefore, Jiang Ci hadn’t planned to sell these things to the survivors. She was already busy enough and didn’t need to add another burdensome task for herself.
“My brother’s leg has been injured for five years, and he’s always moved around by crawling on the ground. I also want him to try moving around normally with a wheelchair,” the survivor said calmly despite the faint hint of sadness in his eyes.
“I also want to buy one, but it’s for my daughter. She’s had a leg disability since birth, and now she’s eight years old and has never been able to leave the house normally,” another tall and burly male survivor said.
“Boss Jiang, no matter how many crystal cores it takes, I’ll give them to you. Please sell me one.”
Several survivors surrounded Jiang Ci, all wanting to spend crystal cores to buy a wheelchair after seeing Mao Jing’s wheelchair.
Jiang Ci stood in the middle of the crowd and sighed, “Alright, but I don’t want crystal cores. If you want to buy a wheelchair, exchange it with me for gold.”
She had given it some thought and realised that gold was now practically considered scrap metal in this world. She had seen gold discarded on the ground in some abandoned cities with no one picking it up.
Although it was useless here, gold was still hard currency in her own world, and their value was still rising.
Her purchase price for a wheelchair was 10,000 points, equivalent to 10,000 Chinese yuan. The current price of gold was around 600 per gram, so she only needed 10 grams to break even.
“Gold?” The survivors were somewhat puzzled by Jiang Ci’s request, as the currency used in the hotpot restaurant had always been crystal cores.
However, gold was practically useless in the apocalypse and was certainly not as valuable as crystal cores.
The survivors thought to themselves, could this be another act of kindness from Boss Jiang? The wheelchair must be very expensive—something they couldn’t possibly afford, which is why Boss Jiang seemed so hesitant and ultimately decided to subsidize it herself, only symbolically accepting some useless gold from them.
Moved to tears by their own assumptions, the survivors looked on with sincere eyes, while Jiang Ci, who was calculating the gold price and imagining the fortune she would make by selling it, turned around and was met with several pairs of earnest eyes, causing her to be momentarily confused.
“What do you need gold for? It’s probably useless now,” Song Jinchuan asked curiously from the side.
Jiang Ci chuckled mysteriously, “You just need to know that I have a use for it.”
Suddenly, the gold shops that no one would glance at after the apocalypse began to attract some survivors, who started searching the ruins for the forgotten gold.
Not long after, Jiang Ci saw the survivors return, their backpacks bulging.
She led them to the back door, where there were fewer people. Before she could say anything, the survivors opened their backpacks and poured out a mountain of gold, including jewelry and gold bars.
The dazzling amount of gold nearly blinded Jiang Ci. She had never seen so much gold before in her over twenty years of living.
“Is this enough? We went to a nearby gold shop. If it’s not enough, we can go further,” the survivors said.
“It’s enough, plenty enough. To be honest, you didn’t need to find this much,” Jiang Ci squatted down and picked out a portion. The survivors, fearing she might be selling at a loss, kept stuffing more and more into her hands.
Finally, Jiang Ci roughly estimated that she had received several pounds of gold, far exceeding her initial expectations.
After accepting the gold, she opened the backyard door and went inside. Jiang Ci exchanged her points for several wheelchairs from the mall, each costing 10,000 points, which she and Song Jinchuan then brought out.
Seeing the wheelchairs before them, the survivors could hardly contain their excitement.
After the apocalypse, the wheelchairs that could be found were mostly destroyed or extremely dilapidated. Although some were still intact, they were all basically hoarded and monopolised by those higher up in the base. Ordinary survivors like them would rarely come across them, and obtaining one required a hefty amount of crystal cores.
Moreover, they had seen Mao Jing using that wheelchair, and its functionality and performance were clearly much better than ordinary wheelchairs.
Jiang Ci handed each of them a set of user manuals and then let them take the wheelchairs back.
Since they were afraid of attracting attention, they left directly through the back door.
Song Jinchuan helped Jiang Ci carry the gold back to her room before the two of them returned to the shop.
Their brief absence didn’t cause any issues, with the shop still running smoothly. Jiang Ci and Song Jinchuan continued to register survivors who wanted to buy water.
pls do not share this anywhere or u will always stub ur toe when u walk past a door frame !! this translation has been stolen from mioscorner.wordpress.com, pls only read there i’m begging u :kneels:
By two in the afternoon, both shops were temporarily closed, and the employees gathered at the hotpot restaurant to have a meal together.
The earlier survivors who had become staff were already accustomed to this routine, but the newcomers were clearly still a bit uneasy.
Mao Qianqian and Mao Jing didn’t hold back and pulled Aunt Mo Yun aside to ask about how she found her work on her first day.
Aunt Mo Yun’s smile never faded, and her energy was completely different from before, “It’s great. The boss is really nice, and the work isn’t hard at all.”
Jiang Ci had already asked Su Xing to pre-select their lunch on the ordering app. Pan Cheng and Xue Yi had gone together to bring in the meals for their group of over a dozen people.
Looking at the abundant dishes and heaping bowls of rice in front of them, the survivors swallowed their saliva and, at Jiang Ci’s invitation, sat down around the table.
Previously, though they only knew that the hotpot restaurant offered good benefits, and that everyone had been eager to get in, they still hadn’t quite expected the extent of that treatment to be this good.
“Eat up, we still have more work to do this afternoon,” Jiang Ci said to those who were still hesitant to start eating.
“Come on, this beef with sour soup is delicious,” Mao Qianqian, who was always the mood maker in the shop, chimed in. “The first time I had this at the store, it was so good I couldn’t stop myself—I ended up eating ten bowls of rice.”
Her humorous way of speaking made everyone laugh as the atmosphere instantly relaxed.
The meal left the survivors feeling exceptionally satisfied, and they all agreed that working for Jiang Ci was truly wonderful.
When Aunt Mo Yun, Mao Qianqian, and Mao Jing returned home that evening, Mo Sisi had already returned home.
Mo Sisi had been out on a mission for several days and had only just returned, so she didn’t know that Aunt Mo Yun had applied for a job at the hotpot restaurant. She just assumed her mother was, as usual, helping out with small tasks in the base or assisting Mao Jing from next door.
“Mom, how come you’re back even later than I am?” Mo Sisi asked with a smile when she saw Aunt Mo Yun, then greeted Mao Qianqian and Mao Jing at the door.
After the door closed, Mo Sisi began organizing the items she had obtained from her recent mission with the team. They had completed the mission and exchanged the bodies of the mutated beasts they had hunted for supplies.
“Mom, the rewards from this mission were pretty good. Here are some crystal cores—you keep them. If you have time tomorrow, you can go and buy some better nutrient solutions. I also exchanged for a few other supplies. Didn’t you say we were out of toilet paper at home last time? The leader of this team knows someone in the logistics department, so I spent some crystal cores to get some,” Mo Sisi said as she shared her recent experiences with Aunt Mo Yun and took out the supplies from her bag.
Mo Sisi was quite capable, so many teams were willing to hire her. She never turned down any mission as long as it could earn her crystal cores. Her motivation to survive was to work hard so that she and her mother could live an ordinary life.
The toilet paper she had exchanged for had already started to yellow and was rolled up into a small bundle. It was an extremely scarce resource, and obtaining one like this was already a rare opportunity, so she had directly exchanged for ten rolls, costing her one high-level crystal core.
the translator has nothing to add ◡̈
