Chapter 210 - 186: You Try, You Die

Chapter 210: Chapter 186: You Try, You Die

Full and satisfied, Lin Mengjuan clutched the mystery box of braised food she’d gotten from the event and began her journey back to her rented apartment. Sitting on the bus, she reviewed the photos she’d taken that evening. She hadn’t realized it while she was snapping away, but now she saw she had taken nearly a hundred pictures.

She had taken over twenty photos just on the short, three-to-four-hundred-meter walk from the bus stop to Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant. She snapped another dozen or so in front of that amusing social media standee—some of her alone, some with online friends from her chat group she got along with, and a few with some aggressively friendly strangers. Then came the walk up to the second floor. When she saw the spectacular tower of drinks and the wonderland-like ocean of braised dishes, she took another thirty or forty pictures in a row, practically documenting the scene in a full 360-degree panorama.

Looking at so many similar photos, Lin Mengjuan wanted to delete some of the duplicates. But this one and that one had subtle differences, and it would be a shame to delete them. ’Oh, whatever. I’ll just upload them all to an online photo album.’

She created a new album on her profile and uploaded all the pictures she’d taken that day. After the upload finished, she exited her profile and went back to her chat app. She noticed two people in the Hai City Food Delivery Group were discussing the "Braised Dish Tasting" event at Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant, describing it so vividly it made you yearn to have been there.

However, the two of them had been so busy eating that they hadn’t taken a single photo of the food. Now, as they chatted with the other group members, most people thought they were exaggerating. Even though the pair argued their case vehemently, everyone else just saw it as a desperate attempt to save face after being called out on a lie.

Seeing them looking so weak, pitiful, and helpless, Lin Mengjuan couldn’t bear it. She opened her photo album in the chat app and selected a few pictures of the ’mountain of drinks and ocean of braised dishes’ taken from the perfect angle, sending them to the group.

’[Photo] [Photo] [Photo]...’

"What a coincidence, I just got back from the tasting event too. It really was amazing! (giggles behind hand)"

The moment Lin Mengjuan’s photos appeared, the people who had just been arguing that the other two were bluffing all went silent. The group chat was as quiet as if everyone had been muted. After a long pause, someone finally typed out "Holy shit," and a flood of the same two words followed, one after another in a neat, continuous stream.

"When did this event start? How come we never heard about it? You three are traitors! How could you not tell us about something so awesome!"

"Yeah, traitors! Kick them out of the group!"

"I saw the event announcement. From the time it was posted to when it closed was only like ten minutes. The people who got in are all master slackers (bomb emoji)."

"..."

Reading everyone’s comments, full of envy, jealousy, and hate, Lin Mengjuan couldn’t help but smile smugly. ’I saw the event, I snagged a spot, I attended the event, I ate 108 flavors of braised dishes, and I even brought home a mystery box of them. Hehe, you can’t even dream of being this lucky!’

The thought of the braised dishes made Lin Mengjuan feel as if she could smell a scent that was a bit pungent, yet somehow familiar. Her nostrils twitched a few times. She suddenly looked down at the mystery box resting on her lap, leaned in for a sniff, and realized the smell was coming from it. She instinctively took a couple of deep breaths, trying to identify the aroma.

COUGH COUGH—COUGH COUGH COUGH—

The moment the smell entered her nostrils, Lin Mengjuan began to cough violently. She coughed so hard her body doubled over and her face turned beet red.

’This smell is so overwhelming!’ After she finally caught her breath, Lin Mengjuan immediately tied another dead knot in the plastic bag, sealing every possible gap. The faint smell from before instantly became unnoticeable.

’...The mystery boxes contain a secret-flavor braised dish that will only be revealed on opening day...’

The words Xu An had said suddenly popped into Lin Mengjuan’s mind. ’Could it be? Is this smell the secret-flavor braised dish the owner was talking about? Just the smell is this suffocating; I wonder what it’ll taste like. Is its bite as bad as its bark, or is it like durian and stinky tofu—smells bad but tastes delicious?’

The half-hour bus ride passed in the blink of an eye, and the bus soon stopped at the station near her apartment.

Behind the bus stop was a 24-hour convenience store. Recalling the smell from earlier, Lin Mengjuan hesitated for a moment before turning into the store. She grabbed a one-liter bottle of coke from the cooler, paid, and left.

She placed the coke and the mystery box on her coffee table, turned on the fan, and flopped lazily onto the sofa. She pulled out her phone to check her group messages. The Hai City Food Delivery Group had quieted down, but the chat for Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant was now buzzing with activity.

Over an hour had passed since the "Braised Dish Tasting" event ended. The first thing most people did when they got home was open their mystery boxes to see if they contained the new flavor Xu An had mentioned. Everyone wanted to see if they were the sole lucky one out of the sixty-six participants. But unfortunately, of the thirty-two people who had announced the contents of their boxes in the group so far, all of them had received regular varieties.

Watching everyone in the group discuss what the new flavor might be like, Lin Mengjuan was instantly reminded of the smell from the bus. She sat up on the sofa, reached for the still-cool box of braised food, and undid the dead knot she had tied...

A rich, incredibly pure spicy aroma exploded into the room. Almost instantly, Lin Mengjuan heard coughing and the BANGING and CLATTERING of windows being slammed shut from the apartments on either side. But she had been prepared. The moment she took off the lid, she had pinched her nose shut with her left hand. As a result, her throat only felt a little tight, her eyes were slightly red, and her skin felt a bit taut.

The box of braised food before her looked ordinary enough. Its color was just a little darker, the sauce a little redder, and the aroma a little richer than the other flavors. But these slight differences made it impossible to look away. ’Even the hairs on my head and my very toes are screaming at me: Eat it! Eat it now!’

After a moment’s hesitation, Lin Mengjuan picked up her chopsticks with her right hand and placed a piece of duck wing in her mouth. The instant it entered, her saliva production skyrocketed. She gently tore a small strip of meat from the wing with her teeth and began to chew cautiously and slowly. As the marinade infused in the meat fibers seeped out, a wave of spice broke through the blockade of ’numbness,’ rushing from the tip of her tongue straight to the crown of her head.

After that one bite, Lin Mengjuan could no longer control her higher animal instincts. Her teeth sank into the duck wing again and again. At a speed visible to the naked eye, the wing was reduced to two slightly yellowed bones. Not even a shred of meat was left; she had even ground up the cartilage at the ends with her teeth and swallowed it.

At this moment, Lin Mengjuan felt as if she were tipsy from drinking. Her five senses grew dull, and her soul felt light, as if it were about to break free from her body’s shackles to roam freely through the world. The feeling was intoxicatingly addictive. Her chopsticks reached for a plump duck heart in the box. When they were just 0.01 centimeters away, a jet of fire suddenly shot up from her stomach...

After that... after that, Lin Mengjuan didn’t know what happened. When she came to her senses, one of the chopsticks she’d been holding was on the table, and the other was on the floor. Her previously upright posture had collapsed, and she was now leaning back against the sofa, her head tilted slightly up, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"A flavor this ’amazing’... I can’t be the only one who knows about it!" Lin Mengjuan muttered, her bright red right hand reaching for her phone. She snapped three photos of the alluringly colored ’Hellish Braised Flavor’ on the coffee table. She picked the most perfect shot, pulled it into an app to adjust the lighting, and made the already perfect picture even more eye-catching.

’[Photo]’

"Guess what this is! It’s the new flavor of braised dish! It’s super, super, super delicious! So good that one bite will move you to tears and make your soul spiral to the heavens! If you don’t try this new flavor, I’ll regret it on your behalf for the rest of my life!"

The moment she sent the message, the group members replied.

"Holy shit! The chosen one!"

"It looks top-tier just from the photo! Look at that marinade. It seems spicy. We already have a fragrant spicy, so is this a numbing spicy?"

"@Mengmeng, where do you live? We’re forming a party to come eat at your place right now (crying emoji)."

"..."

Some users expressed reservations or even skepticism about Lin Mengjuan’s over-the-top praise. But their voices were small and insignificant, completely ignored by everyone else.

Lin Mengjuan GLUGGED down the last of her coke. The entire one-liter bottle was finished in less than five minutes. Her skin faded from bright red to a light pink, returning to a normal human shade.

’Go on, everyone, give it a try,’ she thought. ’One taste and you’re a goner!’

After the "Braised Dish Tasting" at Xu’s Fast Food Restaurant ended, Liu Zhaowen and Liu Tong had planned to go straight home. But on the way to the bus stop, one of them—it’s unclear who started it—complained about work, and soon the two of them were trading curses back and forth.

Thinking about how tomorrow was Sunday, a day off for the rest of the world, they instantly agreed to find a barbecue stand. They ordered some grilled chives and two dozen beers, drinking until past three in the morning before slinging their arms over each other’s shoulders and staggering back to their residential complex, swaying as they walked toward home.

He stumbled and climbed up to the sixth floor. After fumbling for his keys and finally managing to open the door, he saw a pair of unfamiliar sneakers and two large suitcases. One was pink, and the other was also pink.

’Did a relative come to visit? Before I left this morning, I think Mom and Dad mentioned something about my cousin getting ready for school to start. So, is my cousin here?’

His sluggish brain turned over once before seizing up, completely devoid of reason. Driven by instinct alone, he tenaciously made his way to the kitchen. He placed the ’mystery box of braised food’ in the refrigerator, made sure the door was closed, and only then did he stumble and sway back to his room.

The moment his body hit the soft bed, his eyelids fell shut, and a light snore began to echo in the room. Suddenly, Liu Zhaowen smacked his lips, his whole face wrinkling up as if he were terribly wronged. A second later, he rolled over, landing spread-eagled on the bed. His lips moved slightly, and a faint, muffled voice sounded in the room.

"So tired... I’m so, so tired..."

Just then, the phone that had fallen to the floor vibrated again. The screen lit up. The message was, once again, from his boss.

"Liu Zhaowen, what’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you all night..."