"Boss Zhou, what is the meaning of this?"
Wang Xue stared blankly, disbelief flashing in her eyes. In her past life, when Hou Yong introduced them, this man had been extremely amiable.
Little did she know how much effort and toil Hou Yong had poured into making that happen behind the scenes.
"It doesn't mean anything. Buzz off, you crazy woman, and stop following me."
Boss Zhou cast an impatient glance at Wang Xue, then turned to Hou Yong. The impatient look on his face instantly morphed into a smile. "Little brother, don't be in such a rush to refuse. I can offer you this much."
Boss Zhou held up four fingers, gesturing back and forth. By the looks of it, he meant four thousand yuan.
Because his ice jelly business had already established a firm foothold at several fixed locations, his daily net profit was around thirty-odd yuan. Over the course of a month, that added up to nearly a thousand.
In this era, a ten-thousand-yuan household was the ultimate symbol of wealth; the man wasn't about to shell out forty thousand yuan just for a recipe.
Trading four months of profits to buy out his formula—Hou Yong wasn't foolish enough to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
"Boss Zhou, I'm very sorry, but I have no plans to transfer the ice jelly recipe right now."
Hou Yong smiled and shook his head. Rebuffed once more, the smile on Boss Zhou's face faded inch by inch. "Little brother, the price I'm offering is already very high. A man shouldn't be too greedy."
"Boss Zhou, you want the ice jelly recipe? I can help you with that."
Hearing what had caught Boss Zhou's interest, Wang Xue blurted it out immediately, having tasted the stuff in her past life.
"You can?"
Boss Zhou whipped his head around, fixing his eyes on Wang Xue. She froze for a split second, then lifted her chin with a touch of pride. "Of course. This thing is a piece of cake."
"Good. If you can help me get this business off the ground, then we certainly have something to talk about."
A trace of delight returned to Boss Zhou's face, and he promptly invited Wang Xue to his restaurant for tea. Wang Xue patted her pocket, but as if suddenly remembering something, her expression turned considerably grim.
"Boss Zhou, go on ahead to the restaurant and wait for me. I'll just say a few words to him and join you."
Boss Zhou's gaze shifted back and forth between Hou Yong and Wang Xue several times. Their conversation just now had tipped him off to something a bit unusual; otherwise, he wouldn't have believed quite so easily that Wang Xue knew how to make ice jelly.
Boss Zhou turned and left. Left standing in their spots, Hou Yong merely glanced at Wang Xue twice and prepared to walk away with Gu Panpan.
"Hou Yong, wait a minute."
Wang Xue called out to stop him. Hou Yong halted, turning his head slightly to look at her. "Something you need?"
"That ice jelly recipe of yours—can you tell me how it's made?"
Hou Yong was stunned, while Gu Panpan beside him dropped her jaw in sheer astonishment. Neither of them seemed to expect Wang Xue to come out with such an absurd statement.
"Are you out of your mind, or is something wrong up here?"
With that, Hou Yong tapped his own head, then grabbed Gu Panpan's hand to leave.
"Hou Yong, it's just a tiny little recipe! You're doing this on purpose just to make a fool of me, aren't you?"
"What were you thinking when you agreed to Old Zhou?"
Hou Yong's single sentence left her utterly speechless.
Having traveled back in time only a couple of days ago, Wang Xue had not yet fully adapted to life here.
During these first few days, she had remained entirely immersed in the joy of being reunited with her white-moonlight crush. Everything she experienced now felt like something she could previously only dream of.
Her agreement with Boss Zhou just now had been driven by a subconscious reflex. She assumed that for something like ice jelly, one only needed to do a quick internet search—forget the recipe, there were whole videos dedicated to "ancient methods." But the moment she reached into her pocket, she remembered this was the damned 1980s; forget smartphones, there wasn't even a single pager to be found.
Left with no other choice, she had no alternative but to make Hou Yong hand over the recipe.
In her eyes, shaped by years of habitual thinking, Hou Yong was still the man whose heart and mind were entirely consumed by her. As for the wedding cancellation farce earlier, which hadn't happened in her past life, she simply chalked it up to a spur-of-the-moment reaction from Hou Yong because she had tried to call off the wedding.
Besides, in an era of information explosion, an ice jelly recipe was hardly anything of high value.
"If you made promises to others on your own, go figure it out yourself. You want my recipe? Did you start drinking in broad daylight?"
Hou Yong smiled coldly, took Gu Panpan's hand, and walked away.
"Hou Yong, you wretched little street peddler! If you don't give me the recipe, don't expect me to ever say another word to you again!"
Wang Xue stamped her feet in rage right where she stood, but Hou Yong merely offered a cold smile and kept walking without a word.
A wretched little street peddler?
She had no idea how much money this seemingly inconspicuous little business would make every day in this era, nor how thoroughly it would transform his battered and broken family.
"Brother Yong, Wang Xue said she knew the recipe too just now. Could it actually be true?"
It wasn't until they had walked a good distance away that Gu Panpan looked at Hou Yong with a worried expression.
After all, Hou Yong used to cater to Wang Xue's every whim. If Hou Yong knew the formula, there was a very strong chance Wang Xue knew it too.
The main reason they were able to make so much money right now was that they had a monopoly on the business. If Wang Xue handed the recipe over to that wealthy-looking Boss Zhou, their income would plummet overnight.
"Of course she doesn't know. I never told her."
Hou Yong smiled and offered a few words of comfort to Gu Panpan. In an era where information was extremely restricted, virtually no one would know about a local specialty snack from a place thousands of miles away.
Still, this gave Hou Yong a new line of thought. Snacks like hot pot, skewers in spicy broth, and cold pot skewers—if conditions permitted, he could certainly try introducing those later on.
Did Wang Xue have the means to get her hands on ice jelly? Perhaps she did.
Either she had friends down in Xinyang, or she could find out how to make ice jelly at a library. The probability of either was entirely too slim—so slim it was practically negligible.
"That's good."
Gu Panpan looked into Hou Yong's gentle eyes and chose to trust her man. After walking a few more steps, she suddenly reached out to take Hou Yong's hand, furrowing her brow as she asked, "Then if Wang Xue can't make that ice jelly, will that boss give her a hard time? After all, he looks sort of..."
Gu Panpan couldn't find the right word for a moment.
Hou Yong laughed.
He laughed at his girl—even when it came to a romantic rival, she remained kind-hearted.
On the other hand, he laughed because Gu Panpan's judgment was spot on. That Boss Zhou was indeed no saint.
In his past life, he had come to know this big boss because he used to wash dishes at his restaurant late at night after finishing his daily work. As the operator of the only high-end seafood restaurant in the west side of the city, Boss Zhou naturally had plenty of dealings with people from the southeast coast.
Amiable on the surface, ruthless underneath. If Boss Zhou found out Wang Xue had conned him, things were going to get very interesting indeed.