Gourmet: A Time-Limited Food Truck, Tracked Down After Late-Night Service

After transmigrating into an unfinished building, Chen Mo is left facing a monthly mortgage of 5,500 yuan and rent of 1,500 yuan, with just 8,500 yuan in his salary account. He stands on the edge of an unfinished apartment on the twenty-eighth floor, its windows not yet installed, with liquor bottles scattered all over the floor. Just as he wonders whether to jump, his elderly mother sends him a video teaching him how to make egg dumplings: Once your place is finished, Mom will come over and make them for you.

The System promptly appears: a limited-time gourmet food cart that operates at random hours each week. He can only earn experience and level up by setting up shop late at night. Gritting his teeth, he shoulders the cart and heads into the night market on Central Avenue. At eleven that night, he sets up for the first time, selling egg dumplings for two yuan each, pan-frying them slowly with a little water until the bottoms are golden and crisp. The first group of five spends two hundred yuan. The second group, a construction crew, buys everything in the pot. Then the girls from the foot massage parlor, exhausted after work, gather around and ask if he can give them a free meal when they scan to pay. He replies without expression, "The rules cannot be broken."

When he closes up, his experience bar hits a thousand. He pushes the cart back to the unfinished building, climbs to the twenty-eighth floor, and gazes at the city lights at three in the morning. Then he opens the System panel.

Tomorrow, bring twice as much stock.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.