The McDonald's of Chinese Budget Dining—Sally Duck.
2013.
A plate of Roman-style bacon carbonara pasta cost just ten yuan.
A student-priced pork trotter rice from the backstreet eateries also went for ten.
But this price was available to everyone.
Two people sat facing each other, two large menus resting on the table.
Jiang Yunlu picked up the menu and flipped it open.
"The dishes... are so cheap," she couldn't help but remark.
Though she often had meals delivered from home these days,
she also frequently went out to eat at the backstreet stalls with Wang Qin and the others.
So Jiang Yunlu had a clear grasp of market prices.
Despite being a young lady from a wealthy family, she never looked down on these humble street-side joints.
In fact, she enjoyed them thoroughly.
As she scanned the menu, Jiang Yunlu muttered under her breath,
"This is probably the cheapest Western food I've ever seen."
Lin Mo didn’t respond. Instead, he stood up and walked over to the self-service drink station, returning shortly with two glasses of fizzy orange soda, placing one in front of Jiang Yunlu.
"Aren’t these drinks an extra six yuan?" Jiang Yunlu frowned. In her eyes, the "all-you-can-drink" deal wasn’t worth it.
She looked at Lin Mo with sparkling eyes, her tone laced with playful scheming.
"How about you drink enough to make it worth it for me?"
Lin Mo chuckled and couldn’t resist patting the girl’s head.
"Don’t overthink it. It’s just six yuan. Let’s focus on ordering."
Just as Jiang Yunlu rubbed her head and continued wrestling with the menu, a father and son walked in.
The father’s jacket looked well-worn, a jingling set of keys hanging from his waist.
The son, likely in his early teens, couldn’t hide his excitement.
They were the picture of an ordinary working-class family.
The moment they sat down, the boy grabbed the menu and declared loudly,
"Dad, I want the super-duper chicken steak!"
The father grinned, his face crinkling with laughter. "Sure, sure! Since your mom’s not here tonight, we’ll splurge a little. Order whatever you can finish!"
"Yay!" The boy clapped in delight.
Lin Mo glanced at the pair and smiled.
Though Sally Duck was mockingly called the "McDonald's of Chinese budget dining," it was, strictly speaking, a place that served decent Western-style meals at rock-bottom prices.
The phrase "order whatever you want" might sound trivial, but to that child, it meant the world.
Lin Mo’s gaze returned to Jiang Yunlu.
"In that case, I’ll have the seaweed salad, the Flaming Spicy Tuna Pasta, and the black pepper burger."
The moment the words left his mouth, Lin Mo suddenly stood up, circled the small square table, and sat right beside Jiang Yunlu.
Feeling his sudden closeness, Jiang Yunlu stiffened, caught off guard by the abrupt proximity.
"Don’t you want to try the escargot? It’s great with bread."
"Uh... sure, let’s try it."
Jiang Yunlu’s cheeks flushed pink, a hint of bashfulness in her voice.
Lin Mo then pointed at the five-spice sausage on the menu.
"I really like this one. Let’s get it too."
In a daze, Jiang Yunlu only registered that the distance between them was now much closer than when they were sitting across from each other.
Still, a small gap remained.
Nothing like the closeness they’d shared back at school.
Once their order was finalized, Lin Mo returned to his seat and called the waiter over. Jiang Yunlu took small sips of her Fanta.
In a corner of the restaurant, the female assistant snapped a few more photos—all of the two sitting together.
"Ah, they look so good together. But if I send these to Mr. Jiang, he’ll probably lose his mind."
After some deliberation, she decided to only send the photo of them sitting across from each other.
Sure enough, a reply came instantly:
"Where are they eating?!"
"It’s Sally Duck. Are you coming over, Mr. Jiang?"
Silence followed. No response for a long while.
Meanwhile, Lin Mo’s phone buzzed. He picked it up to see a furious message from Old Jiang:
"You take my daughter to a place like this?!"
Lin Mo was well aware the assistant had been snapping photos, but he didn’t care.
He just hadn’t expected Old Jiang to confront him directly.
So he replied:
"How many years has it been since our people could finally eat their fill? And you’re already looking down on restaurants that feed them affordably?"
That shut him up.
Having fended off the old man, their food arrived quickly.
Though Sally Duck followed a fast-food Western dining model, it was actually the pioneer of pre-made meals.
To ensure consistency across all branches, the chefs here were essentially just oven operators.
The salads came pre-portioned—when a customer ordered, they’d scoop out a serving of seaweed strips and drizzle on some dressing.
Most other dishes worked the same way.
But the place was undeniably cheap, clean, and hygienic.
Lin Mo glanced at his phone, then at Jiang Yunlu.
How is it that father and daughter are nothing alike?
"What’s wrong? Is Xie Yuling texting you to go home?"
Lin Mo paused. Jiang Yunlu rarely brought up Xie Yuling in front of him.
She must have assumed the message was from her, seeing him smile at his phone.
Lin Mo couldn’t help but laugh.
"Want to know who texted me?"
Jiang Yunlu sniffed and turned her head away.
"Not really."
"Fine, suit yourself."
With that, he set his phone down and dug into his tuna pasta.
The girl’s eyes kept darting to the device.
But in the end, she didn’t reach for it.
A while later, another notification chimed.
Jiang Yunlu’s attention snapped back to it.
Lin Mo deliberately picked up his phone with exaggerated slowness.
"Let’s see who it is now."
Unconsciously, Jiang Yunlu leaned in slightly, as if trying to peek at the screen.
"Someone’s dad just scolded me for taking his daughter here to eat. I fired back, and he realized he was being unreasonable, so he apologized."
Lin Mo grinned at her.
Jiang Yunlu immediately knew it was her father causing trouble again.
She stomped her feet under the table, visibly annoyed.
"Did he say anything weird?"
"Of course not. If he had, I’d have reported him to his daughter."
Jiang Yunlu smacked his arm in mock irritation.
What Old Jiang had actually said was:
"I worked my ass off so my daughter could live a better life! Don’t you dare try to win her over with this cheap crap!"
Well, I’ll pretend I didn’t see that. No need to tattle.
You’d throw a fit if I actually acted like some troublemaker.
Meanwhile, the assistant, unable to hear their conversation, only saw Lin Mo sliding his phone toward Jiang Yunlu.
She quickly messaged Jiang Chengshan:
"Boss, Lin Mo just handed his phone to the young miss. It looked like she was checking up on him."
Back in his office, Jiang Chengshan erupted:
"Lin Mo, you little @#$%&!"
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
transmigrates into the role of a villainous rich second-generation kid in an urban fantasy novel, and gets bound to a god-tier choice system. Right at the start, he catches the female lead stealing exam papers! This triggers the villain's choice options! [Choice 1: Pretend you didn't see anything] [Choice 2: Loudly call her out, drawing everyone's attention] [Choice 3: ...] And thus, a twisted villain is born. To avoid getting killed by the protagonist, he has no choice but to take down all the protagonists first. Jiang Che: Nobody understands being twisted better than me!
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
