AGN -Chapter 180 The Lie Beast (Part 3)

After Gong Liang returned home, his mother said nothing. She simply went to inform the neighbors that Gong Liang had returned and there was no need to keep searching. Then she used the stove to reheat the food in the lunchbox and urged Gong Liang to eat quickly.

Inside the lunchbox were quail eggs braised with pork and coarse grain buns. The buns looked wrinkled and misshapen, clearly made entirely from coarse grains. The braised quail eggs and pork were the portion set aside by Gong Liang when he reheated the dishes in the afternoon—Gong’s father and mother hadn’t touched them at all.

Gong Liang didn’t speak much the entire time. After finishing his meal, he washed the lunchbox, cleaned himself up briefly, and returned to his room to rest.

The next day, when Gong Liang got up, his mother was no longer at home. A boiled ear of corn was left on the table, and the doors to his parents’ room were tightly closed. Gong Liang glanced inside and saw that his father was still sleeping with his eyes closed, so he said nothing and went off to work.

Gong Liang didn’t have a god’s-eye view, so he couldn’t see things clearly, but Qin Huai had been wandering around the house the entire time. He saw Gong Liang’s mother wake up before dawn to brew medicine, clean the house, organize clothes to be washed, and do needlework—she didn’t rest for a moment, always afraid that if she did less, someone else would have to do more.

About fifteen minutes before Gong Liang woke up, his mother had taken her needlework out to mend clothes, likely timing it carefully to avoid being seen.

The clothes she was repairing came in many styles and were quite varied. Most of them probably weren’t from their household; she likely took on sewing work from outside.

As for Gong Liang’s father, he wasn’t asleep either. He had already woken up long ago.

Most of the time, he lay in bed with his eyes open, staring blankly. Occasionally, he would try to move to see how paralyzed he truly was, then continue staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

Gong Liang walked to work, nibbling on his corn as he went.

Although the sales department had an office, it was never fully staffed. Qin Huai counted—there were 11 desks, so theoretically there should be at least 11 people in the sales department, but only 4 were present that morning.

Section Chief Chen, Gong Liang, Liu Hai, and another middle-aged man Gong Liang had never seen before. The middle-aged man who had told Liu Hai to speak less yesterday wasn’t there today—he was likely out running business.

Running business outside was hard work, and staying in the office wasn’t exactly idle either. Gong Liang was assigned the task of gathering information. In reality, this meant reading newspapers, writing letters, and making phone calls.

He read newspapers from all over the country, searching for factories that might have silk purchasing needs. If the likelihood seemed high, he would call directly; if it seemed unlikely, he would write letters. These three tasks couldn’t be done simultaneously, so Gong Liang mainly spent the morning reading newspapers and recording information.

Qin Huai watched from the side and came to realize that Gong Liang was indeed a natural-born salesman.

Not only was he eloquent, thick-skinned, and skilled at persistence and opportunism, he was also highly adept at gathering, identifying, and extracting information. Many newspaper articles were clearly advertisements—for handicrafts, toys, and the like—but he still recorded them and marked them as potential sales targets.

Even news reports about a pearl farm whose products were well received at last year’s expo and successfully earned foreign exchange were noted by him, annotated as possibly needing silk packaging.

With such ability and patience, Qin Huai was fully convinced that Gong Liang losing the Shanghai order earlier in the year wasn’t due to lack of ability—it was purely a matter of mindset.

No wonder Section Chief Chen trusted Gong Liang, a newly regularized young man, so much, even letting him take the lead in major deals.

After the morning work ended, Gong Liang didn’t go to the cafeteria. Instead, he went to ask Section Chief Chen for leave. He explained the reason directly without making anything up—just said that Master Jing had asked him to go to the state-run restaurant in the afternoon.

Section Chief Chen agreed immediately, without hesitation. He didn’t even require Gong Liang to submit a leave request form, and told him that if things at the restaurant finished early, he didn’t need to return to the office and could go straight home.

Gong Liang ate a meal at the cafeteria before heading to the state-run restaurant.

The silk factory’s cafeteria served very basic food: multigrain steamed buns, minced meat with cabbage, and stir-fried white radish. Aside from a bit of oil visible in the minced meat and cabbage, the white radish dish looked no different from boiled vegetables.

With this kind of food, it was no wonder the factory workers were always trying to transfer to other factories. The meals alone revealed that the factory’s efficiency wasn’t doing well.

When Gong Liang arrived at the state-run restaurant, it had just closed for the day. The waitstaff were already sitting down, eating noodles. They appeared to be made from refined white flour, and the meals looked quite decent.

Seeing Gong Liang arrive, a slightly chubby round-faced waiter lifted his head and gestured silently toward the kitchen with his eyes, lazily drawing out his words: “Master Jing is waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Gong Liang, somewhat confused, walked into the kitchen.

Inside, only Jing Lixiang was present.

“You’re here,” Jing Lixiang said with a smile, gesturing toward all the ingredients on the counter. “Anything you feel like eating?”

The implication was clear—order whatever you like; today’s meal would be on Master Jing.

Gong Liang felt a wave of panic.

The first thing he noticed was the beautifully marbled pork belly on the cutting board, but he quickly looked away. Then he saw chicken—looked away again. Duck—looked away. Fish—he hesitated, then saw crabs.

Gong Liang pointed at the crabs.

From the order in which Gong Liang evaluated the ingredients, Qin Huai discerned a pattern.

He didn’t dare look at expensive items—he kept choosing cheaper ones.

In this era, crabs, fish, and shrimp were considered inexpensive goods. They could be caught easily from rivers. To make them taste good required seasoning, which meant spending money. Otherwise, boiled plainly, they lacked flavor and—most importantly—didn’t provide the same satiety as pork.

Although it was the season when crabs were at their fattest, that large basin of crawling crabs might not be worth more than a small piece of pork belly on the cutting board.

“Crabs, huh? They are indeed quite good this time of year—fat and full of roe,” Jing Lixiang said thoughtfully. “Let me think… cooking them as a main dish might be a bit too extravagant and could invite criticism for favoritism.”

“How about a pastry instead? Crab roe xiaolongbao?”

Gong Liang quickly shook his head. He knew xiaolongbao with crab roe required pork as well—too expensive.

Seeing his hesitation, Jing Lixiang smiled helplessly. “Since you don’t want pork filling, how about crab roe shumai instead? With shrimp filling and crab—it’s a bit more work, but the ingredients are easy to get and not expensive.”

Gong Liang nodded, still not fully understanding.

Jing Lixiang began preparing the crab roe shumai.

Qin Huai was very familiar with this dish. He knew the process so well that even if his eyes were covered, he could still predict every next step.

Qin Huai’s crab roe shumai was taught by Zheng Da, whose was taught by Jing Lixiang. In that sense, Qin Huai and Jing Lixiang shared the same lineage of technique.

Every movement Jing Lixiang made was familiar to Qin Huai, yet somehow also felt distant.

How to put it—his pastry skills were simply too high.

Ignoring physical stamina, a pastry chef’s skill could theoretically keep improving indefinitely.

Unlike wok chefs, whose craft requires intense physical strength and precise control, and whose skills tend to decline after middle age as their bodies can no longer keep up with their minds. Red-cooking is physically demanding, and older chefs often struggle to maintain the pace.

Pastry work is more forgiving. That’s also why female chefs are relatively rare among wok chefs, but more common among pastry chefs.

Even though Jing Lixiang was already in his fifties and had a lame leg, his pastry skills were still at their peak. Watching him, Qin Huai could only admire in awe, realizing how far he still had to go.

His movements could no longer simply be described as smooth or fluid.

Qin Huai felt that Jing Lixiang was probably the second-best chef he had ever seen. The first was Jiang Chengde, whose teaching videos were too difficult to fully understand.

At least Jing Lixiang’s techniques were somewhat comprehensible.

“You probably spent the whole night thinking after going home yesterday, didn’t you?” Jing Lixiang asked casually while kneading dough.

Gong Liang nodded.

“Did you come up with anything?”

Gong Liang remained silent. Silence meant no.

“Sometimes, making a decision is difficult. But once you commit and start doing the thing you think is hard, it often isn’t as difficult as you imagined,” Jing Lixiang said. “Just like the first time Shengli cut his finger—after that, he became very careful, afraid of cutting himself again.”

“In reality, people don’t fail once and then keep failing over and over. When learning to cook, cutting your finger once doesn’t mean you’ll keep cutting it.”

“Failure teaches lessons. Lessons lead to improvement. Improvement prevents repetition.”

“If you don’t even have the courage to try, you won’t even have the chance to know whether you’ve improved.”

Gong Liang stood quietly beside him, saying nothing.

Jing Lixiang chuckled. “You think your Master Jing is just lecturing you with empty talk, don’t you?”

“No,” Gong Liang quickly denied. “I just… I just think… it’s no use thinking about this now. The expo quota is already gone—I don’t even have a chance to try.”

“Opportunities are always there,” Jing Lixiang replied.

“I still remember how, last year, your parents proudly told me how you landed your first deal.”

“If the silk factory didn’t have orders, you searched newspapers for interested companies and called them one by one. When Section Chief Chen felt your phone calls were too costly, you wrote letters instead and waited for replies.”

“While others went on business trips to Jinling and only visited scheduled clients, you prepared in advance and visited more factories than others. Even if guards wouldn’t let you in, you waited outside, looking for purchasing managers.”

“Wasn’t your first deal secured exactly like that—by waiting outside?”

Gong Liang hadn’t expected Jing Lixiang to remember all of this so clearly.

“Section Chief Chen may be rigid, but he’s not bad. He values talent. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have treated you as a core member before you were even fully regularized, or let a newcomer like you take charge of major deals in Shanghai.”

“Giving up after one failure—that’s not the Gong Liang I’ve watched grow up.”

“I remember when you were a kid. During New Year, when I made snacks, you were greedy for them. If one method didn’t work, you tried another, constantly sweet-talking. You weren’t the kind of person who gives up after one setback.”

Gong Liang grew embarrassed and lowered his head, his face slightly red. “Master Jing, that was all childhood…”

“Didn’t you also trick Shengli and Zheng Da when you were in middle school—”

“Master Jing!” Gong Liang pleaded.

Jing Lixiang laughed and stopped exposing his past.

Before long, the shumai was ready to be steamed.

“Speaking of which, Xiao Liang, I’ve watched you grow up all these years. You’re not someone who will accept fate just because the expo quota isn’t given to you.”

“Back then, when Section Chief Chen didn’t allow you to make phone calls, you switched to writing letters. Now I believe you can do the same.”

“You’re just still hesitating—hesitating whether to take action.”

“But there’s something I want to tell you: opportunities pass quickly. Not every chance will sit in front of you waiting to be seized.”

Gong Liang remained silent.

Jing Lixiang said no more and waited for the shumai to finish steaming.

Seven or eight minutes later, the crab roe shumai was ready.

After letting it cool slightly, Gong Liang picked one up and took a bite.

His eyes widened instantly. He said nothing, yet his reaction said everything.

While he was chewing excitedly, Jing Lixiang stood beside him with a smile and asked, “What do you want to eat tomorrow?”

Gong Liang: !

He quickly swallowed and refused repeatedly. “Master Jing, no need, tomorrow I…”

But Jing Lixiang wouldn’t let him refuse. “Don’t be polite with me. Just say what you want to eat. People must face their desires and their inner selves—you need to know what you want before you can find motivation to choose and work toward it.”

“I’m not someone who only talks empty words.”

Gong Liang thought for a moment, then said somewhat shyly, “Master Jing, I want to eat meat buns.”

Jing Lixiang burst into laughter. “I knew it—you’ve been staring at that pork belly since you walked into the kitchen. Alright, I’ll make them for you tomorrow!”

“Special meat buns—three-ding buns.”