Chapter 221 Boss
When he said these words, Ding Ning was slightly embarrassed. After all, they used to be soldiers. He was afraid that participating in the game of underground forces would make them resentful.
Unexpectedly, these soldiers did not mind at all, and each of them patted their chest to ensure that they could do it.
Ding Ning was a little confused at the beginning. After hearing the explanations from Gong Qiang and others, he realized that they had disguised themselves as the gangsters on some missions during their service.
In the underworld, there were also greenwood heroes who were strict with their values and had good faith, virtue, and patriotism. In their lives, they had many stories of joys and sorrows that were both happy and tragic. Compared with those vicious people with sheer cunning and falsehood in the upper world, these bold and forthright greenwood heroes had a similar temperament of these soldiers.
Of course, they were more convinced of Ding Ning’s character and believed that he would never do anything wrong to endanger the country and society.
That made Ding Ning deeply moved. He asked them why they would believe in him so much. Weren’t they afraid that he treated them only to exploit them?
Xiaoniu smiled and interpreted their voices with one word, “What kind of life are you unable to get with your medical skills? It is an easy job to find masters to follow you. You were not supposed to waste time and energy on disabled and desperate men like us. Since you agreed to cure us, it’s logical and reasonable for you to tell us to participate in the game of underground forces. That is also a kind of trust and privilege for us. The decision to follow you will naturally be a vocation to obey orders.”
Ding Ning ruminated for a long while and then said in a solemn voice, “Here, I swear that I will never make you do things against conscience and morality, otherwise…”
“Well, boss, we believe in you. You don’t need to swear an oath. We are embarrassed.”
Lu Zhan, who was burly, with a firm and persistent look and high prestige, laughed, interrupted Ding Ning, and took the lead to call him boss.
“Yeah, from now on, we all follow you. As long as you don’t cold-shoulder us, you are the boss of our whole life.”
Gong Qiang also smiled and echoed the name of the boss.
“Boss! It feels better than calling your name directly.”
“Yeah, you are our saver. It seems that calling your name is very disrespectful. Our instructor has done better.”
“We want to call you Brother Ning, but you are younger than us, and it feels uncomfortable for us and you. Calling you boss is easier.”
“Anyway, we are all poor soldiers who have no money to pay for medical expenses. We can only pay our debts with our lives, boss, haha.”
…
Nine soldiers, with the sincere smiles on their faces, decided the new title of boss in a semi-joking and semi-serious tone.
Ding Ning felt very embarrassed, but under everyone’s insistence, he had to accept this title.
After making the appointment to treat Cheng Hu tomorrow and declining their invitation to have a drink together, Ding Ning went to the address Mu Yanran gave him and headed to Yipin Vegetarian House to have a midnight snack.
The front door of Yipin Vegetarian House was not grand, but its inside was quite spacious. There were more than 20 tables in the hall. Although the main dishes were vegetarian, they were very popular because of the excellent taste.
Even if it was already more than nine o’clock in the evening, the hall was still full, and there were still people queuing. Fortunately, Mu Yanran had already booked a table. Ding Ning told the number of the room, and the waiter took him to a room named Yizhaoxian.
The room was not big. There were a round table around one meter in diameter, four chairs, and a set of sofas on the side. It looked very warm and sweet.
“Sir, do you want to order now?”
Mu Yanran had not arrived yet, and the waitress took the menu and asked Ding Ning.
Ding Ning took over the exquisite menu with attached pictures and asked with a surprised voice, “Aren’t all of the dishes vegetarians here? How come there are chicken, duck and fish.”
The waitress looked like she was in her early twenties, quite pretty and willing to interact with the handsome guy. She smiled proudly and said, “These dishes look like meat. In fact, they are all made of tofu, and it is difficult for guests to tell.”
Ding Ning suddenly realized it and praised sincerely, “No wonder you are doing so well with your business.”
“Of course we are. Although our place is not spacious, many guests come every day because of our fame. From 11 a.m. to midnight, we have guests all along.”
The waitress became more and more proud.
Ding Ning smiled and said with an intrigued voice, “Then you would be very tired.”
“That doesn’t matter. The better we do business, the higher our salary will be.”
The waitress explained very earnestly. “We are not only given a basic salary. According to the daily turnover, we will have corresponding commissions. The better the business is, the more commissions we get. Our boss said that is performance pay.”
“Your boss is very business-minded.”
Ding Ning secretly felt that business management was really a learned skill.
Linking turnover to commissions not only enhanced cohesion but also gave employees a sense of ownership.
After all, whether the business would go well or not was closely related to the interest of each of them, which drove them to be more enthusiastic and thoughtful with their service and strictly follow the rule Customer First. In that way, they would gain more regular customers and do business better and better. There was no wonder that the business of Yipin Vegetarian House was so good.
That reminded Ding Ning of the small restaurant that Sister Qiao ran in Luochuan Town, in which the business was equally hot, but the service attitude was far worse than that of Yipin Vegetarian House.
What Sister Qiao did was a tongue-in-cheek business. It didn’t matter to her if she would make money or not. The restaurant was only for providing a place for his father and masters to eat.
Customer First? That was a joke. Sister Qiao was too lazy to serve those guests well, and the service attitude was even worse, but those customers were still rushing to it like ducks to the water.
But no one could do anything about it. The food made by Sister Qiao was delicacies, even it was casually made. People who had her food enjoyed themselves so much as to forget to go home.
Although he hadn’t tasted the dishes of Yipin Vegetarian House, Ding Ning was sure that the cooking of the chefs here was definitely not as good as Sister Qiao’s.
That made him miss Sister Qiao’s food. Although he had already learned 80% of skills of Sister Qiao’s cooking, he wasn’t trying his best at all, and he was far from the state said by Sister Qiao to be without distractions and emerging in the cooking cultivation.
“Here you are. Sorry, I am late.”
Mu Yanran pushed the door to come in and said in an apologetic voice.
“It doesn’t matter, for being late is always a privilege for beauty.”
Ding Ning came to his sense, stood up with a smile, took over Mu Yanran’s bag, hung it on the hanger next to him, and said with a playful tone.
The waitress looked at Mu Yanran’s appearance of the national beauty and heavenly fragrance with a cold and holy temperament, suddenly felt ashamed of her plain appearance.
She felt dejected when she saw how the handsome guy was well-matched with the beauty. Then she held back the idea of picking up the handsome guy, and said with a professional smile. “Beauty, this handsome guy waited for you to come to order. What do you want to order?”
Mu Yanran took the menu naturally and familiarly ordered a few dishes, “Colorful Neon, Dragons in the World, Thousand-hand Guanyin, Nine-layered Pagoda, um, and one dish of Nezha Messes the Sea!”
After hearing that, Ding Ning asked with a stunned voice, “These are the name of the dishes? Why do they sound like myths?”
“Haha, when I first came here, I also felt quite confused. After dining here a few times, I realized that the Colorful Neon is actually a combination of seven vegetables of different colors. The Dragon in the world is a piece of tofu carved into a dragon with a topping of special sauce; Thousand-hand Guanyin are carved potatoes, which is stewed with a kind of sauce. It tastes very fragrant and soft; the Nine-layered Pagoda is made from red taros, which is actually red taros in toffee with a Nine-layered Pagoda shape; Nezha Messes the Sea is a medicinal cuisine made of tofu, lotus petals, lotus seeds, etc., its taste is absolutely amazing.”
Mu Yanran patiently explained with shimmering smiles in her beautiful eyes and seemed to enjoy looking at Ding Ning getting stunned.
“Sister, you invited me for supper, wouldn’t you order even a little meat for me, would you? I am a carnivore.”
Ding Ning said with a bitter look.
“I am vegetarian. Well, let’s have dishes of Rooster Crows and Fish Jump Over the Dragon Gate. Two dishes of meat should be enough.”
Mu Yanran said with a sneaky smile.
“Wow, that’s actual meat.”
Ding Ning liked when Mu Yanran showed the sneaky side of a young girl and pretended that he didn’t know, revealing a look of mouth-watering.
The waitress knew that he was trying to be funny, showed a subtle smile, and turned away.
Sure enough, Mu Yanran did not know that she had fallen into a trick, and said proudly, “My treat, of course, I have to order my brother two dishes of meat.”
“Sister, you are so good. I am so moved that I want to marry you.”
Ding Ning showed an extremely grateful look.
Mu Yanran’s pretty face was slightly blushed, and she glared at him with a sullen look. “Rogue, I am your sister, don’t talk nonsense.”
Ding Ning knew that she was shy, stopped teasing her, changed the topic, and said, “Why did you invite me to supper today? Do you need my help?”
“Can’t I invite you to dinner for nothing?”
Mu Yanran pretended to be upset and said.
“No favors, no thieves. At ordinary times, you want me to stay far away from you. You invite me to supper for nothing, chut, I don’t believe it.”
Ding Ning said with a hint of resentment.
With her heart thumping, Mu Yanran thought about it. Since they knew each other, it seemed that Ding Ning had been always paying, while she had been always receiving, which made her felt a hint of inexplicable guilt.
She indeed had something to ask from Ding Ning, but now that their conversation turned to this point, what she wanted to say became somewhat difficult.
Seeing that Mu Yanran was silent, Ding Ning secretly blamed himself for not chatting in a good way, and said with a smile, “Sister, I was just joking, please don’t take it to heart. You can tell me anything. I would try my best to help you, even if I have to go up a mountain full of knives and go down a fire sea.”
Mu Yanran looked at him with her eyes straight, which made him feel quite nervous. He asked, “What happened? Sister, am I saying something wrong?”
“Ding Ning, why are you so nice to me?”
Mu Yanran’s sudden words took Ding Ning by surprise, and there was a trace of confusion across his eyes.
He examined his own conscience and asked himself, “Why are you so good to Mu Yanran?” He himself didn’t have the answer either. In the beginning, he got attracted by her queen temperament, which gave him a strong desire to conquer her.
After several meetings, he found that though she was very queen-ish, in the inside she was a simple little woman. His conquest desire was long thrown into the clouds and turned into a desire of protection.
However, it seemed it had already become a habit to be good to her. He didn’t want to see such a pure woman like her being exploited or bullied. He only wanted to protect her.
Staring at him, Mu Yanran seemed to want a satisfactory answer.
Ding Ning sorted out the thoughts and said with a grin, “You are my sister. Do I need a reason to be nice to my sister?”
Mu Yanran got stunned as if a sledgehammer was beating her heart, and tears ran out of her eyes.
Ding Ning flurried, passed a piece of tissue, and said, “Sister, you… please don’t cry. Did I say anything wrong again?”
Mu Yanran showed an unprecedented weakness, took a piece of tissue, wiped the tears, smiled and said, “No, you didn’t say anything wrong. I am just too happy. These are tears of joy. Having such a good brother like you makes me very happy.”