2 Chapter 2: Seafood Noodle Soup

It was still night for the City of Elysium with most of the people asleep, cultivating, or rushing to finish an 8000 word essay that they procrastinated on. Fu Chen was in a government building applying for the permits and licenses required to build and open a restaurant. After he finished filling out the digital forms, Fu Chen had to pay 13,000 credits for all of the permits and licenses. The site for the restaurant was near the outskirts of the red-light district of Elysium so Fu Chen had to spend 70,000 credits.

"This place is actually pretty big considering the price I had to pay."

Fu Chen started walking around examining the land where he would construct his restaurant. The land was where a warehouse was once located, but it had blown up around a month ago. The news reported that the warehouse was a secret drug lab and the illegal energy pills that the owners were making had exploded and destroyed the building. Elysium's police force had reported that the energy pill explosion didn't leave anything harmful behind, but most people were still suspicious and avoided the place which was why Fu Chen managed to buy it for such a low price.

Fu Chen continued to survey the land and noticed something interesting.

"Some rats appeared to have left something interesting underground. hahaHAHAAAaaa!!..."

His laugh sounded like a dying animal and his smile was horrific. Luckily, Fu Chen's laughing didn't last long and he started to build his restaurant. A large stone foundation appeared with four giant stone walls topped with a white stone roof that started to rise out of it. Fu Chen had decided to design a simple restaurant so he just created a white stone rectangular prism. A large dining room had black wooden dining chairs and tables spread throughout the space. Black wooden bar stools faced a bar with empty shelves. The floor was white stone tiles.

Slightly bright ambient lighting filled the dining room and the waiting room. The source of this light came from energy crystals hanging from the ceiling and from the sunlight that came through the large, clear energy crystal windows. A large waiting area had long, comfortable black couches with cushions. There were four clear energy crystal fountains that contained a liquid that wasn't water. The liquid was slightly sparkling and it seemed to be filled with power. It was pure energy fluid that was flowing in the fountain. The entrance used two large black wood doors with energy crystal panes inserted in the middle of each door. A signboard was located above the entrance with the words, The Abyss Bar & Restaurant.

Fu Chen headed towards the kitchen. He opened the black energy crystal door and entered the bright white room. Several large metal refrigerators were built into the right side wall. Other than the metal refrigerators, the wall was made up of energy crystal cabinets. Four metal ovens occupied the back wall and were next to the sink. A 12 burner gas stove took up the front wall which faced towards the dining area.

After inspecting all the equipment for fun, Fu Chen started to prepare the first dish for his menu. He opened one of the cabinets which turned out to be a water tank filled with live seafood. A kitchen knife appeared and he quickly opened up all the crustaceans on a wood cutting board. The meat was separated from the shells and the meat was placed back into the tank where it vanished upon contact with the water. Fu Chen took out a large metal pot from another cabinet and filled it a quarter of the way up with a sparkling liquid that came from one of the sink faucets. Then, he turned on another faucet that filled the pot three quarters of the way up with water.

The pot filled with water and the energy fluid was placed on one of the stove tops. Fu Chen then took out some miso paste, butter, garlic, ginger, and onions from a cabinet. He sliced the onions on a cutting board and put them in a metal bowl. A metal pan appeared from the same open cabinet where the ingredients came from. Fu Chen put it on the stove and conjured two blue flames to heat up the pot filled with water and the pan. Butter was added to the pan where it started to melt. After all the butter melted, ginger, onions, and garlic were added into the pan which started to let out a savory aroma. He then put in the miso paste and stirred for several minutes and started to cook the shells in the pan. Fu Chen poured the pan of ingredients into the pot of water and energy fluid that was starting to simmer.

Several minutes later, the stock was nearly boiling where Fu Chen then decreased the heat of the flames to reduce the liquid to a gentle simmer. As the shellfish stock was gently simmering, Fu Chen opened a cabinet and took out bread flour, vital wheat gluten, sodium carbonate, and salt. He took out a glass bowl and filled it with enough water and energy fluid to create a 37%-hydration noodle dough. The sodium carbonate and salt were stirred and dissolved into the water mixture to create an alkaline solution. Fu Chen combined the vital wheat gluten and bread flour together in a metal bowl and slowly added the alkaline solution into the flour and stirred with chopsticks to incorporate the solution. The process was slow since he only added small amounts of the solution in at a time to hydrate as much of the flour as possible. Small clumps of dough started to form after Fu Chen finished adding the alkaline solution. He started to use his hands to rub clumps of dough together to hydrate all the flour. Fu Chen continued to rub the dough together until all the flour was equally hydrated.

The loose dough was wrapped and rolled into a flat sheet with a rolling pin. Fu Chen placed the dough into a refrigerator for it to rest and turned his attention to the shellfish stock. Fifteen minutes had passed since Fu Chen let the stock simmer. The stock's volume had reduced a bit and let out a fragrant seafood aroma. Fu Chen smelled the mouth-watering aroma and smiled normally. He decided to continue simmering the stock for another hour which would be around the same time he finished making his noodles.

Forty minutes later, Fu Chen lightly dusted a long cutting board with some flour and took out the noodle dough that was resting in the fridge. He cut the dough into two sheets and used a rolling-pin to roll the dough and folded each sheet in half. They were then rolled to a two millimeter thickness and lightly dusted with flour to prevent the dough from sticking. Fu Chen folded the sheets to a size where he could cut the dough into noodles. After cutting the noodles, they were placed in a fridge.

The shellfish stock simmered for another twenty minutes and then Fu Chen stopped the fire. He strained the stock into another metal pot and crushed the shells to extract all the rich liquid. The stock would cool down to room temperature and then placed into a fridge. All of the dirty kitchen utensils were placed into a cabinet and vanished. The preparations for the first dish that would be served the first day of the restaurant's opening were done.

Fu Chen exited the kitchen and headed towards a hallway that led to his personal room. There was only a bed in the room. He jumped and flopped onto the bed and covered himself with several blankets. After getting comfortable, he closed his eyes and started to sleep.

"Ugh, fuck I drank too much last night."

A bearded man wearing an unbuttoned short-sleeved bright yellow and dark blue dress shirt slowly staggered out of a resting room for drunk people. After going ten steps out of the room, he ran back in and started to vomit in a metal trash can. Tears started going down his face as he vomited again.

"Okay I think I'm finally done."

He lurched along the street after cleaning himself with many people looking and pointing at his bright and messy clothes. The man had arrived near the outskirts of the red-light district after twenty minutes of something that can barely be called walking. He noticed a gigantic white building that appeared to be open for business.

"The Abyss Bar & Restaurant. Who the fuck came up with a name like that? I might as well try to get some food for my hangover."

The interior of the restaurant was bright and the fountains were pleasing to look at. He sat on one of black couches and felt like he could sink in and sighed with happiness.

"Good morning sir, welcome to the Abyss Bar & Restaurant."

A man wearing a white mask through the dining room doors and entered the waiting room to greet the bearded man with a brightly colored shirt and blue shorts on. The bearded man looked at the two meter tall restaurant host who wore a black suit and black dress pants. He was surprised that he didn't notice the host until he was greeted.

"Can I get a table for one please."

He was led into the dining room and to one of the tables near the kitchen. A waiter wearing a white dress shirt, black vest, and the same type of mask that the host wore appeared. He clicked a green button on a holographic device on the table.

"Here is our menu."

A display of the menu appeared with only one item on it. Seafood Noodle Soup: 100 credits.

"I guess I'll get one bowl of seafood noodle soup."

The man was surprised about the 100 credit price for a bowl of seafood noodle soup, but decided to try it anyway since he already arrived. A medium-sized bowl filled with thick noodles and rich, fragrant broth was placed on the table. The aroma made the man start to salivate. He took a pair of black lacquered chopsticks and a spoon made of an energy crystal.

"Slurp."

Slurping noises filled the mostly empty dining room. The bearded man put down the bowl and some soup dripped down his beard. He frowned a bit because he definitely couldn't slurp that broth.

"Slurp."

The man had actually used his hands to lift his slightly long beard filled with a bit of broth towards his mouth and drank the stock.

"It appears that you enjoyed our food."

The waiter had appeared again and was amused. The bearded man felt a bit awkward getting caught in this position. He dropped his beard and tried to look a bit more proper.

"Ah yes, can I get another bowl please?"

"Right away sir."

Ten minutes later, the same scene happened again despite the man trying to use the spoon to drink all the broth. He had gotten impatient and decided to tilt the bowl of leftover soup into his mouth and had some of it in his beard.

'Spending 200 credits on two bowls of the noodles was worth it. It turns out that the food has a large amount of energy that is easy to absorb. This is way better than the energy supplements and foods that I have tried.'

There were several types of energy sources available on the market. Energy crystals were the most commonly used since they were cheap. They were either mined or synthetically created by special machines or by cultivators that had reached stage two or higher by injecting energy into used energy crystals.

There were special nutrition bars injected with energy that also existed for cultivators that still wanted to eat something tangible with flavor. However, energy bars that contained the same amount of energy as an energy crystal were more expensive and had to be sealed with special materials to prevent the injected energy to leak out. The most expensive energy source on the market was energy fluid which could come in different flavors. Energy was condensed into liquid form and sealed in expensive containers to prevent energy leakage.

Chefs had tried to inject energy into their dishes, but it usually leaked out quickly or the ingredients couldn't handle the amount of energy being injected and would explode. The only viable option for making dishes with energy was by using spirit beast meat. Spirit beasts were animals that cultivated and were hard to kill which made spirit beast dishes very expensive, but they were delicious. A plate of spirit beast meat could easily be sold for around 150 credits so the noodles were actually pretty cheap.

"I would like to pay now."

This time, the waiter and host didn't appear. A man wearing white chef clothes walked towards the table. He had a fair complexion and an average face that people wouldn't remember in a crowd, but he was 212 cm tall and that was fairly tall compared to the average height of an Elysium male which was 180 cm.

"Dear guest, please push the red button on the holographic device to pay."

The bearded man pressed the red button and transferred 200 credits.

"Will you be dining with us again sir?"

"Definitely."

"Please tell me your name so we can remember you."

"Su Zheng."

"Well Su Zheng, thank you for dining at the Abyss Restaurant today."

The host and waiter had appeared out of nowhere and bowed with the chef towards Su Zheng. Su Zheng was slightly surprised, but thanked them and left.