Chapter 219: Entering
“Come on, write your name on this.” Zhang Qian tapped the notebook.
Although the waiter’s strength wasn’t much, for safety’s sake, leaving his name under the branch store wouldn’t hurt.
Anyway, there were fully ten quotas now, and it would be hard to find people to assign them to for the time being; if needed later, he could just kick him out.
“Understood.” The waiter nodded, without the slightest resistance.
If anything, Zhang Qian’s action actually put him much more at ease, so he no longer had to worry anxiously about being killed.
Now they were all family, so his life should be safe, right?
A few strokes went down.
“Niu Xiao Er” landed right below Zhang Qian.
When the waiter put down the pen, the blank space to the left of his name suddenly began to crawl with some crooked, twisted marks like insects.
These black lines intertwined with each other, finally forming a traditional 【shop assistant】.
“Shopkeeper and shop assistant, does this count as taking effect?” Zhang Qian saw this change and felt somewhat strange about it.
The moment the writing appeared, he maximized his perception, but he didn’t sense any supernatural fluctuations.
There were no invisible arms, no transparent fierce ghost; the writing seemed to seep out from the paper inside the notebook out of thin air.
It felt… a bit like the ghost map.
But the ghost map only had images, no text had ever appeared, though it looked pretty similar to the notebook.
“Yes, I have truly become your subordinate now, boss.”
The waiter immediately stood up and bowed respectfully. “No matter what you need, please just instruct me. I guarantee I’ll abide by the employee handbook you’ve set.”
At this point, the Zhang Qian branch of the ghost restaurant officially had its first employee.
And Zhang Qian didn’t disappoint him, immediately standing up to issue the first order.
“Come with me to check out that opening. I want to confirm if the dining area can really be exited.”
He’d asked pretty much everything he needed to now. Though it had only delayed more than ten minutes, it wasn’t good to delay any longer.
Rolling up the notebook and putting it in his pocket, Zhang Qian picked up the wooden stick and headed toward the wall corner.
As for the employee handbook, with only him and the waiter in the store now, there was no need to make one.
After all, the handbook’s prestige came from the ghost restaurant main store. Even if violated now, the ghost restaurant couldn’t break through the ghost ship to punish the contract breakers.
Halfway there, the waiter followed respectfully behind Zhang Qian, exactly one step slower, just like a servant following behind his master.
Zhang Qian also took this chance to ask the waiter about intelligence on the dining area. “You said that after entering the dining area, you’d transform into something like a fierce ghost. What’s the principle behind that transformation? Does everyone undergo that change?”
He was a shopkeeper who had come halfway into the job, after all, so he still had to ask the waiter about many things.
With his nearly hundred years of on-the-job experience, even if he slacked off, he probably knew very little about the ghost restaurant that he hadn’t picked up through osmosis.
The waiter thought for a moment, then said, “Not clear on the principle, but as for that change, customers don’t have it—only shop assistants and the shopkeeper do.”
This answer didn’t surprise Zhang Qian, but it reminded him of some other issues.
“You said there was a ghost controller who was a shop assistant? Ordinary shop assistants transform into fierce ghosts upon entering the dining area, so what about ghost controllers? Any other changes?”
“There really seems to be.”
The waiter recalled that unnamed ghost controller and hesitated, “The fierce ghosts that shop assistants transform into all seem to have a fixed appearance, regardless of whether man, woman, old, or young, tall, short, fat, or thin—they all become the same in the dining area.”
“All skin and bones, sallow-faced and emaciated, just like starved ghosts reincarnated. Even I feel disgusted thinking back on it.”
Raising starved ghosts in a ghost restaurant seemed pretty reasonable.
Zhang Qian silently noted this clue in his mind.
Setting aside that weird appearance, just the waiter’s ravenous eating at the time, and his appetite to keep eating even after his belly burst, really seemed similar to a starved ghost.
“But that person was different.” The waiter continued.
“Though the other parts of his body were the same as ours, that one arm stood out awkwardly among us.”
“That guy was clearly a big man, but that arm was pale and slender, like a woman’s. It wasn’t too noticeable when covered by clothes, but it was fully exposed once entering the dining area.”
“From what he described afterward, it wasn’t just about not being able to hide it—apparently, even his supernatural power was enhanced a bit.”
“I see.” Zhang Qian nodded.
Ordinary shop assistants transformed into fierce ghosts upon entry, while ghost controller shop assistants, on top of transforming into fierce ghosts, could also strengthen the original fierce ghost in their body.
But what was the point of doing that? Customers and shop assistants couldn’t attack each other anyway.
Besides these two identities that could enter the ghost restaurant, maybe supernatural means could force an intrusion.
But was it possible for the ghost restaurant to be intruded by others?
After walking a few more steps, Zhang Qian and the waiter arrived in front of the door frame.
Without the door panel blocking, the situation inside was fully revealed before Zhang Qian’s eyes.
But it wasn’t very clear, only feeling like the inside wasn’t pure darkness, more like a layer of hazy black gauze.
“Where did the door up there go?” Zhang Qian asked.
The waiter shook his head. “Not sure. The branches I’ve been to all seemed like this—only door frame, no door panel. Don’t know what it means.”
Thinking about it, Zhang Qian couldn’t figure out any special meaning either, so he simply stopped worrying.
“Let’s go. Accompany me inside to take a look.”
First testing if his arm could reach in, and confirming it was fine, Zhang Qian shoved the waiter in first, then stepped into the darkness himself.
“Pat.”
A light footfall, and Zhang Qian’s figure fully passed through the door frame.
The expected discomfort didn’t appear—no disorientation, no dizziness. Sensing carefully, Zhang Qian didn’t even notice anything special.
The surrounding environment had changed quite a bit, though.
Not far ahead, several beams of bright white light from who-knows-where converged, carving out a circular area in the darkness.
In the center of the area was that long table, but now it was empty, with no one and none of the previous bowls and chopsticks.
Looking back, the door frame hadn’t disappeared; instead, it stood abruptly in the darkness, reflecting the messy scene of the resting area.
