The several elderly who had eaten until were surrounded by reporters when they were leaving. They also generously accepted the interviews and reviewed today’s dishes from all sorts of perspectives such as appearance, smell, taste, etc. All summed up, there was only one meaning: the dishes were made exceptionally well, it did not let them be disappointed, furthermore they had already reserved a private room for a year, because they were only allowed to reserve for a maximum of a year.

When the diners on the side heard this, they again ran to find servers to argue. For what reason were those people allowed to reserve for a maximum of one year, yet we can only reserve for a maximum of one week, this difference was too big.

Chen Rui could only come out again to explain, because these several elderly men were the restaurant’s first VIP members, so only then could they enjoy the special treatment. And then the customers who hadn’t left yet again started to request becoming members, but Chen Rui really wanted to say that this was actually just an excuse, even if you all became members I also have no way to let you all reserve a private room for a year. So he could only go run to consult Jing Yang on what to do.

Jing Yang said, divide members into three levels, different levels are allowed to reserve tables for different lengths of time, and obviously the membership fees will also be different. Furthermore they needed to set up all kinds of conditions and provisions, it isn’t possible that once you become a member you would then be able to come eat whenever you want.

Even though the three levels of membership fees were considerably high, there were still unceasing numbers of people requesting membership. In the future, Jing Yang opened more than 20 branches, and all of them became restaurants that especially received only members. But that is the future, we will not mention it at the moment.

Besides interviewing the several elderly men, the reporters also interviewed the other diners, obtaining only unanimous positive evaluations, they all said that the flavor was too amazing, extremely amazing, they would definitely come back again.

What surprised everyone the most was that even the Zhao family corporation’s successor Zhao Bocheng accepted an interview, and furthermore even gave a very high evaluation.

Those reporters and food critics who had been dispatched by the Zheng father and son saw that the situation was very different from what they had expected, they were even a little unsure about what to do. They had also eaten the dishes, they were indeed really good, plus they were better to a certain degree. They had accepted money to do things and didn’t care about speaking without conscience, but now other people all said it was good, even several highly prestigious elderly men and the Zhao family corporation successor all said it was good, if only they said the food wasn’t good, then that would be too obvious.

After the media reports, the netizens discovered that the results were completely different from what they had expected, a lot of people didn’t believe that this was true, they thought that Lu Jingyu spent money to bribe all the big media and journalists, so that it would become this way.

So then there were a lot of netizens who had gone to eat at Lu De Ji who stood in to defend the injustice against Lu Jingyu, retorting against those people who were still saying malicious words about him.

——“You say Lu Jingyu is able to bribe the reporters, don’t tell me that he’s even able to bribe those several elderly men who have high status in all sorts of circles, as well as the Zhao family corporation’s successor? Then he’s too rich, don’t know how much Zhao family corporation’s successor’s fee is?”

——“In the end whether the food is good or not, if you all went yourself to eat it once, wouldn’t you know? You all haven’t even gone yourself to eat it, just using conjecture and imagination to review it, you guys are obviously just brainless internet trolls.”

——“I have already been a food critic for over ten years, if I hadn’t gone to personally try the dishes, I would definitely not come up with any sort of review. These are only the most fundamental of professional ethics. I have gone to eat at Lu De Ji, so I can say with good conscience that even though I have reviewed many dishes, but this is definitely the best dish I have ever eaten in my over 30 years of life. Whether you believe it or not, in any case I will not accept objections from those who have not gone to eat there.”

The online commentary was no longer skewed to one side, many netizens stated that they would personally go to eat there to see, and then come back to comment.

Jing Yang actually did not anticipate that Zhao Bocheng would stand out to help speak for him, don’t know in the end what he was thinking, but thanks to his appearance, none of the media dared to deliberately discredit him.

The Zheng family father and son, facing this kind of result, their mood was in no way good.

Zheng Jianlin had never taught Lu Jingyu cooking, and also never even knew that he actually knew how to cook. Originally he had thought that after he (ZJL) had not been able to defraud him (JY) last time, this time he (JY) had voluntarily dug a pit for himself (JY), and he (ZJL) would only need to and that would be enough, just the netizen’s saliva would drown him.

Yet Zheng Jianlin never thought that it would become this kind of result, those people with high status all stood out to help Lu Jingyu speak, in the end when did he bribe those people, and in the end how did he do it? He felt that this matter definitely had something fishy, even if Lu Jingyu knew how to cook, yet it would be impossible for it to be as good as those people said.

Zheng Junming’s mood was also extremely complex. On the one hand he had no way to believe that Lu Jingyu would be able to cook well, and on the other hand he did not dare to believe that Zhao Bocheng actually would give Lu Jingyu such a high evaluation.

Because Qian Xiang was Zhao Bocheng’s cousin, in the past he also had opportunities to make dishes for Zhao Bocheng to eat. At that time, in order to cook the dishes well, he had already started preparing from a long time ago. Every day he would repeatedly make the dish multiple times to practice, but after Zhao Bocheng ate it, he wouldn’t give even a sentence of commentary, even his expression would still be the same cold and indifferent kind as usual.

Since he was small, he practiced cooking with blood, sweat, and tears, yet Lu Jingyu from small to big only knew how to drink and play around. Everyone said that he had talent in cooking, even though he was young, yet he was even more powerful than many of those chefs who had cooked for several decades. How could Lu Jingyu’s dishes be better than his, for what reason had he received such high reviews?

Zheng Junming thought of one possibility, he said to Zheng Jianlin, “Dad, I heard that Lu Jingyu found his grandfather’s apprentices and brought them back to help, could it be that those dishes were actually made by them, and they were simply not made by Lu Jingyu himself?”

Zheng Jianlin contemplated for a while and then nodded. “It’s very likely that it was actually this situation, cooking well can’t be done in just one or two days. If you want to cook especially well, then you even more require a very long time to learn and temper oneself. It’s impossible that he would suddenly become someone who knew how to cook.”

“Then what should we do?” Zheng Junming looked at Zheng Jianlin and asked.

“Spread out this matter outside, it will only work if we unrestrainedly broadcast it out, otherwise if we wait until Lu De Ji really has been accepted by everyone, our Zheng De Ji will slowly have no reason to exist, we must think of ways to defeat Lu De Ji.” He, Zheng Jianlin, had painstakingly built up the business for so many years, just to bring the Zheng family dishes to a greater height, let the Lu family become the Zheng family dishes, let the Lu family restaurants all become the Zheng family’s restaurants. Seeing that his goals were all slowly being accomplished, how could he at this time be defeated in the hands of the son that he had never placed into the eye?

Ever since the opening of Lu De Ji, the restaurant always had a full house every day, the people who scolded them online decreased, only leaving the brainless fans of Zheng Junming persisting on attacking him, and expressed that they would definitely not go to eat at Lu De Ji, calling upon the other people to boycott Lu De Ji. Yet the other people stated that you guys not going was you guys not having good food fortune, we have no animosity against good food, why would we boycott them.

Lu De Ji’s business was flourishing, even though Lu Deyuan’s those two apprentices were completely busy, yet they felt very happy from the bottom of their hearts. Jing Yang had said to them, there were two branches that would open in not too long, it seemed like they were seeing the liveliness of the Lu De Ji restaurant from back when their master was still alive.

Originally when Jing Yang had invited them over, they had only agreed to come help for a period of time and then leave, but now they didn’t want to leave. They wanted to stay to help Lu Jingyu revive the most genuine Lu De Ji and Lu family dishes.

“Jingyu ah, if you don’t mind our two brothers being handicapped, we would like to stay here in the future to help you.”

At that time, Guo Long and Wang Yang were Lu Deyuan’s most favored apprentices, Lu Deyuan even considered letting Guo Long become his own son-in-law. After Lu Deyuan died, Zheng Jianlin originally wanted to chase out all of Lu Deyuan’s apprentices, just these two people proved to be the most difficult to deal with, so he had one of them have a leg crippled, and the other have one eye blinded. In the end they could only leave to a foreign area, hiding in a remote place to continue to cook, but they did teach out quite a few apprentices.

“Guo uncle and Wang uncle, you also know, now at my side the number of people who I can use and trust is not many. If you both are willing to stay to help me, that is something that is , how could I ignore you?”

Guo Long said, “We also didn’t expect that your cooking was so much better than our two brothers’, we could see out your grandfather’s demeanor from back then. If we could help you revive Lu De Ji and Lu family’s dishes, and defeat Zheng Jianlin that villain, we would have face to go see master in the future.”

“That’s right.” Wang Yang nodded.

Jing Yang transferred the main restaurant’s matters to the Guo Wang two, he instead was busy preparing the two branches for opening.

Jing Yang was in a private room editing his architectural plans when Chen Rui hastily rushed in holding a laptop. “Quickly look at this.”

“Look at what?” Jing Yang raised his head, collected his blueprints neatly and placed them to the side.

“Online there’s people saying that you’re faking and hoodwinking the masses. They said that those dishes were simply not made by yourself, but instead were made by your grandfather’s apprentices, but you actually claimed that you made them yourself. They said you simply don’t want face.”

Jing Yang carefully read through the entire content, and then smiled.

“What do we do?” Chen Rui somewhat worriedly said. “Do you want to come out and explain? Zheng Junming’s brainless fans are seriously speaking increasingly excessively. If we don’t quickly clarify this situation, this will definitely adversely affect your personal reputation as well as the restaurant’s reputation.”

“Just let them keep talking about it, .” Jing Yang indifferently said.

“Those people online who believe whatever other people say, or those who love blindly following the crowd, would never pay attention to whether you are actually innocent or guilty. If you don’t come out to explain, that proves that what they said is true, once more time passes, the number of people who will believe them will only keep increasing.”

“Don’t worry, not too much time will pass, very quickly there will be an opportunity for me to prove myself. So now whether or not I come out to explain, there won’t be too much of an influence.”

Chen Rui doubtfully looked at him, just when he wanted to ask what opportunity this was, a server knocked on the door and came in. “Boss, Mr. Zhao Bocheng said he wants to see you.”

“Zhao Bocheng?” Jing Yang raised his head, somewhat surprisedly and somewhat doubtfully looking at that server.

“That’s right, precisely that Zhao family corporation’s successor, Mr. Zhao Bocheng, he’s currently right in the private room that he reserved waiting for you to go over.”

Even though Jing Yang was still doubtful in his heart why this person was looking for himself, but he still decided to go see him. After all, for the current him, he was still not able to rashly offend this person who was like a big BOSS.

———

[1] – 心滿意足, idiom, also perfectly satisfied

[2] – 往坑里填土, often use the metaphor of a digit a pit to represent a trap or trick, now he’s just helping fill up the pit, which means he’s just helping him fall even more

[3] – 求之不得, idiom, literally seek but fail to get

[4] – 清者自清,濁者自濁, idiom/saying, literally true blue will never stain, the marks of sin will never be washed away