護花近衛 - 第641章 食堂投毒 - 清風書屋

"Right you are, Young Master Zhong!" The worker nodded and went back to his business, paying Zhong Yongliang no further mind.

After all, this was hardly Zhong Yongliang's first trip to the back kitchen. The cafeteria was still in its pre-opening preparations; the serving trays had not yet been carried out and all the dishes sat waiting in the back. Even when Zhong Yongliang ate, he chose his dishes back here.

Zhong Yongliang shoved the kitchen door open and swaggered in. When he saw that the head chef was the only one inside, he breathed a sigh of relief. The back kitchen usually held more than just the chef — there were vegetable cutters, dough handlers, and others besides — but today, perhaps because only the final dish remained, everyone else had gone out to help wipe down tables and chairs for opening.

To save on costs, a high school cafeteria never hired many workers; most of them were part-timers.

With an easy, careless air, Zhong Yongliang called out to the chef, who was busy with the last dish: "How's the food today? Got anything hearty?"

The chef glanced back, saw it was Zhong Yongliang, and thought nothing of it. Privately he had little use for these rich brats who lived off their families' clout, but at the end of the day he still had to earn his rice on their turf. So what if he had a skill? So what if he made his living by his own hands? They could fire him outright and hire another cook just like that.

So the chef said, "Just the pork ribs stewed with potatoes left. It'll be out of the pot in a moment; everything else is ready. Have a look for yourself."

"Oh, then let me taste this ribs-and-potato first, see if it's any good!" Zhong Yongliang walked up beside the chef, glanced at the pot, and said, "Go find me a bowl and dish out a piece of rib so I can taste it!"

"Fine, wait a moment!" The chef had no choice. He turned and left the kitchen to fetch Zhong Yongliang a bowl. The tableware wasn't kept in the kitchen but in the sterilization room next door.

The moment the chef turned his back, Zhong Yongliang whipped a small bottle from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the entire contents — a powdered poison — into the pot of pork ribs and potatoes before him. Gao Xiaofu was busy too, tipping poison into the other dishes.

Because the bowls and chopsticks were being sterilized at that moment, the chef had to shut off the cabinet before he could take any out, which cost him some time — time enough for Zhong Yongliang and Gao Xiaofu to do their work. The two of them emptied every last drop of poison into the serving dishes, and still the chef had not returned.

The school's daily menu was six dishes and a soup — no more, no less — and the seven bottles of poison went in just right. Had there been one dish fewer, the job would have been awkward.

In truth, hardly anyone ordered all six dishes and the soup at a single meal. Apart from the wealthy, almost no one did such a thing.

But close classmates often gathered in groups of three or five around one table, each buying a dish or two different ones, and together they made up the full six dishes and soup. This pooling of orders was very common among the students, so the odds of being poisoned rose considerably.

By the time the chef returned with the bowl, Zhong Yongliang was already standing, perfectly at ease, back beside the great pot of ribs and potatoes. Seeing the chef, he said with some impatience, "What took you so long? Hurry up, hurry up, I can't wait!"

"The bowls are in the sterilization cabinet — they're a bother to get out!" the chef explained with a wry smile. "Young Master Zhong, will you taste it now?"

"Yeah, hurry it up!" Zhong Yongliang nodded and pointed into the pot. "That rib there — that one, that piece is nice and fatty!"

The chef hastily fished out the rib Zhong Yongliang had picked and handed it over.