Chapter 845 - Yuan Zhou's Ultimate Trick

Sun Ming was very well practiced with hanging up on others. As such, he did it so fast Yuan Zhou could not react to it.

“How many times does he want to celebrate his birthday per year?” Yuan Zhou muttered as he stared at his phone gloomily. Yuan Zhou felt like something sounded off with Sun Ming’s words, but he couldn’t quite identify what it was.

Recently, Yuan Zhou had given red packets to several people for different occasions such as the occasion of a customer’s son passing the university entrance examination, and to the marriage of a customer’s ex-girlfriend that he had received an invitation for.

The somewhat ridiculous invitations caused Yuan Zhou to be speechless, but he was already used to this. One could say that the behavior of his customers proved that he was loved and respected by them. But Yuan Zhou could not leave his restaurant closed just so he could attend the celebration of his customers.

And thus, he was only giving away red packets but could not eat at the celebrations. This was quite a tragedy. In Yuan Zhou’s opinion, although he was feeling bitter, he decided to keep it inside. He had evolved from a Stingy Compass to a Walking Red Packet.

Fortunately, none of those occasions had held their celebratory feast in Yuan Zhou’s restaurant while also inviting him, saving him the pain of personally witnessing the feast going on while not being able to eat.

Yuan Zhou was not one to be stuck in his thinking for long. Soon, he cleared his mind and continued preparing his sculpting materials.

After preparing the ice block and the basin to keep the ice chunks, Yuan Zhou picked up his kitchen knife and started practicing ice sculpting. Naturally, a crowd started forming around him as he did this.

After all, ice sculpting involved a comparatively large block of ice, and was more shocking. Among the crowd, a certain little mischievous kid was so excited that he started holding his phone out and filming it with his face flushed red in excitement. The previous video he had filmed of Yuan Zhou had gone somewhat viral on the Internet, earning him several hundred yuan. He had used the money to buy several hundred pieces of meat jerkies to be resold to his classmates at school.

For his classmates that did not have the money but still want to eat meat jerkies, they could do his homework for him to get some meat jerkies. By monopolizing the “homework-for-hire” market of his year at school, he had subsequently earned even more money.

It was said that three types of people should never be offended when one walked the pugilistic world. The elderlies, women, and children. Perhaps this was why. One should never underestimate the intelligence of a mischievous child.

Right at this moment, someone entered the street with a trolley with Sweet And Spicy Noodles written on it.

While this person walked, he yelled, hawking his wares.

“Sweet And Spicy Noodles, the best in Nancheng,” yelled this person. He was wearing a gray sweater and had short hair. With one hand, he pushed the trolley and with his other hand, he held onto his mobile phone.

His gaze shifted between the phone and the people around him, and he would occasionally hawk his wares.

Before long, he arrived before Yuan Zhou’s pub. When he saw that this was a rather empty plot of land with a small crowd, he stopped and took out a folding chair before sitting down.

When he noticed the large crowd in front Yuan Zhou’s restaurant, he stretched his head to get a better look.

Surrounded by the crowd, Yuan Zhou was focusing on sculpting a Two Dragons Chasing A Pearl sculpture, the sculpture left unfinished the previous time.

To improve one’s craftsmanship, practice was the only way and there were no shortcuts.

There were five basic forms of dragons, coiling dragon, ascending dragon, hovering dragon, crouching dragon, and soaring dragon. Most other forms were extensions of these five basic forms.

Yuan Zhou was perfectly clear that from ancient times until modern times, the Two Dragons Chasing A Pearl sculpture had always used the soaring dragon form. Even if the details of the sculpture were changed, there would not be too big of a variation.

However, after Yuan Zhou finished the sculpting, he started sculpting some weird curved lines. This confused the crowd around him.

One ought to know that apart from the ice block used to sculpt this Two Dragons Chasing A Pearl, Yuan Zhou had also brought along several other blocks of ice and arranged them in a row.

At first, the crowd believed that Yuan Zhou would be sculpting ice dragons with all of the blocks. But now, he was sculpting one curved line after another. Alone, the curved lines looked quite beautiful, but when combined, they did not look like they fit together and were completely unrelated to the dragons.

Since Yuan Zhou was the sculptor and he was obviously a skillful person, everyone merely watched on silently with doubt, wondering what Yuan Zhou was trying to do today.

If it was any other sculptor, the crowd would have started jeering already.

Curved lines were sculpted on the first ice block, and the same was done on the second, third, until the fifth block of ice. Now, all the ice blocks were already sculpted. Yuan Zhou gazed at his work, frowning in a dissatisfied manner. Then, he sighed, put away his basin and the ice chunks, before returning to the restaurant.

Only the stupefied crowd was left behind, staring at the sculptures that they had no idea what they were.

“So what has Boss Yuan sculpted? Is this the foundation for the Great Wall of China?” guessed a certain someone who had learned painting before.

“You are thinking too much. These are obviously the curves of a continuous mountain range,” deduced a customer.

“Enough. Based on my understanding of Boss Yuan, what you see is what you get. These are nothing but curved lines,” declared Ling Hong as he rolled his eyes.

That was a sound explanation. After all, Boss Yuan had never been one to do things in an overly fancy way. The things he did would not be so complicated.

With that, the crowd had a new question. The customer who had learned painting before asked, “So why was Boss Yuan sculpting curved lines?”

It was understandable if it was someone new to sculpting that was sculpting curved lines to practice the basics. But did Yuan Zhou need to practice the basics?

And thus, the question stumped Ling Hong.

Yuan Zhou did not enjoy losing. To be precise, nobody enjoyed losing. Because of that, Yuan Zhou had prepared a secret weapon.

As the saying went, if one cleaned the spear at the last minute before battle, even if the spear wasn’t faster, it would at least be shiny. It was rather hard for Yuan Zhou to master this in a short time frame, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing.

After dinner time, Yuan Zhou carried several blocks of ice outside the restaurant and started doing the same thing: sculpting curved lines.

The customers all got curious, but nobody could guess what exactly Yuan Zhou was sculpting.

On the next day, after breakfast time.

“What are you doing here? It’s only nine in the morning. What are all of you doing gathered here?”

Perhaps it was because he had finished way too many paintings recently, but Wu Hai did not feel like painting after he returned from the trip. And when he saw the condition at Yuan Zhou’s restaurant, he got flustered.

All along, Wu Hai took the opportunity of the fact that he lived near the restaurant and him waking up early to be the first few customers to eat each meal there.

But it was only nine in the morning yet the restaurant was already surrounded by a crowd. This was driving him nuts.

“Did you guys starved to death in your previous lives? Why are you here so early? Where is your sense of compassion, duty, propriety, and integrity?” Wu Hai walked towards the restaurant while making a racket.

“Shut up. We are trying to guess what Boss Yuan is sculpting,” said a customer.

Wu Hai was relieved when he heard that. It would be fine so long as they were not here to overtake his position. He squeezed himself to the front of the crowd and only gave it a glance before he decided to leave.

“Mustached guy, you are a painter, right? Can you see what Boss Yuan is trying to sculpt?”

“If you ask Shameless Wu about food, he might know. But for this, if even so many of us can’t get it right, how can Shameless Wu know?”

This was a very clumsy reverse psychology method, one that would only work on someone like Wu Hai.

Hearing those words, Wu Hai stopped walking and said, “Boss Yuan is sculpting clouds, clouds in the sky. It’s that simple. Anyone can see that.”

Clouds?

The customers looked at the curved lines. Clouds?

Many of them were already here since yesterday, but not a single one of them had guessed that Yuan Zhou was sculpting clouds.

“Shameless Wu, don’t lie and mislead us if you don’t know.”