The Max-Level Chef’s Magical Town Game

Jeff couldn’t believe it: “This… is this Qiana Town?”

Ye Mu nodded: “Yes.”

Jeff stared at her with wide eyes: “Did you just use a teleportation rune?”

“Yes,” Ye Mu admitted casually, completely unaware that this would deepen a long-standing rumor.

—Teleportation runes are not only very expensive, but they are also rare, with almost every one of them in the hands of nobles.

—Miss Ye is indeed a noble.

Jeff thought to himself.

Ye Mu looked around but didn’t see Isaac. Just as she was about to message him, three people came out from the nearby hall.

Isaac paused in surprise: “Miss Ye?” Then he smiled and quickly walked over.

Chase and Jenna were both surprised to hear those three words, so they followed Isaac and greeted Ye Mu: “Hello, I’m Jenna.” Jenna shook hands with Ye Mu first.

“I’m Chase,” Chase said. “We’re Isaac’s teammates.”

“Good evening,” Ye Mu nodded, not forgetting to introduce her side: “This is Jeff, my employee.”

Jeff shyly waved his hand to greet them, then quietly asked Ye Mu, “Why is this gentleman here?”

He was referring to Isaac.

Jeff often saw him at the restaurant, but he didn’t expect to meet him here.

“He…” Ye Mu glanced at Isaac, trying to think of a suitable explanation, “He just happens to be the contractor for this town, he’s the one who told me there’s a new town here.”

Chase: “…”

Jenna: “…”

Isaac accepted this explanation well and laughed a couple of times: “Haha, you can call me the foreman from now on.”

“…” Chase and Jenna were completely at a loss for words but still made an effort to stay professional, guessing that Ye Mu must have something important to discuss for coming over so late. Jenna then took the initiative to invite Jeff: “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

“Okay, thank you!” Jeff, who was already curious about the town, followed Jenna, and Chase left with them as well.

The large area was left with only Isaac and Ye Mu. Isaac smiled and asked, “So, are you here to check the progress of the work?”

“No,” Ye Mu said with a wry smile. “I want to move here.”

“Move here?” Isaac was surprised. “You mean, right now?”

“Yes,” Ye Mu nodded. “Some things happened tonight…”

She sighed and briefly recounted what had happened today. When she mentioned the shop owner’s sudden fatal attack, she still felt quite helpless: “I really didn’t expect someone would hate me so much… It’s terrifying.”

“That such a thing would happen is really hard to understand,” Isaac agreed.

It was just opening a business, some people would do well, and some wouldn’t—this was normal in his eyes.

But he also knew that some people would kill over trivial matters, which normal people would obviously find difficult to comprehend.

Ye Mu didn’t want to complain further, instead, she asked, “Are there any houses available to live in here? Anywhere is fine, I just need a place to stay for tonight, and I’ll see if I can buy a house tomorrow.”

“Uh… Hahaha!” Isaac laughed out loud at her politeness and told her, “As the lord, you have full authority over this area, and all empty houses belong to you by default. In fact, even houses that have been bought can be forcibly taken back if you want to breach the contract, the other party can’t do anything about it.”

“So arrogant?” Ye Mu was stunned. “There’s no protection for buying a house?”

“Well, how should I put it?” Isaac smirked. “At this stage, they can sue you, but the efficiency of the courts is very low, and the costs are high. Once you officially receive the royal seal and become a true lord, you’ll enter the noble class, and the courts won’t even handle such cases anymore.”

In other words, a lord can basically act with impunity on their territory?

Realizing this suddenly sent a chill down Ye Mu’s spine.

Before she crossed over, her life had been calm and ordinary, without experiencing major ups and downs. But that didn’t mean she didn’t understand the weaknesses of human nature.

When a person is completely unrestrained and can abuse their power, very few can maintain their so-called moral bottom line.

A strong sense of disconnection arose within her. She had not been in this world for long, and during her earlier time here, she enjoyed the pleasure of developing delicious foods, relished the praise of being a “culinary god,” and revealed in the thrill of making money daily, at one point feeling that this world was truly wonderful.

However, recently, the enormous taxes of the Dragon Town, the landlord’s price hikes, and Billy’s betrayal had suddenly brought the ugliness of society back into her view.

Now, what Isaac had said pushed these emotions to a peak, instilling in her a strong sense of insecurity about the entire world. She even wondered, is this really a game world?

A game world? How could it be so dark?!

Suddenly, everything felt more real. Previously, she always thought this place had too much of a game-like feel, even when interacting with familiar people like Ivy and Xibel, she often felt a sense of unreality, subconsciously thinking of them as mere game data, as if they were all fake.

But now, the darkness made that sense of unreality fade away. She felt as if the world had suddenly become three-dimensional, the good was indeed real, but so was the cruelty. Although there was a system and a seemingly game-like mechanism, everything else was not too different from the real world.

She began to believe that all the “game characters” she encountered were also living people, which was why there was such oppression and injustices. And those being oppressed truly felt pain.

An indescribable anger surged within Ye Mu.

She never thought she could change anything, but at this moment, she really hoped she could do something.

After a long silence, she suppressed these thoughts for now and asked Isaac in a relatively relaxed tone, “How is the construction going?”

“I’ll show you around, we can talk as we walk.” Isaac gestured for her to follow, leading her to a nearby residential area. “This is the residential area. I’ve built a hundred houses so far, and twenty households have moved in, including me and Chase. Besides the three of us, the rest are all from the nearby slums.”

“And over there, and over there.” He pointed to two locations in the distance. “Those are the quarry and the mine, the basic materials needed for initial construction are collected from there, and I happen to have hired those new residents who just moved in.”

Ye Mu nodded. “Is there anything you need me to do?”

“Hmm… If possible, I hope you can go to the hall to submit the tax standards first,” Isaac said. “Although we don’t intend to collect excessive taxes, this is the thing everyone is most concerned about. They feel very uneasy with it not being announced.”

“Okay,” Ye Mu agreed. “What else?”

“Other things…” Isaac paused, thought seriously for a moment, and smiled. “Then I hope you can open the new restaurant as soon as possible.”

Ye Mu frowned. “Stop joking, let’s talk about serious matters.”

She really disliked it when others interrupted discussions about serious matters like that.

But Isaac said, “I’m serious, this is serious business.”

Ye Mu asked, “From the perspective of territorial development?”

“Yes, from the perspective of territorial development. Trust me, this is really important.” Isaac’s expression became serious, and the moonlight highlighted the contours of his face, making his seriousness seem almost profound.

Ye Mu nodded. “Okay, I’ll choose a suitable house to stay in first, and I can open tomorrow.”

After all, she had all her kitchenware in her backpack. Since there was no need to clean in the game, she could truly achieve the concept of “moving in with just her bag.”

Isaac smiled and skillfully led her to choose a house.

This house was a two-story building with its own yard, the best type of residence among the various housing options currently available in the territory.

Ye Mu took a look upstairs and downstairs and felt very satisfied. The place she had rented before also had a yard, but it was a backyard. When she moved in, she had considered planting vegetables in the yard, but before she could realize that idea, she had to move out.

Now, with a front yard here, she could continue to pursue her vegetable gardening plan. Or instead of growing vegetables, setting up some outdoor dining spots in the yard would also be quite nice.

Ye Mu decided to settle down in this yard, then picked a place for Jeff as well. However, to avoid raising Jeff’s suspicions, she chose the simplest kind of one-story bungalow and told him it was rented.

That night, Ye Mu’s former landlord received two system notifications in succession.

The first one stated that the tenant had exited the territory, and the rental agreement was automatically terminated. The second notification indicated that the system had automatically settled the amount for the past few days of rent. Since Ye Mu had already paid for the month, the remainder had been automatically refunded.

Seeing the two messages left the landlord feeling dizzy.

Generally speaking, once a house is rented for a month, it cannot be revoked. As a landlord, he cannot evict tenants early, if the tenant leaves on their own, that is their responsibility, and the remaining rent is not refundable.

However, there is a special settlement mechanism when residents exit the territory.

This mechanism includes automatic settlement of taxes, rent, and hotel accommodation fees. If someone owns a house, they can also submit it for sale on this settlement panel, if it sells successfully, they can receive the money directly.

He hadn’t thought much about this mechanism when he decided to raise the rent because Ye Mu’s restaurant business was booming. He completely believed she wouldn’t leave Dragon Town.

He thought that even if he raised the rent again, as long as she could still make a high profit here, she wouldn’t leave.

But unexpectedly, she really did leave?

Just because he wanted to raise the rent???

The landlord stared at the panel, gradually petrified in the wind.

How… how could she be so unrestrained!

He recalled the rumors about Ye Mu’s background and suddenly believed it like never before—those rumors must be true, she really had an extraordinary identity and definitely wasn’t short on money, which is why she could abandon such a thriving business and move away.

To her, money was just a number, so preserving her dignity was more important!

It had to be like that!

After the shock and realization, he began to regret his earlier greed.

He started to imagine that if he hadn’t raised the rent at that time, or even if he had raised it but only a little, and hadn’t been so aggressive as to make her clearly feel threatened and bullied, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out like this.

As long as she didn’t leave, he could at least still earn stable rent.

But now, he had to look for new tenants. Every day the house remained vacant was a day of loss.

Greed is not to be desired…

The landlord leaned back in his chair, staring blankly.