Blood Queen - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: This Is Life

***

May 18, Saturday.

Although it could only be considered late spring, it already had an early summer feeling, with the entire city enveloped in scorching sun and humid stuffiness.

As a former soldier, even for a green recruit like Jiang Yao with only a year of military service, her housekeeping was still done meticulously.

For the past few days, the bedroom shared by the two maintained a fairly good level of tidiness, though it was uncertain how long this self-discipline could be maintained as time passed.

In the small living room, Jiang Yan wore a serious expression, holding up her phone to film the light blonde-haired girl pacing back and forth in front of her.

When the other stopped, Jiang Yan put down her phone with a look of exasperation and threw a paper ball that hit Jiang Yao’s forehead.

“Ouch! What did I do wrong now!”

Wearing a dress and rubbing her forehead, Jiang Yao looked indignant.

“Look at the video yourself and see how you walk. Why are you swinging your hips? Are you a streetwalker!?”

Jiang Yan covered her face irritably, feeling too tired to even speak: “We’ve been practicing for several days, and you’re getting worse. Can’t you be more natural? Watching those female characters in anime all day, how can you apply that to real life?”

“This is wrong, that’s not right! Brother, if this goes on, I really won’t know how to walk anymore! Brother, please, can we stop these silly tricks?”

The light blonde-haired girl sat down on the chair huffily, her reddened face still bearing fresh sweat, directly pulling at the hem of her dress to fan herself.

Without saying a word, Jiang Yan grabbed her phone and walked to the center of the living room, slowly pacing back and forth a couple of times. Jiang Yao turned her head, quietly and carefully watching, gradually becoming stunned.

Jiang Yan before her wore a T-shirt, jeans, and flat sandals, still an ordinary outfit without much character.

With a slightly swaying figure, arms bent in front holding the phone, as her steps alternated, her body moved naturally and lightly, exuding a pure elegance like green lotus, as if she were a college girl walking along a forest path towards the female dormitory.

“Brother… you…”

Jiang Yao opened her mouth several times, unable to express the shock in her heart.

“Relax yourself, be natural. Our current identities are our best protection. Don’t stand out in others’ eyes, understand?”

Jiang Yan smiled and sat back on the sofa, her tone calm, but her face showed traces of pride and a faint blush.

“That’s easy for you to say, but… I feel like this will make more people notice you!”

Jiang Yao thought for a long time before squeezing out this sentence.

“…”

This time it was Jiang Yan’s turn to be at a loss for words, slowly furrowing her brow, as if summarizing and reviewing some information.

“Hmm, we all need to adapt… By the way, it’s been so long, why is your ability to control your pheromones still so poor? Don’t be startled so often, it’s particularly easy to cause pheromone release fluctuations.”

Jiang Yan shook off the inexplicable thoughts in her head, her face returning to its usual serious expression: “Several times, from half a street away, I could sense the aura you were emitting. Not to mention the Dark Arrow Unit, who knows how many Black Blood Clan members in C City specialize in hunting their own kind. We can’t have another incident like last time when we were followed and ambushed by the Black Blood Clan in the middle of the night.”

“What can I do about it? Pheromone control is something only Servant-level and above can possess. Right now, without activating boiling blood, I’m at most an upper-level Thrall, how can I compare to you and Huang Gu? Besides, if it were so easy to master control over these things, external hormone inhibitors wouldn’t be so precious.”

Jiang Yao kicked off her sandals and walked barefoot to the refrigerator, took out a bottle of soda, and chugged it down with a series of gulps, burping while looking quite aggrieved.

Ah, this Xiao Yao, always giving up at the slightest setback, just like when she was little… However, it’s hard to imagine that she could persevere and complete all the intensive training content.

“Xiao Yao, today I want to tell you again…”

Jiang Yan sighed, organizing her thoughts for several tens of seconds, pulled Jiang Yao to sit down on the sofa, her tone solemn: “I am Jiang Yan, you are Jiang Yao. I am your elder sister, you are my younger sister, these must be etched into your bones! We need to change our old habits, behavior, manners, clothing, food, housing, and transportation. Otherwise, countless visible details could accumulate fatal risks.”

As she spoke, Jiang Yan stood up, looking sideways at the silent Gu Yao, with a hint of bitterness in her cold tone: “From the night we escaped from the underground factory, we were no longer soldiers, and now we might not even be human.”

“Brother, I know you mean well…”

“What did you call me?”

“…Sister? Ugh, it feels so weird! I’m getting goosebumps!”

…

After lunch, braving the hot sun, Jiang Yan and Jiang Yao strolled along the old street behind the residential complex, scouting for storefronts.

This was a plan the two had discussed a few days ago, to open a small cold snack shop. On every hot night, they would set up a stall selling stir-fried river snails, cold noodles, braised dishes, and beer to generate income.

After all, the two currently had no stable source of income, and the last blood transaction made them realize that money was still very important for vampires. This was the mode of production, life, and civilization operation of the entire human society, which even vampires couldn’t escape.

Cold snacks were an extremely popular street leisure food culture in S Province, especially in C City, and could operate smoothly almost year-round except for winter.

Neighborhood residents with poor appetites in the scorching summer would occasionally sit down for a while during their cool evening walks, having some spicy, fresh, and salty snacks to stimulate their stomachs. Young people, in particular, liked to gather in groups of three or five, eating, drinking, and chatting in the open-air environment to enhance their relationships.

This crowded old neighborhood had a high population density, and the old locals were very fond of this summer consumption habit.

The neighborhood was full of old, run-down houses, and the cheap rent naturally attracted many young people from out of town to live there, making this kind of night life similar to midnight snacks even more vibrant. Opening a cold snack shop was already the best choice.

The former director, Grandma Jiang, in order to fill the funding gap of the orphanage, had also led older children to do these things on the streets near the orphanage. Jiang Yan was familiar with the food processing techniques of cold snack shops from a young age, but after graduating from high school and enlisting in the military, these skills were gradually sealed away.

Several storefronts that were being subleased caused Jiang Yao to fall into a choice paralysis, feeling somewhat restless. Jiang Yan, on the other hand, was much calmer, recording a large amount of detailed information about the surrounding environment in her notebook.

After several days of on-site observation at different times, Jiang Yan had basically determined the location for opening the shop.

Located at a street corner, there was a spacious sidewalk space in front of the store, where quite a few additional dining seats could be placed as long as it didn’t attract the intervention of city management.

Diagonally across the street corner was a small, 24-hour leisure park with public toilets, less than a 3-minute walk away.

A few minutes’ walk would take you to a main street, where turning at the corner would lead to an underground parking lot of a shopping mall, convenient for parking.

There were no specialized beverage shops within at least 200 meters to the left and right, so the shop’s beverage sales wouldn’t face too much competition.

The neighboring shops on both sides were a beauty salon and an auto repair shop, which didn’t involve competition and even made it easier for young people to linger for longer periods due to their business characteristics, increasing the visual attention flow to this shop, and also forming an easier-to-express coordinate reference.

After testing ride-hailing or taxi contacts at multiple time slots, the efficiency of getting a ride was also very high.

Within at least a 1.5-kilometer radius of the surrounding residential areas and streets, Jiang Yan had not detected any hidden vampire auras. At least, she hadn’t sensed any Thralls or Servants, which made up the absolute majority among vampires.

If there were really high-level vampires present, that would be beyond her perception ability. After all, living in constant fear wasn’t sustainable, and just the monthly blood purchase expenses weighed on her mind like a lead.

All in all, Jiang Yan couldn’t be more satisfied with the chosen location. Most importantly, the storefront she had her eye on was originally a noodle shop, so the kitchen, back room for food storage, and other hardware environments almost didn’t need any additional investment. They could just change the sign and save quite a bit of money.

Quickly contacting the person subletting the store, after a few simple negotiations, Jiang Yan successfully secured this storefront, and even inherited the other party’s business procedures. When the time came, they would only need to change some registration information to open for business directly.

However, Jiang Yan’s remaining funds quickly shrank to less than 40,000 yuan.

…

Inside the shop renamed “Lingzui’er Cold Snacks”, both girls were preparing for the opening.

“Sister, we’re opening in two days, I’m a bit nervous,” Jiang Yao said with an uneasy expression as she tidied up the various tables and chairs in the store. “What if business isn’t good? With just over 10 tables, those eating cold snacks might sit for hours after ordering just 50 or 60 yuan worth of food. Can we make any money!?”

“You’ve been a food delivery rider before, are there many deliveries for this kind of business in summer?” Jiang Yan replied calmly while cleaning years of grime in the kitchen and placing the newly ordered food racks in position.

“I guess you’re right… Not just in summer, even in winter, I often had to run to various residential areas late at night to deliver stir-fried river snails and braised dishes. Especially those young ladies who had just started working, they were particularly picky and troublesome! That’s why I quit, it was too tiring.”

Jiang Yao suddenly realized as she recalled her experience as a food delivery rider.

“Just you wait and see! More than 10 years ago, you could still catch small fish and river snails in those few rivers in the city. My river snail stir-frying skills were praised endlessly by Director Jiang! I remember you’ve eaten what I cooked before, right?”

Jiang Yan rarely showed a proud and confident expression, while Jiang Yao nodded repeatedly like a pecking chick, her mouth watering.