Chapter 1493: Chapter 1497 Worse Than That
"How did they get set up?" Ye Xingbei frowned and asked, "Was it by putting flies and cockroaches into the dishes and then starting trouble over it?"
"No, it was much worse than that," Gu Junzhu said. "Someone from that thug’s family died. It was clearly a natural death from illness, but they insisted it was food poisoning from the restaurant’s food. They gathered a group of people to cause a scene. Guu Bohe’s grandmother led the staff from the restaurant to confront the thugs and argue with them. The leader of the gang pushed her, and her head hit the edge of a table. She died on the spot."
Ye Xingbei was stunned, speechless.
After a long moment, she exhaled and said, "Life really is so fragile!"
"It is," Gu Junzhu said. "Although the gang members were later all arrested and sentenced according to the law, the dead cannot come back to life. Guu Bohe’s grandfather became completely disheartened, closed the restaurant, and never cooked again. He also forbade his descendants from becoming chefs."
Ye Xingbei asked curiously, "Then how did Guu Bohe become a chef?"
Gu Junzhu explained, "According to Guu Bohe, her grandfather, as he grew older, would often sit in a daze holding their family’s heirloom kitchen knife. When he was sick, she took care of him by his bedside and overheard him talking in his sleep. He said that he let down their ancestors, that he felt guilty for not passing down the family’s culinary skills."
"Guu Bohe said she felt that not passing down the family skills had become a lingering regret for her grandfather. If this regret wasn’t resolved, her grandfather would likely fall into despair and pass away. So she secretly found their family’s ancestral recipe book and started studying cooking."
"She said it might be a talent passed down through her bloodline. She’s not particularly smart in other areas but has an uncanny skill for cooking. She learns it instantly."
"Later, her grandfather discovered that she was studying cooking. He didn’t stop her. Instead, he tirelessly taught her but repeatedly reminded her that it was enough to learn the skill; she must not open a restaurant."
"He told Guu Bohe that running a restaurant meant dealing with countless types of customers, both good and bad. One unpredictable incident might happen, and as a girl, she wouldn’t be able to handle it."
"Because of the restaurant, he lost his wife. He hated the idea of opening a restaurant to the core. He allowed his granddaughter to learn cooking but absolutely forbade her from starting a restaurant."
"I can understand how he feels," Ye Xingbei said. "The saying ’once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of the rope’ fits his mentality perfectly."
Being bitten by a snake leaves a shadow of fear for so many years.
Let alone the pain of losing someone you love dearly.
The fear that his granddaughter might follow the same tragic path, becoming a victim because of running a restaurant—it’s entirely reasonable for him to forbid her.
Gu Junzhu nodded, "Exactly."
"So if she didn’t open a restaurant, how did you come to know that her cooking skills are so good?" Ye Xingbei was even more curious now.
"After her grandmother passed away, her grandfather was in deep mourning for his wife and became so consumed by grief that he neglected to discipline his son properly," Gu Junzhu said. "During that period, her father went down a bad path. He indulged in drinking, gambling, and finding women, turning into a good-for-nothing. By the time her grandfather realized it, her father’s character was already set, and it couldn’t be changed. Although her grandfather arranged for her father to marry her mother, when she was very young, her parents divorced."
"While her grandfather was still alive, he kept her father’s gambling addiction under control. But after her grandfather passed away, her father relapsed. He mortgaged their ancestral mansion to a loan shark, used the money to gamble, and lost everything."
Ye Xingbei widened her eyes. "What terrible luck for that girl!"