I have few friends, but many childhood sweethearts.

Chapter 178. Oh crap, Liang Feifan!

Inside the secret base, six people sat around a laptop in the living room watching Xu Qingfan operate it.

"Brother Fan, buy another serving of edamame, I love it!" Xiao Ruanwen shouted, pointing to the photo of braised edamame in the vegetable section.

"And seaweed knots! Brother Qingfan, you haven't bought seaweed knots yet!"

"Don't rush, let me select the meat section first." Xu Qingfan reached out and ruffled the girl's hair, then clicked to buy the crayfish picture.

"Will he be able to deliver it to my home then?" Xia Xiaoxiao asked curiously after Xu Qingfan placed the order.

"Otherwise, the website is only online for one day, so it should be delivered in a few minutes," Xu Qingfan said, browsing the website's homepage.

After nearly a month of preparation, Good Taste Delivery officially launched on December 12th.

The page looks quite different from the future Meituan. Currently, the only takeout options available are Haowei Duck Neck, Haowei Milk Tea, and large chain convenience stores such as Meiyijia and 711-Eleven.

As for introducing other food vendors, that will have to wait until the initial success is achieved before proceeding.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes after ordering, Xu Qingfan's phone rang. As soon as he answered, the prepared script came through: "Hello, your takeout has arrived at the door. Please come out and pick it up."

"Okay, okay, come on now." Xu Qingfan suddenly had the illusion of ordering takeout in college in his previous life, and almost blurted out the words "just leave it downstairs".

The five girls were all shopping online for the first time, and they followed him out out of curiosity after he hung up the phone.

Sure enough, a food delivery guy was already standing at the entrance of the courtyard. He was wearing the red uniform of Haowei Food Delivery, with a work badge around his neck. The electric scooter parked behind him was also red and ordered by the company. He looked very professional.

Xiao Bai thought the stranger standing at the door was a bad person and barked at him.

"Your delicious takeout is ready. Please confirm receipt on your computer and leave a five-star review, thank you." The deliveryman respectfully handed over the takeout after Xu Qingfan and his group came out.

"Thank you for your hard work." He reached out and took the takeout. He had originally wanted to ask the person how many orders they had received that morning, but then he thought better of it and decided not to delay their work.

Xu Qingfan patted Xiaobai's head to encourage him, and the six of them returned to the house.

They squatted in front of the coffee table, huddled together, and examined the order slip on the packaging box.

The order information clearly shows the order time, the merchant's address, the phone number and shipping address he left on the website, and his ID: "The Most Honest Person in Licheng".

Xu Qingfan unpacked the package; both meat and vegetables were packed in separate containers, and there was no oil leakage whatsoever.

"How amazing! Brother Qingfan, does that mean we won't have to go out to buy things anymore?" Lin Wanning said, sipping milk tea and munching on a duck neck while gazing at Xu Qingfan with starry eyes.

All five girls knew that the idea for online food delivery came from Xu Qingfan. Now that the idea has become a reality, even though Zhang Chunxue arranged 99% of the work, they still admired Xu Qingfan immensely.

"It's not that easy. I guess it will take another two or three years." He recalled in his mind when touchscreen phones became widespread.

"Brother Fan, please tell us!"

"That's right, Brother Qingfan, please tell me!"

He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. "We'll probably have one of these when everyone has one."

"So what? This can't hold a SIM card!" Xia Xiaoxiao retorted immediately.

He couldn't remember which year Apple got its mobile phone license in China; anyway, since it couldn't access the internet or make phone calls, it was just a brick.

Xu Qingfan smacked Xia Xiaoxiao for interrupting and continued, "You can't access the internet now, but you can in the future. This kind of phone will definitely be the mainstream in the future. Everyone will be able to order takeout with their phone then. How convenient that will be! As the market grows, more merchants will come in, and then you can buy things without leaving home."

Most importantly, the cost of training a delivery rider is too high at present. Equipping them with a customized mobile phone and electric scooter costs a lot of money. In addition, the algorithm is not perfect yet, so it cannot achieve the same effect as in the previous era, where riders could grab orders on the platform and the shortest delivery route could be planned.

Currently, the only way to divide the area is by the stores with delicious duck necks. Each person is responsible for one area, and all orders within a three-kilometer radius belong to one person.

"That's wonderful! I can't wait for that day to come!" Xiao Ruanwen nodded, seemingly understanding.

Xu Qingfan squatted in front of the computer and clicked "delivered" for the product. On the subsequent review page, he gave the store and the deliveryman five-star reviews respectively. "It will definitely come when we are in the third year of junior high school at the latest."

"Here you go, Brother Fan!" Wu Lingyu helped him put a straw in the Yakult passion fruit tea and handed it to him.

"Mmm." Xu Qingfan stretched his neck and took a sip before taking it.

The recipe for this fruit tea was also provided by him, and since its launch, it has become a best-selling product along with another fruit tea called Grape Delight.

Good Taste Milk Tea's strategy is still the same as that of duck neck shops, except that instead of directly buying shops like the latter, it chooses to rent shops and start its business with a lighter approach.

Since the target audiences for milk tea and duck neck are almost completely overlapping, the location only needs to be next to Haowei Duck Neck, which saves a lot of time.

In just six months, Haowei Milk Tea has blossomed all over Lingnan Province. Almost wherever there is Haowei Duck Neck, there is a Haowei Milk Tea shop. The achievement of opening a thousand stores in half a year is truly impressive.

The headquarters of Haowei Milk Tea is located in Meicheng. In order to help her older brother, Zhang Chunxue directly invested 200 million yuan to open a store. Apart from the four first-tier cities, an investment of 200 million yuan in 2008 is not low anywhere. It can easily boost the local GDP by more than 1 billion yuan.

Although he only invested a few million in the milk tea shop, Zhang Chunxue still gave him 20% of the shares, and this was done without his prior notice.

After all, Xu Qingfan never thought that Zhang Chunxue would harm him, and he signed the documents for him without even looking at them.

"Let's drink as we walk, school's about to start." At two o'clock sharp, the living room clock chimed automatically, and Xu Qingfan snapped his fingers as he addressed the girls.

"Ok!"

After covering the unfinished delicious duck necks and putting them back in the refrigerator, they put on their backpacks and went out.

In December, Licheng was already a bit chilly, with temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius, requiring winter coats to keep warm.

Along the way, most of the students had unconventional hairstyles, their winter school uniforms zipped up completely, and their trousers were obviously altered to be short and narrow. They wore AJ sneakers, wired headphones, and walked with their hands in their pockets, exuding a cool and confident vibe. This was practically the coolest look that junior high school students could imagine.

Xu Qingfan and his six friends' aesthetic sense is arguably 20 years behind that of today's junior high school students; they simply cannot tolerate thick bangs or bowl cuts.

A few minutes later, they returned to Class 7-6. When the students saw them come in, they continued chatting amongst themselves. Almost a semester had passed, and everyone had formed their own circle. Xu Qingfan and his group of six had unsurprisingly isolated everyone else.

This week, it was their eighth group's turn to clean. After putting down her schoolbag, Wu Lingyu got up to fetch water and wipe the blackboard. "Who wants to come with me to take out the trash?" Xu Qingfan asked, looking around at everyone.

"Brother Qingfan, I'll go!" Lin Wanning eagerly raised his hand in response.

"Then the three of us will sweep the floor."

"Let's go." He put down his schoolbag and pulled Lin Wanning to his feet.

The school's garbage disposal area is several hundred meters away from the teaching building. It would be very boring if only one person took out the garbage. Therefore, even though one person could carry the garbage can, students still preferred to go to the garbage disposal area in groups.

Xu Qingfan was carrying a trash can full of fruit peels and packaging bags in his right hand, while Lin Wanning was chattering away on his left.

"Brother Qingfan, let me tell you, that girl in the group across from us definitely likes you. She turns her head to peek at you more than ten times during a class!" The silly girl obviously overlooked the fact that she was saying this, and at the same time, she also revealed the fact that she peeked at Xu Qingfan more than ten times during a class. Otherwise, how would she know that the girl in the next group had peeked at him more than ten times?

"How did Lin Wanning know that she looked at me more than ten times?" Lin Wanning couldn't figure it out, but he obviously wouldn't overlook it. Xu Qingfan turned his head and asked with a smile.

"I must have found it when I was looking at the blackboard!" the girl almost blurted out, but thankfully she was quick-witted and changed her words in time.

"You're always daydreaming in class, be careful you don't get the worst grade in the final exam!" Xu Qingfan shook his head and reached out to rub her head.

Lin Wanning stuck out her tongue, two shallow dimples appearing on her face, thinking to herself: [Thank goodness, Lord Ningning is quick-witted!]
"Which class are you two from? It's almost lunchtime, what are you doing here? Do you need two people to take out the trash?" Suddenly, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline walked quickly over from a distance, pointing in their direction and yelling.

Xu Qingfan raised his hand and looked at his watch. Morning reading time was 2:30, and it was only 2:15 now. What a load of crap!

He completely ignored the bald teacher in the distance, grabbed Lin Wanning's wrist, and continued walking forward.

"Is Brother Qingfan crazy? There are still ten minutes before morning reading, why are you saying we have to start right away!" Lin Wanning only dared to whisper in his ear.

"Ignore him. He's not a teacher in our grade. We'll just say 'three, two, one' and run together," Xu Qingfan whispered.

"Hmm!" The girl was secretly excited after hearing his suggestion.

After they finished emptying their trash in front of the garbage truck, the bald teacher was only five or six meters away from them when he shouted, "Didn't you hear me talking to you? Hand over your student IDs! You're so young and you're already trying to date!"

Xu Qingfan turned around to face him, pointed to himself, then to his ear, and finally waved his hand in front of his chest.

The bald teacher stood there in astonishment, wondering if he had ever heard of any deaf or mute people in the school.
Just as he began to regret his words and actions, Xu Qingfan suddenly grabbed Lin Wanning's hand and ran away.

"run!"

"Braise!" The bald man stood there dumbfounded for three or four seconds before realizing he had been tricked. He immediately burst into curses, "You two little brats, stop right there!"

"Hey, Liang Feifan!" Xu Qingfan didn't even turn his head, grabbing Lin Wanning's hand and running through the campus.

Beside him, a girl's cheerful laughter rang out, "Hahaha~ Brother Qingfan, let's run!"

They ran until they reached the corner of the teaching building before stopping. Xu Qingfan leaned on the stair railing, while Lin Wanning put her arm around his shoulder.

The two faced each other, panting, and couldn't help but burst into laughter again as they recalled how they had just tricked their teacher.

"Go back to the classroom first, don't let the Japanese devils catch up with us!" Although Xu Qingfan was not afraid of the other side, it would be disgusting to be caught and called in for a lecture.

"Ok!"

The two looked back and saw that the bald teacher still hadn't chased after them. They held hands and ran back to the classroom.

"Why are you running so fast? There aren't any dogs chasing you at school." Seeing the two of them sitting down, panting, Xiao Ruanwen asked curiously.

"Of course there was a dog chasing us!" Xu Qingfan immediately told the four women what had just happened, and they all burst into laughter again after hearing it.

Just as Xu Qingfan was about to speak, the loudspeaker above his head suddenly blared.

After a brief period of static, an exasperated middle-aged man's voice rang out, "Hey! You two male and female students who were just taking out the trash, I'm giving you three minutes to get to the school's first-floor broadcasting room, or you'll be suspended from the dorms!"

The students were all completely confused. After all, the content of the broadcast was already ambiguous. Two male students and two female students—did it mean two male students and two female students, or one male student and one female student?
Xu Qingfan and his six companions looked at each other in astonishment, then burst into laughter again after a moment.

“We weren’t staying overnight anyway, so it’s more like we should be staying here!” he mocked.

None of the six of them took such a trivial matter to heart. After all, they had already tried taking spontaneous trips, and their reverence for school dogma had almost completely vanished.

After lunch reading, the first class is English.

The English teacher stepped onto the podium and announced something important: "The week after next is the school's New Year's Eve party. Each class can submit one performance. Does anyone in our class have any talents? If not, the teacher will select one!"

A murmur rippled through the classroom. Some students mentioned performing skits in elementary school, while others said they had practiced guitar for ten years. But no one dared to raise their hand to speak.

"Brother Fan, let's form a band like we did in elementary school!" Singing under the spotlight had always been Xiao Ruanwen's dream, and she suggested with shining eyes.

"This is acceptable!"

"Brother Qingfan, get up quickly!"

Before Xu Qingfan could speak, Xia Xiaoxiao and Lin Wanning helped him to his feet.

"Does Qingfan have any talents?" the homeroom teacher asked respectfully as soon as he stood up.

The students in the classroom all quieted down.

"Teacher, we had a band when we were in elementary school, and we could sing songs and stuff," Xu Qingfan nodded and said.

"Then you can come. Come to my office after class to pick up the registration form." The homeroom teacher smiled kindly at him and made the decision on the spot without asking the opinions of the other students in the class.

With a good family background and excellent grades, what teacher wouldn't like such a student?
"Open the vocabulary list for Unit 7 and let's begin the lesson!"

(End of this chapter)