Li Xiao picked up a mantis shrimp dripping with sauce. He easily peeled off its shell along the seams of its carapace.
The plump, tender mantis shrimp meat glistened. After marinating for well over half an hour, the once translucent meat had absorbed the sauce and turned a light brown.
As the mantis shrimp meat entered his mouth, a spicy aroma hit him, followed by the fresh sweetness and plump tenderness of the meat.
Unlike the intensely flavored raw marinated crab, the mantis shrimp had a cleaner, sweeter taste.
The texture was incredibly delicate, practically melting in his mouth.
After swallowing the mantis shrimp, Li Xiao picked up a sea prawn.
The sea prawn was slightly smaller than the mantis shrimp, only about the size of a middle finger.
Peeling off the shell, he popped the whole thing into his mouth and his eyes instantly narrowed in pleasure.
‘Wild sea prawns are really something else. The meat is so firm and springy.’
Because the sea prawn’s meat was firmer, it had absorbed the least amount of flavor in the same amount of time.
But because of this, the light taste of the raw marinade actually brought out the prawn’s natural sweetness perfectly.
Satisfied, Li Xiao finished the entire box of sea prawns and mantis shrimp before opening the last container of raw marinated seafood.
This box contained all sorts of shellfish, including clams and sea snails.
However, this last box was a little different from the first two.
The seafood inside was cooked.
Shellfish are very different from shrimp and crabs; they carry a higher risk, so it’s better to cook them before marinating.
Strictly speaking, this last box couldn’t be called “raw marinated” but rather “cooked marinated.”
As the name implies, “cooked marinated” means the ingredients are cooked before being marinated.
While this method reduces the seafood’s natural sweetness, it’s much safer.
Li Xiao picked up a sea snail.
He tossed the meat, dripping with broth, into his mouth and chewed it carefully.
‘Just as I thought.’ The cooked snail meat had become much firmer.
Such a short marination time was nowhere near enough for the flavor of the sauce to fully penetrate the snail meat.
Although salt had been added to the boiling water to give it a base flavor when the snails were cooked, the inside of the meat was still somewhat bland.
Cooked marinated sea snails like this needed to be refrigerated for at least 24 hours to be thoroughly flavored.
Half an hour was far too short; the flavor only clung to the surface.
Still, they were fresh enough, so Li Xiao, dipping them in the rich sauce, polished off the entire box of shellfish anyway.
He let out a small burp. The three boxes of marinated seafood didn’t look like much, but eating it all was quite filling.
Full and satisfied, the four of them got back into the car and looked at the hotel address Li Xiao had sent.
Zhou Shishi blinked. She was about to ask something, but she quickly remembered her boss’s extravagance and swallowed her words.
The hotel was a ways from the old town. It took a good twenty-minute drive before they pulled up to the entrance of a luxury hotel.
Seeing the name on the hotel’s sign, Wen Churen, who had been playing on her phone, could no longer sit still.
“Wait! Marriott International?”
“Isn’t this hotel way too expensive?”
“Should we find another one?”
Wen Yaqian, sitting next to her, nodded repeatedly.
“Yes, yes, let’s switch. This is a five-star hotel! I heard a regular room costs 1,000 yuan a night. That’s a bit too pricey.”
Even though Li Xiao had promised before they left that he would cover all expenses for the trip, they had originally assumed that even if he booked a nice hotel, it would be one in the three-to-four-hundred-yuan-a-night range.
They never imagined he would actually choose the most expensive hotel in the area.
Li Xiao shook his head.
“What are you talking about? I already booked the rooms before we left. If we switch now, we won’t get a refund.”
“I said before we left that I’d cover everything. You don’t need to worry about the cost.”
As Li Xiao’s assistant, Zhou Shishi had seen a thing or two by now.
Her boss was the type to give away millions during a single livestream; a hotel fee of one or two thousand was nothing to him.
So she quickly chimed in to agree.
“Sister Wen, don’t worry.”
“This week alone, our boss has given away nearly 10 million yuan in benefits to his livestream viewers.”
“The cost of these rooms really is nothing to him.”
“Besides, this place is pretty close to the Wandering God area. It’ll be more convenient for us when we have to get up in the middle of the night.”
“Didn’t you guys say that the whole area will be closed to traffic? If we stayed at another hotel, we’d have to figure out how to get there.”
As they spoke, the car pulled into a parking spot.
Wen Churen did know a little about Li Xiao.
She knew that he planned to invest 10 million yuan in just the first phase of his milk tea shop project.
At that thought, her recent worries began to fade a little.
The four of them grabbed their luggage and walked into the lobby.
The moment they entered, a bellhop immediately took their luggage and placed it on a cart.
The bellhop pushed the cart and followed the four of them. Although Zhou Shanshan wasn’t a personal assistant, her work ethic was quite proactive.
After asking for the relevant information, she walked quickly to the front desk to handle the check-in.
After confirming the reservation number, the pretty young lady at the front desk suddenly looked confused.
She looked over the group of four with a suspicious gaze while checking their booking details.
She wondered if there was a problem with her computer system. Otherwise, she must have been working for too long and her eyes were playing tricks on her.
She had been working at Marriott International for a long time and had served all sorts of guests.
Never mind a handsome guy with three beautiful women—she had seen plenty of groups with one pretty girl and a dozen greasy middle-aged men, or one handsome young stud with a dozen middle-aged aunties.
However, she had truly never seen a group with one handsome guy and three beautiful women book three presidential suites.
‘Did they make a mistake when entering the quantity while booking?’
Things like that had happened before.
If it were daytime, an incorrect order like this could be canceled directly.
But it was almost 11 p.m. now, and all reservations were locked in and couldn’t be canceled.
If the guests had really made a mistake and booked more rooms than they needed, they would likely cause a scene.
After all, a single presidential suite cost 16,000 yuan a night.
Even if the guests here were all rich or powerful, they would most likely care about that kind of money.
So, she asked cautiously,
“Excuse me, miss, I see in the system that this phone number was used to book three presidential suites. Did you book all of them?”
Zhou Shishi was taken aback by the receptionist’s words and blurted out instinctively,
“What? Three presidential suites?”
Hearing Zhou Shishi’s reaction, the receptionist thought, ‘Oh no.’
‘Just as I thought! These guests really did enter the wrong quantity.’
Growing anxious, she reached for her walkie-talkie, preparing to call the lobby manager over to handle the situation.
After all, she was just a lowly front desk receptionist; she didn’t have the authority to handle changes to a booking for rooms as expensive as the presidential suites.