Chapter 231 - 201: As Someone Who’s Been Through It, Don’t Come Over

Chapter 231: Chapter 201: As Someone Who’s Been Through It, Don’t Come Over

"Ha, well I’m a fishing ground employee now — I applied for the security guard position."

"Same, I’m security too."

"I applied to be a server."

"I’m on the cleaning crew."

"Yuan, are there any spots left? I want to apply too."

Chen Yuan looked around at the villagers. Quite a few had been hired, and there were still more looking to sign up. Not that it was any of his business — his sister and Uncle Bin were handling all the interviews and onboarding.

"Boss Chen, when’s the hot spring opening?"

After chatting with the villagers for a bit, Chen Yuan was just about to head back and start working out the pricing and launch promotions when a few of his regular fishing buddies came over.

"Give it another couple of days. The kids’ zone and the food court upstairs still aren’t ready."

Chen Yuan pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them around one by one.

"Come on, Boss Chen, hurry it up. My wife nags me every single day to take the kid out somewhere fun. I keep telling her your place is almost open."

"Right? Summer break’s almost over, and the little gremlin is bouncing off the walls. If I don’t take the kid and his mom out for a good time before school starts, my freedom ends with the summer~"

The guys took the cigarettes and let out weary sighs.

Every one of them had a family waiting at home — wives, kids, the whole deal. Sneaking off to go fishing wasn’t exactly without consequences.

And on top of that, it was summer vacation. The kids were home all day. Skipping out on family time and running off to fish instead of taking them somewhere fun?

Who’s watching the kids and doing the chores?

"Hearing you guys talk like this is honestly making me scared of marriage."

Chen Yuan laughed it off.

"Heh, speaking from experience, Boss Chen — my advice? Don’t do it."

"And if you must, put it off as long as you can. The sooner you jump in, the sooner the suffering starts."

A few men bonded over their shared misery, finding unexpected kinship in their complaints. They made plans to stay overnight next time and have a proper drink together.

"A man who’s full can’t understand a hungry man’s pain."

Chen Yuan rolled his eyes. Easy for married guys to say it’s no fun — what was that supposed to make a single guy feel?

"And a hungry man can’t understand how drained a full man gets~"

His fishing buddy shot the look right back at him.

It was like that old saying about the city — the people inside want out, and the people outside want in. Everyone romanticizes the road they didn’t take.

But you should never put a halo on the choices you didn’t make. That other path feels full of possibilities precisely because you’ve never walked it. If you had, it might not be any better than where you are now.

"Hey, drained sounds pretty good to me. I’d love the chance to be drained."

Chen Yuan wasn’t afraid of being worn out — he was afraid of never getting started in the first place.

"That’s easy to fix, Boss Chen. With your business booming like this, you could have a new girl every night if you wanted. Honestly, just say the word."

The guys laughed and ribbed him.

Chen Yuan just shrugged. Sure, the world out there was full of glittering temptations — but the prettier it looked, the more toxic it was. Any one of them could drag a man straight into the gutter.

All just jokes, of course.

The attractions here would be up and running in a few more days at most. Once they were, these guys could bring their wives and kids over and have a proper family outing. That ought to keep the complaints at home to a minimum.

"Boss Chen, why not open up the ground floor first? I’m dying to try out those hot spring pools."

More fishing regulars wandered over.

Once the building had been opened up for viewing, everyone had rushed through it excitedly — second floor, third floor, rooftop, the works. Now that there was nothing new to see up there, they’d come back down to check out the hot spring area.

Hadn’t even cast a line, and already thinking about splashing around~

"Good things are worth waiting for. Once everything’s properly sorted, you’ll have a much better time. There are still plenty of details to iron out."

Chen Yuan was just as eager to open, but "as soon as possible" didn’t mean rushing it and cutting corners. He needed the equipment and fit-out fully finished, the pricing set, and the launch promotions locked in — only then could he give guests the experience they deserved.

Besides.

He hadn’t done a single bit of promotion yet. Opening on a whim with no plan was a recipe for disaster.

Uncle Bin and Uncle Dong were both watching closely. If this first step went badly, everything that followed would only get harder. He couldn’t afford to be careless.

After wrapping up with the fishing crowd, Chen Yuan sent them off toward the water, then hopped on his three-wheeler, headed back, grabbed his laptop from upstairs, and rode out to Old Pond.

The regulars over there were just as impatient for him to open, and the fishing group chat was buzzing with chatter too.

Photos and videos of the hot spring pools, the restaurant fit-out, and the rooftop garden had already been posted to the group by the Old Pond regulars, and the response was exactly what you’d expect — people were chomping at the bit to come and bring their families and friends along.

It wasn’t just about showing support, either.

Whether you looked at the scale or the setting, Chen Yuan’s hot spring operation was genuinely top-tier for all of Chong City. Plenty of places with nothing more than a single big pool still had lines out the door.

Chen Yuan’s setup had over a dozen pools, including two massive ones each spanning more than a thousand square meters. A Tsunami Pool that size was a rarity even in the provincial capital.

Chen Yuan kept the chat short, then settled into the office, opened his laptop, and got to work drafting the rules, pricing structure, and promotional plans for Hot Spring Paradise.

First up: the rules.

Starting with parking.

"No parking fee. It’s small change — not worth the hassle."

With a wave of his hand, parking was free.

Next, operating hours.

"Hot spring hours don’t have to match the fishing ground’s, but if someone’s out here fishing and wants to bring their family over to enjoy the facilities, I can’t exactly turn them away in the morning."

Chen Yuan turned the question of operating hours over in his mind.

Typically, hot spring facilities ran from the afternoon into the evening. Mornings were dead — almost nobody came, so most places didn’t bother opening that early.

But his hot spring was tied to the fishing ground, and he had to think about how the two worked together.

He couldn’t have someone’s family sitting around waiting until the afternoon to get in, especially when the daytime fishing session would be wrapping up right around then — leave together or stick around? That was an awkward spot to put people in.

"Let’s open at nine. Mornings are slow anyway, so we can just run with a skeleton crew."

Chen Yuan thought it over and settled on that.

For closing time, he landed on eleven at night. A good soak before bed was perfect, and by the time the hot spring wrapped up, the night fishing crowd would be heading out around the same time anyway.

That had another bonus too.

If a fishing regular brought his family along, the family could finish up with time to spare — shower, dry their hair, get their things together at a leisurely pace, and head home together.

"Hot Spring Paradise needs its own separate hours."

Sure, there were streetlights outside, but the Tsunami Pool was no place for late-night sessions — poor visibility, too easy for something to go wrong. Same went for the Paradise Pool.

So the Tsunami Pool and Paradise Pool would run nine in the morning to seven in the evening. It was summer, so it stayed light late — visibility at seven was still perfectly fine, and that was a natural time for guests to wind down and head in.

If they wanted dinner, they could eat first. If they still wanted to swim or soak, the indoor pools were right there with proper lighting and no safety concerns.

"The Tsunami Pool can’t run continuously — let’s set it to go off every two hours for now."

That was actually a pretty solid frequency. Most hot spring resorts ran their wave pools just twice a day, and if you missed it, that was that.

Chen Yuan was scheduling five sessions, which was more than enough to guarantee that virtually every guest could catch the Tsunami Pool at least once.

And most day-trippers would only be there during daylight hours, with plenty of guests likely heading out before the later sessions anyway.

Operating hours were the easy part — adjustable as needed. The real challenge was pricing.

"Ideally, one ticket covers everything."

Chen Yuan liked things clean and simple. Buy one ticket, cover it all — Flower Sea, hot springs, dining, cultural experiences. Easy for guests, easy for him.

But that wasn’t going to work across the board.

Individual attractions needed their own pricing, and he had to account for different group sizes. Some guests came solo, some brought kids, some came as a whole family or with a group of friends.

"One thing at a time."

Start with the all-access pass — full admission to every attraction.

Then individual attraction tickets.

Then bundle packages for different group sizes and combinations of attractions.

Like a one-adult-one-child ticket.

What about two adults and one child?

Or two adults and two kids?

And the more attractions you included, the more the price shifted.

It all sounded simple enough on the surface, but the simpler something seemed, the bigger the headache when you actually sat down to work it out. Chen Yuan frowned, typed, deleted, and started over, again and again.

He spent the entire morning parked in the office. The ashtray was nearly overflowing with cigarette butts.

It wasn’t until Chen Dequan and Liu Fang showed up at Old Pond with lunchboxes and side dishes that he finally closed the laptop with something close to satisfaction.

"Done. Finally."

He shut the lid, stretched out with a long exhale, and let himself go slack. Working through all that was genuinely exhausting~