Chapter 72 - 73: The Younger Generation Begins to Take Up the Mantle

Chapter 72: Chapter 73: The Younger Generation Begins to Take Up the Mantle

When they arrived at the fish pond, Wang Tao called his workers over to unload the goods.

Chen Yuan pulled him aside to the flat clearing on the slope and pointed at the hillside in the middle.

"I fought to get this approved. That means I expect nothing but top-quality work. I’ll be inspecting everything myself, and if anything doesn’t pass, you can pack up and crawl back to wherever you came from."

Chen Yuan’s face was dead serious.

There was absolutely no room for error here. The fish pond was right below — if something went wrong, it’d be exactly like Uncle Bin said: no amount of heads would be enough to pay for it.

"This is small potatoes, Boss Chen. We’ve tackled way bigger mountain excavations than this — hollowed out whole hillsides. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Quality’s going to be absolutely top-notch."

Wang Tao was completely unfazed.

"I’m giving you full authority over this, so make it count. Do a good job and the rewards won’t disappoint — on top of what you’ve already asked for, there’ll be bonus points too."

The carrot and the stick.

He wasn’t particularly worried about the system workers, but a good balance of rewards and pressure always got the best results.

"Now that’s what I like to hear."

Wang Tao broke into a wide grin. Nothing motivated him quite like points.

"Go ahead and run with it. This project is entirely yours to manage."

Chen Yuan waved his hand and turned to head back.

He didn’t know the first thing about the specifics of construction — keeping an eye on quality was enough.

"The construction side’s fine, but we really need to stay on top of the points situation. Otherwise, we won’t be able to keep up the pace."

Wang Tao pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Chen Yuan.

He was ready to go all out, but that depended on Boss Chen keeping the supplies coming. As long as Boss Chen held up his end, he could push the progress to the absolute limit.

Ugh~

Every time he thought about points, it gave him a headache.

Was it really time to get a membership program on the table?

Better look into it first — that way, when the time came, he’d be ready to roll it out without hesitation.

With that in mind, Chen Yuan finished his cigarette and headed home to work on the membership idea.

Noticing there were still a few packs of cigarettes in the truck bed, he briefly wondered whether he should swing by the village committee.

"Forget it. If anything comes up with Zhou Jianming, Uncle Bin will definitely give me a heads-up."

He dropped the idea and went straight upstairs the moment he got home.

He fired up the computer, opened a document, and sat there at his desk with a cigarette dangling from his lips, thinking.

A membership program was inevitable — the question was how to design one for Chen Yuan Fishing Ground. Should he take cues from other fishing venues, or look at what membership models were already out there?

"The usual membership tricks are all pretty much the same — monthly passes, annual passes, top-up discounts like ’spend a thousand and get a bonus.’ None of it is all that exciting."

Chen Yuan muttered to himself, cigarette still in the corner of his mouth.

Monthly and annual passes were, without a doubt, the fastest way to recoup cash. Plenty of industries ran on that model — streaming platforms, for instance. It brought money in upfront and kept customers locked in.

Once you’ve bought a monthly or annual pass, how could you not use it?

But applying that model to a fishing ground was a different story — hard to say whether it’d be a blessing or a disaster. Your average weekend angler was fine, but if you got someone like Wang Heng, the kind of guy who fished like it was his full-time job, an annual pass could run you straight into the ground.

As for bonus-on-top-up deals, that was just cutting straight into your own profits.

Give too little and customers couldn’t care less. Give too much and it hurt to watch the money walk out the door. There was no easy middle ground.

"So how should the membership be structured? Or better yet — what’s the angle that’s actually going to blow up?"

Chen Yuan took a long, hard drag without even realizing he’d lit the cigarette.

He’d done sales in his past life. He knew better than anyone how critical a product’s selling point was. Take fishing grounds — if everyone’s offering memberships, why would anyone pick yours? What’s your edge?

The Fish King?

That was a solid hook, sure. It had worked well early on. But once other fishing grounds caught on, what was stopping them from sourcing their own trophy fish? It wasn’t like he had an exclusive patent on big catches.

Strong cashback rewards were the same story — if he could offer it, so could everyone else.

When you stripped it all back, it came down to one thing: no technical barrier meant it could be copied overnight, which meant it could never be a truly explosive selling point.

"Even with the system backing me up, I could still grind out the competition playing that game — but it’s still not enough. Maybe~"

Something clicked for Chen Yuan.

Same principle as always: what you have that others don’t is your advantage. Since the perks side of things was pretty much the same everywhere and a truly explosive discount model was hard to pull off, he could focus on adding value in other ways — things that actually made the membership feel worth having.

Like service.

Like unlocking certain perks once the fishing ground’s construction was further along.

Now that the fishing ground and the village were tied together, there was a whole lot of room to work with.

The downside was that rolling out the membership wouldn’t just be delayed — it’d have to be pushed back even further.

"Then so be it. If the membership can’t demonstrate real value, it’s not worth launching at all."

Chen Yuan had his direction. He stubbed out the cigarette, flipped open the document, and started hammering away at the keyboard. The ideas just kept coming — he couldn’t stop if he tried. The only sound in the room was the rapid clatter of keys.

He had no idea how much time had passed, and only finally stopped when Tang Ying’s voice drifted up from downstairs calling him to dinner.

"Whoa."

He hadn’t noticed while he was in the zone, but now that he’d stopped, he could see the document had sprawled across several pages — covering not just plans for the fishing ground, but ideas for developing the village too.

"When the time’s right, I need to sit down with Uncle Bin and go through all of this."

Chen Yuan was satisfied with what he’d put together. There were still gaps to fill in, but he’d come back to it later tonight.

He closed the laptop and headed downstairs, humming a little tune to himself.

"What were you even doing up there? I called forever and nothing — thought you’d fallen asleep."

Tang Ying came into the main room carrying dishes and waved Chen Yuan over to eat.

Liu Fang followed close behind her.

As for his dad, Chen Dequan, and his uncle’s family, they must have spent a while tending to the vegetable patch — they were just now riding back on the three-wheeler, a few bundles of greens sitting in the truck bed.

"Dinner’s a bit early tonight, so let’s eat first and go back to feed the chickens and pigs after."

Chen Jun hopped off the vehicle and waved for his older brother to come eat.

The meal was simple — just a few straightforward dishes, but more than enough to go around.

"Uncle, tomorrow just stay home and wait. If any customers drive up, they’ll stop at your place first — go ahead and walk them over to the pond. If parking gets tight on our end, I’ll round up a group and bring everyone over to yours, then we’ll head to the pond together."

After dinner, Chen Yuan went around lighting cigarettes for everyone and laid out the plan for the next day.

"No problem. I’ll be ready by six. Just call if you need anything and I’ll be there."

Chen Dequan lit his cigarette and nodded along.

"Once you’ve sorted out the customers, go back to your own stuff — laundry, the fields, whatever needs doing. Come over for lunch."

Chen Yuan grabbed a few stools and they all settled in the courtyard for a good chat.

"Oh, and Aunt Liu — you’ll need to come by a little early. Around ten o’clock to help get the cooking started."

"No problem with me."

Liu Fang’s voice floated out from the kitchen.

"One more thing — everyone needs to get their food handler certificates sorted. Running a food operation means you can’t skip that paperwork."

Chen Yuan brought it up casually, even though he’d already quietly taken care of it through the system. But it still needed to be said out loud.

Otherwise, if inspectors came down someday and he just whipped out the certificates, his aunt and the others would be completely bewildered — when did those get sorted, and nobody ever asked them for their information?

"Of course. Whatever details you need, we’ll send them to you on WeChat."

His uncle chimed in.

Yuan really had his head screwed on right — everything above board, nothing overlooked.

"You heading over to the pond later?"

Chen Jun looked over at Chen Yuan.

"Nah, I’m not going. The crew seems solid enough."

Chen Yuan shook his head. He still had the document to work on, and he trusted Wang Tao to handle things.

"Then I’ll go take a look."

It wasn’t out of concern for the crew — he was just curious. The way the pond had looked that morning had been genuinely impressive, and he was dying to see what it’d look like by tonight.

"Don’t stay out too late. Tomorrow’s the first night fishing session — it’s a big milestone for the ground. You need to be rested and ready to make it count."

Chen Yuan threw the reminder out there.

"Like I don’t already know that."

Chen Jun rolled his eyes at Chen Yuan — hard to tell what he meant by it — but Chen Kingdom and Chen Dequan both burst out laughing beside him.

The laughter gradually softened into quiet smiles and gentle shakes of the head.

Here was Yuan reminding his own father what to do, managing everything with total precision — and yet, there was no denying he had a firm grip on the helm of the fishing ground.

Their generation was getting old. The younger ones were already picking up the banner.

They chatted for a while longer, and once the kitchen was cleaned up, the other two families headed home.

Chen Yuan said his goodbyes, then went back upstairs, sat down at the computer, and carefully read through the document again, thinking about what else needed to be fleshed out or added.

Out of habit, he tucked a cigarette between his lips, and before long he was back in the zone — the steady clatter of keys filling the room.

"Whoa, it’s already ten o’clock." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

When he finally sat back and stretched, Chen Yuan was genuinely surprised to see it was already ten.

"Alright. Wash up and sleep."

He made sure everything was saved, then shut down the computer and went to get ready for bed.

Once he was done, he flopped onto the bed, pulled out his phone, and scrolled through WeChat. Nothing that needed dealing with. He set his alarm, put the phone down, rolled over, and closed his eyes.

An early night, for once~