Chapter 10: The Elder Has a Complaint

The Clear River Sect group stopped outside the teahouse.

Seven of them this time. Young Master Han stood up front with his chin tilted at an angle that had clearly taken years of practice. Behind him, five disciples. Behind them, one old man in a plain gray robe.

The old man carried no weapon at all.

That worried Lin Fan far more than any sword would have. In his experience, people who carried weapons wanted you to notice them. People who didn't bother were usually the reason everyone else did.

Lin Fan glanced at his six workers.

The bandits drifted subtly away from the cup basin, suddenly very interested in the floor. Crimson stood by the entrance holding a tray, face calm, eyes locked on the old man like he was cataloguing exits.

"Nobody fights," Lin Fan muttered.

The leader nodded. Crimson nodded. Neither of them looked particularly convinced by their own agreement.

The old man stepped inside first.

Han jabbed a finger at Lin Fan. "That's him."

Lin Fan pointed right back. "That's the customer who paid."

Han's face flushed. "Elder, he insulted me!"

"How, exactly?"

"He didn't recognize my identity!"

The elder glanced at Lin Fan.

"In fairness," Lin Fan said, spreading his hands, "he told me his name after ordering. I can't recognize a stranger before he's introduced himself. That's just bad customer service on his end."

The elder's gaze slid back to Han, who opened his mouth and produced absolutely nothing.

Lin Fan had served enough entitled customers to know a simple rule: the louder someone insisted their name should cover the bill, the more carefully you counted their coins.

The elder walked to yesterday's table, surveying the cups, the kettle, the suspiciously clean floor, and five very still bandits lined up behind the counter like a police lineup that had shown up voluntarily.

"You forced my disciple to pay?"

"No. I offered two options."

"Which were?"

"Two Spirit Stones, or wash cups."

Silence. One disciple studied the ceiling with sudden intense interest. Another kept sneaking glances at Crimson, who was still holding that tray like it might be evidence in a trial.

Lin Fan had no idea why his own staff kept looking at Crimson like he was a landmine waiting on someone to step wrong.

The elder turned to Han. "Did you drink the tea?"

"...Yes."

"Did you pay?"

"Yes."

"Did you leave a review?"

Han's shoulders went rigid as a fence post.

"What review?" the elder asked, turning to Lin Fan.

Lin Fan produced the board proudly.

Tranquility Tea — 5/5.

The elder read it. Read it again, as if the second pass might reveal a different answer. Looked at Han.

"You gave five stars?"

Through gritted teeth: "The tea was acceptable."

"Then why," the elder said slowly, in the tone of a man doing math that wasn't adding up, "did you drag me all the way out here?"

"Because he made me pay for it!"

The elder blinked. "...That is generally how tea works."

"He threatened me with a broom!"

"I showed you the broom," Lin Fan corrected. "There's a difference."

"You clearly intended to use it."

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"Only if you'd bolted without paying. Which, statistically, you would have."

The elder's eyes drifted to the broom leaning by the counter — an entirely unremarkable broom, worn handle, a few loose bristles near the bottom — and, out of pure habit, brushed it with spiritual sense.

His face changed instantly.

The broom sat there, completely opaque to his senses, offering nothing back. He withdrew his perception fast, like he'd touched something hot.

Lin Fan misread the expression entirely. "It's not for sale, if that's what you're wondering."

The elder's lips twitched, somewhere between offense and disbelief.

Han looked like he wanted the floor to open and take him.

"We did not come here for a broom," the elder said, with visible effort.

"Good. It has sentimental value. I've had it since day one."

The five bandits turned away in unison, shoulders shaking with what was very obviously not coughing.

Crimson remained deadly serious, quietly trying to work out how a stick with bristles had acquired sentimental value in under two weeks.

The elder sat down. "Bring me the tea."

Lin Fan slid over the menu. "Two Spirit Stones."

"I am an elder of the Clear River Sect."

"Congratulations. Two Spirit Stones."

The eyebrow twitched. "The price does not change for rank?"

"The price doesn't change for age either, before you try that next."

A disciple coughed sharply into his sleeve. The elder turned his head with slow, terrible precision. The disciple found the ceiling fascinating again.

Lin Fan replayed his own sentence and winced. "I meant — experience. Wisdom. Very respectable wisdom."

"I understood you the first time."

"...Good."

The elder set down two Spirit Stones. Lin Fan checked them, pocketed them, and started brewing.

"What did you do to the bandits?" the elder asked, watching him work.

"Gave them tea."

"They were notorious criminals."

"They're probationary workers now."

"You turned bandits into staff with tea?"

"They asked for the job afterward. I just went along with it."

The elder turned to the bandits directly. "Is that true?"

The leader stepped forward, chest out, like he'd been waiting his whole life for this exact question. "We drank the tea. We remembered our crimes. We paid for a second cup. We washed the dishes. We confronted a wronged merchant. We accepted employment."

The elder's expression cracked slightly. "You remembered your crimes... and then ordered a second cup?"

The broken-bowl bandit nodded, entirely earnest. "The second one was also very good."

The elder looked at Lin Fan like he was reassessing a threat level.

Lin Fan just shrugged. "A good product earns repeat customers. That's just business."

The elder accepted his tea but didn't drink right away. He studied the color, the rising steam, the smell, circling a thread of spiritual sense around the surface of the cup, hunting for a hidden formation or trace poison.

He found nothing at all.

"If you stare at it that long," Lin Fan said, "it's going to get cold."

"You are not worried I'll uncover your secret?"

"There isn't one. It's tea. It's genuinely, boringly just tea."

The elder finally drank.

The first sip hit and the memories arrived — stacks of unfiled reports, broken training dummies nobody had replaced in months, disciples squabbling over storage bags, an elder pounding on his door at midnight because someone's prized chicken had gone missing from the medicine garden.

For thirty years he'd believed being an elder meant fixing every single problem personally. Sitting here now, tea in hand, he suddenly recalled the wild, radical concept that a sect was supposed to have other people to solve problems.

The tea hadn't shown him some grand cosmic truth.

It had shown him a staffing issue.

He lowered the cup slowly.

"Too strong?" Lin Fan asked.

"No."

"Too weak?"

"No."

"Then why the face of a man who just remembered an overdue bill?"

The elder exhaled. "I have made... poor arrangements."

Lin Fan nodded with genuine sympathy. "Happens to every business owner eventually. You need better middle management."

The five bandits looked at the elder.

The elder looked at Lin Fan.

For one brief, shining moment, the two of them understood each other completely.

Unfortunately, they understood entirely different things. The elder was fairly convinced Lin Fan had just seen straight through the rot at the core of his entire sect's leadership structure with a single glance. Lin Fan simply thought the old man needed to hire a better assistant.

The elder finished his tea, set the cup down, and said, "The tea is good."

Lin Fan handed him the board. He wrote his five stars with slow, deliberate strokes, like signing a treaty.

Han stared, betrayed. "Elder?!"

The old man ignored him entirely.

"Thank you for the honest review," Lin Fan said, pocketing the board.

[Legitimate customer service recorded.][Hospitality Points increased: 123 → 125.]

The elder placed both hands flat on the table. "I apologize for my disciple's conduct."

"Elder!"

"You refused to pay for tea you had already ordered."

"I did pay."

"Only after threatening the shopkeeper."

"I never threatened him!"

Every single person in the room turned to look at Han.

Han remembered the broom. His face did something complicated and defeated.

The elder rose and bowed, just slightly, toward Lin Fan.

Crimson moved instantly, hand darting for the weapon at his hip.

The old man's entire body went rigid.

Lin Fan grabbed Crimson's sleeve before things escalated into a diplomatic incident. "He's bowing."

"He moved suddenly."

"That's what an apology looks like."

"It could have been an attack disguised as a bow."

"He already paid for his tea. Nobody who's paid attacks."

Crimson considered this with the gravity of a man weighing empires, and slowly let go of the hilt.

The elder had caught the whole exchange — one instant of Crimson's killing intent, cold and bottomless, stopped by nothing more than a hand on a sleeve.

He bowed a second time, much lower, much more carefully.

"We will not disturb your business further."

"Appreciate that. Come back if you liked the tea."

The elder's expression turned unexpectedly solemn.

"We will remember this invitation."

"...It's really just a normal invitation. You're welcome to leave a tip too, if that helps."

The Clear River Sect filed out.

Lin Fan watched the door swing shut. "That went better than I expected."

Lin Fan went back to the counter and counted the take. Two fresh Spirit Stones, sitting pretty in the box.

Outside, down the road, the elder was walking briskly, Han trailing behind him.

"There is terrifying, world-class expert currently serving tea with a bandaged chest."

Han went pale.

The elder's voice dropped even lower. "Do not, under any circumstance, provoke that shopkeeper."

"The shopkeeper? Not the terrifying expert?"

"The expert is dangerous. The shopkeeper is the one who's already tamed one."

Back inside, Lin Fan looked over his clean cups, his lopsided sign, and his very strange staff.

"Tomorrow," he said, "we need better advertising."

Six pairs of eyes turned to him at once.

Lin Fan smiled, tired and a little bitter around the edges.

"Preferably the kind that doesn't mention bandits, mysterious experts, or brooms."