Chapter 11: Advertising Is Also Dangerous

Lin Fan had learned something useful from the Clear River Sect visit: a good complaint, handled right, was basically free advertising.

The elder had shown up with seven people, paid in full, apologized, and left while personally warning his own disciple never to provoke the teahouse again.

That was practically a five-star endorsement.

Unfortunately, it was also the exact kind of endorsement that made ordinary folks picture a secret organization stuffed with terrifying killers who just happened to also serve tea.

Lin Fan decided this needed fixing before word spread any further.

He grabbed a clean board and wrote:

LIN'S TEAHOUSETranquility Tea — 2 Spirit StonesFirst cup free for new customersNo fighting inside

He stepped back and admired it. Simple. Honest. Nothing about ancient inheritances or Heavenly trials anywhere on it.

Then the bandit leader wandered over, read it twice, and got a very particular gleam in his eye — the same gleam he got right before suggesting something Lin Fan would have to shut down immediately.

He borrowed the charcoal without asking and, before Lin Fan could stop him, had already added a small skull in the corner, complete with tiny crossed swords underneath.

Lin Fan stared at the addition for a long moment, then wiped it off with his sleeve, smearing charcoal across half the board in the process.

"We sell tea," he said. "We are not declaring war on a neighboring province."

The leader looked genuinely wounded, like an artist watching his masterpiece get erased. He opened his mouth to argue.

That was when Crimson walked out holding a second board of his own — apparently he'd been working on this quietly for the better part of an hour, off in a corner, with the focused dedication of a man carving his own tombstone.

One line, gouged deep into the wood in enormous, uneven letters, like he'd used pure intent instead of a proper chisel.

ENTER WITH RESPECT. LEAVE ALIVE.

Lin Fan looked at it. Looked at Crimson, who was holding it up proudly, clearly expecting praise. Looked back at the sign.

He took it, walked it behind the counter without a word, and leaned it face-down against the wall where nobody would have to see it again.

Crimson's face fell like a man watching his firstborn get grounded.

The five bandits, watching all this, immediately began quietly retrieving the sign the second Lin Fan's back was turned, passing it hand to hand toward a hiding spot near the firewood pile like they were smuggling contraband.

Lin Fan pretended not to notice. He didn't have the energy today.

He handed everyone a stack of plain paper flyers instead — name, price, hours, nothing more — and sent the whole crew down the road to distribute them.

He should have gone with them. He would regret this decision within the hour.

The first stretch went fine. Then, from a bend in the road, Lin Fan — trailing a safe distance behind out of pure suspicion — watched an entire family of travelers spot his five armed employees approaching with rolled-up papers and simply vanish sideways into the bushes, luggage and all, with the speed of animals that had survived predators before.

A basket rolled loose across the dirt and nobody came back for it.

The leader stood there for a moment, staring at the empty road, genuinely baffled, before crouching down to peer into the bushes like he might spot a customer hiding there and politely wave them back out.

Lin Fan jogged up, snatched the flyers out of everyone's hands, and personally called into the bushes in his best warm, unthreatening voice: "It's just tea! First cup's free! Nobody here bites — much!"

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That last word slipped out before he could stop it. He regretted it instantly.

A branch rustled anyway. A middle-aged man peeked out first, one eye on Lin Fan, one eye on the five very large, very armed men standing a polite distance away trying their best to look friendly, which mostly involved them all smiling at slightly different intervals like a poorly rehearsed chorus line.

It did not help.

The man came out anyway, tea being tea, followed by his wife and a small daughter clutching a woven basket to her chest like it contained the family fortune.

They entered the teahouse the way people enter a room they suspect might be on fire.

Lin Fan brewed three cups fast, hands moving on autopilot while he mentally drafted several new rules about supervised advertising. The family drank in silence at first — then, slowly, shoulders unclenched, faces softened, and the little girl broke into a grin over her cup.

"It's sweet," she announced to the room.

"Good," Lin Fan said, relieved down to his bones. "That means it's working."

The father set six Spirit Stones on the table with the relaxed ease of a man who'd forgotten, briefly, to be afraid. "An old woodcutter told us about this place."

Something warm bloomed in Lin Fan's chest. His very first customer, recommending him to someone else, completely unprompted. This — this — was what a real business felt like.

Behind him, the leader made a small, choked sound.

Lin Fan turned just in time to catch him dabbing at one eye with his sleeve, extremely conspicuously, while trying to look like he was simply adjusting his collar.

"Not in front of the customers," Lin Fan hissed.

The leader nodded rapidly and buried the rest of his feelings somewhere deep and private, though his eyes stayed suspiciously bright for the rest of the visit.

The father left five stars. The mother left four — she kept glancing sideways the whole time at Crimson, who had spent the entire visit standing rigid by the counter with the unblinking focus of a man guarding a vault. The little girl left five stars and, with great ceremony, drew a small sun in the corner of the board.

Lin Fan glanced toward Crimson, who was still staring intently at the family's basket like it might sprout legs and attack.

He didn't even need to ask.

He simply walked over, plucked the basket out of the mother's hands himself, tipped it so Crimson could see the turnips inside, then handed it back to her with an apologetic nod before physically turning Crimson by the shoulder and steering him toward the kitchen.

"Go wash something," he said. "Anything. Just — not baskets."

Crimson went without protest, though he glanced back at the turnips once more on his way out, clearly unconvinced.

The mother watched the whole silent exchange happen — no words needed — and let out a small, surprised laugh, the first sound of genuine amusement Lin Fan had gotten out of a nervous customer all week.

"He's very obedient, at least," she said.

"It's honestly his best quality," Lin Fan admitted, and meant it.

By the time the family left, Lin Fan had six Spirit Stones in his box and a genuine smile on his face for the first time since opening the store panel and discovering it only sold kettles.

[Legitimate customer service recorded.][Revenue recognized: 6 Low-grade Spirit Stones.][Hospitality Points increased: 125 → 131.]

He allowed himself thirty full seconds of quiet satisfaction before the bandits crowded back around the confiscated sign, having apparently voted amongst themselves to display it again — this time propped up right next to the register, angled just enough to catch the afternoon light.

Lin Fan didn't even have the energy to fight that battle twice in one day. He simply picked it up, walked it out back, and used it to prop open the kitchen door instead, where its threatening message was now permanently obscured by a bucket.

Crimson, spotting this from across the yard, looked personally devastated, the way a man looks when his life's work gets repurposed as a doorstop, which — accurately — it now was.

Lin Fan went back to his advertising board and, after a moment's thought, added one final line beneath the rules, mostly out of pure exhaustion.

Staff will not search your vegetables.

He read it back twice. This was not the clean, professional sign he'd set out to make that morning. It was, instead, a formal public assurance about the safety of root vegetables.

At least it was true.

The next afternoon, disaster arrived in the form of good intentions.

A cluster of passing cultivators spotted the teahouse from a distance, whispered urgently to each other, pointed at the sign, and hurried off down the road at a pace just short of running.

One of them shouted back over his shoulder as he went, loud enough for the whole street to hear:

"It's true! The supreme organization has taken down its execution board!"

Lin Fan's broom clattered to the floor.

"What execution board? What rumor?"

Five bandits developed, in perfect unison, an urgent and consuming interest in their own sandals.

The leader eventually raised one hand, extremely slowly, like a man volunteering for punishment. "We may have... embellished the flyers slightly. While handing them out yesterday."

"Embellished them how?"

"We mentioned that customers who enter with respect will leave alive."

From somewhere behind him, very quietly, not even trying to hide it: "That part was mine."

Lin Fan didn't even turn around. He simply pressed both palms against his eyes and stood there for a long moment, breathing, while the System panel chimed cheerfully in the background, utterly indifferent to his suffering.

[Regional interest detected.][New customer category approaching: Cultivation authority.]

He lowered his hands to find, far down the road, a large carriage wrapped in a faint, unmistakable shimmer of spiritual light, rolling steadily and unhurried toward his teahouse.

He looked at his sign. He looked at the carriage. He looked, very briefly, at the sky, as though it might refund him for the day.

"Please," he said, to no one in particular, "just let this one want tea."

Behind him, the leader was already solemnly rolling up his sleeves, bracing for something.

Lin Fan didn't ask what for.

His business had finally, genuinely started attracting real customers.

This was not even close to what he'd pictured when he said the word success.