Chapter 318: Lin’s Gymnasium

Glancing at Cheng Bao’s loyalty score, it was only eleven. This value meant he could betray the inn at any moment. Normally, he shouldn’t have been allowed out. Fortunately, he had already been given the Mutated Golden Armored Snake Inner Elixir, so even if he wanted to cause trouble, he would surely wait until he grew stronger.
If Cheng Bao’s loyalty increased while taking the elixir, it meant there was no major issue. If not, it would still be time to address it later.
As for loyalty, it was within Lin Dong’s expectations. However, Cheng Bao’s various attributes, especially his creativity, far exceeded his predictions. In high spirits, looking at Cheng Bao’s face full of fleshy muscles and fierce gaze, Lin Dong found him increasingly likable. He smiled and said, “Put away your knife. You must know Ma Chun—he’s the inn’s manager. I’ll take you to him to arrange accommodation. Then quickly write down the recipes you know and list the required ingredients. Within three to five days, you should be able to start working.”
Cheng Bao shook his head. “The main ingredient can’t be bought in Autumn Wind City. I do have some stored, but only about 180 pounds. If the inn is busy, it will run out in less than a day.”
“What’s the main ingredient?” Lin Dong asked.
Cheng Bao explained, “It’s the Tianfeng Pepper, a wild specialty from Wangshi County in Kuaitian Commandery. It’s extremely spicy—just putting one in someone’s stomach is enough to kill them from the heat. Even locals dare not try it. Only I can reduce its spiciness. So, to collect it, one must send someone to Wangshi County to pick it. Even with fast horses, the round trip would take two to three months.”
Lin Dong frowned slightly before relaxing. As long as the guild didn’t have too much of an impact on the inn, with Lin’s Inn’s current strength, there were no rival restaurants in Autumn Wind City. A delay of two to three months wasn’t a big deal.
With two to three months, Lin’s Inn in Lingnan Commandery would likely be built too. If the guild didn’t consume too much energy, it would be just in time for the new inn to open.
After thinking this through, Lin Dong pushed open the door and turned to Cheng Bao. “As for wages, it’s ten taels of silver per month for now, with gradual increases later. If it’s not enough, you can draw in advance—there’s no limit, of course, depending on the situation. Like other chefs, you’ll have three days off per month. If you have any other questions, write them down and give them to Ma Chun. He’ll fully cooperate. During the preparation phase, you can train at the inn.”

After a pause, Lin Dong continued, “Next is my promise to help you reach the realm of a strong warrior before you turn forty. Once the Golden Armored Snake Inner Elixir is fully refined, it should be enough for you to reach the late sixth stage of the Mental Focus phase. After that, I’ll consider giving you more spiritual beast materials based on your performance. The rest is your responsibility. My demands aren’t high—just avoid trouble.”
Cheng Bao remained silent. Avoid trouble? For a bandit leader, wasn’t that a pretty low demand?
“Let’s go!” Lin Dong waved his hand.
He took Cheng Bao to the front yard, found Ma Chun, gave him a few instructions, then returned to the back yard to cultivate.
The night passed peacefully. When a faint silver light filtered through the white paper windows into the room, Lin Dong opened his eyes and checked Cheng Bao’s attributes, a slight smile appearing on his lips.
Fifteen points of loyalty. Four points added in one night—quite fast. Undoubtedly thanks to the Golden Armored Snake Inner Elixir. For Lin Dong, what was more important was that the loyalty was indeed increasing. Low loyalty only meant the person might easily develop rebellious thoughts, not that they definitely would. When loyalty was on the rise, the possibility of rebellion was almost negligible.
Opening the door, Lin Dong walked to the kitchen. As a rich breakfast was brought out, misty clouds of fragrance wafted in.
After three days of waiting, the day finally arrived when the president and vice presidents of the merchant guild were elected under the certification of the new prefect, Liu Xiu. The next day, the guild officially began operations.
They recruited servants, utilized all the advantages of Qiufeng Mansion, and sent people elsewhere to investigate prices… The president of the guild was Wan Xuliang, the former owner of Changyun Bank, in his fifties, who had already handed over management of his business to his eldest son. Changyun Bank had a history of over a hundred years in Qiufeng City. Wan Xuliang was resourceful, highly capable, and had a decent reputation, making him the expected choice. Under his leadership, various tasks were carried out in an orderly manner.
What concerned Lin Dong the most was undoubtedly pricing.
The outcome gave Lin Dong some headaches. Whether it was food and drinks or accommodation, as he had guessed earlier, it all had a significant impact on Jinji Inn.
For food and drinks, the guild compiled recipes for hundreds of dishes along with costs such as ingredients and labor. Since the costs varied between large restaurants and small taverns, the highest value was used as a reference. Based on votes from shop owners across different industries, prices were set—typically with a profit margin of 20% to 40%, adjustable as needed. For spiritual beast materials, the profit margin was around 30% to 60%, also adjustable.

Just this alone is enough to cause great headaches for large restaurants and bring immense joy to small taverns. Especially for establishments like Lin’s Inn, which offer benefits such as VIP cards, it’s a heartbreaking situation, as these perks aren’t even counted as part of the cost. To avoid losses, they can only make the conditions for obtaining these benefits more stringent.

Next is the pricing of each restaurant’s specialty dishes. Since research takes time, prices cannot be set in the short term. Regarding the pricing of specialty dishes, the result of all merchants’ voting was that restaurants could hide their specialty dishes while trying to provide as accurate a cost estimate as possible. For example, they could hide one or two steps in the preparation method or one or two ingredients. After verification by the researchers, the actual cost would then be determined. In other words, the hidden steps or ingredients couldn’t be included in the cost calculation.

As for profits, the voting result was that the profit margin for specialty dishes should be between 20% and 40%, just like regular dishes. With these restrictions—where the profit margins are limited and costs are even lower due to hidden steps and ingredients—how much profit could be made?

In Lin Dong’s view, having the profit ceiling for each restaurant’s specialty dishes determined by everyone’s vote would easily dampen their enthusiasm for developing unique dishes. Unfortunately, the merchant guild was still in its developmental stage, and it lacked the capacity to adjust various immature rules and unnecessary details in the short term.

Fortunately, while others lack clever solutions, I have my own tactics. The biggest advantage of specialty dishes is that no one knows exactly how they’re made. The best approach, undoubtedly, is to find ways to increase their cost. Lin’s Inn has many specialty dishes, but only two are expensive and almost always ordered—Maple Leaf Stewed Turtle and Vitality Beef Balls.

The cost of maple leaves, turtles, and other ingredients adds up to only a hundred or two hundred coins, yet the price is two taels of silver. To increase the cost, one must add more ingredients—selecting a few high-grade spiritual materials that lose their color and flavor after being steamed or boiled—then mix the broth from these materials into the Maple Leaf Stewed Turtle, and that’s it. As for the final product, it still appears to be the original Maple Leaf Stewed Turtle. The same principle applies to Vitality Beef Balls: although their cost is only a dozen coins, adding a step involving broth from high-grade spiritual materials quickly boosts the overall cost.

Overall, although the specialty dishes were unaffected and the original pricing of Lin Ji Inn’s regular dishes was not high, just the cost of spiritual beasts and materials already significantly reduced its profits. Lin Ji Inn aimed for a high-end market, with profits from spiritual beasts and materials being more than double; those of third- or fourth-tier spiritual beasts even reached five to six times that amount. A drop in profits to between 30% and 60% meant that even at 60%, monthly profits could plummet from 30,000 taels to around 10,000 taels. This indirectly meant that the prices of dishes and drinks would be reduced by about half. Adding to this were losses from other branches and the inability to quickly attract customers due to pricing issues, leaving Lin Ji Inn severely hit.

Still, Lin Dong wasn’t too concerned. Although the inn’s advantages were somewhat suppressed by pricing, its strengths were still sufficient to attract many wealthy clients willing to travel an hour or two to dine there. With Cheng Bao joining as the second head chef in Lingnan City, the inn would remain highly competitive. As for profits, although they had dropped by over 60% monthly, the amount was still enough to support large-scale expansion. Even with increased expenses on purchasing spiritual stones, as long as expansion kept up, there would be enough funds—any shortfall could be covered by Lin Ji Winery and the upcoming Lin Ji Factory.

What truly troubled Lin Dong was the limitation in accommodation. Lin Ji Inn’s advantages in this area were its colorful beds and excellent, affordable service. The colorful beds attracted wealthy guests, and at level 2 with 74% completion, it would take at most three to five years to upgrade them so they could be used in all rooms. As for excellent, affordable service, there were no secrets behind the pricing—once the guild set prices, the advantage of affordability disappeared. Relying solely on excellent service, the inn’s already weak advantage in attracting customers from other cities was greatly diminished.

In Qiufeng City, even if someone wanted to open a new inn, it would take at least half a year to buy land, build it, and open. Since Lin Dong had already acquired all the inns, this wouldn’t have a significant impact in the short term. But Lin Ji Inn wouldn’t stay in Qiufeng City forever. According to Lin Dong’s plans, it would set off for Lingnan City in about two months. What would Lin Ji Inn use to attract guests once there?

Compared to Qiufeng City, Lingnan City was several times larger. In Qiufeng City, it took about two hours to travel from the eastern part of the city to the center by carriage, while in Lingnan City, it took over ten hours. This meant that even if Lin’s Inn was located in the city center, buying up all the inns there at high prices wouldn’t give it an advantage in attracting enough guests. After all, people didn’t have to stay only in inns; spending over ten hours traveling just to find lodging was worse than staying at a local household. Although the conditions might not be as good as those in an inn, it was still far better than arriving in the city early in the morning and only finding an inn the next day.

Once the pricing was set, not to mention attracting merchants passing through the city, even if Lin’s Inn was located at the city gate, its advantages weren’t obvious. Moreover, if other inns sent staff to the city gate to attract customers, they might even lose out to nearby inns.

In terms of pricing for lodging, Lin’s Inn’s monthly profits increased by just a few taels of silver. But as for guests… unless all the inns in Qiufeng City were bought up, and it took only three to five hours to reach Lin’s Inn from any city gate, with free carriage services provided, it would be difficult to retain even 30-70% of the guests.

It was still a headache. The only thing Lin Dong was relieved about was that the guild’s impact on inns hadn’t reached its worst yet. As long as the problem of attracting guests could be solved, the emergence of the guild would only lead to a significant drop in profits and a slowdown in expansion. It wasn’t a fatal blow to the inn’s expansion potential.

After studying the issue all day with no solutions to increase guests, Lin Dong had no choice but to follow the same approach he used with Fenglin Restaurant—gathering all the inn’s chefs and staff to brainstorm. After a whole night, many good suggestions came up, but none were able to turn the situation around.

Five days later, Lin Shuang came to Qiufeng City on leave, and Lin Dong shamelessly shared his problems with this business genius. As a result, he felt slightly relieved. According to Lin Shuang, it was impossible to attract guests who would travel over ten hours just to stay at Lin’s Inn in a short time through sheer strength. The only option was to target local residents.

The idea was quite unexpected, but to get local residents to stay at Lin’s Inn instead of their own homes, Lin Shuang suggested organizing activities like vitality ball games and calligraphy competitions in the area, preferably scheduling the important events at night. This way, residents living further away would be forced to stay nearby.

The method is good and indeed feasible. The only thing that worries Lin Dong is the cost… it might be a bit high. After all, to get residents to travel far to watch the matches, the contestants must be top-notch, so the prizes need to be high enough that they can’t refuse them. The guild won’t include these costs in the accommodation expenses, but the head of Lin Ji Inn’s system will include them. As for the profit from the lodging building, even if it’s always full, the daily earnings are only about one or two taels of silver—completely insignificant compared to the hundreds of taels in prizes each day. Of course, this method isn’t entirely without a chance of success. If a gymnasium or something could be built near the inn and tickets sold, and if those ticket revenues were profitable, the inn’s system would automatically exclude it from the accommodation costs. Lin Dong isn’t completely at ease because he’s worried that the ticket revenues won’t be profitable or cover the costs. After all, even in the previous world, gyms couldn’t guarantee profits. In this world, where living standards are low and people are accustomed to working from dawn to dusk to support their families, it’s hard to expect many to be willing to spend money watching matches at night. If tickets are targeted at the wealthy and ultra-wealthy, the number of attendees will be extremely limited, not only preventing profits but also possibly reducing the number of guests at Lin Ji Inn. With no other options, they can only give it a try. Coincidentally, it’s about time for the guard team to lead the advance into Lingnan City. That day, Lin Dong sent Wang Liuzhi with silver coins and some men to Lingnan City to buy plots of land in the city and at the northern city gate, just like for the inn’s location, so that two Lin Ji Gymnasiums could be built, with the choice of which one to use decided later based on circumstances. The threats posed by the guild and the new prefect have been mostly dealt with, though not entirely satisfactorily, but still within Lin Dong’s acceptable range. Life gradually returned to normal. The prices of food and drinks could only be adjusted within a certain range and not arbitrarily. New restaurants or those that hadn’t yet established themselves, or large restaurants like Yingfeng Lou that relied on star performers to attract customers and whose main features couldn’t be counted as costs, would be greatly affected. However, for a restaurant like Lin Ji Inn, which already had an absolute advantage in Qiufeng City and didn’t face too much competition, the number of customers wouldn’t decline; in fact, it might even increase slightly. Of course, the profits from this increased customer base still fell far short of covering the losses caused by fixed pricing.

Ding: Congratulations! Your inn’s experience points have reached the maximum level. You’ve received an upgrade task: “Help the first guest of tomorrow solve their problems.”
The sudden system notification made Lin Dong, who was in meditation, open his eyes abruptly.
Lin’s Inn had finally met the conditions for an upgrade again.
Eagerly, he opened the inn’s system, examined the upgrade task carefully for a while, then immediately opened the door.
With the moonlight surrounding him, Lin Dong roughly estimated that it wasn’t yet midnight. He then stepped into the lobby under the moonlight.
Upon entering the lobby, he glanced around. On the counter, an oil lamp flickered with a faint yellow glow. Below the counter, there was a bedroll. Judging from the head peeking out from the thick, slightly worn quilt, it was Liu Hua who was on night duty today.
Lin Dong stepped forward and gently patted the quilt.
“Is it already dawn?”
Liu Hua slowly woke up, opened his sleepy eyes, and upon realizing it was Lin Dong, quickly sat up.
“Owner, why did you come here in the middle of the night?”
“I had a sudden urge to experience what it’s like to be on night duty,” Lin Dong said with a smile.
“You want to be on night duty?” Liu Hua was stunned. Such a sudden decision was quite strange.
Lin Dong nodded.
“Well then…” Liu Hua was confused.
“I’d definitely wake up others if I went back,” Lin Dong said with a smile. “Let you enjoy it for once. Check if there are any vacant Type-A rooms. If so, stay there tonight. If not, look for Type-B rooms.”
“Ah!” Liu Hua nodded quickly, hesitated for a moment, and asked, “Should I leave the bedding here for the owner, or should I go to the room to get it?”
“Just leave it here!” Lin Dong shook his head.
Night duty meant sleeping in clothes. Liu Hua got up from the warm bedroll, shivered slightly, then looked at Lin Dong and handed over a bunch of keys. “Are there any other instructions, owner? If not, shall I go now?”
Taking the keys, Lin Dong said, “First, tell me about the vacant rooms in the lodging building.”
“Hmm! The Type-T rooms are always booked, with reservations until half a month from now. There are still five vacant Type-A rooms, and seven more will be vacated tomorrow. There are also four vacant Type-B rooms…”
Lin Dong nodded, memorized the situation of the lodging building, and after Liu Hua left, he sat cross-legged on the bedroll.