Chapter 408: Promoting the Fragrant Pipeline

After waiting a while longer, the crowd grew to over thirty, with the number continuing to increase. As vendors from both sides of the street appeared one after another, one guard each jumped down from each of the ten carriages.
Under the watchful eyes of the onlookers, the guards picked up the small leather tubes at the bottom of the wine jars and untied the knots.
“Huh? Why isn’t there any wine?”
A gasp was immediately heard, followed by reactions from everyone present.
With no wine flowing out, it was clear that all their assumptions were wrong.
The jar wasn’t filled with wine at all. None of their guesses based on wine held true.
“If it’s not wine, then why use a wine jar? I wasted over a minute waiting for nothing! I have urgent matters to attend to!” snapped a burly man in a black fur coat. Clearly, he had expected the jar to contain fine wine.
Though annoyed, the reputation of Lin’s Inn had already taken root in people’s hearts. After hesitating for a moment, he put his urgent matters aside for now.
It was a rare chance, so there was no reason not to see it first. In the future, he could even boast about it to others.
“You know what? I’m the first person to see and try Lin’s Inn’s promotion.”
Those words carried great authority!
“If nothing’s coming out, why keep the tube?”
“I think it might contain some magical beast like a spirit snake. They’ll surely need something to lure it out through the tube later.”
“Joking. Why would Lin’s Inn promote a spirit snake? If they want to add new dishes, they can just post a notice outside.”
“What do you know? That spirit snake isn’t for eating. Maybe it’s meant for children to keep as a pet. It’s colorful, non-venomous, and its sound might be strange enough to calm crying babies.”
“I think it’s some kind of magical bird, like a bee. Once it bonds with its master, it can obey commands. It’s also extremely strong. If you spend enough silver at Lin’s Inn to get one, you can take it home and use it to carry things.”
“I think it’s…”
Listening to the surrounding discussions, Lin Dong couldn’t help but marvel at human imagination—truly endless.
In the future, any large-scale promotions would need to be even more extraordinary and beyond imagination. Otherwise, Lin’s Inn’s reputation might suffer.
“Huh, it smells so good…”
“So good? What smells good? Are you hungry? Old Zhang, the bun seller, hasn’t arrived yet! The bun shop doesn’t open this early… Huh, it really does smell good!”

“This fragrance is truly wonderful. Besides, I was having a slight headache just now, but it’s much better now.”
“Where does this scent come from? Ordinary flower scents can’t be this strong or pleasant; it must be a magical flower.”
Suddenly, the onlookers became agitated, looking around in search of the source of the fragrance.
“Let’s go!”
Standing on the lead carriage, the man with triangular eyes waved his right arm and shouted confidently.
In an instant, the carriage beneath him began to move slowly along the street. The nine other carriages scattered in different directions, moving several times faster as they slipped into nearby alleys.
Unnoticed in the sky, an eagle-beast bird was circling with outstretched wings. The guard on top opened his palm, took out a stack of flyers from his storage ring, and tossed them out.
The flyers fluttered in the air like snow-white butterflies, descending with flapping wings. They resembled patches of bright white snowflakes, descending to the ground with graceful movements.
After distributing three stacks of flyers, the guard had a wrapped bundle in his hand. Unwrapping it, he waved his hand, and the contents drifted down with the breeze, following closely behind the flyers.
Upon closer inspection, they were small square paper boxes made from folded flyers.
The boxes weren’t large, about seven centimeters in length, width, and height, and they descended slightly faster than the flyers. From a height of twenty meters, they could easily be mistaken for astonishing hailstones.
“Wanli Flowers? They’re indeed magical flowers. There aren’t many. This fragrance comes from that wine jar,” exclaimed one of the first people to catch a flyer.
“Look! Inside these paper boxes, there’s also this fragrance—even stronger when opened.”
Soon, more and more exclamations arose. The descending paper boxes and flyers not only created a strange sight in the sky but also brought an unusual liveliness to the streets and alleys below, despite it still being early winter.
House doors kept opening everywhere. Early in the morning, families rushed outside upon hearing the news, their eyes filled with indescribable excitement.
The north part of the city gradually became bustling. The liveliness made even the air less icy and harsh.
In the sky, after dropping over a dozen more bundles of paper boxes, the guard patted the back of the eagle-beast bird, and together they flew toward their next destination.
After standing for a while on the increasingly bustling street, Lin Dong chased after the caravan.
As the caravan moved forward, the excitement spread wherever it went.

Following it all the way to noon, the unceasing excitement, along with the various evaluations and enthusiasm shown toward the fragrance, made Lin Dong let out a long sigh of relief. He had invested a tremendous amount of money in this promotion—costs that were no less than those of his initial promotion when he first entered Lingnan City. Just for these Wanli Flowers, Lin’s Inn spent over 60,000 first-tier spirit stones. Moreover, the small gardens in each branch were allocated most of their space to grow Wanli Flowers for a full month. Adding the spiritual energy consumed in refining the flower vases and the promotional materials, the total cost amounted to over 100,000 silver taels. Fortunately, the results met all expectations. From the various discussions, Lin Dong could tell that, thanks to the explanations and guidance in the promotional materials about the fragrance of the Wanli Flowers, everyone had a great interest in it. They were convinced that they could smell this fragrance in all areas of Lin’s Inn except the main lobby on the first floor, and insisted on bringing vases to try it and take some home as decorations. When the fragrance delivery system was officially launched three days later, despite some uncertainty, Lin Dong had reason to believe it would be extremely popular—after all, according to the promotional materials, guests could pay a small amount of copper coins after dining to have the staff fill vases of specified size with the fragrance for them to take home. The fragrance of the Wanli Flowers was known for its ability to soothe the mind and never become tiresome. Having one in the study, one in the bedroom, one in the dining room… it was not only beneficial to health but also enhanced taste. Even the wealthiest families, after calculating the costs, would surely resist the temptation of these Wanli Flowers. There were countless spiritual materials with soothing effects, but their prices were certainly high. The Wanli Flower, being a second-tier spiritual material, cost around 2 silver taels per flower. However, if filled at Lin’s Inn, the same fragrance could be obtained for just 400 to 500 copper coins. Moreover, the fragrance filled at Lin’s Inn allowed control over the coverage area and intensity of the scent, making it far more convenient than simply placing a Wanli Flower in a room. When guests arrived, Lin’s Inn would offer as gifts a batch of mass-produced vases of different quality levels that could adjust the fragrance intensity. Lin Dong was confident these vases would become essential decorations in every household. Although the fragrance delivery system didn’t increase the price of meals, it added some costs. But considering the fragrance sold as well, it was a sure profit with no losses, and it also greatly boosted the inn’s business.

Sure that nothing unexpected would happen, Lin Dong returned to the inn. It wasn’t until evening that Lin Dong stepped out of his room again. After pulling Yun Lan along, he explained to her why he had delayed cooking and headed straight for the Lucky Wood Shed. Yun Lan had long since become indifferent to the strange items Lin Dong brought out, so she surprisingly believed his explanation about the Lucky Wood Shed right away, without any surprise at all. This annoyed Lin Dong a bit. If Yun Lan could show some astonishment, emotion, or shock, he would feel more fulfilled. Otherwise, it was just his own enjoyment. Upon entering the Lucky Wood Shed, Lin Dong checked its attributes and saw that a day had passed. Without hesitation, he stuffed a bundle of wood with an eight-fold luck bonus into the mobile counter and then headed straight to the kitchen. As he cooked, the lucky wood burned continuously in the stove, and the enticing aroma of the food filled the air, giving Lin Dong the illusion that the food cooked with this wood was much more fragrant than that cooked with ordinary wood. With three dishes, one soup, and two bowls of white rice, Lin Dong and Yun Lan sat down at the stone table. Rubbing his palms together, he placed the food down and began to eat greedily. After finishing the meal, once Yun Lan had cleared the dishes and sat back down, Lin Dong started chatting with her casually, occasionally looking up at the dark sky and then down at the ground. Time passed by, but no gold ingots fell from the dark sky, nor did any antique vases emerge from the flat soil. The eight-fold luck bonus seemed to have little effect on Lin Dong and Yun Lan. What surprised Lin Dong even more was that his exaggerated behavior had made Yun Lan decide to increase the difficulty of the spiritual array he used to train his focus. From evening until early the next morning, nothing good happened despite their eight-fold luck bonus. Although having continuous conversations with Yun Lan for several days wouldn’t run out of topics, Lin Dong still couldn’t stay still. The eight-fold luck bonus cost 1,280 spirit stones, which was equivalent to about a thousand taels of silver. Lin Dong wasn’t short of silver; he was now considered a wealthy man in the region. A thousand eight hundred taels wasn’t much, but if no gold ingots fell from the sky, it meant that the basis of this luck bonus was the individuals’ own luck, rather than something predetermined by the system.

In that case, it would be quite difficult to significantly boost the inn’s business. After all, the costs are too high, and no matter how lucky someone is, they can’t be lucky every day. Selling a dish for several hundred to nearly a thousand silver pieces with no visible results—even if people know that Lin’s Inn doesn’t cheat them—won’t encourage many to order dishes with luck enhancements.
If this is the case, the only option is to focus on firewood, finding kindling that burns well and using it specifically for cooking dishes that are expensive but cook quickly. Only in this way can costs be reduced enough to be acceptable to larger customers.
The appeal of such a method is far less than setting a fixed price of a thousand silver pieces per dish, as that would allow earning over a thousand silver pieces in a single day—much more attractive.
Lin Dong was planning to take Yun Lan out of the city to the nearby forests to see if they could encounter some high-level spiritual beasts when a figure rushed in from the entrance of the courtyard.