Chapter 13: The Flour Has Arrived

Lin Fan woke to the sound of carts and the smell of flour.

The smell was everywhere. It had crept in through the window, settled on the counter, and somehow found its way onto his own pillow overnight. The moment he opened the door, a white cloud rolled off the road and swallowed all five bandits whole.

"WHY IS THERE SNOW IN SUMMER?" one of them screamed from somewhere inside the cloud.

Lin Fan waved a hand through the haze. "It's flour. Stop breathing it."

They staggered out one by one, faces bone-white, eyebrows bone-white, one with an entire sleeve packed solid, another with a mouthful he was chewing and swallowing purely out of confusion. The leader sneezed so hard the sign by the door swung sideways and nearly took his own head off.

Lin Fan grabbed it before it could finish the job.

The road itself was gone, replaced entirely by wagons — sack after sack of wheat flour stacked higher than the teahouse roof, with more still being hauled off the carts behind them.

Sect Master Lu stood in the center of it all wearing a gray apron, beaming like a man who'd just conquered a small country.

Lin Fan looked past him at his own storage room, which stared back with the quiet dread of a small space about to be asked to hold something impossible.

He asked how much flour, exactly, had been purchased.

Lu swept an arm across the entire wagon convoy. "Enough for the beginning."

One disciple immediately started counting the town's population on his fingers, clearly preparing to place a second order. Lin Fan physically closed the man's notebook before a number could turn into another twenty wagons.

The bandits circled the sacks with deep suspicion, poking a few like they might be hiding something dangerous inside.

Crimson scooped up a small handful and let it run through his fingers — onto his hand, then his sleeve, then, when the wind shifted, directly into his own face. He blinked white lashes at nobody in particular, accepted a cloth from Lin Fan with both hands like it was a ceremonial gift, and — before wiping anything — quietly pinched a small sample of flour into a pouch and knotted it shut, tucking it away like a keepsake.

Lin Fan confiscated the pouch on principle. "If you start treasuring every ingredient that comes through this door, I'm going to need a second storage room just for your feelings about flour."

Four sect guards had already stationed themselves by the ovens like an honor guard. The alchemist arrived clutching a formation plate. One disciple carried a stack of mixing bowls. Another had, for reasons nobody bothered explaining, brought his sword.

Lin Fan pointed at it. "Why."

The disciple's grip tightened around the hilt. "The new path may attract enemies."

A sack split open behind him at that exact moment and buried the entire weapon in a fresh coat of flour, handle to tip, transforming a deadly blade into what now looked, unmistakably, like a very long, very useless breadstick.

The disciple stared down at it in silence.

The youngest bandit, delighted, grabbed a nearby broom and gave it a full formal salute. Lin Fan snatched it away before this bakery could accidentally form its own standing army.

Lu approached the doorway with visible excitement. "Owner, I would like to use your kitchen."

Lin Fan planted himself squarely in front of it. His kitchen currently held clean cups, dry tea leaves, and roughly the last shred of his patience for the week — none of which he was prepared to hand over to eight overexcited cultivators armed with half a county's flour supply.

"Kitchen's staff only."

Lu glanced past him at said staff — one bandit currently scrubbing a cup with the flat of his own sword hilt, another attempting to sweep spilled flour into some kind of decorative formation on the floor.

Lin Fan pointed instead at the back table. "Use that. Keep it away from the kettle."

Lu's whole face lit up.

An elder produced a pouch of Spirit Stones, and Lin Fan's eyes tracked it on pure instinct before he could stop himself.

"Tea first," he said. "Five cups."

Lu counted out ten stones without argument. Lin Fan served him and four disciples. The alchemist declined at first, then watched everyone else drink without incident and accepted a cup purely so he wouldn't look suspicious by comparison — still holding his formation plate protectively in the other hand the entire time.

The plate slipped straight into his tea.

He froze, staring down at his own drink with growing horror.

Lin Fan fished it back out with a pair of chopsticks and handed it back dripping. "This is a teacup. Not a research vessel."

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The alchemist dried it on his sleeve, which promptly turned an unfortunate shade of brown, and studied the stain with the grim acceptance of a man who'd just received a personal message from the heavens about his life choices.

Lin Fan set a bowl of flour on the back table. "Add water slowly. Knead until smooth. Do not, under any circumstance, burn it."

Lu began pouring — with spiritual energy laced through every drop, apparently, because the water arrived as a single glowing thread that struck the flour dead center like a spear.

The wet patch spread. And spread. Lin Fan watched it grow into what could only be described as a small, ambitious swamp.

"Pour faster," Lu commanded himself, doubling down.

The entire bowl became soup in one decisive motion.

Every disciple in the room took a synchronized step backward.

Lin Fan grabbed a fresh bowl, dumped in more flour, and started working fast. "Nobody move. This is fixable."

He'd survived worse disasters with a lot less flour and a much angrier head chef standing over his shoulder. He added, mixed, adjusted, added again, until the mess finally thickened into something resembling actual dough.

He pulled the drawer open and took out the System knife.

The alchemist spotted a thin, impossible line running along its edge — something his instincts screamed was Absolute Severance — and his formation plate slipped clean out of his hand and hit the floor with a crack he didn't even seem to register.

Lin Fan divided the dough with three clean strokes. Each piece fell apart smooth and even, no tearing, no dragging.

The alchemist crouched by his broken plate and very deliberately did not look at the knife again.

Lu plunged both hands into the dough with total confidence.

It stuck to him instantly, both palms glued fast. He yanked backward and the entire bowl came with him, still attached, swinging wildly through the air.

He tried once more, wrenching harder this time — and the bowl went flying clean across the table, landing dead center on the sword-carrying disciple's head with a soft, floury thump.

Flour cascaded down the poor man from scalp to belt. His sword, still buried under its own coating, slid off the table and hit the floor with the muffled dignity of a stick giving up entirely.

Lin Fan grabbed a cloth and wiped the man's stinging eyes. "Don't rub. You'll make it worse."

Lu finally lowered his hands, chastened, and Lin Fan took over the kneading himself — pressing, folding, turning, making it all look so effortless that the disciples immediately swarmed the remaining bowls to copy him.

Their first attempts launched flour across the table. The second round coated the entire wall. A third produced a single dense lump that simply refused to move no matter how hard anyone poked it.

Crimson lifted his own attempt off the table. It held the exact shape of the bowl perfectly, unmoving, defiant.

Lin Fan rapped it once with a knuckle. The sound it made was closer to knocking on a door than touching food.

"...Add water. More water. A lot more water."

One disciple eventually shaped a decent round loaf. Another made something flat. A third produced a lump with four aggressively sharp corners standing straight up, like a tiny fortress.

Crimson molded his into a perfect triangle and set it down with the ceremony of a man presenting a blade to his lord.

Lin Fan pressed one corner. It held its shape with such total, unwavering commitment that he half expected it to march itself directly into the oven under its own power.

"Round," he said. "People eat bread with their mouths. Not their weapons."

Crimson looked from the triangle to the still-flour-caked disciple's mouth, calculating something.

The disciple, alarmed, snapped his own mouth shut immediately and took a full step backward.

Lin Fan set the offending triangle beside the round loaf. "Round, Crimson."

Crimson pressed it once, and the whole thing folded obediently into a flawless circle, like it had simply been waiting for direct orders.

Every disciple in the room stared at the reshaped dough with something close to reverence. Lin Fan wiped down the knife and slid it back into the drawer fast, before anyone got any ideas about building it a small shrine.

Somewhere behind him, the oven fire had crept far too high — Lu had lit it with an actual flame technique, and the flames were now licking well past the opening and up toward the ceiling beams.

Lin Fan grabbed the nearest bucket and threw the whole thing straight at the oven mouth.

Steam detonated across the entire room.

Guards drew swords through the fog. Bandits grabbed cups defensively. The alchemist threw up a formation shield out of pure reflex. Somewhere in the chaos, someone knocked over a full sack of flour, which added its own contribution to the general apocalypse now unfolding in a small rural teahouse.

Lin Fan stood dead center of it, empty bucket still in hand, dripping.

"EVERYONE. PUT IT DOWN."

The room slowly, sheepishly, settled. Lin Fan reached in and dialed the fire back down to something that wouldn't require a formal evacuation.

"Bread needs heat," he said, wiping soot off his own forehead. "Not a Heavenly Tribulation."

Lu watched him adjust the flame like a student memorizing sacred scripture off an elder's hand.

When the loaves finally came out, the crusts were black and the centers were still cold soup. The round loaf cracked the instant Lin Fan touched it. The triangle made a sound, when tapped, like a wooden plank falling flat on stone.

Crimson picked his up. It left absolutely no mark on his fingers, hard as stone straight through.

Lin Fan set it by the door on his way past, mostly to stop a draft, and cut the round loaf open — the middle cold enough that the alchemist immediately reached for his cracked formation plate again, halfway convinced it was poisoned after all.

"More time. Less fire," Lin Fan said, exhausted. "And stop kneading it like you're trying to knock someone out."

Lu's eyes sharpened with new resolve.

Several disciples began scribbling furiously in their notebooks. Lin Fan glanced over one shoulder and caught three fresh headings mid-formation: Fire Control, Dough Suppression, and, somehow already underlined twice, Triangle Defeat.

He confiscated the notebooks before a fourth heading could appear.

[Customer hospitality interaction recorded.][Revenue recognized: 10 Low-grade Spirit Stones.][Hospitality Points increased: 133 → 143.]

Lin Fan surveyed five empty teacups, one exploded flour sack, and roughly a full inch of white powder settled into every chair in the room.

Ten Spirit Stones earned. Half a day gone. Flour, permanently, in places flour should never be.

Lu gathered up the failed loaves with real tenderness, like they were still worth something. "Owner, I will return tomorrow."

Lin Fan pointed at the flour mountain still parked outside his front door. "Bring less."

Lu turned to his chief disciple instead. "Record the amount required for the next attempt."

The disciple flipped open a fresh page and started writing before Lin Fan could stop him. He caught a glimpse of it just before it was angled away.

At the top, underlined with real conviction:

Next Trial: Twice the Flour.

Lin Fan closed his eyes and said nothing, having simply run out of the energy required to fight that particular battle today.

Behind him, Crimson had already relocated the first failed loaf to prop the door open against the wind.

It held the door firm without so much as a wobble.

Lin Fan looked at the black, rock-hard brick that used to be bread, and found, somewhere in the wreckage of his afternoon, one small genuine point of pride.

"At least," he said, "it's found honest work."