Chapter 50 — The Hospitality Trial Begins

The morning sun broke through the golden haze of the Imperial Capital, casting bright rays over Secondary Pavilion Building Four. Down in the prep yard, Lin Fan stood before his small team looking thoroughly exhausted, with dark circles hanging under his eyes like bruised plums. He had spent the entire night tossing and turning, worrying about little Yun and wrestling with the looming dark conspiracies of the capital.

Yet, as the shopkeeper, he knew he couldn't let his team’s morale crumble before the biggest corporate trial of their lives.

Lin Fan cleared his throat loudly, calling a mandatory morning staff meeting around the main cutting table. Sect Master Lu, Xiao Yu, Xiao Ling, and tiny Xiao Mei gathered closely, their faces tense and grave. They all braced themselves for an intense, serious speech about assassin guilds, hidden conspiracies, and the mortal perils of the capital.

Instead, Lin Fan pulled out his wooden clipboard with a loud snap.

"Alright, team," Lin Fan announced, his voice carrying the crisp, practical tone of a tired manager at an eight-in-the-morning shift. "Here is our revised shift schedule. Lu, you're on dough station and primary boiling. Xiao Yu, floor management and order routing. Xiao Ling, tea pouring and table resets. Xiao Mei, executive napkin distribution and smile deployment."

Sect Master Lu blinked, holding a wooden spoon mid-air. "Shopkeeper... what about the Shadow Viper Society? What about the bloodstained token?"

"We deal with dark conspiracies after business hours, Lu," Lin Fan said deadpan, shoving a warm, freshly steamed bun into the former sect master's flour-dusted hands. "Right now, we have a competition to win. If we fail this trial, the System will raise our profit tax by ninety percent, and I will personally have to start charging you rent for your baking ovens."

Lu paled, instantly shoving the whole bun into his mouth. "Perish the thought! I shall bake like a man possessed!"

Lin Fan glanced around the yard, noting that Crimson was nowhere to be seen. His spot in the dark corner was completely empty.

He's probably standing guard outside or patrolling the perimeter, Lin Fan thought to himself, completely unaware that his Head of Security was currently three miles away, quietly turning an assassin hideout into a pile of smoking crater ash.

An hour later, the team arrived at the Grand Secondary Arena for the Hospitality Trial.

The rules of the trial were simple yet brutally demanding. Each competing establishment was assigned a fully furnished, open-air temporary restaurant module. For one full four-hour service period, the doors would be opened to a stampede of three hundred pre-screened, extremely demanding capital citizens, martial arts guests, and undercover imperial judges.

The judges evaluated six key operational metrics: Order Accuracy, Preparation Speed, Food Consistency, Cleanliness & Waste Management, Customer Satisfaction, and Staff Coordination.

Around them, prestigious capital establishments had deployed ludicrously lavish setups. The Jade Phoenix Pavilion brought thirty pristine servers wearing matching silk tunics, two dozen spirit-powered warming arrays, and a trio of musicians playing soft zither music to relax waiting guests. Another sect kitchen had installed a glowing water fountain that spouted fermented wine directly onto customer tables.

Lin Fan looked at his own modest setup: six clean wooden tables, a limited menu of three high-yield dishes, a stack of porcelain bowls.

"Look at those provincial hillbillies," a rival chef from a high-tier capital dining hall snickered, pointing at Lin Fan's station. "No zither players? No wine fountains? They brought six wooden tables and a clipboard! Do they think they're running a roadside tea shed?"

Lin Fan ignored the snickers, calmly checking his prep stations. In his mind, flashy wine fountains didn't clear dirty tables, and zither music didn't make cold soup taste hot. Real hospitality was about operational flow.

"GATES OPEN!" the head judge’s voice boomed through a brass horn. "COMMENCE SERVICE!"

The iron gates swung wide, and a wave of three hundred hungry, impatient capital guests flooded into the arena.

Within minutes, chaos erupted across the arena floor.

Rival stations quickly descended into absolute pandemonium. The establishment with the wine fountain suffered a catastrophic array failure, spraying cheap fermented alcohol directly into the faces of three high-ranking martial elders, who immediately began smashing tables in a rage. Over at another flashy station, twenty servers bumped into each other in the narrow aisles, dropping platters of expensive roasted duck onto the marble floor.

Lin’s Inn, however, started with the smooth, rhythmic precision of a factory assembly line.

Xiao Yu greeted arriving guests with a crisp bow, seated them instantly, and wrote down their orders on small slips of paper. Xiao Ling served warm herbal tea within thirty seconds of seating, while tiny Xiao Mei handed out clean, rolled napkins with a bright smile that instantly disarmed even the crabbiest cultivators. In the kitchen, Lin Fan handled the woks with lightning speed, while Sect Master Lu pumped out fresh, steaming loaves of hearth bread like a human conveyor belt.

What appears here is a copy taken without the author's permission; their official chapter is the place to read and support their work.

However, the imperial judges were not about to make things easy.

To test emergency crisis management, the judges secretly sent in "troublemaker groups." A party of four arrogant young cultivators sat down at Lin's Inn, loudly demanding that their beef noodles be made with zero ginger, extra scallions, double spice, and served in precisely three minutes—or they would leave a zero-star rating.

Xiao Yu handled it with practiced, polite composure, marking the special modifications clearly on his order slip.

Then, the first real operational disaster struck.

In the heat of the rush, a temporary local assistant whom Xiao Yu had hired for extra table clearing accidentally wrote the same order slip twice. Sect Master Lu cooked two identical portions of braised pork, while a quiet old scholar sitting in the corner was left waiting twenty minutes for his solitary bowl of noodle soup.

"Shopkeeper!" Lu gasped in a panic, holding two identical bowls. "I have a duplicate! But where is Table Four's noodle soup?! The timer is almost out!"

The hired assistant turned pale as chalk, trembling violently. "I-I'm sorry! I mixed up the slip numbers! It's my fault!"

Rival chefs watching from across the aisle grinned maliciously. In a high-stakes trial, a misordered ticket and an angry guest meant a massive penalty to the operational score.

Lin Fan didn't shout, throw a pan, or blame the trembling assistant. As a modern manager, he knew that human error was simply a symptom of a broken tracking system.

"Stay calm," Lin Fan said smoothly, stepping over to the order board. He pulled out a wooden block, grabbed his chalk, and drew a clean, numbered grid directly onto the kitchen wall.

"From this second onward, we deploy the Numbered Ticket Grid System," Lin Fan commanded, his voice steady and sharp. "Xiao Yu, every table gets a wooden number block from One to Six. When you take an order, you write the table number on the slip and pin it directly to the corresponding grid box on this wall. Lu, you only cook what is pinned to the grid. When a dish leaves the pass, Xiao Ling unpins the slip."

It took precisely minute to implement.

The results were instantaneous and miraculous. The chaotic stack of loose paper slips vanished. The visual grid allowed everyone in the kitchen to see exactly which table was waiting, how long they had been waiting, and what dish was up next.

Lin Fan personally whipped up a fresh bowl of hot noodle soup in forty-five seconds flat, walking it out to the waiting old scholar himself.

"My sincere apologies for the slight delay, elder," Lin Fan said with a warm, humble bow, placing a complimentary slice of Lu's golden hearth bread beside the bowl. "Please enjoy this fresh hearth bread on the house for your patience."

The old scholar—who was actually the Chief Imperial Evaluator in disguise—picked up his chopsticks, took a bite of the bread, and tasted the soup. His stern, critical scowl melted into a look of absolute, blissful satisfaction. He pulled out his golden evaluation ledger and immediately checked the highest possible score for Crisis Management & Customer Retention.

Standing on the upper judge's balcony, the Head Imperial Judge watched Lin Fan's grid system with wide, fascinated eyes.

"Fascinating..." the head judge whispered, stroking his long beard. "He didn't use a single spirit stone, nor did he yell at his staff. He reorganized his entire operation mid-service using such clever strategy!"

When the four-hour service bell finally chimed, the arena floor was littered with broken porcelain, spilled soup, and exhausted, weeping chefs from rival establishments.

Lin’s Inn's station, however, was spotless. The tables were wiped, the dishes were stacked neatly, and Xiao Mei was happily sweeping the floor with a small broom.

The judges gathered at the central podium to announce the official rankings for the Hospitality Trial.

"Attention, competitors!" the head judge announced, his voice echoing across the quiet arena. "After evaluating order accuracy, service velocity, crisis adaptability, and customer feedback... the First Place Winner of the Hospitality Trial is..."

The judge paused for dramatic effect, unrolling a golden scroll.

"...Station Forty-Four: Lin's Inn of Qingshui Town! With a unprecedented score of 98 out of 100!"

A massive gasp erupted across the arena!

Rival chefs stood frozen in absolute, jaw-dropping shock. The prestigious capital dining halls, who had spent millions of spirit stones on silk uniforms, wine fountains, and high-tier spirit arrays, had been completely crushed by a provincial shopkeeper.

At Station One, Shen Yuelan of the Jade Phoenix Pavilion—who had secured Second Place with a score of 92—stared at Lin Fan with a mixture of disbelief and intense, burning professional respect. Her pristine, highly trained servers had faltered slightly under the sudden surge of modified orders, while Lin Fan’s rustic team had adapted instantly without breaking a single sweat.

"First place...?" Xiao Yu whispered, his eyes filling with tears of pure joy. "Shopkeeper, we won first place!"

"We did it!" tiny Xiao Mei cheered, jumping up and down while waving her small broom.

Sect Master Lu wiped a tear from his flour-dusted cheek, puffing out his chest. "Our hearth bread has conquered the capital!"

Lin Fan let out a long, quiet breath, a calm, satisfied grin spreading across his face. He nodded politely to the judges, accepting the applause with easy corporate modesty.

However, before the celebrations could fully begin, the head judge raised his hand, commanding absolute silence across the arena.

"Do not celebrate just yet, competitors," the head judge warned, his expression turning grave and intense. "The preliminary rounds are officially over. The final stage of the festival shall take place in three days: The Imperial Banquet Trial!"

The head judge unrolled a massive crimson banner displaying the Imperial Court's dragon crest.

"For the final trial," the judge declared, "you will no longer be serving three hundred screened guests in a controlled pavilion. You will be tasked with catering a grand, real-time public feast for over three thousand attendees, including high-ranking imperial nobles, provincial sect leaders, and the royal court itself! You will be judged on sheer capacity, peak volume handling, and absolute culinary satisfaction under extreme scale!"

Three thousand guests!

The remaining chefs in the arena turned pale as paper, many of them looking like they were about to faint on the spot. Catering for three thousand high-status guests simultaneously was an absolute logistical monster that could shatter even the largest capital kitchens.

Lin Fan stood at his workstation, looking at his five small porcelain bowls, his single portable hearth, and his four tired staff members.