An auspicious spot with favorable winds and waters

Jiamao City was vast, and there were few players during the closed beta.

Lin Bai stopped wasting time searching for players and turned toward the Brokerage instead.

He had no idea how time in the game compared to time in reality!

If the ratio was one to one, he would have a tremendous advantage. After all, players couldn't stay online for long stretches.

But that probably wasn't the case. No game would synchronize its time with reality; there was far too little you could accomplish in a single day.

So he couldn't waste his time playing hide-and-seek with the players.

To live well in this unfamiliar world, he had to make sure he grew faster than they did.

The systems were his only shortcut to growth.

Therefore.

System quests absolutely had to take top priority.

An hour later.

Lin Bai stood beside a shop deep in Bronze Sparrow Alley, speechless.

The shop was a two-story building.

Both floors combined amounted to only eighty square meters.

It was rather small for a restaurant.

Its size alone would have been tolerable, but it also looked terribly dilapidated. Cobwebs sealed off the entrance, and its gloomy appearance spoke of considerable age.

Most importantly, its location was ridiculously out of the way. In this bustling city, the surrounding area was actually somewhat desolate, with the nearest shop two hundred meters away.

No matter how he looked at it, this was no place to open a restaurant.

"Sir, a shop this big for just a hundred taels—you've struck gold." The Brokerage's young assistant stood beside Lin Bai with his hands tucked into his sleeves, an ingratiating, fake smile on his face. "I'm not boasting, but only our Brokerage has such quality properties in stock. Anywhere else, your money would barely rent a storefront, if it even stretched that far.

"With us, the same money buys you the land too. Miss this village, and you won't find another shop like it. Don't mind how shabby it looks now; it just hasn't been tidied up. Put a little thought into the furnishings, and it'll be every bit as good as the Returning Guest House.

"As the saying goes, fragrant wine fears no deep alley. If you know how to run a business, customers will come in droves. See that patch of waste ground out front? Hire someone to clear it, and you could park seven or eight carriages there easily. What other restaurant in Jiamao City has such a spacious private forecourt...?"

When something was out of the ordinary, a demon had to be behind it.

The harder the assistant pushed his sales pitch, the more convinced Lin Bai became that something was wrong with this shop.

Carters, boatmen, innkeepers, porters, and brokers deserved killing even if they hadn't committed a crime.

He would have to have been kicked in the head by a donkey to expect them not to swindle him.

But what choice did he have with such shallow pockets? Two hundred taels of silver sounded like a lot, but it really wasn't enough to start a business.

"I'll take it." Lin Bai interrupted the assistant's rambling.

"What?" The assistant froze, then broke into a delighted smile. "Certainly, sir! Just a moment. I'll find someone to transfer the deed right away."

"No rush," Lin Bai said. "The deed can wait. Sorry for the trouble, but please find me some craftsmen—carpenters, blacksmiths, and the like. I want to renovate the shop..."

Chasing small bargains led to big losses. Lin Bai understood that principle.

But his needs were different now.

If this were an ordinary world, he might have saved up slowly and chosen a thriving street-front shop to start his business.

But now, the players and systems were his true wealth. To survive amid the ravages of the Fourth Calamity, he had to put system quests above everything else and take whichever approach was fastest.

Time waited for no one. He had to grow before the players did.

Besides.

The God of Cooking System required him to open a restaurant, but it didn't stipulate that the restaurant had to be grand. Otherwise, its ten-tael reward wouldn't even amount to spare change compared with the investment. How could that motivate anyone to complete its quest? Who would be that stupid?

Ultimately, all Lin Bai needed was a fixed base for grinding quests!

So what if it was remote?

So what if it was dilapidated?

With a storefront, even a place with just one dining table inside could be called a restaurant...

Having finally sold this out-of-the-way shop, the assistant collected a deposit, then hurried off to find the people Lin Bai had requested.

The assistant might not have understood the term "sunk cost," but he knew that the more a customer invested, the less likely he was to back out.

Brokerages served as intermediaries in ancient times.

The assistant soon rounded up the carpenters, blacksmiths, painters, and other craftsmen Lin Bai wanted.

He was quite shrewd. Seeing that Lin Bai wasn't the sort to do manual labor, he even brought in odd-job workers to help clean up.

Money obtained through swindling didn't hurt to spend.

Lin Bai was happy to enjoy some peace and quiet.

Two hundred taels meant little to a wealthy man like Luo Congwen, but ordinary people would have to save for at least five years without eating or drinking to accumulate that much.

Apart from buying the property, the renovation and decorating costs weren't actually very high.

Outside the new shop, the craftsmen all looked somewhat uncomfortable. Occasionally, a trace of sympathy flashed in their eyes when they glanced at Lin Bai, as though they were looking at a fool.

Lin Bai took it all in, becoming even more certain that this shop had serious problems.

But he also knew he wouldn't get anything out of these men.

The craftsmen were in cahoots with the Brokerage. They were all on the same side, and he was merely an outsider!

Still, Lin Bai didn't care. So what if there were problems?

He had only himself to blame for swindling too little money. A single copper could bring even a hero to his knees. Besides, he was opening the restaurant to grind quests, not to actually make a living selling meals...

"Proprietor, you want to call this dump... ahem... this shop the God of Cooking Restaurant?" The carpenter looked around at the surroundings, barren of even a blade of grass for a hundred meters in every direction, and the corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily.

"Of course." Confidence shone on Lin Bai's face. "Don't underestimate this shop. Before long, it'll be famous throughout the world."

The carpenter pursed his lips and gave Lin Bai another look reserved for idiots. "As long as you're happy, proprietor."

"Make the signboard rectangular, but leave a chunk missing from the upper-right corner. Use gilt lettering for 'God of Cooking Restaurant,' except leave off the shelter-shaped top of the final Chinese character, shop, turning it into occupy, and don't color that part either. Oh, and don't close up the box-shaped mouth in occupy."

Lin Bai picked up a twig and sketched the signboard on the ground, describing his requirements in detail.

He had learned this from the Incompleteness System. If it could reward him with the Nine Suns Scripture with a stroke missing from its name, he could open a God of Cooking Restaurant with strokes missing too.

The carpenter listened in bewilderment.

The blacksmith and the Brokerage's assistant beside him were dumbfounded as well.

"Proprietor, I can't do this job." After standing dazed for a long moment, the carpenter knitted his brows.

"Not skilled enough?" Lin Bai raised an eyebrow, contempt naturally spreading across his face.

[Anger from Zhang Achun +1]

"It has nothing to do with skill." Zhang Achun's face darkened. "Making a signboard like that would ruin my shop's reputation."

"Master Zhang, if you think the pay is too low, just say so. I like people who speak plainly. I'll increase your wages by 19.85 percent." Lin Bai snorted, looking at the carpenter as though he were a petty man who cared for nothing but profit.

Having tasted the benefits the systems provided, he had begun pursuing quest completion to its utmost limits.

Compared with seeking uplifting positive emotions, negative emotions were far easier to stir up.

He just had to keep speaking bluntly and saying exactly what was on his mind.

Not being afraid to offend people was enough.

As for the 19.85 percent, he had learned that from the Incompleteness System. If the arithmetic hadn't been so troublesome, he would even have said 3.1415826...

19.85 percent?

Either add ten percent or twenty percent. If you really must, fifteen percent is a reasonable number too!

What the hell is with all those decimal places?

Am I supposed to hire an accountant just to calculate my wages afterward?

Zhang Achun's back teeth clenched in waves as he looked at Lin Bai and thought, Is there something wrong with this fellow's head? No wonder the Brokerage swindled him!

"Twenty percent." Zhang Achun drew a deep breath and offered a round number. "And don't tell anyone you ordered the signboard from my shop."

"21.37 percent." Lin Bai's expression didn't change. Even if it cost him more, he insisted on including decimal places. "I have a few other requirements."

"Go on."

The carpenter couldn't tell whether Lin Bai was doing this deliberately. He suppressed the urge to slap him across the face with the sole of his shoe.

There was no shame in earning money.

He was a craftsman. He wouldn't stoop to arguing with a lunatic.

"The custom tables inside the shop can't be standard squares either. Each table must either have a missing corner or a hole in the middle. Ideally, the missing corners should be in different positions, and the holes shouldn't be round. The four legs can't all be the same length; one must be shorter than the other three. The same goes for the stools..." Lin Bai vividly outlined his new shop's furnishings for the carpenter.

"Wait." Sweat poured off the carpenter like rain, and he increasingly looked at Lin Bai as though he were a sick man. "The signboard is one thing, but if the table legs are different lengths, surely the tables won't be usable..."

"I can prop them up with bricks." Lin Bai smiled. "Just make them according to my specifications. You needn't worry about the rest."

"..." The carpenter drew a deep breath. As an image of the finished products surfaced in his mind, he shut his eyes in pain and silently resolved that this furniture absolutely could not bear any mark of his shop. Fortunately, this dump might not attract any customers anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't ruin his reputation.

It was what the customer requested. That couldn't count as earning money against his conscience...

After briefing the carpenter, Lin Bai turned to the blacksmith. "Master blacksmith, sorry for the trouble, but I'd like to commission a batch of bowls, each with a differently shaped chip in the rim, and chopsticks, every one a different length and thickness..."

"..." The blacksmith's temples throbbed. He gave a dry laugh. "Proprietor, restaurant bowls are generally porcelain, and the chopsticks are bamboo. I'm not really the right person for this."

"Iron bowls are sturdy. I'm worried porcelain ones won't stand up to customers smashing them." Lin Bai smiled sheepishly. "And if someone snaps the bamboo chopsticks to matching lengths by hand, I'd lose more than I gained. Taking precautions ahead of time is always wise!"

"..." The brokerage assistant.

"..." The carpenter.

"..." The blacksmith.

Was he fucking opening a restaurant?

Wasn't this purely meant to make people uncomfortable?

[Depression from Zhang Achun, Feng Liu, and Zhang Shutang, +3]

[Collect ten instances of negative emotions (10/10), reward (issued)]

[Let ten people experience the beauty of incompleteness... (3/10...]