[This week's check-in location: Three Pure Ones Palace!]

Tour all Five Great Mountains for their sights; the finest scenery lies on Mount Sanqing.

At the entrance to the Fortunate Inn, inside the Mount Sanqing Scenic Area.

"What kind of shitty inn is this? We must've had our heads slammed in a door to choose this place!"

"I could put up with the musty sheets and pillows, but there's not even a private bathroom! We'd have been better off camping outside!"

"And that Daoist Master Lingyun from the Three Pure Ones Palace claimed it had beautiful surroundings and friendly service? Bullshit! It's all lies! They're all shills!"

"The next time I see him livestreaming, I'm going to roast him alive! Working hand in glove with crooked businesses-what a piece of shit!"

"I'm calling 12301 to report this inn's unscrupulous owner for false advertising!"

Early that morning, four tourists-two men and two women-walked out of the Fortunate Inn with backpacks on their shoulders, leaving a trail of curses behind them.

"..." Lin Zhe, who was approaching from the opposite direction, had originally intended to greet them. After all, anyone who came from afar was a guest.

But after hearing their complaints, he smoothly turned his raised hand into a head scratch and looked away, awkwardly yet gracefully.

Lin Zhe's expression remained calm in the face of the guests' bad reviews of his family's inn.

It was always the same few complaints, nothing new. He'd heard them so often his ears were practically growing calluses.

He wanted to run the inn properly too, providing good service and earning positive reviews.

It was a nice idea. It just cost a bit of money.

And money was what he lacked.

The Fortunate Inn paid the scenic area over 300,000 yuan a year in rent and management fees alone.

Then there were taxes, utilities, repairs, staff wages, and a whole mess of other operating costs.

All told, the Fortunate Inn's annual expenses came to at least 500,000 yuan.

A few years earlier, when tourism was booming, the inn had done fairly well.

A year's hard work had brought in around 500,000 yuan in net profit.

Unfortunately, luck hadn't been on Lin Zhe's family's side.

Over the past few years, for reasons everyone knew, tourism across the country had been in a slump.

The Mount Sanqing Scenic Area was no exception. Out of 365 days a year, it had been closed for over 300.

Without the skin, what could the hair cling to?

The Fortunate Inn depended on the Mount Sanqing Scenic Area for its livelihood, so naturally it hadn't fared much better. Business had taken a nosedive along with it.

Although the scenic area's management committee had offered substantial rent reductions in light of the circumstances,

the Fortunate Inn had still spent those three years running at a loss. Forget making money-they'd had to put in over 200,000 yuan just to keep it going.

When his parents had first opened the inn, they'd scraped together money from friends and relatives and taken out bank loans, spending over two million yuan in total.

To this day, they still hadn't recouped their investment.

With over two million yuan in sunk costs weighing on them, his parents couldn't simply abandon the inn over short-term losses. They could only grit their teeth and keep going.

As the inn continued losing money, they had drastically cut back on operating expenses, saving wherever they could.

Back when business was good, the sheets and duvet covers had been changed after every guest.

Now, as long as they didn't look dirty, they stayed in use.

As wages fell, the inn's employees either found other jobs or quit.

Now, the entire inn was down to Lin Zhe, its inexperienced young owner,

and a young receptionist who had just graduated from university and was equally inexperienced.

With two novices running the inn, plenty of things inevitably slipped through the cracks, leading to a sharp rise in guest complaints.

As bad reviews and complaints piled up, the inn's reputation worsened, fewer guests came, and the losses continued.

It was like being trapped in a vicious cycle.

To break that cycle, he first needed to invest some money in improving the inn's operations.

Standards for service and cleanliness both needed raising. In plain terms, it still came down to spending money.

The problem was that Lin Zhe had none. His pockets were completely empty.

Three months earlier, during the Qingming Festival, his parents had been in a car accident on a country road while driving back to their hometown to pay respects to their ancestors.

The driver who had caused the accident had been using cloned license plates and had fled immediately afterward.

Since the other driver was entirely at fault, his parents couldn't claim through their own insurance. They had to cover the medical expenses themselves for the time being.

Over those three months, their hospital treatment had cost nearly 600,000 yuan, wiping out almost all the family's savings.

There were no cameras along the stretch of road where the accident had happened, so the traffic authorities had made little progress tracking down the driver. Compensation remained out of reach.

His parents' ongoing rehabilitation costs were another bottomless pit, and there were still plenty of expenses ahead.

It was already July 12. Next year's rent was due at the end of the year, leaving him barely five months.

Tourism had begun recovering that year, and visitor numbers at Mount Sanqing had essentially returned to pre-pandemic levels. The inn's rent concessions had been canceled too.

"Rent is 310,000 yuan, and I've got five months left. I'd need to clear 60,000 a month just to cover it. I'm nowhere near that!"

Just thinking about the looming rent deadline gave Lin Zhe a headache.

The Fortunate Inn had made barely over 10,000 yuan in profit the previous month. Earning 310,000 yuan for rent within five months...

For Lin Zhe, a trainee innkeeper forced into the job, that was a complete fantasy.

Unless...

"Zhe, dear, I'll be waiting for your call..."

Auntie Li's voice began echoing in his mind again. The greater the pressure he was under, the more tempting that voice became.

Auntie Li's full name was Li Muchan. She was forty-five that year and the mother of Dan Teng, Lin Zhe's best friend from university. Though her youthful years were behind her, she still had plenty of charm.

Her figure and skin were also exceptionally well maintained. Whenever she went out with Dan Teng, people often mistook them for siblings.

All Lin Zhe had to do was message her saying he was tired of struggling, and he could get hundreds of thousands, or even a million yuan, in no time.

The problem before him would be solved effortlessly.

But then he thought about how Auntie Li was a year older than his own mother.

If he got together with Auntie Li, wouldn't things be awkward between his mother and her daughter-in-law?

And wouldn't going from Dan Teng's best buddy to his father be a little inappropriate too?

For those two reasons, Lin Zhe still wanted to try a little harder, unless he truly ran out of options.

Weighed down by his worries, Lin Zhe entered the inn's courtyard, walked over to a long park bench with a backrest beside the wooden fence on the west side, and sat down to ponder his life.

"The inn's current income barely covers my parents' medical bills. Everything's gone by the end of the month. I don't even have 3,000 yuan left over."

"Where am I supposed to find over 300,000 yuan in five months?"

One money-making idea after another flashed through Lin Zhe's mind.

Dan Teng and Auntie Li certainly had money. If Lin Zhe asked, borrowing three to five hundred thousand yuan wouldn't be much of a problem, even without becoming family.

But borrowing money was a step he would take only after trying everything he could and still failing to solve the problem.

He couldn't go running to others for help or loans whenever he hit a snag, before he'd even tried to think of a solution or put in any real effort.

Lin Zhe had been competitive since childhood and had a strong sense of pride. More than anything, he hated swallowing that pride to ask for help.

The closer he was to a friend or relative, the harder it was for him to ask.

"Huh? Did someone drop a coin here?"

A casual glance caught a glint of silver in the grass in front of him.

Lin Zhe bent down and picked it up, discovering that it was a rather unusual coin.

It wasn't one of the common one-yuan coins with a chrysanthemum design.

The character for "check-in" was engraved on the front, while the back bore a landscape.

And... Lin Zhe noticed that the landscape on the back looked a lot like the Mount Sanqing Scenic Area where he was now.

"That landscape on the back is Mount Sanqing, isn't it? Could this be a new commemorative coin from the scenic area? I haven't heard anything about them making these."

Lin Zhe turned the coin over in his palm. Both its design and craftsmanship were first-rate.

Suddenly, the coin in his hand grew scorching hot, like a branding iron!

"Holy shit! What the hell is this?!"

Lin Zhe yelped and instinctively flicked his hand to throw the coin away, but it clung to his palm like a stubborn adhesive plaster.

He immediately began flailing his right hand wildly, shaking it so hard he nearly dislocated his wrist, yet the coin still wouldn't come off!

As he frantically reached over with his left hand to pry it loose, something even stranger happened!

The peculiar coin in his palm instantly broke apart into countless tiny, multicolored particles, as though dissolving in water.

About fifty centimeters in front of Lin Zhe's eyes, those colorful particles gathered into a line of brilliant gold lettering that looked almost solid.

[This week's check-in location: Three Pure Ones Palace!]