189: Chapter 189 Tracing the Root Cause of the Fate-Stealing Problem

Jiang Feng sat in the back of the business van, his fingers sliding across the screen twice as he reread the Lins Shop business report sent by Lawyer Fang from the beginning.

The report's data was very impressive.

In the seven days since opening, the average daily table turnover rate was 4.2 times, the average transaction value per customer remained stable between twenty-two and twenty-eight, and the repeat purchase rate was as high as sixty-seven percent.

In any catering startup project, this set of numbers would be enough for investors to decide on the spot to provide additional funding.

But the last paragraph of the report included three customer complaint records.

The first: Tuesday lunch service, two female diners at Table 4 got into a verbal altercation due to the long wait time and left after slamming down their chopsticks.

The second: Wednesday lunch service, a male diner at Table 7 claimed the dishes were too salty; after failing to get a refund, he left a one-star review on a review website.

The third: Thursday lunch service, three diners at Table 2 collectively complained that the air conditioning temperature was too high and refused to pay the bill.

The three complaints were spread over three days and appeared to be isolated incidents.

But Jiang Feng vaguely felt something was wrong.

With Lin Shuo's culinary skills, the dishes after the official opening would only be better.

If the food itself was fine, customers wouldn't have such frequent emotional outbursts in just one week.

The wait-time altercation could be understood as a result of the surge in customer traffic.

Complaints about saltiness could be attributed to personal taste differences.

But the third complaint was unreasonable.

The Underground Street had constant temperature and humidity; the air conditioning system was a central pipeline controlled by the property management, and the temperature of that Lins Shop shopfront remained stable around twenty-three degrees year-round.

Three people shouting at the same time that it was too hot—so hot they refused to pay—this wasn't a problem with the air conditioning.

It was a problem with the people.

Jiang Feng tucked his phone back into his pocket and patted the headrest of the front passenger seat.

“Lao Chen, hurry up.”

Lao Chen glanced at him through the rearview mirror and pressed the accelerator down an inch.

Fifteen minutes later, the business van parked in a temporary spot near the entrance of the Underground Street.

Jiang Feng walked down the steps, and before he reached the bottom, he heard the sound of voices.

A line of about a dozen people had formed outside Lins Shop, extending from the shop’s main door to the corner of the main passage; several white-collar workers in shirts were peeking inside while scrolling through their phones.

Business was ridiculously good.

From where Jiang Feng stood, he could clearly see the dynamics of most of the shop.

For the first eight minutes, everything was normal.

Then he saw something abnormal.

The necks and ears of two middle-aged women at Table 8 began to turn red.

But those two had ordered Stewed Pork Ribs and Poached Seasonal Vegetables; there wasn't even a hint of chili in the dishes.

The flush started from the base of their ears and spread, crawling along their necks toward their cheeks.

One of the women put down her chopsticks and frowned for no reason.

“What did you mean just now?”

The person opposite her looked bewildered.

“What do I mean? I didn't say anything.”

“Why are you rolling your eyes? I saw it.”

“I rolled my eyes? I’m looking down at my food, where would I be rolling my eyes?”

The two spoke louder and louder, the smell of gunpowder appearing out of thin air in their tone.

The three men in work uniforms at the neighboring Table 5 also stopped eating; one of them tugged at his collar, his forehead covered in sweat.

“What's going on today? It's so stuffy.”

Another chimed in, his voice carrying an inexplicable irritability.

“We said we'd go back to work after eating, why are you dawdling?”

The third man shoveled two mouthfuls of rice into his mouth, shoved his bowl and chopsticks aside, and stood up, the chair legs screeching against the floor.

The Suit Man at Table 10 was even more direct.

He pushed the half-finished bowl of noodles to the middle of the table, stood up, patted his chest twice, muttered “my chest feels tight,” threw down a fifty-dollar bill, and turned to leave without even taking his change.

He even kicked a plastic stool by the door before leaving.

Jiang Feng's gaze followed the Suit Man's back for three seconds.

Not sick, not drunk, and the food was fine.

But he had already sensed that feeling of agitation the moment he stepped into the shop's vicinity.

It was an indescribable discomfort, as if something was lightly pressing against his temples; it didn't hurt, but it was distracting.

If an ordinary person encountered this feeling, they would mostly think it was just bad weather or that they were in a bad mood.

But Jiang Feng was no ordinary person.

He pushed aside the curtain to the kitchen and walked in.

Lin Shuo was standing in front of the stove, tossing a wok.

His movements were still fluid, and his posture was perfect.

But the person was wrong.

Lin Shuo's face was ashen, his eye sockets were sunken, his lips were dry, and the flesh on his cheekbones was clearly a layer thinner than it had been a week ago.

It had only been seven days.

This was damn well not normal.

Someone who had suffered for three years and had just seen the dawn of a comeback wouldn't exhaust themselves into this ghostly state when business was at its best.

“Lin Shuo.”

Lin Shuo turned his head, and seeing it was Jiang Feng, he squeezed out a smile.

“Master Jiang, you're here. Just in time to taste the new dish added today...”

“Turn off the fire.”

Lin Shuo was stunned for a moment, then did as he was told.

The fire on the stove went out, and the kitchen suddenly became quiet.

“Stand still and look at me.”

Jiang Feng walked to a distance of a step and a half directly in front of Lin Shuo and stared straight at Lin Shuo's face.

He had used the skill of Physiognomy countless times; he could do it with his eyes closed.

But what he saw this time made his brow slowly furrow.

Lin Shuo's the area between the eyebrows in physiognomy.

In a normal person's the area between the eyebrows in physiognomy area, the complexion might be bright or dim, but it was always dispersed, like a patch of watercolor with varying depths.

On Lin Shuo's the area between the eyebrows in physiognomy, there was a line.

That thin line condensed from black qi pierced right into the center of the the area between the eyebrows in physiognomy, its hooked tip pointing downward, firmly embedded in the deepest part of his complexion.

The other end of the line went straight up, passing through the top of his head and extending to the end of Jiang Feng's vision, pointing toward a fixed external direction.

Someone was siphoning his fortune.

Moreover, they were using a complete Feng Shui Killing Array to pull out the Origin Fortune and Wealth Qi that should have belonged to Lin Shuo, strand by strand.

The more flourishing the business and the stronger the fortune, the more was being siphoned away.

This was why even though business was so good that the table turnover rate exceeded four, Lin Shuo himself became weaker day by day.

He wasn't earning money; he was providing a blood transfusion for someone else.

“Master Jiang?”

Lin Shuo felt a bit unnerved by his staring and reached out to touch his own face.

“Is there something on my face?”

“Yes.”

Jiang Feng withdrew his gaze and took a step back.

“Have you been especially tired lately? Not the kind of fatigue from physical labor, but the kind where you can't recover no matter how long you sleep.”

Lin Shuo's expression stiffened.

“How did you know?”

“And has your temper been shorter than usual? Does everything look unpleasant to you, and do you want to scold the kitchen assistants if they make even a small mistake?”

Lin Shuo was silent for two seconds, then nodded.

“I thought it was just too much pressure from the opening.”

“It's not pressure.”

Jiang Feng turned around, facing the direction of the shop's exterior, and closed his eyes.

The moment he closed his eyes, all chaotic information was filtered out, leaving only a faint, flickering flow of qi.

The direction that black line pointed.

Through the ceiling, through the soil layer above the Underground Street, all the way north-northeast.

Three kilometers.

The endpoint landed on a building.

Dingsheng Catering Group headquarters building.

Jiang Feng opened his eyes, lifted the curtain, and walked out, tossing a sentence as he passed by Lao Chen.

“Give me the car keys. You stay here and watch the shop.”

Lao Chen threw the keys over without asking questions.

Twenty minutes later.

Jiang Feng stood alone in the Civic Plaza directly in front of the Dingsheng Catering Group headquarters building.

The building with its full glass curtain wall reflected blinding light in the afternoon sun; it was thirty-two stories high and shaped like a standard square column, transparent on all four sides.

Ordinary people looking at this building would only find it grand.

When Jiang Feng looked at this building, he saw something else entirely.

First, he saw the Bronze Deer Sculpture standing in the center of the plaza.

Three meters high, the deer's head faced south, and its antlers had eight tines. The sculpture's base was black marble, with a circular fastener in a copper coins pattern embedded in each of the four corners.

The bronze deer was centered to gather qi, and the eight-tined antlers corresponded to the Eight Trigrams directions to guide the incoming qi veins.

He moved a few steps toward the building's main entrance.

A pair of Stone Drums was placed on either side of the door, and the pattern on the Stone Drums was a linked Ouroboros design.

The Ouroboros pattern locked the qi vents on both sides of the main door, allowing qi to enter but not leave.

He looked up again and scanned the green belt in front of the building.

Four Buddhist Pines pruned into conical shapes.

From an aerial view, their positions fell exactly on the extensions of the four diagonals of the Bronze Deer Sculpture, forming a diamond-shaped encirclement.

The four pines formed a 'Kun' character sealing formation at the four ordinal positions, siphoning all Wealth Qi and Origin Fortune of the same industry within a three-kilometer radius toward this center point.

Simple, crude, and effective.

A standard Feng Shui Fortune-Stealing Array.

A triple-ring nested array, specifically designed to feed on the blood of peers.

Lin Shuo's Lins Shop was opened within this siphoning range; the better the business and the stronger the fortune, the more ferociously it was siphoned by this array.

No wonder while the table turnover rate exceeded four, the man was visibly weakening day by day.

Jiang Feng looked up at the Prosperity LOGO on the top floor of the building and shook his head with a smile.

“This array is too by-the-book. Was it copied from some street-stall secret manual?”

He withdrew his gaze, pulled his hands out of his pockets, and flexed his fingers.

“You've underestimated me far too much.”