Quote of the Day: "In any market, the greatest opportunity lies in the inefficiencies others overlook."
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The conference room was a glacier, all polished obsidian and cold, blue light. The air hummed with the silent, expensive frequency of absolute power. Lin Feng stood at its head, his knuckles resting lightly on the chilled surface of the table. He wasn't a large man, but his presence consumed the room, a black hole in a tailored Zegna suit.
"The numbers don't lie, Samuel," Lin Feng's voice was calm, a surgical instrument. "Your company's operational efficiency is 18.3% below industry standard. Your R&D pipeline is a ghost town, and your brand loyalty is a nostalgic fantasy."
On the massive screen behind him, a single, damning chart glowed. A red line, representing the company's value, plunged precipitously towards zero.
The man across the table, Samuel Vance, CEO of Vance Innovations, had aged a decade in the last twenty minutes. A fine sheen of sweat coated his forehead. "We have legacy, Lin. A history. Our employees... they're like family."
Lin Feng's lip barely twitched. Family. The most inefficient and emotionally volatile corporate structure imaginable.
"Sentiment is a liability," Lin Feng stated, his gaze unwavering. "My final offer is forty-seven cents on the dollar. I will absorb your assets, liquidate your debts, and provide a standard severance package to your... family."
It wasn't an offer. It was an autopsy report, delivered before the patient had officially expired. Samuel Vance's shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him. He was a ghost already. Lin Feng had merely shown him his own corpse.
The thrill was familiar, a clean, sharp spike of adrenaline. This was the pinnacle. The art of the deal. The absolute power of seeing a complex system of hopes, dreams, and livelihoods reduced to a simple, executable line on a spreadsheet.
He reached for the crystal glass of water, a silent toast to his own victory.
The next sensation was not the cool touch of crystal.
It was the violent, nauseating lurch of reality tearing itself inside out. The glacier-like conference room fractured into a billion shimmering pixels. The smug satisfaction was ripped from his psyche, replaced by a howling void of disorientation and pain. He felt his consciousness being stretched, compressed, and then—
—Silence.
A dull, throbbing ache pulsed behind his eyes. The cold polish of the obsidian table was gone, replaced by the rough, splintery texture of cheap wood beneath his cheek. The sterile, filtered air was now a thick cocktail of smells: dust, mildew, the faint, cloying sweetness of spoiled herbs, and underlying it all, a pathetic wisp of something... energetic? Spiritual?
He forced his eyes open.
Darkness. Faint, pre-dawn light filtered through a single, grime-caked window, illuminating a scene of profound neglect. He was lying on the floor of a small, square room. Wooden shelves, half-empty, held a few desiccated, unrecognizable plants in ceramic pots. A simple counter, scarred and stained, stood opposite him. A single, hand-painted scroll hung crookedly on the wall, its characters faded, depicting a mountain that looked as defeated as this place felt.
What... is this? A warehouse? A dump?
This wasn't his penthouse. This wasn't anywhere he had ever been.
He tried to push himself up, and a wave of weakness so profound it was humiliating washed over him. His limbs felt like overcooked noodles. His body was thin, clad in a coarse, simple robe of blue cloth. Panic, an emotion he had spent a lifetime mastering, began to ignite in his chest.
Ambush? Kidnapping? Some kind of... psychotic break?
Before he could form a coherent thought, light erupted in his vision. Not from the window, but from inside his skull. A translucent, blue-tinted interface shimmered into existence, hovering before him with brutal clarity.
[Soul Transmigration Complete.]
[Host Neural Compatibility: 99.9%.]
[Initializing System...]
Text scrolled, cold and digital.
[Welcome to the Karma & Capital Ascension System.]
[User: Lin Feng (林枫).]
[Cultivation Base: Qi Condensation Level 1 (Unstable).]
[Physique: Mortal Grade. Weakened.]
[Dao Heart: Fractured. Cluttered.]
Lin Feng stared, his mind, usually a supercomputer of corporate strategy, refusing to process the information. Transmigration? System? Qi Condensation? This was the language of the trashy webnovels his junior analysts read to decompress. Nonsense.
[New Host Detected. Mandatory Primary Quest Issued.]
[Quest: The Phoenix from the Ashes.]
Objective:Restore the 'Serene Heart Teahouse' to a state of stable profitability and repute.
Time Limit:3 Months.
Capital Goal:1,000 Spirit Stones (Current: 12).
Karma Goal:Stabilize Dao Heart (Current: 5/100).
Success Reward:System Unlock, Continued Existence.
Failure Penalty:Soul Dissolution.
Soul Dissolution.
The words hung in the air, devoid of emotion, and that made them all the more terrifying. This wasn't a game. This was a binding contract, and he had already signed it without reading the fine print.
"Spirit Stones? Dao Heart?" he muttered, his voice a dry, unfamiliar croak.
A new window popped up, helpfully titled [Establishment Ledger: Serene Heart Teahouse.] It was a horror show. The numbers were so bad they were almost comical.
Assets:
· Spirit Stones: 12
· Low-Grade Spiritual Herbs: 7 units (Drying)
· Basic Qi-Gathering Formation (Efficiency: 3%)
· Property: Single-storey wooden structure (Structural Integrity: 45%)
Liabilities:
· Debt to 'Void-Severing Pavilion': 500 Spirit Stones (Overdue)
· Monthly Operating Loss: 50 Spirit Stones
· Reputation: 'Failing,' 'Last Resort,' 'Impure Qi'
His business mind, even addled by panic and this new reality, immediately latched onto the data. A negative cash flow. Catastrophic debt. A worthless asset. The only thing missing was a chapter on corporate turnaround strategies.
The door to the room creaked open. An old man stood there, silhouetted against the grey dawn. He wore a similar, though cleaner, blue robe. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, but his eyes... his eyes held a deep, weary sadness that seemed to anchor the very dust in the room.
"Feng'er?" the old man's voice was soft, etched with concern. "You... you're awake. The doctor said the Qi backlash might have..." He trailed off, his gaze dropping to the floor where Lin Feng had collapsed. "It doesn't matter. Rest. There is nothing left to be done."
Memories that were not his own, fractured and blurry, bubbled up from the depths of this new brain. Elder Bai. His grandfather. The owner of this sinking ship. The previous Lin Feng, the wastrel son, had tried a risky cultivation technique in a desperate bid to break through, failed, and died from the backlash. That was the vacancy he had filled.
Lin Feng ignored the old man's concern. He pushed past the weakness, leveraging sheer force of will to sit up straight against the counter. The System interface remained, a persistent HUD of his impending doom.
"Grandfather," Lin Feng said, the word foreign on his tongue. He gestured with his chin, not at the old man, but at the space around them. "Explain the situation. From the beginning. Omit nothing."
His tone was not that of a chastised grandson. It was the tone he had used with Samuel Vance just minutes—or a lifetime—ago. It was the tone of a CEO demanding a briefing.
Elder Bai flinched, startled by the cold authority in the young man's voice. The weakness was still there, in the body, but the eyes that met his were no longer the eyes of a lazy, spoiled boy. They were the eyes of a predator, assessing a new and hostile ecosystem.
"The... the situation?" Elder Bai stammered. "Feng'er, you need to—"
"The debt," Lin Feng interrupted, his voice gaining a shred of its former steel. "The Void-Severing Pavilion. The terms. The competition. Now."
As Elder Bai, bewildered, began to speak of spiritual herbs, rival tea shops, and the looming takeover by the corporate-like "Void-Severing Pavilion," Lin Feng's mind was already racing, cross-referencing the old man's words with the damning data in the System ledger.
His initial plan, formed in a split second, was simple. Liquidate. Sell the remaining herbs, the property, the pathetic formation core. Use the 12 Spirit Stones as seed capital for a small trading operation. Cut losses and run. It was the only logical move.
A sharp, electric pain lanced through his temples. The System interface flashed red.
[WARNING: Host course of action conflicts with Primary Quest parameters.]
[Proposed action: Asset Liquidation.]
[Predicted Outcome: Quest Failure.]
[Penalty: Soul Dissolution.]
Lin Feng froze, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. He was trapped. Trapped in a weak body, in a failing business, in a world with rules he didn't understand, and bound by a System that had a literal kill switch.
He looked at Elder Bai's resigned, hopeless face. He looked at the dusty, dying herbs. He felt the pathetic, fading wisp of energy in this so-called "teahouse."
This wasn't a corporate takeover. This was a startup. The worst startup imaginable, with the highest possible stakes.
Failure wasn't bankruptcy. It was oblivion.
A grim, cold smile touched his lips. It was not a pleasant expression. It was the smile of a cornered wolf realizing it had to stop being a wolf and learn to be a shepherd, all while the hunters closed in.
"Very well," Lin Feng said, his voice low. He pushed himself fully to his feet, leaning heavily on the counter. The System's objectives burned in his mind.
Capital Goal: 1,000 Spirit Stones.
Karma Goal: Stabilize Dao Heart.
Profit and... personality. Two sides of a coin he'd never had to flip.
"The Serene Heart Teahouse," he declared, his gaze sweeping over the room as if seeing it for the first time—not as a tomb, but as a project. A terribly, catastrophically flawed project. "We're not closing. We're restructuring."
Elder Bai could only stare, speechless, as his grandson, who had just cheated death, began to speak the language of a stranger.