Chapter 135: Mission Completed, Employment Quota +1!
After stepping out of the tricycle, Qin Yue’s mood improved quite a bit upon seeing the old house’s crisp, brand-new facade.
Although she had grumbled to Cai Wei that these rural guesthouses were always just rundown village houses with a quick coat of paint thrown on before opening, a fresh layer of paint at least gave a sense of cleanliness, which was a hundred times better than a filthy, messy environment.
Cai Wei had already paid for their reserved room on his phone earlier—160 yuan with the twenty percent discount came to 128 yuan. The moment his feet stepped into the manor, Jian Xingxia’s mission progress ticked up by one, becoming 5/10.
At the front counter, Cai Wei turned to ask Qin Yue, “Yueyue, I booked lunch and dinner for us, but do you want some breakfast? How about we order a portion to tie you over first?”
Qin Yue shook her head. “I have no appetite. Do you have coffee? I want an iced coffee.”
Jian Xingxia replied, “We only have it in aluminum cans. Is that okay?”
“Fine.” Qin Yue shrugged. Being out in the mountains, it was already lucky enough to have coffee at all; she certainly didn’t expect it to be freshly brewed.
But Cai Wei felt a trace of concern. “Yueyue, you haven’t eaten a single thing all morning. Drinking coffee on an empty stomach isn’t good for you. Tell you what, I’ll buy a portion of breakfast, and you can just pick out whatever you like. Eat a little bit first, and then have your coffee, alright?”
Qin Yue remained indifferent. Cai Wei quickly prepared to pay. “One breakfast and two sets of lunch and dinner.”
Just as Jian Xingxia was about to calculate the discounted price, Qin Yue pulled out a two-hundred-yuan note and slapped it onto the counter.
Feeling a bit awkward, Cai Wei tried to push it back. “Yueyue, let me handle it.”
Qin Yue had already spun around and was heading upstairs. “Drop it. Let’s not bicker back and forth over this.”
Left with no choice, Cai Wei grabbed the change and hurriedly followed her up.
Behind the counter, Jian Xingxia couldn’t resist pumping her fist in a tiny victory gesture. Yes! That’s six individual customer revenues!
However, the time had already crept to 9:20 AM. She was still short of four people. At this hour, if someone hadn’t already set out from town, they wouldn’t make it to the manor in time! Even if they arrived later, the mission deadline would have already passed.
Anxious out of her mind, Jian Xingxia called Hu Da back down in the village. “Uncle Hu, are there any other guests heading up?”
Hu Da shook his head. “None at all! If anyone passes through, I’ll message you right away.” He made sure to add, “Make sure you do a fine job hosting up there.”
After hanging up, Jian Xingxia’s heart pounded with unease. If no one else arrived by 9:40 AM, she was prepared to unleash her ultimate fallback strategy—opening the greenhouse picking activity ahead of schedule. She would have the guests weigh their harvests individually, and someone was bound to pay separately.
Meanwhile, Hu Da, who had just hung up his phone, harbored a similar wave of worry. Although five batches of guests had arrived this morning, they were all Jian Xingxia’s acquaintances. He had no idea how she had managed to get to know so many people from Jinmen Town when she had been back for less than a month.
But looking at it objectively, this didn’t seem like a good sign for a guesthouse. Running a business couldn’t succeed without acquaintances showing up to support it, but it certainly couldn’t survive if only acquaintances showed up!
Inside and outside the mountains, the exact same anxious waiting filled the air.
At 9:40 AM, the mission progress still hadn’t refreshed, and the guests who had booked the remaining two rooms had yet to set foot in the manor.
Just as Jian Xingxia steeled her nerves and prepared to deploy her emergency baseline tactic, Hu Da suddenly phoned her back.
“Xia… Xiaxia! A massive crowd of people just arrived at the village!”
“A massive crowd?”
Down at Lu’an Village, the villagers were utterly dumbfounded—seven or eight small cars had rolled into the village in a continuous line.
The villagers, who had assumed their duties for the day were wrapped up and were casually chatting beneath the banyan tree, were forced to scramble to their feet. They fanned out to provide simple explanations and point directions for the people in each car.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. Keep going straight ahead and you’ll find Xingxia Manor.”
“Rest assured, rest assured! I am a village cadre. This is a key project supported by our village; it’s absolutely not a scam!”
“Flowers in the mountains? Yes, we have those. The mountains are vast, so how could we lack flowers… A wall of blossoms? I wouldn’t know about that; you’ll have to ask Xiaxia.”
“What Douyin? What Xiaohongshu? I haven’t heard of them, but this place is definitely Lu’an Village.”
“Ah, yes. Drive straight ahead for just over two kilometers, and you’ll see the barrier gate.”
“Yes! There’s a parking lot! Plenty of parking spaces!”
Hu Da was run off his feet. As a village cadre, his words carried far more weight than the others when stepping forward to speak.
Up at the old house, Jian Xingxia was equally dazed. She suspected the flyers and business cards had finally worked, but why on earth had everyone concentrated their arrival right before ten o’clock?
But she had absolutely no time to ponder it now, because the faster cars had already reached the barrier gate. Jian Xingxia quickly lifted the barrier, letting A-Feng guide the vehicles outside.
At 9:50 AM, the guests from the first car stepped inside and asked the moment they entered, “You have fruit picking here, right? Is it twenty percent off today? Does it start at ten o’clock?”
Jian Xingxia blanked for a beat. “Yes, that’s correct.”
The family of three let out a collective sigh of relief. “Thank goodness we made it in time! My goodness, you have no idea. The moment I saw it on my WeChat Moments, I was so afraid we’d miss out!”
The happiest was the little guest. “Yay! We can go picking right away!”
Before she could finish receiving this family of three, the guests from the second car approached as well. “We came after seeing a Douyin video. Is this the place?”
Jian Xingxia looked at their screen—wasn’t that the Berry and Blossom Pathway? The three girls featured in the photos were exactly Lin Shuang, Fang Xiaoying, and Ai Jinjin!
Jian Xingxia couldn’t help but marvel, “They took such an amazing shot!”
The guest looked a bit doubtful. “What do you mean? It doesn’t look this pretty? It’s not a catfishing photo, is it?”
“Ah, no. I mean the guests captured it beautifully. We do indeed have this exact landscape. Here is a flyer detailing everything; please have a look.”
The guest who accepted the flyer remarked, “We can fish too? Give me a set of camping gear. I’ll handle the fishing side by myself.”
Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang worked frantically to calculate bills, collect payments, guide guests, and settle luggage.
Then came the third car, from which several peculiar-looking individuals emerged. Some were thinning on top, some appeared completely drained of spirit, some had massive dark circles sagging beneath their eyes, and some walked with a distinct, floating sway.
“Is this Xingxia Manor? Did Lao Zhang and Xiaoyu come here? Are there any rooms left? We want a room exactly identical to Lao Zhang’s.”
“It doesn’t matter if the room layout is different, but the bed must be identical! Please, I beg you. We are all members of the Jinmen Town Insomnia Support Group. Lao Zhang said your beds here can cure insomnia; we need to sleep right now.”
Jian Xingxia was startled and hurriedly clarified, “The beds at our guesthouse do not possess such a therapeutic effect. Please don’t spread such claims, or we’ll be flagged for false advertising.”
But the group couldn’t care less about that. “Just open a room for us. We only want to sleep, nothing else.”
Regrettably, Jian Xingxia had already received a system notification—the two guests who had pre-booked the remaining rooms had already crossed into the manor’s boundary.
Jian Xingxia shook her head. “I am so sorry, but all our rooms are completely occupied. There are currently no vacancies left.”
Even the two west-wing rooms on the first floor had long been spoken for—Luo Yang and Xiao Ya, who had arrived early to wait for a vacancy, hadn’t managed to secure a second-floor room, but Jian Xingxia had still decided to arrange a complimentary stay for them on the first floor. On the other hand, the young security guard from Jiahe Garden had also mentioned taking a day off today to bring his girlfriend to support her opening, so a complimentary room had to be set aside for them as well.
These two ground-floor rooms couldn’t compare to the suites on the second floor, so Jian Xingxia didn’t intend to charge them, planning instead to offer them as a gesture of goodwill. Of course, even if these two rooms hadn’t been given away, they would be useless to these “insomniacs,” because the mattresses inside weren’t the premium ones supplied by the system.
Jian Xingxia saw the guests off with regret, but to her surprise, they didn’t leave.
“Fully booked? Well, nothing to be done about that. Come on, call Lao Zhang and have him clear a spot for us… I don’t ask for much, just let me sleep for an hour.”
“Heh, you think you can actually get through to his phone? Look! I’ve called him twenty or thirty times along the way, and not a single one was answered!”
The speaker’s face was a mask of pure agony, laced with a heavy dose of envy and spite. “That dead fatty Lao Zhang must have fallen asleep! The very last WeChat voice message he sent me said he didn’t even dare lie down on it, because the moment you lie down, you drift off within a single minute…”
“Doesn’t that mean he didn’t actually lie down?”
“He’s full of it! At the very end of that voice message, I literally heard the rustle of him lying down, followed by an instant snooze! Why else would I drag you guys over to try it out?”
The group, having been tormented by a lack of sleep for far too long, let their tears flow freely.
Meanwhile, the system was chiming rapidly to register the counts.
The system automatically identified that the criteria for entering the manor and generating individual customer revenue had been met. Progress +2.
Furthermore, among the guests being received at this very moment, some required camping gear, some ordered breakfast, and some purchased beverages and snacks…
Customer revenue generated +1
Customer revenue generated +1
Customer revenue generated +2…
In an instant, the requirements for [Manor Operating Mission Three] were overwhelmingly satisfied.
Seizing a quick window while heading into the kitchen to prepare breakfasts, Jian Xingxia checked the system notifications.
[Congratulations! The Manor Owner has successfully completed Operating Mission Three: Attract 10 new guests within 24 hours. The reward of Guesthouse Exclusive Employment Quota *1 has been dispatched. Please check and accept it!]
