Chapter 4: The Art of the Hustle
For the first week, Li Wei'an became the king of "Common Sense."
He didn't launch a luxury brand. He didn't sell mystical elixirs. He simply opened his shop and sold the things people actually needed—buckets, shovels, cheap iron nails—at a price that was exactly 10% lower than anyone else.
"How does he make a profit?" the other merchants whispered.
"He's not," a rival sneered. "He's just burning through his inheritance before he dies."
Wei'an, listening from the back of his shop, just smiled. He wasn't burning money; he was optimizing. He bought surplus goods from "Tesla" peasants (hard-working, efficient village groups) for dirt cheap and sold them at high volume. Win-win. The citizens got cheap nails, and Wei'an got a steady stream of copper that slowly turned back into silver.
Then, he turned his attention to his "Army."
He summoned the 17 Li family guards and the 25 mercenaries from the Iron Vanguard. They stood in the yard, looking like a collection of bruised fruit.
"New plan," Wei'an announced, tossing a bundle of wooden swords onto the dirt. "Training."
"Training?" the mercenary captain grunted. "Master, we know how to swing a blade."
"You know how to swing in a bar. I want you to swing in a rhythm."
Wei'an wasn't a general, but he knew 21st-century fitness. He didn't teach them "Secret Dragon Strikes." He taught them burpees, squats, and stamina drills.
"Down! Up! Swing! Down! Up! Swing!"
It was comedic. Forty men groaning and sweating, doing jumping jacks in the dirt. To the neighbors, it looked like a circus. But Wei'an didn't just give them pain; he gave them carbs.
"Eat," he said, opening a sack of his stockpiled wheat. "Take it home to your wives and kids. If you work for me, you don't starve."
It wasn't a grand speech about loyalty. It was just basic human decency. But in a city where most masters treated guards like disposable rags, the mercenaries looked at the wheat—and then at Wei'an—with a terrifyingly new kind of focus.
The Summons
In the middle of a "squat session," a messenger arrived with a letter sealed in expensive white wax.
The Shen House.
The letter was a summons. "Master Li, the Shen House requests your presence to discuss trade matters at your earliest convenience."
"Earliest convenience, huh?" Wei'an wiped sweat from his brow. "Old Chen, send a reply. Tell them I'm swamped with... uh... military exercises and logistics. I'll be there in a week or two."
When the reply reached the Shen Estate, Shen Yao almost dropped her tea.
"Two weeks?" she hissed, her face flushed with a mix of anger and disbelief. "I am a Noble Widow of a Viscounty, and he is a bankrupt merchant! Does he not know I have a one-month deadline before the Censor arrives?"
She had expected him to come crawling, begging for a chance to kiss the hem of a noble's robe. Instead, he treated her like a doctor's appointment he might miss if it rained.
"One week," she wrote back, her brush strokes sharp enough to cut paper. "No later."
The "Inheritance" War
While the Shen family fumed, the neighboring town of Stonebridge descended into a farce.
The Town Official, a very healthy 40-year-old man, watched in horror as his two "educated" sons started a civil war over his job.
"I am the eldest! The title is mine!" the first son screamed, mobilizing fifty local thugs.
"I am the favorite! I have the better beard!" the second son yelled, mobilizing fifty more.
They were fighting over an inheritance while their father was literally still sitting in his office eating lunch. It was a comedy of ego—until someone accidentally knocked over a torch.
The town's ration station went up in flames.
Suddenly, the joke wasn't funny. A town of five thousand had no grain, and winter was coming.
While the two sons were busy arguing about who would be the better "New Official," Li Wei'an's wagons were already rolling.
He didn't wait for a request. He showed up at the Town Official's door.
"Master Official," Wei'an said, bowing politely. "I heard your sons are... enthusiastic. I have ten wagons of wheat in cold storage. I'm not giving it away for free—I have a business to run—but I'll sell it to you at 20% over market price. It's higher than usual, but it's a lot cheaper than a famine."
The Official, exhausted and ready to disown his children, almost hugged him. "Master Li, you are a saint among vipers."
"No," Wei'an chuckled, his merchant-brain calculating the 30% net profit. "I'm just a man with a lot of birdseed."
The Hook
By the time the week was up, Wei'an had made a killing in Stonebridge and secured a town's worth of political favors.
As he prepared for his meeting with Shen Yao, he stopped by a local tea house to relax. There, he bumped into Lian'er, a famous local courtesan known more for her razor-sharp wit and information-gathering skills than her singing.
"Master Li," she purred, fanning herself. "The man who buys grain when everyone is full and sells it when the world is on fire. You've become quite the mystery."
"I'm just a simple shopkeeper, Lian'er."
"A shopkeeper who is about to walk into a lion's den," she whispered, leaning closer. "The Shen widow isn't looking for a merchant, Wei'an. She's looking for a sacrifice. Be careful. The nobility likes to eat their partners."
Wei'an adjusted his new, high-quality wool robe. "Let them try. I've found that even lions get indigestion if they swallow too much 'birdseed'."
Next Chapter Hook:
Wei'an finally enters the Shen Estate. But instead of a humble merchant, he arrives with his "buffed up" guards and the confidence of a man who just saved a town. Shen Yao is ready to play a game of chess, but Wei'an is about to flip the board and talk about taxes.