You just used your right hand, right?

Chapter 188 You just used your right hand, right?

"Oh my, little immortal, your recipes are truly miraculous! The businesses of those restaurants have suddenly come back to life. In the past few days, no fewer than five or six people have come, all saying they want to meet you, but unfortunately they don't have the connections, so they all came to me to ask."

At the inn, Xiong Shi praised Fang Shi incessantly upon seeing him.

"I just thought you must be very busy at your shop these past few days and wouldn't have had a chance to see you, so I made all the excuses."

Fang Shi listened and said, "We should decline. Those people who come to visit me are simply greedy after tasting the sweetness of success. They either came on the orders of the restaurant manager or they have ulterior motives. Meeting them will only cause more trouble."

Xiong Shi nodded in complete agreement. He could tell what those guys were thinking: they just wanted to acquire a unique recipe and go out on their own.

But Xiao Xianzhang is a man of great vision; how could his recipes be taken by a few petty people and made their own?

Xiong Shi still couldn't forget Fang Shi's original plan. Although he was also interested in recipes as a fellow chef, he was already a retired man living in an inn and didn't seek profit like the other young chefs.

Fang Shi came here to discuss this matter.

"I am currently settling some matters and things, and once everything is ready, I will leave the city."

Xiong Shi immediately said, "In that case, Little Immortal Master, you might as well just call me directly, which will save you from having to send another letter later."

"No." Fang Shi shook his head and refused. "I haven't found a place to stay yet. Although I wandered in the mountains before, I still haven't found a place I like. Now that there are many wild animals, it's not safe in the mountains. If you come with me, I'm afraid there will be many dangers. It would be bad if you lost your life for nothing."

Upon hearing this, Xiong Shi had no choice but to give up, but he still earnestly urged Fang Wang not to forget him.

"That's natural."

Fang Shi then returned to the alchemy shop. As soon as he entered the alchemy room, he asked Zhu Zhu, "Where is Master? I can't find her anywhere. Shouldn't she be here settling accounts?"

"Sister Zhu went to the store to check on things; it seems there was a dispute between some customers."

"Oh." Fang Shi didn't mind; his master could definitely handle this little matter.

Just as he was about to read a book, Zhu Zhu leaned in and whispered in his ear, "Besides that, there's something else Master hasn't told you yet. I heard that several restaurants in the city have launched hot pot these past few days, trying to steal our business."

"Really?" Fang Shi's ears tickled from her words, and he tilted them slightly. "It's just imitation, which is normal. But our specialty is medicinal cuisine. Hot pot is just the base. It's not anything profound."

Let alone other shops, anyone who has seen it once can imitate it. Isn't it just a soup pot with a fire burning? The key is in the soup base. As long as you have that, nothing else matters.

"Besides, even flowers need green leaves to set them off. With other hot pot restaurants around, diners can make comparisons, which makes our hot pot seem even more delicious, doesn't it?"

Besides, hot pot restaurants are not so easy to replicate. Even in the past, many ordinary people often overlooked fire hazards.

Not to mention the Xuanjie, a place full of wooden buildings, where fire hazards would only be more serious. In the past, meals were cooked in the kitchen and served on the table, but hot pot requires lighting a fire on the front table.

The hot pots in the alchemy shops are all made with low-grade alchemy furnaces. After the fire is lit, the heat is contained within the furnace by its special structure, making it very safe. But how could those restaurants that are just imitating them afford to spend a lot of money to buy alchemy furnaces to make hot pots? At least the few shops that are hastily imitating them probably don't have this awareness, so they can only use open flames. You can imagine how many hidden dangers there are.

Burning diners and damaging one's reputation is a minor issue; the real loss would be if the restaurant itself were to burn down.

Unfortunately, you can't kindly offer advice on this kind of thing. If you go, people will just think you're petty and that you're trying to scare them, and they definitely won't give you a good look.

Even though we received safety education from childhood, many people still didn't take it seriously. Without real-life lessons, people are often reluctant to listen to advice.

Therefore, let's just drink our own tea and enjoy our own scenery.

It was past lunchtime.

Fang Shi sensed something was wrong. "Why hasn't Master returned yet?"

Zhu Zhu, peering out the window, also seemed puzzled: "Xiao Fang, look, there's a huge crowd gathered at the entrance of the hot pot restaurant. They're neither leaving nor going in, like they're just watching the commotion. Could it be that the troublemakers haven't left yet?"

After spending a lot of time together, Zhu Zhu also started calling Fang Shi "Little Fang" like her older sister Zhu.

Upon hearing this, Fang Shi stepped forward, listened intently, and his keen hearing faintly detected a breaking sound, as if something had been smashed.

"Oh no, I'm afraid it's not just a conflict between diners, but someone has come to attack the restaurant."

Without hesitation, Fang Shi leaped out of the window, landing on the edge of the floor at the shop entrance below.

When the crowd saw someone fall from the sky, they quickly dispersed. When Fang Shi landed and looked inside, he was surprised to find that there were no customers left in the restaurant, broken bowls and shards were scattered all over the floor, and perfectly good ingredients were also scattered on the ground, which was a real pity.

He looked up and saw his master sitting inside, surrounded by three men. The man in the lead looked middle-aged, wearing a red robe with white patterns. His eagle eyes were gloomy, and he looked down at him with a stern gaze. The two young and strong guards beside him seemed to be his protectors. Judging from the stains on their clothes, they must have smashed the things.

Fang Shi, unable to sense any Xuan Qi and unafraid, walked inside. As soon as he entered, he heard the leading man speaking to his master in a stern tone: "Huan'e, your sister-in-law spoiled you, letting you run off to the borderlands. The family wanted you to help manage the sect's shops, to settle down and understand the hardships your elders endured. But look at you now! Have you forgotten the ancestral teachings after being away from home for so long, or have you been spoiled for too long, thinking that now that you're grown up, the family will still indulge you? You dared to turn the sect's alchemy shop into a hot pot restaurant, using the alchemy furnace that alchemists value most as a soup pot, tainting it with the stench of raw meat! Do you know how angry your elder brother will be if he finds out?!"

Zhu Huan'e sat there, not with composure, but with tears welling up in her eyes. The radiance she had displayed over the past few days was shattered by this sudden pressure. She clenched her hands tightly, but was powerless to resist the pressure from her family.

She knew that her second uncle's personal arrival meant that the elders in the family would no longer tolerate her willfulness.

She gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and said, "Second Uncle—is there really no other way for our Xuan Dan Sect to go besides currying favor with others? There are thousands of people in the sect, and we—"

"You little brat! You've been a boss lady for a while now, and you think you're all that? You even have the nerve to worry about the sect leader! What do you know? You think that just because you opened this so-called hot pot restaurant, you have the right to challenge your second uncle and my elder brother? Do you know that what you're doing is violating ancestral teachings! It's breaking the rules of the Pill Sect for thousands of years! It's betraying the path of alchemy!"

"But Second Uncle, you didn't see these—"

"Shut up."

*Slap!* A crisp, resounding slap landed.

"My elder brother has already said that he's here so I can teach you a lesson on his behalf."

The onlookers outside were all astonished.

But they weren't surprised that the middle-aged man dared to slap the proprietress, Zhu; they were surprised that the young man who walked in had an axe in his hand.