Chapter 1 The Art of Doing Absolutely Nothing (Except for a Fee)

The sun in Chengdu doesn’t so much shine as it does simmer. It’s a humid, heavy heat that turns the air into a lukewarm bowl of bone broth, thick enough to chew. In the rest of China—the frantic, twitching centers of Beijing and Shanghai—this kind of weather is an obstacle to be overcome with caffeine and desperation. But here, in the heart of Sichuan, it is an invitation.

Lin Feng sat in his favorite bamboo chair outside the “Quiet Cloud” tea house, his posture less like a human being and more like a discarded silk robe. His eyes were half-closed, watching a group of retirees argue over a Mahjong table with the kind of intensity normally reserved for nuclear physics.

He checked his watch. 2:15 PM.

“Perfect,” he whispered to himself. “Another forty-five minutes and I can officially call this a productive afternoon.”

By “productive,” Lin Feng meant that he had successfully avoided answering three emails, ignored a “996” motivational TikTok sent by his mother, and had not moved a single muscle except to sip his jasmine tea. This was his craft. This was his religion.

The quiet was shattered by the sound of expensive leather shoes clicking frantically against the cobblestones. Lin Feng didn’t need to open his eyes to know that a “Client Type A” was approaching. These were the ones who still believed that time was money, rather than realizing that time was simply the stuff between naps.

“Mr. Lin? Lin Feng?”

Lin Feng sighed, the sound of a man watching his favorite dream dissolve into the afternoon haze. He opened one eye. Standing before him was a young man in a suit that cost more than Lin Feng’s entire office lease, yet he was sweating through it like a steamed dumpling.

“I’m on a scheduled break,” Lin Feng said, his voice a flat, deadpan monotone. “It started at 9:00 AM. It ends whenever I stop being annoyed.”

“The sign at your agency said you specialize in… ‘Social Equilibrium,'” the man panted, clutching a designer briefcase.

“That’s the polite way of saying I save people from their own stupidity,” Lin Feng replied, finally sitting up with the slow, pained grace of an ancient turtle. “The sign also says ‘No Walk-ins.’ But since you’ve already ruined the atmosphere, you might as well sit down. Who are you, and whose ‘face’ are we trying to prevent from hitting the floor?”

The man sat, looking around nervously as if the tea-drinking retirees were undercover corporate spies. “My name is Xiao Zhang. I… I have a high school reunion tonight.”

Lin Feng groaned. “Reunions. The Olympic Games of insecurity. Let me guess: Your high school rival is now a venture capitalist with a hair transplant, and you’re still an associate analyst who lives with a roommate who steals your yogurt?”

Xiao Zhang blanched. “How did you—?”

“I don’t need a crystal ball, Zhang. I have a PhD in Human Vanity,” Lin Feng interrupted, leaning back. “Everyone is a script. You’re currently in Act 2, ‘The Great Imposter.’ You want to hire me to be the ‘buffer.'”

“Exactly!” Zhang leaned in. “I need to look successful. Not just ‘doing well’—I need to look like I’m the guy who *buys* the companies the other guys work for. My rival, Chen Wei, just posted a photo of his new Tesla. I need to crush him.”

Lin Feng looked at Zhang’s sweaty forehead and trembling hands. “You want me to orchestrate a ‘Face-Saving’ operation. But here’s the problem, Zhang. If I just give you a fake Rolex and a rented Ferrari, you’ll trip over your own ego within ten minutes. People like Chen Wei smell desperation like Sichuan peppercorns—it’s pungent and lingers for days.”

“Then what do I do?”

“You don’t do anything,” Lin Feng said, his eyes sharpening with a sudden, rare spark of intellectual boredom. “You hire the Face-Saving Agency. I don’t provide props. I provide *context*.”

Lin Feng pulled out a tablet—the only piece of high-end technology he owned, mainly because it allowed him to work while lying down.

“Here is the package: **’The Reluctant Visionary.’** You won’t arrive in a Ferrari. You’ll arrive in a Didi—but a luxury one—and you’ll spend the whole night looking at your phone with an expression of profound, weary responsibility. When people ask what you do, you’ll say, ‘I solve problems that shouldn’t exist.’ It’s vague, it’s arrogant, and it’s impossible to disprove.”

“And my role?” Zhang asked.

“I will be there as your ‘Executive Assistant,'” Lin Feng said, a smirk finally tugging at the corner of his mouth. “But I won’t be helpful. I will be incredibly rude to you. I will constantly interrupt your conversations to tell you that ‘The Board’ is unhappy about the Singapore merger. The more I treat you like a stressed-out god, the more everyone else will believe you are one. In China, Zhang, true power isn’t having people serve you tea—it’s having people who are too busy to let you drink it.”

Zhang looked enlightened. “It’s brilliant. It’s… wait, why do you have to be rude to me?”

“Because if I’m polite, I’m just an employee,” Lin Feng explained, already losing interest as he thought about his abandoned nap. “If I’m stressed and borderline insubordinate, it means you’re so successful that even your genius-level staff is cracking under the pressure of your empire. It’s the ultimate ‘Face.’ Now, my fee is triple because I have to wear a suit, and I hate suits.”

As Zhang frantically began transferring money via WeChat Pay, Lin Feng’s gaze drifted toward the entrance of the tea house.

A woman walked in, her presence cutting through the relaxed Chengdu vibe like a cold scalpel. She was dressed in a sharp, navy-blue power suit, her hair pulled back so tight it looked like it was trying to escape her skull. This was **Su Meili**, one of the city’s most feared corporate lawyers and, unfortunately, one of Lin Feng’s most frequent sources of income.

She didn’t look at the tea menu. She didn’t look at the scenery. She walked straight to the back table where a nervous-looking young man with a slight “hotpot” belly was sitting, rearranging a bouquet of flowers for the tenth time.

That was **Wang “Little” Bao**, the heir to the ‘Red Dragon’ hotpot empire and a man whose emotional intelligence was roughly that of a very earnest golden retriever.

Lin Feng watched them from a distance. Su Meili sat down, pulled out a stack of documents, and began speaking to Wang Bao as if she were cross-examining a witness in a high-profile murder trial. Wang Bao, in response, offered her a single, trembling rose, which she pushed aside to make room for a legal brief.

“Ah,” Lin Feng murmured, ignoring the now-ready Xiao Zhang. “The Chaos Couple is at it again.”

“Who?” Xiao Zhang asked, following his gaze.

“Clients,” Lin Feng said, closing his eyes again. “One thinks love is a contract with a non-compete clause, and the other thinks a hotpot recipe is a substitute for a personality. They are a disaster waiting to happen, and I am the only man who knows how to charge them for the cleanup.”

He stood up, stretching his limbs. The “Face-Saving Agency” was officially open for the day. Tonight, he would have to make a mediocre man look like a titan of industry. Tomorrow, he would likely have to stop Wang Bao from proposing to Su Meili via a drone light show that would probably crash into a government building.

It was a grueling, ridiculous, and utterly unnecessary profession.

“Let’s go, Zhang,” Lin Feng said, heading toward the exit. “We have a reunion to ruin. And if we finish early, I might still catch the 10:00 PM tea service. I hear the Mapo Tofu tonight is particularly unforgiving—much like my social conscience.”

As he walked, Lin Feng bumped into a delivery driver rushing in with a stack of Meituan boxes. The driver cursed, Lin Feng sighed, and somewhere in the distance, the rhythmic *clack-clack* of Mahjong tiles continued—the heartbeat of a city that knew, even if the world was ending, you still had to give the neighbors something to talk about.

Phase 1 of the “Freelance Fiasco” had begun, and Lin Feng was already looking forward to the ending. He just needed to survive the next ninety-nine chapters without actually having to work hard.