Chapter 11 The Professional Bad Eater

The back seat of Su Meili’s electric sedan was a masterpiece of German engineering and cold, synthetic leather. It was also the only place in Chengdu where Lin Feng felt truly safe from the 8:00 AM sun.

“You’re snoring,” Meili said from the driver’s seat. Her voice was as sharp as the espresso she’d forced him to drink ten minutes ago.

“I’m not snoring,” Lin Feng mumbled into a silk travel pillow he’d found in the footwell. “I’m conducting a high-level acoustic audit of your interior cabin. It’s part of my liaison duties. Very taxing stuff”.

“Lin Feng, we are five minutes away from the Heritage Tech Committee briefing. You have chili oil on your badge, your hair looks like a bird’s nest in a hurricane, and the Swiss delegation expects a lecture on ‘The Emotional ROI of Mask-Changing'”.

“Tell them the ROI is currently negative due to lack of sleep,” Lin Feng said, finally sitting up with the slow, pained dignity of a man being forced to participate in his own life. “Besides, I’ve already automated the briefing. I sent Hans a series of cryptic WeChat stickers of pandas doing Tai Chi. He called it ‘profoundly minimalist'”.

Meili pulled the car to a screeching halt in front of the Red Dragon’s flagship store. The “Abstract Dragon-Gavel” logo was flickering in the morning mist, looking slightly hungover.

But something was wrong.

A crowd had gathered outside, but it wasn’t the usual line of hungry foodies. It was a circle of people holding phones, their faces a mix of disgust and fascination. In the center of the circle, sitting at an outdoor table, was a man who appeared to be engaged in a biological war with a bowl of tripe.

“Is that… a client?” Meili asked, her lawyer-brain immediately assessing the liability of the scene.

Lin Feng squinted through his sunglasses. “No. That’s a Professional Bad Eater”.

The man at the table was a spectacle of anti-etiquette. He wasn’t just eating; he was offending the food. He was dipping his tie into the spicy broth, loud-chewing with the volume of a construction site, and occasionally letting out a burp that seemed to vibrate the nearby glass windows.

Next to him, a tripod was set up, live-streaming the entire disaster to an audience of thousands. The caption on the screen read: IS THE RED DRAGON TURNING INTO RED TRASH? THE TRUTH ABOUT HERITAGE TECH.

“He’s a ‘Public Opinion Hitman,'” Lin Feng explained, leaning against the car door, his slacker-mode partially deactivated by a spark of professional annoyance. “Spicy Lotus must have hired him. In the ‘Hotpot Wars,’ you don’t always use lawyers. Sometimes you just use a man who hasn’t used a napkin since the 1990s”.

Wang “Little” Bao rushed out of the restaurant, his hard hat slightly lopsided. “Lin Ge! Meili! He’s been here for an hour! He ordered the ‘Ancestral Broth’ and then asked if we had any ketchup to ‘mellow it out’! My father is in the back holding a meat cleaver and praying to the ancestors for restraint!”.

“Bao, calm down,” Lin Feng said. “If you kick him out, he wins. It becomes a story about ‘Corporate Bullying.’ If you let him stay, he ruins the ‘Face’ of the brand”.

“Then what do we do?” Bao wailed. “The Swiss delegates are arriving in twenty minutes for the ‘Broth-Stability’ demo!”.

Lin Feng looked at the Bad Eater. He looked at the live-stream. Then he looked at a delivery driver who was currently dropping off a crate of extra-large, extra-pungent stinky tofu at a nearby stall.

“We don’t fight him with manners, Bao. We fight him with Extreme Authenticity”.

Lin Feng walked toward the man, his beige trench coat fluttering in the humid breeze. He didn’t look like a government Liaison; he looked like a man who had just discovered the meaning of life in a bowl of fermented beans.

“Excuse me,” Lin Feng said, his deadpan voice cutting through the man’s performative slurping. “Are you the man who asked for ketchup?”

The Bad Eater looked up, a piece of tripe hanging from his lip. “Yeah. What of it? The broth is too… aggressive. It lacks ‘synergy'”.

“I see,” Lin Feng said, nodding with profound, fake wisdom. “You’re a ‘Type C’ taster. You think food is about flavor. But in Chengdu, food is about suffering.”

The man blinked. “Suffering?”

“Exactly,” Lin Feng said, signaling to Wang Bao. “Bao, bring out the ‘Level 10 Ancestral Regret’ base. And bring the ‘Golden Dragon’ chair”.

Within minutes, a pot of broth was brought out that was so red it appeared to be glowing. It wasn’t just spicy; it was a physical threat. Lin Feng sat across from the man, looking bored.

“If you are a true critic,” Lin Feng said to the live-stream camera, “you won’t use ketchup. You will eat this broth with a silver spoon, while reciting 18th-century French poetry. It’s the ‘Billionaire Librarian’ method of digestion. It’s called ‘Aesthetic Digestion Face'”.

The crowd leaned in. The live-stream viewers doubled. The Bad Eater, caught in the gravity of Lin Feng’s nonsensical logic, couldn’t back down without losing his own ‘Face’ as a “fearless” critic.

“I… I can do that,” the man stammered.

“Good,” Lin Feng said, leaning back. “Meili, please draft a ‘Voluntary Culinary Endangerment’ waiver. If his soul leaves his body during the second course, the Red Dragon is not liable for the spiritual transit fees”.

For the next ten minutes, the “Professional Bad Eater” attempted to eat the most concentrated chili oil in Sichuan while trying to look “refined.” He was sweating through his shirt, his eyes were watering, and his attempt at French poetry sounded more like a series of distressed whale noises.

By the time the Swiss delegation arrived, the man had surrendered. He was currently being fanned by two waiters while whispering, “The goose… I see the burden of the goose…”.

Hans, the Swiss CEO, walked up and beamed. “Mr. Lin! Is this part of the ‘Emotional ROI’ briefing? A man becoming one with the fire?”.

“Exactly, Hans,” Lin Feng said, adjusted his sunglasses. “It’s a demonstration of ‘Heritage Stability.’ Our broth is so powerful it can transform a critic into a philosopher in under ten minutes”.

As the delegates moved inside for the actual meeting, Su Meili walked up to Lin Feng. She was holding a small container of yogurt she’d bought from a street vendor.

“You’re a menace,” she said, handing him the yogurt. “You just tortured a man with chili oil to save a marketing demo.”

“I didn’t torture him, Meili. I gave him ‘Context,'” Lin Feng said, opening the yogurt. “Besides, I’ve already billed Spicy Lotus for the ‘Professional Consultation’ I provided to their hitman. Triple rate for the early start”.

Meili shook her head, but there was a flicker of something that wasn’t quite professional in her eyes. “You still have chili oil on your badge, ‘Liaison’.”

“It’s a ‘Flavor Garnish,'” Lin Feng replied, heading toward the car to see if he could squeeze in a ten-minute nap before the next disaster.

Phase 2 of the “Hotpot Wars” had officially moved from corporate sabotage to psychological warfare. And Lin Feng was starting to realize that as long as he was the one holding the spoon, he might just survive the 8:00 AM starts—even if his soul was currently 90% jasmine tea and 10% pure, unadulterated snark.