Chapter 82: Losing to You, a Defeat Without Regret

...

Afternoon.

Hai Lanwhale and Lin Deepdeer sat in the courtyard, eating watermelon.

Lin Deepdeer asked, "If you have something important to say, just get to it."

Gently placing the watermelon rind aside, Hai Lanwhale replied, "You already know... The inn I want to open in Lishui... I've run into problems I can't solve." Hai Lanwhale looked at Lin Deepdeer with pitiful eyes.

"Don't look at me like that, I can't handle it..." Lin Deepdeer laughed.

"Please help me, I know you definitely have a way... Lin Deepdeer!" Hai Lanwhale lightly pinched Lin Deepdeer's sleeve with two fingers and shook it.

"Alright, alright... Tell me what the issue is first." Lin Deepdeer truly couldn't handle girls acting like this beside him.

"Okay!" Hai Lanwhale nodded.

After a pause, she continued, "Actually, I didn't expect things to be like this before I came. Maybe it's because I've been to so few places, so I'm not familiar enough with each city, and reality doesn't quite align with my ideals..."

Lin Deepdeer waved his hand and asked, "First, tell me what your ideal inn looks like—the scale, how many rooms, what kind of location—then we'll talk about the next issue."

Hai Lanwhale lifted her beautiful face, her exquisite chin pointed toward Lin Deepdeer.

After thinking for a moment, she said, "Ideally, I want at least eight hundred or a thousand square meters..."

"Sister Whale... This is Lishui, mostly villages. Even the large restaurants here don't have such big spaces. You're not opening an inn, you're launching an airplane!" Lin Deepdeer teased.

"Oh, but I saw it today, and I don't like the shops on the main street. I don't want to open an inn in places with heavy foot traffic. I hope my inn stands out, quietly nestled in a corner, surrounded by wind, clouds, grass, flowers, everything peaceful... Ideally, it would have thirty or forty rooms, even if they're empty—I just like that feeling..." Hai Lanwhale continued.

Lin Deepdeer nodded.

Then he said, "Your idea... If you really want to realize it, from what I've seen in my days traveling in Lishui, it's quite hard to achieve. Unless you choose a deserted village around Lishui, where you don't have to consider the villagers’ housing. Maybe an unused ancestral hall or an abandoned school could meet your needs."

Lin Deepdeer remembered the ancestral hall in Stone Village he had just returned from.

That place was big enough, and quiet enough, though perhaps not many people would go there.

"I don't want to go to the surrounding villages, I want to be somewhere with people... Isn't it said that the warmth of human life is what comforts the soul?" Hai Lanwhale tilted her head, looking at Lin Deepdeer.

"Weren't you just saying you want your inn in a corner, with only wind, clouds, flowers, and grass around, as long as there are no people?" Lin Deepdeer couldn't help but tease.

"Oh, I mean I want to be away from people but also close to them, you know what I'm saying?"

...

"Alright, let's set that aside for now. Next question—what kind of sentiment do you want?" Lin Deepdeer continued.

"Well... I really don't know... I just want a sense of uniqueness. How should I say it? Like in Dali's Santorini, when everything around is much the same, you came up with ideas like the Wishing Pool, Encounter Pool, and Time Pool—that's your sentiment!"

After a pause, Hai Lanwhale took out her phone and handed it to Lin Deepdeer.

"Look, ever since I shifted my livestream focus and short videos to those three pools and the Drift Bottle concept, even though I haven't been in Dali these last few days, all my stats have been rising..."

Lin Deepdeer couldn't deny this.

His hands-on planning in Dali was truly a brilliant piece of work.

It was a plan whose effects only became more pronounced as time went on.

To say nothing else, in just over ten days, Hai Lanwhale's Douyin account went from a stagnant three million followers to five million.

That was the most magical part.

And the likes on her latest dozen videos had doubled.

More tangibly, the occupancy at Dali Whale-Deer Hotel had gone from just five or six people per day to completely full.

Recent bookings even stretched to a month out.

This was a hotel boom rarely seen in all of Dali.

Even so, many tourists who couldn't book the Whale-Deer Hotel chose rooms in surrounding hotels.

Unintentionally, Santorini's overall occupancy rates soared.

Lin Deepdeer believed that even a year or two from now, it wouldn't fade away.

Instead, as the number of tourists and online exposure grew, it would only get hotter, even prompting imitation from other hotels.

Of course, as long as Hai Lanwhale managed operations well and told the story compellingly, she would keep her throne as the top Wishing Pool and Drift Bottle hotel.

This was a successful "planting a seed" experience for Lin Deepdeer.

As for... this Lishui before him, Lin Deepdeer hadn't really thought about it.

After all, he'd only been here a few days, hadn't finished seeing all the sights.

And it was different from Dali.

Lishui’s villages alone were enough to satisfy Lin Deepdeer; everything here was nature’s masterpiece.

So far, he hadn't found anything disappointing.

If not for Hai Lanwhale mentioning today her desire to create a unique, sentimental inn, Lin Deepdeer wouldn't have considered it in this direction.

"So, these days I haven't been in Dali, haven't livestreamed, everything's been handled by Xiao Ai, but the stats are still explosive, and bookings just keep increasing. I really feel like I can spare time for other things, that's why I left. And only after you left did I realize Dali couldn't hold me anymore..." Hai Lanwhale sighed.

"I stayed in Dali all these years just to wait for someone. Even though I never found him, I always had a plan in my heart—when this person finally appears, either he stays to help me run the hotel, or I leave with him to wander the world. Only those two possibilities..."

"But your appearance gave me a third possibility. You don't let me go with you, nor do you stay for me... Lin Deepdeer, am I really so bad? Is it because I'm ugly, or is it my personality? I'm just... my heart is unwilling to accept defeat, and my words won’t admit it..." Hai Lanwhale said helplessly.

"And... today I realized that I, Hai Lanwhale, didn't lose to Sister An Muxi... I lost to you, because you didn't go with Sister An, nor did you stay for her in Chengdu. You came alone to Lishui. So I'm actually glad, my loss isn’t unjust..."