In an unremarkable town on the fringes of the martial world stands an inn that turns “wuxia” into a “joke”: the Juxian Inn.
The proprietor, Jin Yuanbao, is the daughter of a wealthy silk merchant from the capital who ran away to open an inn. She’s sharper with an abacus than anyone, yet somehow always turns “earning three taels” into “losing five.” Her abacus, studded with fake gems, makes more noise than a cleaver when she swings it. She gets by on sheer bravado. The waiter, Li Xiaodao, claims to be an heir of the Flying Dagger Sect. His daggers have never hit their targets, but they always manage to land squarely on the proprietor’s new clothes. All his tall tales come straight from martial arts novels. The cook, Sun Erniang (a man), is a pretty boy with the nickname “Female Yaksha.” He always hums off-key while cooking, and his signature dish, “Smiling Half-Step Stumble,” is actually mapo tofu with too much Sichuan peppercorn. One bite will have you laughing until your legs give out. The bookkeeper, Lin Moying, is a former disciple of the Thieving Sect who keeps getting betrayed by his own shadow. He can calculate to the last coin a customer has dropped, but can’t figure out how much the inn has lost. The odd-job man, Zhuangzhuang, is broad as a bear and strong enough to lift a door panel, yet a cockroach can send him diving under the table. They say he’s a martial arts fanatic whose training went horribly wrong, and the young master of a powerful family.
This isn’t a serious wuxia tale. It’s a bundle of side-splitting martial-world mishaps starring a bunch of “hopeless cases” in an inn that could “collapse at any moment.”
