That Saturday passed by uneventfully for Mingzie, as he spent his entire morning, and a good chunk of his afternoon getting ahead on his studies. He was finding that the combination of multiple of his Techniques allowed his to do a whole day worth of studying in a few short hours. [Double Time] allowed him to literally read at twice the speed he would normally do. Combined with [Split Focus] and [Perfect Recall] and he was effectively memorizing eight books at once in the time someone at Earth could read one, much less remember it. If one of those cranky “you can never have enough homework” teachers back in Earth saw what he was doing these days, the following homework assignments would be viewed as war crimes. “Oh you need time to relax? Maybe if you weren’t slacking off all day you could get your work done like Mingzie over here”.

Just the silly thought of that made me really think I should take a more significant break one of these days. I really have been working hard these past weeks. At least twelve hours a day of nothing but studying or work, the only thing my parents would be able to be mad about would be the lack of s girlfriend and grandchildren. I briefly considered doing my familial duty, since I couldn’t even argue “it’s so expensive to have a child” since Lady Zhou is basically my sugar mommy, but then I remembered, my mom would kill me if she wasn’t at my wedding. Probably would revive me and kill me again if she didn’t see the child either, so I couldn’t do that, I would miss her cooking too much. Oh well, I think to myself. I look at the time and notice it’s almost dinner time. Resolving to do a quick round of looking through the notes for the Zucai exam after dinner, I set about finding a servant to get something to eat.

. . .

“How dare that outsider humiliate me like that!” I scream out loud, sending some nearby servants scrambling to leave the room. I, Zhou Yuchun, a Young Master of the administrative department of the Gungzhou branch, don’t deserve to get my face slapped like this. Deciding I must ensure make drastic measures to ensure I get the proper payback against Zhou Mingzie, I use the influence of my father to get a handful of questions from the Jouren Exam into this challenge, surely Mingzie will automatically get those questions wrong. As for me? I’ll get answers handed to me, of course. A proper Young Master knows to delegate his work to his underlings. A Young Master only raises his hand to do work long enough to issue orders to his underlings, it is our right after all. I bet Mingzie didn’t even get in the top fifty percent like I did. My servants told me he was from some small village in the wild. They tried to tell me other things, but why should I even listen, I got all I needed to know about some no name nobody who is lucky to be able to breathe the same as air me, much less the sacred Zhonglei.

When my underlings, some stupid guys my father thinks I should hang around with, try to suggest I study for this challenge, I scoff and wave them off. I could win this with my arms tied behind my back, much less with the help of my fathers influence. I send everyone away so that I may relish tomorrows victory in my head without being disturbed. No wait! I must come up with a victory speech, so that when I have Mingzie groveling at my feet I have the perfect words while I slap his face over and over.

. . .

The Young Master Crushers, and Duanlu, of course, are gathered around. They are trying to decide how they should handle this petty Young Master. They had requested information about his academics, only to find out this kid barely even qualifies to be considered a Young Master. Under normal circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have even been selected as a Young Master, but some clever arguments from the kid’s father about low participation that year in the exam among their own should not mean any less Young Masters should be selected. So that’s how someone who only technically could be one, but realistically shouldn’t be one, could become a Young Master. Further investigation shows that while this no name kid isn’t a true horror, no sexual incidents, no real abuse of servants, he still shows all the symptoms of being a disease of a child. No true work ethic, relies on the efforts of others to succeed, subtle threats about ruining the careers of others, all the characteristics of what someone on Earth may call a “Karen” since the kid is so blind to reality and an inflated sense of ago. Nonetheless, they intercept the orders about replacing questions with those from a Jouren exam. They make a quick call back to the Main Branch, and Zhou Baohu simply tells them to change it with different questions from the exam. Something about Mingzie needing more challenges if he wishes to rank up his paths.

This leads to them taking those words absolutely seriously. Using their authority, they get some of the questions changed to Jouren level questions, with fake answers passed on to the brat. Then they go a step further and ask the proctors to make a full version of the Zucai exam as a back up in case it is needed. Knowing they have accomplished their tasks, they wipe their hands of it, and sit back and relax, knowing it is going to be one great day full of entertainment.

That night Mingzie sleeps in comfort, putting little actual thought into handling Yuchun. He was only thinking about the challenge as a means to test his Techniques since he took the original exam, as well an opportunity to refresh himself. Meanwhile Yuchun thought everything was in the bag for him, so confident in his own distorted reality that he failed to see Mount Tai, failed to see the difference between heaven and Earth. The Crushers were just being chaotic, just manifesting their Scorpio signs, ready to sit back and enjoy their popcorn.