“Baoli finishes her talking. Once she sees I have no more questions, she heads out, not bothering with any pleasantries. As all this extra stuff with the rewards from the competition and finding someplace Coming back to my room, I decided to get something a bit “fancier” to eat to celebrate my Path merger. Instead of the equivalent of takeout food, I got some roasted pork with noodles that was quite filling. I took my time to savor the food, getting into a slight food coma by the time I finished. The extra wait for the slightly more elaborate meal was well worth it, even if I probably wouldn’t care to do this every day. After cleaning up everything from lunch, I managed to flag down a nearby servant to get my dishes sent back to the kitchen. I almost didn’t notice the look the servant was giving me, as it seemed I had began building a bit of a reputation among the servants. My complete and total victory yesterday seemed to have made its rounds among the servants, as Yuchun, my competitor wasn’t that nice to the servants. The servant told me of how Yuchun was one of the Young Masters that was demeaning to the servants, maybe not abusive, but definitely made them feel lesser for their work.

While I certainly wouldn’t call myself a saint when it came to my treatment of the servants, as I was more oblivious than kind to them, I still made the little gestures to be polite to them, as well as making sure my actions didn’t provide unnecessary complications for them. I treated them as if you would treat a maid or server at a restaurant back in my world, understanding some things are part of their job, and some things may be beyond what they are expected to deal with. So, when I come to find that there is a bit of a “rising hero” vibe being built up about me, I was a bit surprised. Admittedly, having known Young Master Crushers, as well as my association with the Young Master of this Branch, who obviously would treat the servants well, certainly helps me. Still, it appears what clinched the newfound fame was my own “crushing” of a bad Young Master.

After the welcome surprise, I managed to get a couple more hours of studying in. While I was mainly finishing up a few books on formations, I did spend a little bit going over my notes and practice questions I had made recently about some of the stuff I had been reading. This was when I noticed similarities between some of my personal questions and some of the ones I remembered coming across during the scholarly challenge. When this fact came to light, I contacted Duanlu about this, having a feeling about what may have happened. Duanlu, knowing this may have happened, more or less spilled the beans right away. He told me how Yuchun was caught attempting to give himself an edge with questions he suspected I wouldn’t have been able to answer while ensuring he had the answers, but the plan was foiled. When Duanlu mentioned this to the Main Branch and Youhao, it was decided this would be a good little test of my abilities, given the reasons I mentioned for wanting to do the challenge in the first place. While I didn’t mind too much that it was actually done, as I did perfectly fine with those questions, it would’ve been nice to know about the questions without having to find out about them on my own. Guessing that at some level, telling me would’ve given me notice on what to study, I let it slide.

Turns out that wasn’t the end of the events from yesterday. Some kid named Bo had did some fancy camera work, along with some selective editing and camera angles, to make our challenge seem more dramatic than it actually was, before sending it out to all the different Zhou Branches, where it generated its own buzz, turning into a bit of a game show level trend. While a scholarly challenge wasn’t the most entertaining of trends, Duanlu told me that it will likely last a few days. These fifteen minutes of fame though wasn’t why I was told, as it seems Bo had made a nice little bit of money on the side for this. When Youhao found out about it, he was only mildly upset about it, mostly because no one was informed about it, so he confiscated a bit of the money as a sort of “broadcasting rights”, which he handed over to me as part of my rewards for winning. While the money was nothing amazing, nonetheless it was still a good amount of money. Seeing the little pile of money in front of me, I asked where I could go about commissioning a formal outfit like those from my world.

To my surprise, it was Baoli, the party pooper sister who came forward with recommendations. She told me about a couple places that may work, as they are known for producing quality work and the branch regularly commissions custom stuff from them. She mentioned they may be too busy, or if my request is very different from their typical work, they may decline the commission since they wouldn’t be familiar enough with it to guarantee quality. When I mentioned that the outfits I’d consider getting commissioned aren’t close to traditional fashion in the city, Baoli recommended one more place.

“Pianxin’s Apparel also does a fair amount of custom stuff, the only issue is she tends to do things a bit ‘abstract’ so she doesn’t tend to get as much business. If don’t mind the potentially weird design choices, she actually does good work to finally get a suit made took up most of my afternoon, I ended up getting some simple food to eat in the courtyard just relaxing for a bit. I was too tired today for any extra shenanigans tonight, opting instead for some light reading. After having not done any recent reading about spirit beasts, I perused a few chapters about new spirit beasts before being too tired to continue. Putting the book away, I settled down for the night and went to bed.