I wake up after my night of drinking and fun with a splitting headache, sitting up, I see Bao Bao is sitting at my desk casually reading a book. As I begin to get some clothes on for the day, I swear I see some scandalous clad drawings in the book, chuckling a bit.

“So Baohu, how may help you?” I ask, knowing how ridiculous things look. He responds by tossing me a plant, before asking about my Path progress. I mention getting to rank 5 in Young Master, 10 in knowledge, before it became Scholar, as well as my two new Techniques. “Speaking of what’s new, why did you give me this plant, it almost looks like ginseng, but it looks a bit off-color and too big to be ginseng”, I ask, a suspicion popping into my head.

“You’re right, it’s 500 year old ginseng, so you might want to eat it” is all he says, but going off of the tea that was Qi infused, I can just tell this is going to be a struggle. Deciding to get this over, I start eating chunks of the ginseng, quickly coming to regret the choice. While I struggle with my food, he decides to give more of his unsolicited advice.

“Scholar’s Filing Cabinet is another good Technique, although with Perfect Recall, it’s not immediately useful. As for Let’s Trade Pointers, that is both a common and relatively unique Technique. While that may sound contradictory, it is one of those Techniques that has known “evolution branches” in the sense that if used in particular ways, the Technique will evolve certain types of paths.” I ask about what type of paths is he referring to, as well as how it can be unique if the paths are well known.

“Well you see, if you use the Technique “offensively”, as in taking down a fellow Young Master, or underlings, then depending on what associated Paths you have or merge it with, it develops as some sort of attack. For peers, it may be some single target attack meant to pierce protections, if for underlings, it may be an area of attack move meant to clear them out. Of course if it’s a mix of both, it could be some sort of taunt or challenge Technique” Baohu continues, giving me the hint that the technique slots into a lot of other Techniques, Paths, and lifestyle uses, giving it an innumerable amount of variation. He further goes on to explain how that despite it being able to produce so many variations, because Young Masters tend to be well documented, the Technique itself and its variations tend to ignored from a research perspective, as the effects of the Technique can be easily determined, if only roughly, ahead of time.

“So since I presumably got the Technique by ‘fighting’ another Young Master, it’s going to become an offensive Technique down the line?” I reply, only for him to clarify that since I used my other Technique to effectively shut down the person, it could also develop as a Technique negation or cancellation, but it’s still too early to be sure. Still curious about my Scholar Technique I ask about that.

“Well as you know, a normal filing cabinet would be used to keep a bunch of documents in an orderly fashion so they can be retrieved if it’s needed to be referenced. But since you have a memory Technique, you don’t need it that badly for that purpose, however the organization element can be useful if someone else needs it, allowing you to store things for other people’s ease, making it a quality of life Technique. But since you expressed interest in developing your Paths into a supportive role for fighting, you could also produce, and store formations ahead of time, and use this Technique to allow for rapid field set up. “ Baohu goes on to talk about the potential to expand the Technique to general dimensional storage, activation of attack formations from within the cabinet.

“Like I said, it’s a generally useful Technique, meant to promote synergies, but now onto future planning” Baohu says, referring to the plans to relocate to Gungzhou for a month, preparing for the Jouren Administrative Test, or JAT, that had been made. To my surprise, he explains that things have changed slightly, as the stay was expanded to two months, but in exchange I will be providing clerical work for the branch there while being supervised and managed by some Main Branch members. Before he is about to leave I ask about the special ginseng.

“So I get that I did well and all on the ZAT, but aren’t 500 year old ginsengs kind of rare” I ask, to which Baohu mentions that since people with cultivation’s live for long times, easily hundreds of years, spiritual herbs like this aren’t that hard to cultivate, still not something anyone is going to be having everyday, but along with Techniques to speed plant growth up and increase yields, 500 year old ginsengs are a common cultivation resource given for notable accomplishments. He lastly implies that my accomplishment while low for the level, would have been high enough to warrant being a Young Master of the Main Branch. He goes on to say that while I did not beat out all, or even most of the Young Master candidates of the Main Branch who had participated in the competition.

“In the extremely rare instances that this has happened in the past, the individuals have been brought into the Main Branch. The only reason you aren’t, or at least not yet, is because Lady Zhou has greater ambitions for you. She intends to give you more practical administrative challenges while also providing you the chance to take the JAT and attain even greater achievements” Baohu explains. He clarifies by talking about I said things as is we’re easier to achieve, in terms of an actual challenge, than in my own world, as is, since it was only a matter of I could do it within the time constraint. If I had been sent to the Main Branch all the challenges associated with reaching the Jinshi exam would be nullified and politics would then come into play. I was then told it is better to become a competent and decent ranked member of the Clan before dealing with politics. I was then sent off to begin packing for the trip to Gunzhou that would take a few days.