42 Rise of the first shop

The blue pheonix flew away with a grumble, as it took to the skies with a mighty flap... Of it's tiny wings, as it was still a small blue bird.

"Stay in the small form." Xuanmei reminded with a quiet voice

"I know that!" Blue Pheonix snapped back, secretly cancelling his transformation.

"Oh, he can hear me after all. Wingspan must be short then. Sucks to be him."

Xuanmei walked back to the first town she appeared in with the mask she wore on that day on.

Meanwhile, Bluey was still struggling.

"Agh fine. Human form it be then."

Swooping down into an alleyway, the bird disappeared, turning into a dashing male with pearly white teeth and skin like white jade.

"Now, time to carry some useless items."

Xuanmei, on the other hand, was now buying furniture from the furniture shop a two minute walk away.

"Hello esteemed customer."

"Five long benches, two hundred of your most comfortable chairs and eighty tables accompanied by fire resistant tablecloths."

"...T-That'll be fifty one thousand, two hundred and eighty taels."

(A: Yes. I actually wasted my time calculating this. I used the prices of items that I thought would be of good quality. However, there are no cents as I rounded up for easy estimation of prices. Tsk Tsk. The things I do for you guys.)

Xuanmei pulled out a small sack of gold taels that she exchanged yesterday. Inside were about 500 gold taels.

Reaching her hands into her sleeves and pretending to search for something, she pulled her hand into the Pagoda and pulled out twleve ingots of gold.

The shopkeeper, who had been counting the cash by weighing a gold tael then weighing everything in the bag, took the twelve taels and gave twenty taels of silver back. Taking it, Xuanmei asked for it to be delivered to the soon-to-be hotpot shop at night.

Being near a forest had it's perks. Going back to where the ram had destroyed all the trees, she brought all the fallen wood, with the help of the Pagoda, back to the shop.

Asking for the merchant guild to lay some wooden floors but with eighty holes, they did exactly that, and since wood was free, she paid them for the manual work as she went to get firewood. Buying metal for the fireplaces, she laid the metal in a tall square formation in the holes.

Placing firewood in the holes, she then went to a blacksmith as the furniture came in, and asked the blacksmith to make a U-shape with metal. Using metal to hold the pot, she made a hole in the tables for the pot, hanging it from the ceiling.

(A: I would love to show you the floorplan, but Webnovel doesn't allow for picture uploads.)

After working all night, the store was finally done. Knowing that the auction house she just got in this town was about the same size, she partnered up with the merchant guild to refurbish that guild, throwing all the old furniture and saving the chandeliers.