At the end of their workday, everyone was exhausted, but happy about the current situation.

The Earthly Treasures Pavilion was now always crowded even though the people who were actually buying something, quickly got what they wanted.

"Thanks everyone for your visit, I'm afraid though the shop is closing. We will be opening tomorrow at the 7th bell. I hope to see all of you tomorrow and wish you a wonderful day!"

"Our craftsmen and workers please stay here for a little bit longer."

The customers and visitors all left after some time of saying their goodbyes and only the employees of the Earthly Treasures Pavilion were left.

"Alright, thank you everyone for your hard work today. We had a very successful day and made some wonderful progress and I want to thank you all for your efforts."

"As you already know, payday is usually once at the end of every week, but as some of you might need to spend some money due to the change in living conditions or the like, I decided to hand out a bonus today."

Cheers could be heard as Yui gave all of them a decent amount of coins.

Spirit shards were worth quite a bit more than gold coins and few normal workers would even get to see or use any gold coins, let alone spirit shards or stones. It was common for a lord to own the land and they would never share the majority of the profits.

Even the Araki family, who Yui had many dealings with, while on the lower end of all the powerful families, was still far beyond the reach of regular peasants.

As such, most experienced workers would simply earn a regular salary of 2 to 3 silver coins a month, while serfs would just receive a few coppers if anything and were given some food.

They would not even get the chance to access a place like the Spirit Mine or the Old Vine Forest, because it would take several lifetimes worth of their savings to be able to pay for a ticket.

Yui handed everyone 20 silver coins, which was nothing to her, but made everyone grin happily. To them it was a good half year of a normal salary.

"We have made quite some progress with the first batch of enchanted accessories today." Yui continued.

"As hunters have by far the most dangerous jobs, they will be the first to get them, but once we make more of them, everyone will get one."

Surprise and confusion could be seen on most faces.

Yui brought out a few rings, forged with spirit copper. They did not have any gemstones embedded and did not look too gaudy either, but the real worth of these rings was quite high. A few small runes were carved on the rings inside, granting the wearer a protective enchantment that could be activated with a slight mental command.

It would not last long against a true cultivator, but it might give street thugs some pause to reconsider their actions. The rings could even deflect a blow or two from weak spirit beasts, making it a life saving treasure if a hunter were surprised and unprepared against an attack.

"For now, I will give them to you, if you quit your position before the trial time is over, you have to return these. If you stay around for at least a month, they will be all yours though. You can see it as an extra reward to keep you safe."

"I'm sure Ryoma has already told you about how we value decent behavior. Don't use the Earthly Treasures Pavilion's name to brag or cause any trouble. If people are threatening or provoking you though, without any mistake on your end you can tell them to back off, otherwise they have to face me or my sister."

Such an announcement to make in front of regular peasants and simple freemen, was quite an oddity to these people.

"Thank you miss." , "Yes boss!" , "We will not bring shame to the Pavilion milady!"

All kinds of answers could be heard, but everyone was happy and motivated to do their best.

"Alright, work is over. Senji, Kirano, you two come with me please."

Most of the people made their way out the gate, while Senji and Kirano stood there a little bit confused. What did the lady want of them?

Their first thought was that they would get dismissed. Kirano was the youngest of them, without any experience as a miner. She would obviously have the lowest achievements.

While Senji was helping and teaching her, his own efforts were obviously a lot lower as well, especially as he could not really compete with the other experienced miners in the first place.

"Ah lady, these two are still young, I'm sure they will learn quickly and improve fast."

"Huh?" Yui turned around surprised and found the old miner speaking up for the two young people from his mining team, expecting her to single them out because of their performance.

"Yeah I think so too, don't worry Old Rock, I make sure Tora isn't too harsh on them, cultivation can be rough, but I'm sure they will be doing well."

"Old Rock?"

"Uhh .." Yui blinked. 'Did I really just call him Old Rock? Oops'

"Sorry. I didn't mean that in a bad way, it was a nickname that came up earlier and I wasn't thinking straight …"

'Old Rock' started to laugh out loud in the room. "My name's Mitsuaki, but I'm honored to be the first of our bunch to get a nickname from our lady. Old Rock I see, I guess it is kind of fitting."

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"May I ask what milady has in mind for these two? Pardon an old miner like me for asking, it really isn't my business actually, but …"

"Don't worry. They are still young, and mining is hard on them. I thought if my sister taught them some cultivation then it might be a lot easier for them later on."

Mitsuaki raised an eyebrow. "Isn't the girl a serf?"

"Is there any problem with them being able to learn cultivation? How did you get to learn it?"

"Well, I was actually a reject of a sect, if you are asking me like this milady. Not being proud of it, but I still learned enough to start on that path, even if I didn't get extremely far."

Sects would never even think about teaching someone like a serf cultivation. It was already rare for a freeman to get invited into a sect and that was usually because they had extremely high potential or some influential backer as their friend.

"Well, we can teach whoever we like, right? I see no issues with teaching her cultivation. I'm sure she will do well."

Throughout their whole conversation, Senji and Kirano just stared, never having expected such a strange twist of fate. Cultivators had their own status depending on their strength.

While they were not outside the law, powerful cultivators had a lot more leeway than others. Having a freeman raised to such a status could be seen as a rare chance to turn from a fish into a dragon.

Having a serf turn into a cultivator though, people had never thought about the implications or consequences of doing such a thing. Yui was the first one, to not only consider, but simply do it.

Unlike the problem with the child labor, Yui never expected this to become such a big issue. All her big words about not trying to make any drastic changes did not seem to really make it far.

'Well, I already said we'd teach her, I'm not going back on my word now, especially not as she never did anything wrong to get such a low status in the first place.' she thought to herself.

"Old Rock, I see you tomorrow then." Yui basically dragged the two young people behind her, considering what Ryoma and Tora would say if she brought some new people home again.

'Well, last time Tora sprung Rin on me, it shouldn't be a big deal.'

She knocked at Rinomi's door calling out to her new bodyguard. Or was it spy master?

"Rin, are you awake? We're going to eat dinner soon."

Before Yui could turn around, the door already opened and Rinomi walked out.

"Haha, that was fast. Rin how are you doing? Feeling better?"

"Yes, miss Tai, I'm feeling a lot better thank you."

"Great, just come with us, Ryoma is still outside with Miyuki, but if I don't have something ready when she comes in with her stomach grumbling then she will ask me every minute if it is ready."

"These two will join us today. Senji, Kirano, this is Rin. Rin, drop the miss, no need around here."

She was nearly at the kitchen when she suddenly remembered that both of the young ones were just coming out of a mine.

"Well, you are a little bit dusty."

"A little." Rinomi agreed with an amused grin, as the clothes of the kids were dusty from top to bottom.

"Well, Kirano, can take a shower first. Senji has to wait till she is done. Shouldn't take too long."

"Lady, it is alright, you don't have to invite us to dinner." Kirano tried to argue but was quickly shot down by Yui.

"Don't you like my cooking?" – "I .. I didn't mean that, I have never eaten something cooked by the lady."

Rinomi gave her a strange look. "Wait, you mean, miss … you will cook it yourself?"

"You don't eat Ryoma's food if you don't want food poisoning, Tora won't cook even if she knows how to and Miyuki is way too little to have any idea about cooking, so who did you think would be cooking?"

"I can try to cook in the future, you shouldn't do these kinds of things with your status mi… Yui"

"Pff, and you shouldn't either right, not worth it hiring a chef just for the few of us, but we can both cook from time to time and share the task. No more arguing, Kirano, go get a shower, the bathroom is over there. Senji can take one when she is done. I go find some clean clothes for you two in the meantime."

"Uh lady, what is a shower?"

"Oh. Right, I totally forgot that other places have no showers here. Come on, I show you."

After all the things they had heard and seen so far, Kirano, Senji and Rinomi were already too dazed to worry about yet another strange thing like a shower. Once they all understood how it worked, Yui put some clean clothes in the bathroom, ushered Senji and Rinomi outside and closed the door.

"Alright, Senji, you wait here, when Kirano is done taking a shower and is dressed you can switch with her. Rin and I will start with making dinner."

-

When everyone was finally at the table, Rinomi and Yui had been preparing dinner for a good hour and the table was laden with various dishes.

It was a rather flat table and people were sitting around it on various really comfy mats and enough room for everyone to not feel crammed. It was not as big though as those tables of noble families that made you feel as if the table was much too big for the amount of people eating.

Some of the dishes were cold, some warm, some were well known to them, while others seemed totally foreign as Yui made them herself. Even Tora was coming to join them for dinner in order to taste all the new and exotic dishes.

By the time Yui realized that she came to this world alone and now was sitting at a table with six other people, she stared at all of them in amazement.

"Sis, is something wrong?"

"No Tora, nothing's wrong. It's all quite right actually. I was just surprised about this strange feeling of being surrounded by people eating dinner. I wouldn't be comfortable outside, but here on our table. It's nice."

-

Neither Senji nor Kirano had been taught any cultivation techniques. Not because Yui or Tora wouldn't teach them, but mostly because by the time they were done with dinner, it was already rather late.

"Don't worry, we will just start tomorrow with it. You just skip a few hours of the regular mining. Once the early morning rush has passed there should be some free time when either myself or Tora can help with it."

"Rin, would you mind bringing Kirano back home? Having a young girl like her go back on her own at this time seems like a bad idea."

"That should not be a problem. Please stay inside the pavilion though while I'm away."

"Sure. I told Miyuki I'm going to tell her a good night story today. I still don't know which story I should dig up from my memories and if I even remember any of them correctly, but I guess I will just make up something if I don't."

"Lady, the clothes …" Kirano pointed out.

"Just keep them on, I wash your old ones for you."

The looks Yui got made her roll her eyes.

"What, it's just washing some clothes, don't look at me as if I'm inept and can't even do that much."

"Lady Yui, you're not supposed to do this kind of work. It's what servants are there for." Rinomi pointed out.

"You see any servants here?" Yui asked with a smirk. "I only see my sister, my … eh boyfriend and his daughter who I treat like my own, my bodyguard I guess and two guests."

Ryoma just smiled when she called him her boyfriend, but he didn't want her to have to wash clothes.

"I will wash the clothes, don't worry about it. I guess we could also hire some help for these tasks. It was an oversight on my part. I should have considered about hiring a few servants."

Flustered by the words and not wanting to argue with her lady, Kirano just bowed and accepted that she would just go home with the strange clothes from the shop, that were of far better quality than anything she had ever worn before.

The high quality robe, made her look like a young cultivator and nothing like the serf she really was.

It didn't take long for Senji to do the same and finally they were on their way back home.

With Rinomi by her side, making sure that nothing happened to the girl, it all felt like a weird dream to Kirano. A dream about her lady, a person so much above her, yet at the same time a person who had just made dinner for her.

"What a strange place this Earthly Treasures Pavilion is" she mumbled and looked back at the now distant tower, that had changed her life so completely.