Yunyin wished to try it once more, but his influence was gone, so he could only speculate.
Unwilling to waste time on that, he instead looked at the three blocks behind the Yamen and also at the upgrade requirements of the Yamen, thinking that since the effect was so good, he would gladly upgrade it again –
[Magistrate's Office]
- Use 10 Influence to unlock?
[Official Bureau]
- Use 10 Influence to unlock?
[County Garrison]
- Use 10 Influence to unlock?
The three were clearly the inner works of the county, and it seemed the skill tree reflected reality somewhat precisely. The price was still the same and Yunyin was still as poor, unable to unlock them.
His attention fell on the Yamen's upgrade requirements –
[Use 100 Influence to upgrade the Yamen to lvl2?]
- Special requirement 1: unlock at least 1 connected Enhancement.
- Special requirement 2: unlock the Scholar Academy.
- Special requirement 3: unlock the Martial Arts Academy.
- Special requirement 4: unlock the City Gate.
- Special requirement 5: unlock at least 1 additional Enhancement in the county.
Yunyin looked at the lengthy list of requirements – just the cost of unlocking all the required Enhancements would cost him 60 Influence!
And the required enhancements… 'The two academies are fine, after all, they're related to the training of talents, but why do I have to unlock the city gate?'
His question went unanswered, so he could only accept what it was and think of it later.
What bothered him slightly was that he had to unlock several things he had to use for… but remembering that the effect at least spread to all the five integrations, even if one thing was a bit useless to him, it wasn't a waste.
He accepted his own consoling and gradually calmed down, in his mind, a plan of how to gain more influence gradually developed.
While the budget issue wasn't as important to the assistant minister, it was still an important case. He would be informed of their evening court appearance tomorrow, so he would prepare a few things beforehand.
Leaving the carriage and entering his courtyard, he saw Bailuan standing outside again.
"Master, I have already ordered dinner from the Seven Chickens restaurant, it will arrive in a few minutes."
"Hmm?" Yunyin was confused, yet looking at the sky, where the midday sun had indeed already receded, and evening was about to fall… he realised that he had been out the whole day today, going from court to the ministry of war case and finally the assistant minister's residence!
Thinking of food, he did indeed feel hungry, so he thanked Bailuan for his hard work.
At home, there were only two servants, one of them was his scribe attendant, the other his steward attendant.
With no other servant, the steward was actually doing the job of all servants here, since the scribe always had to walk with Yunyin –
Cleaning the inner yard, taking care of the small garden in the outer yard, ordering food, and several other matters were all left to Bailuan to do.
"Put the poem and my painting into the study, and organise my notes of today. We will go over them after dinner and formulate an outline of how we will proceed with the budget case," Yunyin told Heiluan as he went to his bedroom.
He changed his robe now inside the courtyard, he only wore a simple inner robe and a thin outer robe, this world's equivalent to wearing pyjamas at home…
Soon, the food arrived and Yunyin called for Heiluan to come out of the study and eat together with them.
Three people sat in the living room, eating together while discussing a few things… although they called each other 'master', it was more like an atmosphere of a younger brother, older brother and an uncle living together.
Yunyin joked a bit and Heiluan kept talking in admiration about how majestic the court looked like, while Bailuan mostly smiled and kept putting food into the others' bowl, telling them to eat more since they haven't had breakfast yet.
"Master, should I order food before the start of the court from now on?"
"No, that will inevitably delay me. Hm… still, it's not good to be hungry at court. How about this, you order breakfast right after the court closes, which is two hours on average.
Even if I have something to do, I will at least be able to take a quick bite when I come back to change my robes."
Bailuan nodded in understanding, mentally calculating how long it would take for the restaurant to prepare the food and send it to their courtyard, making a plan to ensure the food would always be warm once it arrived here.
"By the way, how are the finances? Is everything okay?" Yunyin asked on the side. Now that he was an official, he didn't have time to think too deeply about these. His steward was born and raised in the family, and they treated him extremely well, so they didn't doubt his loyalty. He would only look over the books once a month.
They hadn't been in the capital for long but did quite a few things, so he wanted to know whether everything was fine.
"Yes master, everything is well. Of the initial 1.000 silver taels, 800 have been used to purchase the courtyard. 50 taels of the others were used for various matters, and we're now left with around 150 taels of silver."
"That's more than enough," Yunyin thought, since a normal farming family earned around 1 silver tael monthly on average, the sum of 1.000 taels might seem huge, yet in their circumstances, it was barely able to cover their initial expenses.
"Father will send 100 taels monthly from now on. Don't be stingy and use it to slowly improve our standard of living.
Although the courtyard doesn't have more space for a servant, we can still hire a temporary servant to come and clean every day in the morning hours.
Just make sure they don't enter the study," Yunyin didn't want this steward to waste all his time taking care of the courtyard. There would be more important tasks to take care of in the future.
After eating, Yunyin did as he said and went back to his study, outlining the budget plan and writing down a few initial arguments in preparation for the discussion that would come.
His Abacus didn't stop calculating until the end of evening, upon which Yunyin went to go and sleep, somewhat early, but since he woke up before the sun rose, he couldn't stay up any longer without affecting his mental state negatively.
And so, the first day in court ended…