There were several small bookshops on Champion Scholar Alley, and aside from selling books, there were also some crude sets of four treasures of the study available for purchase. Thankfully, they weren't very expensive. 0

After all, the customers of these bookshops were primarily impoverished scholars who had come to the capital city to sit the imperial examination, and Chen Ping'an purchased a few travel journals from one of the bookshops. He wasn't going to read the travel journals anytime soon. Instead, he had purchased them to add to the collection on Downtrodden Mountain.0

As Chen Ping'an returned to the alley where he was staying, the little boy also just so happened to return from his lessons. The two of them walked down the alley side by side, and the boy seemed to want to tell Chen Ping'an something, but was unable to muster up the courage to do so.0

Chen Ping'an pretended to be oblivious to the boy's dilemma. Upon returning to the house, he had dinner with the boy's family that night. According to the rental agreement, the family had to supply meals to Chen Ping'an for an additional cost of thirty copper coins per day. 1

The old woman had promised him that every meal was going to have some form of fish or meat, but Chen Ping'an was often absent, either going out too early for breakfast and returning too late for dinner, or disappearing for a few days at a time altogether, and the old woman was very pleased to see...1