71 More and More Planning From the Fourth Miss

Yujia stumbled home nearly in a trance, completely absorbed in her own thoughts.

Now that the idea of leeching off of Lingxin was out of the question, she needed to think of a new plan quickly. She didn't want to waste any more time, yet at the same time, it only seemed like there were more and more conflicts rising up. Why couldn't this just be an easy journey? Why did life have to do her like this?

By the time she arrived in her courtyard, Hui'er definitely noticed that something was up. Her eyes scanned Yujia's face as Yujia helped herself with a basin of water and a clean towel, wiping all the makeup and scrubbing at her eyebrows to remove the glue and hair. Once finished with that, undid her hair and took off her men's clothes, flopping down on her bed and staring at the ceiling.

What was she supposed to do now? Really, what was she supposed to do?

She could imagine herself painting five hundred generic mountain paintings and selling all of them for one tael each. She did test her speed before, and she was able to paint twenty-four generic mountain paintings within the time limit of four days. On average, each day, she also spent lots of time relaxing and thinking about what could potentially happen in the future, so she only painted for three hours a day, creating around six paintings daily. This meant that a generic mountain painting only took thirty minutes per painting.

Yujia calculated how many paintings she could sell within twenty days at that rate, and that was just one-hundred and twenty. Though, if she spent six hours painting a day, she could paint two-hundred forty paintings within twenty days. If she painted just a little more and sold the paintings for two taels each, she could easily make five hundred paintings…

A horrifying image of a high stack of two-hundred fifty paintings appeared in her mind, and Yujia shook her head.

No— that was a bad idea.

Even if she didn't go crazy from spending the majority of her day painting generic mountain paintings, there were too many other factors to account for this idea.

Firstly, Yujia likely needed to buy supplies. Paper was costly, even the kind on the lower end, and if she were to think about how much ink and paper she had to purchase to paint these things, it would be at least a good amount of taels, which meant even more painting. She didn't know who she would go find to buy two hundred plus sheets of paper either. They must think of her as crazy if she asked for that.

Secondly, even though Yujia was pretty sure she could sell ten or twenty generic paintings for two taels, she wasn't sure if a sudden influx of generic mountain paintings on the market would lower the overall value of paintings on the market. She couldn't sell them all at once, and if she took her time selling them on different days, that would be cutting down on the little time she had to earn five hundred taels. Selling and painting were both time consuming processes.

Lastly, there were too many unpredictable factors that came along with this idea. It just wasn't a very feasible idea to paint two-hundred fifty paintings within a month to earn five hundred taels. If it were as easy as that, she would expect that many artists would already be richer than merchants.

A dangerous idea of pulling five all-nighters and painting for every hour and slowly selling the paintings came to mind, but Yujia dismissed it just as quickly.

She came to the simple conclusion that just selling paintings to earn five-hundred taels wasn't the safest idea. Maybe she would go to it when she had nothing else, but for now, she should spend a little more effort thinking of other ideas.

Yujia groaned loudly and covered her face with her hands. She really hated this.

Hui'er called over, "Miss? What happened at Lingxin Pavilion?" She truly didn't know what caused her Fourth Miss to act this way. "Did things go wrong?"

"I guess you could word it that way," Yujia mumbled, "Things went wrong. Really, really wrong." She paused, and after a long moment, she admitted, "I met Yu Zixu."

"Yu Zixu?" Upon hearing that, Hui'er's eyes widened. "The First Young Master of the Yu Family?"

"Aren't I lucky?"

Hui'er walked closer, frantically asking, "What did he do? Did he— know you were trying to be Yu Ziyang?"

"Yes, but… I don't think he cared?" Yujia frowned, realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

Hui'er was about to reply with something, but someone walked in the room. Yujia sat up, while Hui'er turned to see who it was, her eyebrows flying up.

It was Yang Xiaoyi, dressed in a shade of soft yellow, a bright smile spread across her face.

"Big sister, how are you doing?"