Chapter 123: 3.27

It had to be said, under the vigorous training (tyranny) of Da Gong, and the supplemental spiritual energy from Tang Muxin's cooking, the animals in their group could probably be confidently called the smartest animals in China. Maybe on the earth ah. 

Scouting the area they knew how to hide from the shadows and avoid danger, scampering and slithering around they looked for the familiar 'pictures' that indicated the building was an inn and then observed whether it was appropriate or not. They still didn't fully understand what constitutes as appropriate but Da Gong gave them some basic indicators like if there was a stable relatively nearby for the horses and others could rest in. 

After half an hour the animals all rushed back with their findings. Little Fatty who was the cleverest follower and Xiao Shua the cat, who was the most agile, both found very good looking inns and reported thus with proud looks. 

Da Gong nodded in satisfaction. He didn't waste his time in vain. "Good job. I will reward you with good meat and better grains tonight!"

The group of animals cheered, "Thank you boss!"

"Please go get the human woman to buy meat and grain for tonight, baby," Da Gong  turns to nuzzle his not so little worm with his head. Jia Hyson purrs in delight. 

"Already done Brother Gong~"( ◡‿◡ ♡)

"As expected of my baby, so smart." Da Gong praises.

"Not as smart as you hehe," Jia Hyson praises back sweetly.

Other animals: '…' We wanted meat but instead we got our usual dose of dog food. (ﾉ￣д￣)ﾉ(ﾉ￣д￣)ﾉ(ﾉ￣д￣)ﾉ

Tang Muxin, who was suddenly given a shopping list before being shoved with PDA: '....' As a protagonist I feel like I have no dignity left ah. _(:3」∠)_

Of course Jia Hyson also passed on the two possible inns and roughly where they were to Tang Muxin as well. When she discussed it with the group, Yan Huizhong must have recognised one of the places and decisively chose an inn called Fairy Garden Inn. 

When asked the reason, Yan Huizhong very eloquently said:

"It's because… uhm..." He glances at Ye Cheng staring at him, then stuttered out a couple on incomprehensible words before finally weakly ending with, '…it, it has good wine there.'

Duan Mengyao glances at Tang Muxin before nodding enthusiastically in agreement.

Da Gong didn't really understand what was happening but felt like he instinctively also should agree (as a fellow male lead), glancing at his little worm before bobbing his head up and down.

'Heroines' Tang Muxin, Ye Cheng and Jia Hyson: '...'  (ಠ_ಠ ) (°◇°;) (•͈ᴗ•͈ )

The quality of IQ in this story seems to be quite low ah.

With that decided, they began to travel through the streets of the capital to their destination. Everyone was quite excited and constantly peeked out to observe the bustling streets and chatting with each other.

However quickly, everyone's faces turned a bit odd. 

There was something a bit strange with the capital.

Tang Muxin and Jia Hyson immediately looked at each other. As fellow transmigrators they were more sensitive and puzzled to the current setting.

The first thing that was immediately wrong to them, was the lack of food stall varieties. At this point the original original protagonist of the story Tang Muxin had read and transmigrated to, Pan Shuchun, should have entered the capital by now. Pan Shuchun was an agricultural student, and like most transmigrators who come to a historical setting, was very skilled in cooking and creating new dishes.

People are greedy and there's not much enforcement on things like copyrights unless the emperor specially decrees it or something. Therefore many people would have tried to copy Pan Shuchun's dishes to varying levels of success, while also inspiring them to try create new dishes in order to compete with her small restaurant. 

However, there was no such thing right now.

Instead, and this was the second and more glaringly obvious thing that was wrong… the outfits of a lot of people at the capital were different.

Ancient style clothes currently is generally very conservative. There are layers of fabric, outer robes and inner robes and specific hairstyles for married people etc, etc. It was especially strict for women. For obvious patriarchal reasons. It wasn't until around early 1900s AD did the fashion changed drastically by incorporating western elements. 

Currently the setting is a bit of a mess but it's estimated to be roughly inspired by the Ming dynasty. This dynasty was where people began to incorporate more silks other fabrics that weren't just plain cloth to make robes as well as introducing richer colours in their clothes which previously they were limited to according to their status and gender. The style of clothes were very voluminous with a long robe with wide sleeves for men, a shorter robe worn over a long wide skirt for women.

Noble and wealthy women's dresses were also quite rich in style right now, though the basics of these clothes are mainly imitated from Tang and Song dynasties and most women wore three collars with narrow sleeves. Pleated skirts had also become popular during this time. Still the main points of the style were in hopes one would look elegant, poised and graceful, showing off their Chinese heritage proudly.

But even though the style of the Ming dynasty is quite varied and full of changes and advancements, it's still ancient style and has a strong flavour of history and antiquity.

So why… why was Jia Hyson seeing sneakers and lacy ribbons and fucking double breasted coats ah?! (」゜ロ゜)」

There's a scholar reading a book and shifting his fedora so the light of the sun doesn't hit his eyes. Nearby a group of young ladies were gossiping and laughing, touching their knitted hair accessories, scrunchies and sparkly hair clips that decorated their hair absentmindedly. And coming out of a shop a handsome young dandy was showing off to his friends his silk outer robe, which looks fairly normal to be honest.. if there wasn't an ink painting of a stylised P*kachu on the corner of it! 

An elegant older woman passes by with her servants, the wide sleeves of what looks like a lovely knee length dark blue peacoat billow in the wind. Underneath was clearly a white qípáo* that had a blue porcelain-like design sewn into the fabric, and underneath the qípáo was a matching blue pleated ankle length skirt. It was mature and subtle, yet elegantly eye catching.

*better known as a cheongsam which is a close fitting dress, originated in 1920s Shanghai and is from Manchu origin. It's the typical dress anime chinese girls wear. 

A very fashionable mix of ancient Chinese and western designs that not only looked good and gave a great charm to the individual, but it also didn't violate the conservativeness and disdain of the people.

Jia Hyson stares at the older woman who strolled by with her head up high, it was clear she was proud and preening under the envious attention of the younger girls with the hair accessories. His mouth was agape and he really couldn't believe his cute little dragon eyes. As someone who has been rich twice, and has experienced a  pretty decent modelling career before, he was not unfamiliar with fashion so he could immediately tell-

This was really… really modern and high class fashion. 

Immediately after fully digesting in his brain what visual input his eyes have provided him, Jia Hyson frowned. 'Bebe…'

'Bebe knows,' It's voice was also deeply puzzled, 'Let Bebe contact system administr-'

Suddenly a bowl fell from the sky and landed a foot away from Jia Hyson and Da Gong, distracting them momentarily. However it was only a moment. 

"Deng Wei you bastard!" A shrill female voice screams above, in the building behind them, "You're getting me a new bowl!"

"Shut up woman! The entire street has probably gone deaf thanks to you!"

'Okay, Bebe will now contact system admi-'

A small teacup suddenly bounced in front of them. 

"Xiao An! Don't throw your cup!"

"Wuwuwu! But I don't want to drink mummy!"

"That's no excuse! People could've gotten hurt! Honestly, what is with you…"

Jia Hyson and Bebe: …

'…Bebe will now-'

"Ah!" The nearby people screamed and Da Gong deftly flapped and dragged Jia Hyson away with his talons as a rather sizeable golden buddha statue suddenly wan thrown at them. Looking at the place it landed, Jia Hyson couldn't help but tremble a bit, if they hadn't moved.. well it wouldn't have actually hit them, but it would definitely have been too fucking close for comfort.

'Fuck.' Bebe swears vehemently, 'Bebe knows what this fucking is.'

Bebe had been a system for a long time. While this sort of thing wasn't common, it wasn't a rare occurrence either.

'This is a bug.' 

For Bebe this may be something uncommon but normal but for Jia Hyson it was his first time meeting such a thing and was a bit slow on the uptake. 'You mean... a natural malfunction in the storyline?'

Bebe sighs, 'Yeah, but it's not technically a natural function. More like, the fucking world's consciousness fucked up.' 

Bebe then begins to explain using a common simile that many systems learnt in system school. Some hosts it had before were idiots who didn't understand it despite the simplicity of the explanation but Bebe still had confidence in Jia Hyson's intellect when there wasn't sperm clogging up his brain.

Jia Hyson: ….what happened to us Bebe? We used to be so close. QwQ

Bebe: ...Suddenly have the urge to vomit.

So. Take the whole thing like an architect firm. 

Authors are the clients. They say, 'Here's my building and do it like this okay? Do it exactly like this. Or there will be problems.'

The system world is admin. They take whatever design given and say 'We have to go consult the others, we'll come back to you in three to three thousand working days with the result.' Then they'll quietly bitch and talk shit behind everyone's backs.

The world's consciousnesses are the architects, and the heavenly path is their assistants. They'll take a look at all the building options, consider which 'building designs' are the most affordable for them, within their abilities to make and would produce the best profit for themselves, before picking a bunch. They are responsible for planning out how to make the design into reality and earn commission with each success.

Finally the hosts are the small workers. Depending on their job they can be described as the construction workers, the maintenance workers, the building health and safety inspectors or even the consultants. They come in and do their roles to help the building work safely and make money. 

However the architects cannot bully the small workers. Because the admin has two identities, one is the big boss controlling everyone's wages, and two... is the boss of the small worker union.

Therefore the architects in this scenario are quite pitiful despite earning the highest wage and getting the most commission percentage out of all of them. They do the most work but also get the most scoldings. However it's usually okay and world's consciousness are naturally quite pedantic so there never is a huge problem with the status quo in the workforce. 

But occasionally an 'architect' would mess up and cause problems to their building. Sometimes the problem is so big it would effect the entire structure of the building and maybe even the nearby buildings in the neighborhood as well. This is known as a bug. 

A common bug is when cannonfodder and other people who aren't supposed to be reborn, are reborn. Alternatively they can get some memories of their future through dreams, memories of a past life, find an artifact slash golden finger they weren't supposed to find... it's really all sorts of things. 

Once there was a bug in a romantic comedy school life plot line, it was a very small mistake but it became one of the most infamous bugs that is talked about for centuries afterwards. The world's consciousness and heavenly path gave the clumsy genius character too much ability and accidentally caused the school to blow up as a consequence. This directly killed everyone in the school save the protagonist and male lead who had skipped school to go on a date. 

Not only that, the protagonist's family, her strict but doting father, her gentle but scary mother, and her overprotective older brother, were part of the teaching staff and also died. The protagonist and male lead could not take the tragedy of the situation and broke up. Later on the protagonist who loved her family, was full of survivor's guilt and killed herself. 

The male lead who still loved the protagonist even though they broke up learnt of the news, blackened and broke out of the heavenly path's control. The new school he went to was coincidentally the setting of another highschool plot that featured a hardworking smart vice-president protagonist and a blackbellied genius school president male lead in a cute rival to lovers situation. 

Maybe because the genius student in his previous school was similar to the male lead in appearance and IQ, the blackened protagonist wished to destroy him to vent his twisted anger against the world. 

He seduced the female lead, destroyed the reputation of the male lead and caused the school to suffer the loss of one of their school tyrants. Afterwards he converted the studious female lead into a waste, introducing all sorts of bad things to her before throwing her away. 

The male lead with the ruined reputation couldn't accept this ending and killed the blackened male lead using various means with his genius intellect. Satisfied, he went back to the female lead to win her back only to find her having sex with an old man for drugs, causing him to go completely insane, killing her, the old man and then starting a school shooting as revenge against the school that turned against him. He eventually was killed by the police officers who were called in. 

Jia Hyson, after listening to the story: '...' The butterfly effect is really frightening ah. _(:3」∠)_

'Anyway,' Bebe continues, 'using the architect metaphor again- we the small workers have found a mistake made by the architect. If we report it to the admin, the architect will not only be severely scolded but their work bonus will be deduced and maybe they'll even get worse punishments depending on the severity of the mistake such as being deemed too incompetent to handle a certain level of 'designs'. This would essentially keep them as low level architects with low wages for a long time.'

'So...' Jia Hyson's mouth twitched. It was a little funny if it wasn't so pitiful. 'The stuff that's been coincidentally thrown our way to interrupt us was the world's consciousness way of hugging your leg like dead weight and crying not to report them?' 

If Bebe could it would rub its nonexistent forehead tiredly, 'Its a very typical reaction. Once Bebe tried to contact its overseer when a reborn cannonfodder was detected, and its host got bombarded with kittens. This wouldn't have been a problem but the current body of Bebe's host was allergic to cat fur.' 

Bebe didn't know whether to laugh and cry at the memory, 'Holding Bebe's host hostage we promised to try solve the bug first before reporting. That way the scolding and punishment will be relatively lighter for the world's consciousness and heavenly path.'

'This sort of throwing object method is actually quite mild.' Bebe told Jia Hyson seriously. Even though it dissed the world's consciousness a lot, it isn't good for the host to get a terrible impression of them. These entities were very powerful but at the same time they relied heavily on others in order to maintain their energy demand and life force. In a way they were just very simpleminded, stingy and sneaky wage slaves. It's not too different from systems ah. Except being poorer and stupider.

The poorer and stupider World's consciousness: '...' Why must you hurt me like this? ;-; 

Bebe was quite educated after doing so many jobs and internships, and has a better understanding of this sort of thing than some other systems of similar ages. Not to mention, as a system that got picked to become this rare and amazing Beta system, it's IQ and extrapolation abilities were not low. 'After all the world's consciousness knows that our role is the improve the story, therefore as long as it doesn't get reported and story improves, it won't get reprimanded at all!" 

'Fuck!' Jia Hyson mentally clapped for Bebe while roasting the world's consciousness, 'That's amazing! It turns out to be like that! So sinister!' 

Emboldened by the rare cheering from its host Bebe continued proudly, 'Don't worry host, Bebe has negotiated successfully many times to pull out benefits from the world's consciousnesses and heavenly paths. Once we find a bug, we have the upper hand ah. Plus, as a beta system who could potentially help them avoid all punishment, our fighting power is even stronger!'

Excited by the thought of more benefits, Jia Hyson cheered even harder, 'Yeah! Refuel! Fight on!' (╯✧∇✧)╯*:･ﾟ✧

Even though it's the first time experiencing a bug, Jia Hyson knew from the visible change in costume culture in the capital that the far reaching consequences of the bug was very, very big. Whatever the reason for the bug is, the minimum effect is that it will change historical fashion, influence future clothing styles and even sexism in society.

Don't say that a few clothes cannot do so much. Clothing can reflect the attitude of society. When society is poor they wear simple, monotonous clothing with little dye or accessory. When society is rich there is color and creativity. And when society is feudal and has a strict hierarchy, certain colours and clothing will be forcibly restricted to certain statuses. 

Female clothing especially has always been more expressive, and is a direct reflection to the perspective of female modesty. 

Altering the perspective of female modesty is a big deal in itself, as it relates a lot to to feminism and sexuality. After all, women in both western and eastern history had to originally be covered up for various reasons, and showing too much skin was considered scandalous and shameful. In many cases it was a situation of either marriage or death or joining a monastery. This sort of harsh punishment only enforced into everyone's minds how important modesty in females should be.

For modern clothing ideas to be accepted it requires more tolerant thinking toward women. When the trend catches on, this tolerance will stop being a new and unique idea but the norm.  Even though it will probably be a slow and arduous journey, like how feminism was, and still is in Jia Hyson's own reality, there's no denying that this is a huge jumpstart. 

It's really too much of an alteration in history. It would be strange not to be in trouble when being reported. 

Not to mention, with such a unique historical fashion change, on top of a setting that already had a unique historical change of once having dragons and cultivation elements, wouldn't it be extremely difficult to accommodate other plots into the world later on? It was simply a pit. 

If they get reported, they will be scolded, punished, wages lost, benefits reduced and their world will become grossly unsuitable for other money generating plots to be placed in. It would become a case of needing to spend money to reset everything in order to earn again, but had not enough money to cover the costs of reconstruction. In short, at best the world's consciousness and heavenly path will be forced to starve and scrape by to generate enough energy income for millions of years, at worst it's really directly asking for their death. 

At this point, if they won't cooperate and flatter Jia Hyson and Bebe now, when would they ah? 

Everyone here was selfish and nobody here was brain dead. When these sort of egotistical and intelligent people have a common goal together can they not make great miracles ah? They can! They totally can! 

'Ask them for all the information they can provide about the current situation,' Jia Hyson demands while Bebe proceeds to contact the world's consciousness. 'Not just about the bug, but the situation in the palace, the climate and weather fluctuations, and any key hidden people we should be interested in like the Wen family who were blessed by dragons.'

Bebe felt these requests were natural and quickly relayed them. They didn't have the ability to be omniscient right now due to... reasons that may or may not be Bebe's fault, nor could they afford the proper skills and applications related to omniscience. Now that they have this plug in, it's like having a free trial. 

After a moment of thought Jia Hyson added, 'They can manipulate fate in order to best conform to the storyline right? Ask them to find a way to bring the other dragons' appearance earlier. If they manage to find a way for me to trigger it myself it would be even better since I'm more confident in my own sense of timing then theirs.'

'It's a bit trickier but Bebe is sure they can do it,' Bebe confidently remarks. It too was a little excited. Usually for such a thing, the world's consciousness would really not agree. The more arrogant heavenly path even less so. After all they had to uphold their pride as all powerful beings that can control and manipulate in their domain. Getting more detailed and accurate real time and future information from them and some small rewards is the normal exchange for helping solve a bug. But it was considered too much to actually order them to do things for them. 

Aiyah, not only did they get compensation from the overseers due to their mistake, they were now going to get extra compensation from the world's consciousness for their mistake. This was simply... a reward world on multiple levels! Ahhhhh!!! 

No wonder touching porcelain* is such a popular scheme. Bebe had seen many people do it, and it's own hosts accomplish it, but it was like watching a drama to the system. Never had Bebe truly understood the benefits until it was handed so generously toward it ah.

*Touching porcelain is essentially a con where scammers purposely place something expensive (e.g. porcelain) or someone (e.g. themselves) in a manner so when the victim even just touches them, they will fall. This allows the scammer to pretend to be morally righteous and demand for compensation. In short, a behavior to trick someone into paying through guilt as a result of what they assume is their own mistake (breaking the porcelain) etc. 

Even though it wasn't a scheme and was all real, Bebe still felt a little swayed for a second before mentally slapping itself. Tsk, it was one thing to find mistakes but to purposely make mistakes to report and blackmail was not as easy as it seems. The overseers and world's consciousness aren't so easy to trick out benefits. If they were there would be much more successful Worldhackers in the system world ah. 

But still... how nice would it be if criminal life was easy hehe. (∩❛ڡ❛∩)

Unknowing about Bebe's dreams of easy money through scamming, Jia Hyson also was a bit lost in his own thoughts. However unlike Bebe's crooked ideas, Jia Hyson was seriously thinking about the situation.

This bug was really too unique and the plot may no longer be so useful to him anymore. After all, if the style of clothes are starting to change then it means there will be new ideas and possibly new technology introduced into the capital that will alter things as well. 

Don't think that just getting a new wardrobe of clothes won't do much. In Jia Hyson's opinion it could change everything. 

With sneakers people can walk faster and at longer distances without being hindered by various things like sharp rocks which will make escaping and running errands quicker. With new unique hair accessories and cheap but fashionable trinkets it becomes easier to hide and smuggle goods, maybe even poison for assassinations. Human ingenuity and creativity is astounding, and their perversions and proclivities for violence is appalling. 

Who knows if previously unsuccessful assassinations would succeed, messages that didn't get received in time got received, fights would have different winners and people who previously did not have jobs now did? 

People that should have died, might live. People that should have lived, might die. People who missed their full potential are now maximizing it, and others have lost the chance to reach their peak. It's like a switch board. With one flick, some lights will stay the same, some will light up and some will turn off, but overall the whole picture changes. 

Jia Hyson frowned subconsciously. He was very laidback for a lot of things but in the end he was a little controlling, especially towards things like his stories. It wasn't a trait he appreciated in himself because it reminded him of his father, so he's always tried to not get so irritated when things don't go his way. Still. He felt more than a little uncomfortable facing this situation which had deviated from his original ideas so greatly. 

'Bebe, have they told you what the bug is yet ah?' Jia Hyson rubbed his snout in an attempt to fight off his frustration and anxiety.

'Yes, Bebe has just received the information.' Bebe's voice was filled with confusion and shock.

'The bug is... the bug is the original original protagonist Pan Shuchun.'