The Legendary Janitor

Thinking about the food issue, Di Tou felt conflicted in his heart.

In the end, Di Tou decided to try eating at one or two different restaurants over the next two days, to see if this effect was unique to Old Wang, or if this was something that was simply a common attribute of the food here. After all, if it turned out that it was common knowledge that all of the food would help improve his status and he had forced himself to go to the same shop over and over… Wouldn't that just be a little too tragic?

Of course, if in the end it turned out that only Old Wang had such special food… well being a foodie didn't take precedence over his life. And Old Wang's rib noodles were pretty good, it was just a pity there was only one option.

The second thing he couldn't help but notice was the blatant difference in attribute points he got from rubbing down the table and from tiding the bed. Both were in the same feedback tier, so the difference in attribute returns was very obvious. For the first he had gotten .625 points while for the other he had gotten .25 points.

Making a quick calculation in his head, which Di Tou was surprised to find he could do instantly, he realized the difference between the two was 2.5 times! That wasn't a small difference.

It seemed like tiding the bed wasn't a very effective way to gain points, especially considering how long it had taken him to do properly today in comparison to wiping down the table.

But on the other hand, he was really close to breaking 50%…

If he could streamline how efficient he was in tiding the bed and break 50% at the same time, the gains would still add up over time. After all the amount of time he had taken to do this chore had been quite long, considering he was unfamiliar with the sheeting system here, and he really wanted to be as perfect as possible to test the upper limits.

In his head Di Tou kicked himself a bit, feeling bummed that he hit 49% exactly. Just a little better, ah! He was so close. But sometimes that is how it is in life, the last one percent matters the most, and is the line between succeeding and failing.

Of course, over the next few days Di Tou would come to learn that this last one percent wasn't a coincidence. He would need to do quite a bit more to pass it.

Trying to recall his previous feedback rewards from when he had done a variety of tasks, Di Tou seemed to remember that the activities folding cloths, dusting chairs, and arranging papers had all given about the same amount of feedback for the same judgment. Although, he was a bit surprised at the fact that he could remember so clearly, and was therefore a bit hesitant to completely trust his memory. For now he would trust that he had remembered right, but he would have to make more observations in the future.

For the moment, Di Tou pulled out a new sheet of paper and wrote down various tasks he had done and how they varied in comparison to each other. He doubted it would be very accurate or useful in the short term, but if he kept up with tracking, he would end up with a very comprehensive and useful guide to how to interact with the scroll.

For this series of notes Di Tou decided to track using English and Arabic numerals… He wasn't quite sure why it would be so severe, but remembering Mu Di Bai's warnings he felt like that any information about the scroll probably shouldn't be shared.

By writing in English and Arabic numerals, while he might not fully secure his information, at least it would add a layer of difficulty to anyone who riffled through his notes and ensured some level of privacy.

Of course, to anyone who was flipping through these notes who knew English, they might also end up finding the notebook somewhat indecipherable. It should be remembered that Di Tou was a rather average student… Which meant that most of his grades were secured through the age old methodology of last second cramming.

This meant that for classes that he had to take every year, or were built on previous materials like math and sciences he would be a bit better, but for classes that focused more on testing student's retention of what had been covered over the last semester, or were more infrequence, say a language class like English for instance…

Well, let's just say it'd be quite impressive if he remembered the correct words a week after the test, much less so many years later.

This meant that Di Tou was using his rudimentary English knowledge more like a shorthand than a proper form of documenting and formating. Something like "Tidying the bed" might become "Bed Fold" and something like "Scrubbing the Table" might become "Rub Wood".

The point is, perhaps a bit unknowingly, Di Tou's method of mystifying and making his notes more difficult to crack may have been much more effective than he intended.

The rest of the night wasn't all that eventful.

Seeing that it was getting a bit too dark indoors to be able to do anything, but that it was still too early to eat dinner, much less go to bed, Di Tou decided to rake a few more leaves. After all, even when he had left the courtyard in the morning there were still plenty of leaves scattered about, much less a now a few hours later.

Considering that the leaves were related to one of his [Guidance] objectives, he figured it was a good of a place to start as any, especially considering the fact that it was outdoors and therefor he had a bit more light to work with. 𝒃𝒆𝒅𝒏𝒐𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝙘𝙤𝒎

Grabbing one of the bags he had bought earlier, Di Tou headed out to the courtyard.