The guardian shop

Yang Jingshen adjusted his seat to let himself rest more comfortably as he used the eye mask given by his cousin to cut off the intrusive lights on the plane. Last night, he had spent time memorizing the lines of the new script for this upcoming drama, and when he became aware, it was already past midnight.

Now he was feeling quite sleepy, and it didn't help that the flight was scheduled to take off around 7 o'clock in the morning. He only got to sleep around four hours and he didn't want to arrive at the set looking tired and bedraggled.

Yang Jingshen rested his head on the high back of the seat and plugged in his earphones, effectively cutting off surrounding noises as well. But, he couldn't fall asleep as he wanted to since various thoughts about what happened in the past few days kept popping up in his mind.

Last month -to be precise, on the sixth day of the New Year celebrations- he had been rudely shaken awake from a much-cherished midday nap by Feng Xue, only to learn that the photos of his modeling job had started trending on the web all of a sudden.

Apparently, another fashion blogger, Miss H, who was known for posting lists of designs that catches her eye had uploaded a photo from his job on her New Year's favorite fashion list. Why this made such a fuss- Yang Jingshen hadn't been able to understand at first. How many tens of thousands of fashion bloggers were in this country alone? How can one who wasn't widely known make big waves like this?

But it was only after taking a look at this particular marketing account that had a fan count of more than a hundred thousand, and then by looking at news about this particular blogger did he realize the impact of the situation.

How he ended up drawing the eye of this type of person– Yang Jingshen couldn't even fathom up to this day. Sure, the clothes were beautiful and he knew he managed to present them to the best of their potential, but for heaven's sake, it was just one small job and it was not supposed to make a splash… not even a small one.

Feng Xue had of course been over the moon because of this and had hastily tried to buy an article to ramp up his popularity, but Yang Jingshen had stopped her at this point. After all, this type of coincidence– it was a bit too peculiar, right?

Who was he to say that that damned novel and whatever mysterious force that was behind it -if there ever was one- wasn't at play and wasn't trying to pit him for making efforts to change the plot direction?

And when Feng Xue had asked him why he was stopping her, Yang Jingshen had replied blithely, 'Even if these photos trended, I still have that scandal to my name. If I try to make it big at once, won't the netizens resent me even more?'

And he was not entirely wrong either. When to show off and when to keep a low profile– Yang Jingshen was someone who had a deep understanding of this aspect of the entertainment circle. After all, the human heart was unfathomable and unpredictable. What one liked today could very well be hated by the very same person the next day.

The trending had lasted for two or three days, after which the furor had died down. But it wasn't without its own merits. Not only had his Weibo fan count reached up to a bit over nine thousand -from the initial zombie fan count of two thousand something- and the views had reached up to more than forty thousand, even the company had decided to reward him.

Yep! That's right! Star dreams management had ended up allocating another five merit points, on top of the previous five they gave him for a successfully publicized work. But that was not all…

<Congragulations!

Your first publicized work successfully garnered the attention of the audience and managed to earn you a number of new fans. For your continuous efforts and superior abilities, it had been decided to grant you the following rewards.

Guardian points x200, Soul coins x5, Low-level healing potion x2, Low-grade disguise pill x1

Please continue your hard work for more exciting rewards!>

The first ever soul coins he earned by himself and Yang Jingshen had even forgotten to breathe for a moment when he saw this. In fact, his surprise was even higher than when he saw the satisfaction value displaying a number of -260,180, which was a generous increase of 1253 points, an almost unbelievable concession on the part of that stingy woman, Feng Xi.

Because, no matter what, Yang Jingshen had been aware from the beginning that what he actually needed were those soul coins. Not to mention this new reward named the disguise pill. After reading its descriptions for the first time, he raised one of his eyebrows in surprise.

<Low-grade disguise pill>

<Voyeurism is a treat for the starved -Sean Visser-

Effects: Changes your face to look like some random stranger of the same sex, this disguise can last up to an hour>

It was an ordinary-looking, dark brown pill, the size of half of his pinkie, and the only special thing about it was that it had the same infinity marking etched onto its surface. But unless one looked closely, the sign was almost invisible.

But what surprised Yang Jignshen was not its low-key appearance. No– instead, it was the effects mentioned in the description. Changing one's appearance… well, it might sound too cliched and predictable and suitable for some sort of level-up fantasy novel, but in truth, it can have unexpected uses, right?

Especially considering the difficulties he'd have to face in the future, wouldn't having a chance to operate under different identities save him a hell lot of trouble? But then again, this was not all that there was to it.

Because, right after receiving these rewards, the panel finally notified him of the 'Guardian shop' opening. Yep- this thing finally opened, and just when he had started believing that what the soul guardian said about this shop had all been a lie on its part. And apparently, the criteria for opening it was to earn soul coins by yourself.

Of course, the shop only had made five items accessible to him as of now; three of them being items he already had in his possession. They were the low-level mind soothing potion and the healing potion as well as the newly received disguise pill.

The healing potion -the cheapest- was priced at 50 guardian points, whereas the mind soothing potion was priced at 200 guardian points with the disguise pill costing 400.

But, it was the other two items that were made available to him in this shop that had Yang Jingshen raising his eyebrows until they literally disappeared beneath his hairline. They were priced much higher, but that wasn't what made him surprised. It was because, these two items can only be considered quite unique and very valuable, especially for someone in his circumstances.