I was poor myself. The gift Hei Zi had prepared had been gathered from several sources; it hadn't simply fallen from the sky. Being able to give a ninth-grade qi disk good for one year had already pained me terribly. This fellow, on the other hand, actually looked down on me for it. It was simply too much.
However, the stewards of wealthy and powerful households were petty demons—utterly troublesome. I couldn't say much, either. I could only wait until I met Zhu Junyu, finished what I had to do, and then come less often in the future.
As it turned out, this steward really did lose his temper. After making me wait in the reception hall, he said he would report to his master before bringing me in to meet him. Yet after more than half a day, there still wasn't the slightest word. I was so furious that I cursed him under my breath, but since this was the residence of a chief official of the Six Ministries, I couldn't truly blow up. Otherwise, not only would my visit fail, it might aggravate the conflict, and then things would become troublesome indeed.
Quite a few immortals came to pay their respects to Zhu Junyu. There were even third-rank and second-rank Dao Bodies and officials among them, along with no small number of lower-ranked ones. While I waited, those officials who arrived after me were also led in to meet him. Yet somehow, it was never my turn. It seemed the meeting gifts offered by the other families were truly substantial. Several times, the steward came to usher his master's guests in, and every time he first glanced at me with undisguised contempt and arrogance before taking immortals who had arrived later than I had inside.
This "courtesy" left