The Panda Street Instance had everything that the old Shop Instance had, only more compartmentalised since they had been broken into shophouses for people to mingle around. Jin had utilised the very same concept he first used when he opened his shop.
While it might look like small shophouses from afar, it was a different experience once they walked into the store as the area widened within the shophouses. This allowed groups of people to come in without an issue and would expand accordingly.
For example, the Bai Twin’s Weaponry and Armoury Store Instances had been incorporated into multiple shophouses. Bai Wan had separated his shop based on the type of weapons being sold. Melee weapons had one store dedicated to them while the ranged items were another. He later further separated them based on the types sold.
With swords as the most popular of them all, Bai Wan had put them on the first floor and subsequently the axes and spears on the second. Blunt weapons and niche weapons had the third floor for themselves because he wanted people to at least look at them and do some window shopping so that they could have some love for the community obsessed with swords.
And speaking of swords, the range was absurdly wide. So much that Bai Wan had been given a separate shophouse to accommodate the higher grade swords and the varieties. The same went for magic weapons where Jin started to sell staffs, wands and books as part of the store expansion. Jin knew that there might not be that many mages according to System statistics but at least by offering such an option, it could prompt mages to at least try his dungeons.
On the other hand, Bai Xin’s Armoury Shophouses was even more frightening because of the number of clothes she had in her possession. From traditional armour to reinforced defensive clothes with inscriptions, she literally owned half the row of shophouses in the Panda Street. Jin felt that this would be a better choice than an ever-expanding department store which would make the cultivators feel as if there was no end when window shopping.
With the genres compartmentalised by the shophouses, it should give the shoppers a set of specific choices. What’s more, Bai Xin could now open a shophouse that solely sold her own personal wares. This gave her more control of the products she wished to market and promote her items without it being bogged down by the wide variety of choices the cultivators once had with the department style instance.
But because of the large catalogue they had, Jin had collaborated with Bai Xin and Bai Wan to create a submodule in his Pandamonium App that would give them partial control of the items they wished to showcase.
Based on their inputs, Jin had also revamped the shopping sub-app that should see an increased uptake in the number of people browsing it. And with the items in weekly rotation, several obscure items could be showcased and entice people to buy it.
Not only that, but he had also started to incorporate the Pandafull Delivery Team to send wares in Shenzhen for. (Since his team got a little bigger after the defence against the Demon Rats Ambush.) It was also to see the response of the customers to see if they could catch on getting stuff from his store. After all, Pandafull was just a minor delivery service as compared to the other big names out there.
Regardless, Jin had been thinking of making people like Bai Xin and Bai Wan as official Panda Clan Associates and allowing them to have access to a small part of the System without them knowing that it was the System.
And not only them, but the advent of the newly concocted chi potion by Yu Xiang, the potion researcher had also prompted Jin to create this Panda Clan Associates position. This would not only enhance their current skills but enable them to move faster and further in creating higher grade products at mass quantity too.
Speaking of Yu Xiang, Jin had already rewarded her team plenty by allowing her to open her very own potion shophouse in his Panda Street Instance. With the ability to create whatever shop interior with no budget limits like the Bai Twins, this gave her the ability to build her dream shop. However, what she desired most was better equipment for producing even higher quality potions, and that was when Jin told her that doing it in his Shop Instance would be the only choice.
Unlike the Chinese medicinal Shop Instance which Jin created for them to do their makeshift research, the System had actually allocated very, very little resources to those instances so that they could be standalone without the System’s interference. After all, the System prefered to spend as little as possible while taking as much rent from the tenants. (Of course, Jin did regulate it so that the shopkeepers had a fair price.)
So with the allure of having a more complete lab within the Shop Instance Yu Xiang ended up agreeing to create that shophouse. However, Jin emphasised that only quality items could be sold in the potion store, and she would still be fighting with Octofussy’s General shophouse for profit until she proved her worth.
Yu Xiang did not care about all that as all she wanted was to create even better potions. Which is also why Jin had delegated her potion-making into the first official manufacturing job to the Pandapolis Industrial Sector. So, she did not have to worry about making said potions as part of her job and concentrate on researching better ones.
Furthermore, a new lab department was officially created for Yu Xiang and her team in Ayse’s Research Lab Instance, although clearance wise, the humans had very restricted access to most of the lab. All the lab machines were teleported into the new department, and Jin hoped that Yu Xiang and her team could mingle with his minions and they would give each other insight into what they knew. (The Cosmetic Inscription were a good excuse why the minions sometimes did not look human.)
Of course, that would also mean more secrets would be spilt out. But there was no need to worry as the dungeon supplier had the Director of ‘Secret Keeping” by his side and he knew how to keep a tight leash around when it came to the System’s existence.
