Chapter 192: Provincial Leader

Size shaming!?

What do you mean, “size shaming?”

“What does that mean?” Lin Yue spoke up.

“It means exactly what it sounds like.”

Xu De slowly began to explain, describing a common psychological trick used to manipulate the masses.

“Most women have some anxiety about their appearance.”

“And clothing sizes serve as a constant reminder of their body type: whether they’re out of shape, gaining weight, or bloated.”

For example, an international size L might be for women weighing 120 to 130 pounds.

But when some women see that they need a size L, they subconsciously feel like they’re fat.

So, some retailers deliberately obscure their sizing. For example, they’ll take what should be a smaller size, like a Medium, and make it even larger and looser than a Large, so someone who weighs 145 pounds can fit into it.

Then, when a woman sees she can fit into a size M, she feels happy.

‘She thinks she isn’t fat after all, that she still has a slender figure.’

It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But that’s one of the core reasons for the chaos in women’s sizing!

If you were to standardize the sizes, you’d find that some potential customers would be turned off from buying anything when they see the high weight range listed for the size they need.

“Isn’t that just lying to yourself!?”

Lin Yue was stunned, finding it hard to believe.

“I’ve never even thought about that when I’m shopping for clothes!”

As she finished speaking, Xu De paused. He looked up at her face—so exquisite it was flawless, as if personally sculpted by the goddess Nuwa herself—and then at her slender, willowy figure. The corner of his eye twitched, and he chose to ignore the last part of her statement.

He nodded.

“It is. It’s pure self-deception.”

“But in reality, this mentality is a form of refusing to acknowledge or accept the truth.”

“For some people, objective reality isn’t what’s ‘real.’ Something only becomes real once they admit it’s true!”

It’s not just women’s clothing sizes that are chaotic.

It actually happens with men’s clothing too, but I used this example because the sizing issue is more obvious.

This is common in other areas too, like medicine.

If you’re a doctor.

Then you’ve definitely encountered patients who are evasive and vague when describing their symptoms, unwilling to say what they’re really experiencing.

For example, say a patient has lung cancer. You ask if they’re experiencing certain common symptoms, and they’ll say no. In reality, not only do they have the symptoms, but they’re very pronounced. The patient just covers it up.

Putting aside the financial cost of treatment…

The self-deception aspect is huge!

They think that as long as they describe symptoms that don’t sound like lung cancer, causing the doctor to make a misdiagnosis, then they don’t actually have lung cancer.

But what’s the reality?

In reality, how they describe their symptoms or whether the doctor misdiagnoses them has no direct bearing on whether they actually have the disease.

“The objective fact of ‘being sick’ exists regardless.”

“So for professions like lawyers and doctors, besides your Legal Ability and other professional skills, you also need a certain degree of ‘investigative’ skill.”

Xu De slowly explained the reason he wasn’t worried.

“And that’s the ability to figure out if your own client is lying!”

“And Sun Li clearly doesn’t have that ability.”

This ability to face reality head-on, which seems so basic, is actually quite rare among the general population.

Admitting a mistake is far harder than correcting one!

Lin Yue had a sudden realization.

“So you’re saying… Yang Chunping won’t admit it!?”

“Because she wants the kid and the money, and she knows, subconsciously, that if she confesses what she did, she might not get custody or the child support payments.”

“So, in this state of self-deception… she’ll hide the truth?”

“Because she thinks that as long as she doesn’t admit it, it’s like it never happened, and that by not admitting it, she can get what she wants!?”

And so, her logic becomes a closed loop.

“Yes, that’s about right,” Xu De nodded.

Lin Yue was left speechless, not knowing what to say.

‘So to be a lawyer, having Legal Ability isn’t enough.’

‘You also have to figure out if your client is lying!’

‘Even when a client comes to a lawyer specifically to solve their problem, they still choose to lie…’

“In that case…”

“The information gap in the case forms a perfect closed loop. Everyone is trapped by what they don’t know,” Xu De said.

He stood up and stretched, a series of pops and cracks echoing from his joints.

“It’s getting late. I need to grab a bite and then get some sleep.”

“I won’t keep you any longer, Master. You should get some rest too.”

With that, Xu De started to walk away.

‘He needed to grab something at the night market.’

Lin Yue snapped back to reality. Her expression changed as she watched him leave, and she hurriedly got up to follow.

“Wait for me, wait for me!”

“Don’t even think about sneaking off to eat by yourself!!!”

「Inside the stone pavilion.」

The once-lively atmosphere gradually grew quiet. Only Master Guanxin remained, warming himself by the brazier as he watched the two of them depart.

After a long moment, a faint smile appeared on Master Guanxin’s wrinkled, placid face. He picked up his teacup and gulped it down in one go.

“GULP…”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as the exquisite, top-quality tea went straight down.

Master Guanxin remarked with a sigh,

“Ah, that quenches the thirst.”

“Hmph. I, for one, think you can quench your thirst while also savoring the tea’s aroma.”

Just then, Lin Guodong walked into the stone pavilion, muttering.

He had come looking for Master Guanxin, but as he approached the pavilion, he’d unintentionally overheard Xu De’s entire explanation.

“Heh, it’s all the same.”

Master Guanxin said with a smile, pouring another cup of tea and pushing it across to him.

“But sometimes, insisting on savoring the tea…”

“…might be a different kind of cruelty to someone who’s dying of thirst.”

Lin Guodong fell silent, offering no rebuttal.

He was an idealist, while Xu De was clearly a pragmatist. Their philosophies were bound to clash, rife with contradiction.