Mian xiang draws a three way distinction in how it reads material fortune that a reader unfamiliar with the system might expect to be collapsed into one general reading of wealth. The Wealth Palace, cai bo gong, covers money in hand, liquid accumulation a person can actually spend, read from the tip of the nose and its two wings, the nostrils. The Career Palace, by contrast, covers rank, promotion and public standing rather than money, read from the forehead's center. And the Property Palace covers fixed holdings, land and housing, read from the upper eyelid. A person could in principle be read as strong in one of the three and weak in the other two, since the system treats these as genuinely separate fortunes rather than three windows onto one underlying prosperity.
The specific reading at the Wealth Palace, a full, fleshy nose tip with wings curving inward so the nostrils are not too visible from the front, is read as good judgment about money and steady accumulation of it, while a thin or bony nose tip is read as a caution about money slipping away. The nose tip's shared location with the Examiner Officer, one of the five officers read across the whole nose, means a Wealth Palace reading never stands entirely alone but sits inside a second, broader reading of the same feature.