A groan of dismay escaped from between Yu Xiang’s lips, his current position atop a long padded lounge chair letting him express his discontent with as much drama as it deserved, in his own unbiased opinion.

Meanwhile, sitting comfortably on a cushion at a low table standing right in front of the lying down young man was Lin Fen, enjoying a steaming pot of tea during one of his rare breaks from tinkering in his personal alchemy laboratory.

The green eyed cultivator let out another sigh of discontent, this one purposefully louder than the previous one, in what the feline alchemist knew was an obvious cry for attention.

But still, he kept drinking his tea in silence, deciding that finishing his beverage while it was still piping hot took precedence over his long time companion’s need to be soothed.

After a few more sips, Lin Fen finally put down his tea cup, checking the earthen pot to see how much tea was still left, before he dabbed at his delicate looking face with a handkerchief. Only after all of that did he finally turn his head towards Yu Xiang, who had stopped making noises once he’d realized the feline alchemist was just going to ignore him until he was done.

“Are you still upset about the money?” Lin Fen asked patiently, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

Yu Xiang looked at him with a pout on his lips, his eyes half lidded in a petulant stare. “Of course I am!” He answered promptly. “That bastard made me dump almost half of my savings on some armor! And that’s after I managed to lower the price by sucker punching him with having already gathered the materials needed!” He finished raising a clenched fist in the air, cursing at that silver tongued attendant in his mind.

Lin Fen calmly listened to his childhood friend venting his grievances, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the thing that had pissed Yu Xiang off wasn’t how much money he had ended up spending, but the fact that he’d been outdone while haggling.

Still, he pretended to believe the green eyed cultivator’s words. He was nice like that.

“Well, if you need to you can always dip into our combined emergency funds.” He said to the still seething disciple.

Some time after the two young cultivators had started living together, cementing their agreement to be a team going forward, an important issue cropped up that, had it been anybody else, might have led to an early death of their barely newborn relationship.

Being a burgeoning alchemist, Lin Fen spent most of his days indoors practicing his pill making and elixir brewing skills, which both meant that he didn’t have that much time to go out and complete missions for the sect and that he needed a steady influx of materials to get better in his chosen profession.

In summary, Yu Xiang took care of almost all of their combined monetary needs, something which in any other circumstance would’ve quickly led to friction between two young disciples.

After all, cultivators aren’t the most diplomatic of people at the best of times, let alone the ones in their teenage years. But fortunately for both of them, Yu Xiang’s mind was older and wiser, at least in this one instance, than that of his similarly aged compatriots.

The young reincarnator could already envision the kind of boons having a friendly alchemist on hand at all times would net him. Cultivation pills, elixirs, and medicines would be readily available to him at all times for no cost behind that of the ingredients needed to concoct them.

Of course, Lin Fen wasn't exactly content with this arrangement, he had his own pride after all. So in the end they'd ended up splitting their savings into three parts. One for each of them, which they'd contribute separately to, and one emergency fund which they'd both fill with part of their income from missions and sales at the auction house. This way at least Lin Fen could contribute more directly to both of their needs, something that in the end managed to put his mind at ease, and make him feel less like he'd be taking advantage of Yu Xiang.

"Or you could take some missions for the sect if you'd prefer. You spent most of the month cultivating without taking a single mission after all, so might as well get some contributions and rebuild your savings while you're at it." With that said Lin Fen returned his attention to the tea pot, refilling his cup with the still hot liquid inside before emptying the remaining tea into another tea cup, which he handed to his lounging companion.

Yu Xiang let out a pensive hum as he contemplated his friend's suggestions. He lifted himself up a bit, planting his elbow on the padded chair before he rested his head on his hand, stretching his other arm towards the proffered tea.

He ruminated over his options for a few minutes whilst enjoying the tea made by Lin Fen, after which he finally came to a decision. He placed down his empty cup upon the low table, stretched his half asleep limbs, then finally voiced his decision.

"Might as well, not like I have many other options, to begin with." Lin Fen simply nodded in acknowledgment, his loquaciousness thoroughly exhausted by their conversation.

So that's what Yu Xiang did the day after their little talk.

The young reincarnator went to the sect's mission hall, which by the way was nothing more than a small building with an entire wall covered in scrolls, which amused him briefly as some of the most well paying missions were simple and boring attendant jobs, and a couple of attendants doing nothing but authorizing jobs, and picked up something simple, to acclimate himself back into things after his month long pause from any form of contribution to the sect.

His first job was a simple delivery. Someone high up in the sect, probably an Elder or some core disciple, had ordered something from the Nine Pillars School, another one of the seven Great Sects, and needed someone to pick it up from where it had been left in a town a couple of days of travel from their mountain.

At least for a mortal. Yu Xiang, being a cultivator at the constitutional realm, took only a few hours to arrive at the agreed upon meeting place, where he had a brief conversation with another cultivator, garbed in what looked like a modified set of scholar robes, from the Nine Pillars, after which he went on his merry way back to his sect.

The only real setback he encountered on the road was another cultivator, without a sect's backing as far as he could extrapolate from his lack of uniform, with more greed than sense, which he took more than a bit of pleasure in teaching him, leaving the poor sod battered and bruised but still alive, something he patted himself on the back for.

After that little trip, he was left with a fairly big chunk of contribution to his name and a third of the money he'd spent on his armor recouped, for little more than a morning of work.

Of course, he didn't stop there. Yu Xiang ended up taking a few more jobs in the next few days. Sometimes he was alone like at the start, sometimes with other disciples which had taken on the same mission, and occasionally he even ended up dragging Zheng Yin and Feng Liu with him, which gave him a chance to get to know them better.

And as the days kept moving along and Yu Xiang reached the halfway point of his second month as an inner disciple something he'd been waiting for expectantly for a while finally happened.

It was a day like any other. Yu had just returned from a patrolling mission around one of the peaks under the sects' jurisdiction, something about a couple of spiritual beasts trying to leave the perimeter and cause havoc, when he noticed a sealed scroll laying undisturbed upon their living room table.

He'd asked Lin Fen if he'd left it there, but the feline alchemist denied it, going as far as to say he hadn't even seen the scroll before, which left Yu Xiang understandably perplexed and just a bit curious.

So he simply decided to open it to see what it was all about. He broke the seal that kept the scroll from rolling open, which he just noticed sported the mark of their sect, before he finally took a peek inside.

Yu's green orbs landed on a name, sending a bolt of lightning right through his spine.

Guan Hui Chen.

A mix of nostalgia, excitement, and trepidation filled the young cultivator's being as he read further.

He'd been summoned by his old... friend? Teacher, maybe? Yu Xiang wasn't exactly sure what their relationship had been, but still, he couldn't help but look forward to seeing the Golden Prince once again.