Mei stared at the seat Xuefang sat previously, confused by his panicked departure, then turning to the cat.

It laid on the ground beside a table as disciples tried to pet and feed it. It chewed lazily on a piece of fish one of the disciples gave it.

Was it somehow because of the cat?

The disciples at the tables talked about Xuefang's strange disappearance too, but Mei didn't pay them much heed.

Was the cat actually really dangerous? She thought about it for a bit but decided that couldn't be the case. Otherwise, it would have probably been tossed out by the sect master.

Then, something absurd came to mind. What if he just had a phobia of cats?

Her thoughts were interrupted by strange snickers from Ding Fang.

"What's so funny?" one of the disciples asked him.

"Nothing."

"Come on!" the disciple said. "Okay, how about you just tell me alone? In a whisper?"

The middle-aged cook hesitated for a while, then grinned deviously before leaning in to whisper. Seeing this, Mei leaned slightly closer and listened as hard as she could, curious. The table was actually fairly close to the counter, so there was a chance she could catch a few words.

"...scar... on face... cat... there... scratched..." she managed to catch.

Mei's face went blank. Did she really hear that right?

What a stupid way to get a scar. It now seemed a lot less cool to her.

After finishing her food, she quickly took her leave. The last thing she needed right now was to get 'battle scars' of her own.

She strolled around the tree, taking in the cool breeze. Without the sun's glare, the air was always cooling under the tree.

Looking up at the endless expanses of branches above, she had a sudden desire to climb it. How amazing would it be to look down from such a tall tree? Maybe there were even rare herbs hiding up there, waiting to be harvested.

But not right now. Despite her experience with climbing trees, mostly to harvest fruit or bird eggs, the size of the tree made it more like scaling a massive wall. She wasn't much of a rock climber.

Plus she would fall to her death if she made a slip-up.

She really didn't want to think about cultivation right now, but a thought came to mind. Once she reached the Foundational stage, she could float or fly, couldn't she? She decided that when she reached it, she would come back and try to climb it!

The next day, 6:04 (Evening)

After some training from the axe elder, she headed to the Spirit elder's residence. It was not for cultivation, however. Earlier today, according to Yingyi, even Wang Wei was struggling to breakthrough.

Mei was very pleased to hear that, taking it as a cue to relax. She did realise that meant she would need to go through tons of 'hell' to break through too, but she pushed the thought aside and decided she had time to relax for now.

She had come here to bond with a spirit.

While it was technically not lazing around, Mei was still quite excited.

From a quick read earlier, she found that the jade slip's instructions were surprisingly simple. It could be summed up in a single sentence. Communicate with a spirit, then convince it to follow a contract!

Mei looked out towards the spirits and tried to look for one that looked particularly strong. The jade slip said it was a better idea to try to make a contract with weak spirits when starting out, but she wanted to at least try.

As a rather big spirit flew by, she focused the same sense Li Xuan helped her with. From the jade slip, she learnt it was not spirit sense, but soulsense.

"Hello! Are you interested in forming a contract?"

The spirit paused, floating over to her. It flew around her a few times, as if scrutinising her.

"A contract?"

Unlike with Tian Lan, she didn't actually hear any words. Instead, the spirit was just conveying its intentions to her directly. It was a very odd feeling.

"You seem rather weak to me, still a Qi Gathering cultivator. What can you even offer?" it quizzed.

Mei froze. Somehow, it didn't occur to her that the spirits would have demands too. She realised she had been thinking of them more like pets, instead of intelligent beings.

"Well... uh..." she stammered. "I'm not sure, actually."

The spirit conveyed a strong wave of anger to her, making her wince. 

"Are you serious? You're telling me to give up my freedom and listen to your demands, all for nothing? You are nuts!"

It severed the connection with her and flew off.

Mei sighed. Why did she even think this would be easy?

After thinking for a bit, she couldn't come up with any good ideas of what she could offer. The best she could think of was to say she would share some cultivation resources with the spirits.

Did she really have to work hard and buy resources for the spirits, who might just decide to leave one day? Mei didn't like that idea.

But with how this seemed like the most combat-ty dao available to her, she didn't want to give up. If only spirits were easy to recruit...

Mei headed off, slightly discouraged, wandering around for a bit. She hadn't noticed in the past, but now that she had some practice with soulsense, she realised there were quite a lot of spirits flying around the sect. 

The spirits didn't just glow by default. If they were trying to keep a low profile, they would be rather hard to see. She wasn't directly using soulsense, but after some experience with it, her eyes had gotten better at spotting them.

Some of them seemed rather powerful, but perhaps unsurprisingly, most of them were far weaker than the average spirit flying around the elder's residence.

"Hey!" she said to one of them, stopping it.

"What is it?" it conveyed annoyance.

"Why are there so many spirits flying around?"

After a bit of nagging, it explained to her that spirits were in charge of most of the labour and other miscellaneous stuff in the sect, surprising Mei a little.

There must be a lot needed to maintain a sect then. Since there were still many tasks for disciples to do.

Mei tried to hire some of the weakest ones she saw afterwards but didn't have much luck. She figured out that asking the spirits what they wanted was easier than trying to come up with benefits on her own, but she still found the spirits too demanding...

An idea came to mind, making her eyes light up.