"Seriously? How?"

Liu Qiang looked rather awkward as he unleashed his aura, the soldiers poking and gawking at him.

"Already a Foundational cultivator? That's just freakish!"

Shan Qiang was fairly stunned as well, but he turned to the side to cough and quickly regained his composure.

He was almost tempted to start bragging, but restrained himself, feeling like he would seem more dignified that way.

Meanwhile, outside, Mei and the rest of the group were speechless.

"Sir? I was under the impression there was something urgent?" Xiuying asked.

Shan Qiang looked slightly embarrassed, quickly gesturing for them to not say anything.

"I guess that means we can enjoy ourselves here..." Xiuying said in an unsure manner.

Meanwhile, inside the inn, the soldiers continued to banter. Unlike what Shan Qiang expected, after a brief moment of congratulations, his men began teasing him about hiding a talented son dishonestly instead.

It wasn't that easy to stop people determined to tease after all.

When night came, Shan Qiang offered to let the group stay upstairs in the inn. His home was fairly ordinary in size after all, so unless they wanted to sleep on tables and couches, there weren't many options.

Mei and Xiuying were the only two girls in the group, so they were put into the same room. Su Qing was there as well, but he dumped his puppet into the corner of the room and flew out to have fun. Hopefully, he wouldn't get lost.

Briefly, Yingyi asked the innkeeper why they needed to share rooms if the whole place was rented. The middle-aged man explained that some customers had already booked several days in advance, so most of the rooms were still occupied.

Mei wondered if they regretted booking at this time. She could still vaguely hear the murmurs of the soldiers below and the occasional crashing sounds. Oh well, nothing she couldn't deal with.

She kicked the mattress off the bed in a swift motion (much to Xiuying's shock) and laid down on the wooden bed frame, preparing to go to sleep.

For the next few minutes, she laid there motionless, until she saw her roommate walk off to the balcony, closing off the curtains. A little flicker of light came from the other side.

Hmm? What was Xiuying doing? Mei peeked over with soulsense and saw that her hands were making writing motions. A diary?

By morning, most of the soldiers had left. As Mei and the others headed down for breakfast, she saw that it was now filled with regular patrons, eating peacefully. Much better.

After a brief but tasty breakfast, they were led out of the tavern by Shan Qiang, who seemed to be in a very good mood.

"Have any of you been here before? We get quite a lot of tourists, usually around the harvest months," he said. "The fields really aren't that spectacular until the wispflowers bloom."

"Ah, I've been here before," Xiuying said. "It's a very beautiful town!"

"Haha, I've glad to hear at least one of you know of our humble town! You're all Liu Qiang's friends, right? As thanks for treating my son well, I've been thinking of taking you all down to see the depths of the canyons for yourself!" he said. "It's not something we usually let visitors see."

"Er, we didn't really do mu-" Xiuying began.

"Seriously? When I was younger, you refused to let me in no matter how much I pestered!" Liu Qiang interrupted.

"You were still a mortal child back then. It was unsafe! But since you and your friends are now Foundational cultivators, I don't see why not."

Unsafe?

Mei thought back about how bad her performance was during the fight against that bandit. She figured a skilled mortal martial artist might even beat her in a fight.

...was it really okay for her to head down there...

Of course, with how interested she was, there was no way she would voice that. Besides, she was surrounded by her friends anyway and had guardian spirits accompanying them. There was also Shan Qiang, whom based on his aura, Mei guessed was Core Shaping, which was also reassuring.

"Here, take these."

Shan Qiang handed stone tokens embedded with Sigils to each of them.

Mei stared at hers curiously. Finally, a token that wasn't made of jade. She never thought she'd see the day.

"These tokens will help us find each other down there. Don't put the token in your storage artefacts, and make sure not to lose it!" Shan Qiang warned. "There's also earth and metal spirits fused into each of them, so you'll be able to sense nearby ores."

"Ores?" Wang Wei asked.

"The canyons stretch very deep, far down enough to reach ore veins. If you find anything good, inform me and I'll help you harvest it!" Shan Qiang said. "Ahem, well, as per the rules of the Sundered Earth sect, visitors will only be able to keep 20% of the ores they mine though. This is their property, after all."

...ok that portioning was just unfair.

Shan Qiang next handed each of them a pickaxe.

From a rod of white metal wrapped neatly with grey cloth, two purple crystalline sides protruded, one a sharp point, the other a miniature axe blade.

"You use the pointy end to break rocks and the axe to cut through any roots." Shan Qiang explained. "Even all the way down, without sunlight, plenty of spirit plants thrive on qi."

The disciples nodded.

"Actually, want me to tell a funny story?" Shan Qiang asked.

But before any of them could reply, he continued.

"So actually, these are made of Roseblood Crystals. They have a very pretty pink, you might have seen some used in jewellery. About a century ago, the sect found an absolutely massive deposit of it. Since they had a lot of surplus, the sect started using it to produce all kinds of tools."

"Mind you, not any of the top-grade ones though. Roseblood just isn't very good at conducting qi. So anyway, a lot of the men in the sect were very unhappy and started complaining! Some of them even went out of their way to buy inferior but normal-looking tools instead! Just because they didn't like the colour of the free tools!"

"Eventually, the sect held a huge vote on what to paint standard-issue Roseblood tools. And purple won out."

"It's a huge joke, isn't it? Already cultivators, and still getting so worked up over just a simple colour. This generation, their dao hearts are so weak..."

Mei: ...

"Liu Qiang, your dad isn't going to ramble about random things the whole time, is he?" she whispered.

"...haha... probably not."