"You think maybe I could just swallow the teleportation token or something?" Mei asked. "It's not like cultivators need to go to the toilet."

Xiao Mei was speechless.

Wandering around in a dark, lifeless cavern made Mei feel rather uneasy. Mei had been rambling to Xiao Mei for the past hour to try to hide her fear.

By that point, she had no idea if she was still under the city anymore.

"Da Mei, there's something in the distance."

"Really?"

When she used soulsense previously, she couldn't find a single soul. Usually, souls would paint a whole landscape with their glowing colours. But here, all her soulsense saw was a dark void... it was rather eerie.

As Xiao Mei said however, this time far in the distance, there was a glowing pillar of souls, reaching high above.

"What is that?" Mei gasped.

She walked through the caverns, trying to find a path that reached it.

"Are you sure that's safe?" Xiao Mei asked.

"That stupid turtle seems to be able to see everything, so I don't think he'll let me die! I'm a hostage!"

What type of stupid logic was that? Xiao Mei complained to herself.

As they got closer and closer, a strange force seemed to be sucking up all the surrounding qi. Was that why the qi here was non-existent?

The ground here was paved and covered in strange dusty tools, mostly broken. Mei spotted a crystal pickaxe that was still mostly intact, so she picked it up. One of its tips was broken off, so it resembled a hoe or a scythe more...

"Xiao Mei, do you think this is an ancient ruin or something? Did we stumble across something big?" she asked excitedly, but didn't get an answer.

She stumbled closer and closer, until she saw the pillar for herself.

It was made of thick glass and metal, with vents built in. Inside, hundreds of strange slug-like creatures clung onto the walls, layers of spiky stone of their backs.

Mei could see their gross undersides sticking to the glass.

She could sense a strong surge of qi rushing upwards. No wonder the qi here was so barren... this giant tube was stealing all of it.

"Wait, I think I know what this is!" Xiao Mei said.

"Some kind of ancient device?" Mei asked excitedly.

"No, this is just a Qi Tower. Didn't you see a few tall towers here and there in the sect?"

"No..."

Xiao Mei sighed.

"Okay, so basically, they use a massive drill to dig really deep. And eventually, they hit a Worldvein, and boom, all the qi gushes to the surface."

"So you're saying it's useless to us?" Mei frowned.

"Probably."

"Hmph!'

Mei wiped the dust off the pickaxe before smacking the glass with it.

clink!

"Ahhhhh!"

The next moment a shock coursed through her hands, making Mei yelp in pain.

"Oh, I forgot to mention they have defensive measures to stop spirit beasts from attacking!" Xiao Mei smirked.

Grrr... Mei did her best to glare at her dantian but hurt her neck a little.

"Then what if its a lightning cultivator or spirit beast attacking? Is that why those slugs are fine?" she pointed at the glass.

"No, it's not actually lightning, just pure qi... are you treating me like an encyclopedia?"

"What? You're the one who started talking about Qi Towers before I asked!"

Xiao Mei went back to ignoring her again. Mei grit her teeth. Did people find her as insufferable when they talked to her? Well, she sort of understood how Xiao Mei felt, though. She wouldn't want to be the real life equivalent of the convenient exposition character either.

Mei walked around the tower a little more, hoping to spot something valuable. The caverns here lacked any spirit plants because the tower was stealing all the qi, and she didn't spot any ores either... probably already mined away.

As she looked around, she spotted a weird boulder that looked out of place somehow. Mei squinted at it a little before smashing slamming the pickaxe into it. It split in half immediately, several white orbs rolling out! So fragile?

Mei picked up one of them curiously and immediately realised it was a little squishy.

Were those eggs of some kind? Probably slug eggs. Mei activated soulsense and realised she could indeed see small wisps of souls within half of them. Probably slug eggs.

Maybe these were secretly really valuable? She could probably give them to Wang Wei or try to hatch them...

Mei began to use soulsense to gather all the nearby egg boulders, placing them in a pile. She wished Su Qing was here to store them... Come to think of it, could they even store eggs since they were "alive"?

After spending several minutes gathering egg boulders, Mei felt really bored. Briefly, she considered cultivating, but with how all the qi was sucked away, she couldn't even do that. How cruel...

With nothing to do, she could only lie on the uncomfortable ground, staring at the ceiling. When was she going to get rescued?

...

Suddenly, she heard a large bang ring from inside the tower!

What was that?

Mei got up and saw that hundreds of small flying golems had descended, all of them holding oversized maces. They were headless and lacked legs, but their torsos were all embedded with a single red gem.

The golems were slamming their weapons into the rock armour of the slugs relentlessly! As the armour crumbled away, the slugs beneath were crushed to death before being stashed into spatial artefacts by the golems.

Even in weird underground chutes, people had to deal with pests, huh?

As slug after slug died, finally, they seemed to wake up. Hundreds of them began to squirm away in a mass panic, discarding their rocky armour and trying to squeeze into the vents.

Whoa whoa whoa!

Mei quickly got up and backed away as a few of them popped out of the vent beside her. Were these things dangerous?

Shortly, the last of the slugs escaped. The golems banged on the glass, seemingly angry.

They didn't even add openings big enough for the golems to leave? What kind of bad design was that?