It felt weird to not have her bag on her... it was almost as if something was missing.

Mei returned to her room, dumping the slug eggs into the Qi Imbuing Vase for now. It seemed like they liked qi a lot anyway. Come to think of it, was qi all they needed? It didn't seem like there was any vegetation back at the qi tower.

Right now, it was still dark outside. She glanced at Xiao Mei suspiciously before lying in bed.

But what Xiao Mei wouldn't know was, she was only going to pretend to sleep!

...

...

Mei laid there for an hour, trying her best not to fall asleep... then fell asleep.

Xiao Mei sat up in Mei's body, speechless. Did Mei really think such a silly trick would work? Well, whatever! She picked up a book from the bedside drawer... she remembered back then, she couldn't read it with qi or soulsense.

But now, she had enough control to read with Mei's eyes without her waking up.

Mei got up with a start.

"Darn! I feel asleep!" she shouted.

Grrr... she glared at Xiao Mei.

"If you already knew I could possess you, why were you pretending to sleep anyway?"

"I wanted to see what you would do at night!" Mei harrumphed.

Xiao Mei frowned.

"All I did was read the whole night! Besides, Su Qing knew of this for a long time already! If I did anything crazy, he would have told you!"

"Eh? Su Qing?!" Mei said in dismay.

No way... she got "betrayed" by him too...

"You don't need to be so tense anyway! I didn't want to possess you in the first place, which is why I wanted to get a puppet working fast anyway!"

"I was the one who suggested getting you a puppet in the first place!"

Xiao Mei froze.

"...sorry." she said, finally.

Mei was taken aback by Xiao Mei's sudden guilt. She wasn't sure how to feel about it...

Mei returned to the pond in the Buddhist sect. She hadn't read the turtle any chapters in two days because of everything happening...

As she approached the pool of water, suddenly, it erupted with a huge splash, the turtle jumping out!

"How dare you!" it yelled in soulsense.

The surrounding monks turned to look at the commotion.

"Sorry, I got kidnapped so I couldn't-"

"Don't give me that bullshit! I know now you were lying to me all along!" it boomed.

Gah! Mei took a step aback. She knew she couldn't keep it up forever, but she didn't expect to be caught so soon...

"I thought you had been captured for sharing top secret knowledge with me, so I was really worried! Then I asked a monk and found out you were just reading me... what was it called... a novel?"

"Well... I didn't actually say it was real..." Mei mumbled.

"You didn't?" the turtle looked taken aback for a moment. "No! You still tricked me! Get out of here!"

With a strong push of qi, Mei was shoved away from the lake... she glanced back in dismay.

To think failing to read the turtle chapters consistently would result in this... Oh well, at least she had a way to earn jade now. And she didn't have to spend so long reading aloud.

Still, Mei was slightly dismayed as she walked off.

...

"Mei Mei!"

Su Qing? She turned around in surprise as the little spirit ran after her.

"Where have you been? You disappeared for two days suddenly!" he said. "Wang Wei said you followed him to a mountain, then teleported off on your own!"

"Um, I was..." Mei began to say.

Wait, she needed to confront Su Qing!

"Su Qing..." she said in a low voice.

"Yes...?" the little spirit suddenly got a bad feeling.

"I found out you've been hiding how Xiao Mei has been possessing me every night..."

"Eeeek!" Su Qing shrieked. "Nooo! Please don't do anything to her! She's still you! She didn't do anything wrong! She said you'd hire an exorcist to destroy her if you found out! Noooo!"

Mei was rendered speechless by his incoherent babbling.

"Oh, Su Qing, you forgot to tell Mei about that puppet Li Xuan gave us." Xiao Mei suddenly said.

"Eh? Oh..."

Su Qing seemed baffled, stopping his spew.

"So... you two aren't going to fight?" he asked timidly.

"No, we're practically sisters now!" Xiao Mei said cheerfully. "Right?"

"Huh?" Mei said in alarm. "Since when did we decide that?"

If anything, Xiao Mei was constantly ignoring her!

"Really? Phew, I was really scared there..." Su Qing said. "We can all be friends then? Yay!"

Mei: ...

She had a slight urge to punch them both.

"Su Qing, show her the puppet."

"Okay..."

Su Qing pulled the Lumbersoul puppet out, placing it before Mei. Hmm? Why did it look almost like the one she commissioned at Song Woodworks?

"Big sis, even if you didn't make the puppet for me, I was planning to move out on my own anyway! See? I even got Li Xuan to prepare this puppet for me!"

Big sis? Move out?! What was she, an inconvenient house?

"Eh? But this-" Su Qing started, but quickly stopped as Xiao Mei glared at him.

Somehow, Mei didn't fully trust her nascent soul on this... she seemed suspiciously shameless. But she decided not to pursue it.

"Anyway, where's Wang Wei, Xiuying and the others?" Mei changed the topic.

"Them? Oh, the monk took them to visit the sutra hall. I can take you there too!"

Mei nodded.

With a bounce in his step, Su Qing led the way. He seemed awfully happy today...

...

The sutra hall was a tall white temple. Characters for "purity" were inscribed all along its walls, along with "focus". Around its gates were several stone statues of monks, meditating or reading from books. It was a far cry from how plain the rest of the sect looked.

"Here!" Su Qing led her in, through several hallways and into a room.

Her friends were sitting crossed legged on a prayer mat, before an old monk with a radiant smile. In his hands, he held a thick book, which he was reading from.

"Mei Xiu?" Xiuying said. "You're finally back!"

Seeing her, the monk suddenly stopped smiling.

"Disciple... you have a lot of nerve, to skip lessons for so many days!"