The day of departure had arrived...

After spending the night talking to the temporarily bed-ridden Liu Xueli, Lin Songmei and Yan Mingqing finished up their packing and went to bed, enjoying their beds one last time before they’d be moving again.

Having packed everything, put it into the space storage ring, and then slipped the ring onto her index finger, Songmei was now waiting on the transportation hub island, the first island she had arrived at a few months ago.

Compared to back then though, Songmei’s situation was different, she was no longer the impoverished orphan who had no idea what was going on, now she was just an orphan who had no idea what was going on!

Big difference.

Standing with Mingqing, Songmei waited for Elder Wu Sen and his two disciples to arrive, using her foot to push around some snow as she waited. “Sleep well, Mingqing?”

“No.” Mingqing groaned, leaning her head against Songmei’s shoulder. “I couldn’t fall asleep to save my own life... I have such a bad headache right now...”

Patting the groggy friend of hers, Songmei exhaled a small white cloud into the cold morning air, looking over Mingqing to see Elder Wu, Lu Qiang, and Cai Yufei. They were... right on time. Down to the half-minute.

Songmei closed her terminal, it was new, and... alien. Still not used to it and not having spent any time learning about it, Songmei had only transferred the data from her previous one into this one. She was planning on using either the ride over to Westriver or the first few days in Westriver to study the terminal.

There had to be some rich, fancy function that she didn't know about.

Shelving that thought for another time, Songmei gave a light wave to the arriving trio, supporting Mingqing as they got onto the shuttle that’d transport them to the outside of the mountains that ringed the floating islands and lake.

“Good morning Elder Wu,” Songmei greeted with a nod, “Thanks in advance for bringing Mingqing and I to Westriver.”

“It’s what I should do.” Elder Wu maintained with a stern look, “Elder Liu is injured after all.”

Songmei fell silent, looking towards Mingqing, Lu Qiang, and Cai Yufei for help, only to receive their sighs and shaking heads.

Elder Wu’s appearance, as always, fit his position as head of the Disciplinary Bureau, his gray hair was combed back and gelled to perfection, not a hair out of place, and his clothes had as many wrinkles as a baby’s bottom... which was none.

Moreover, his posture was perfect, Songmei had never seen someone with a back as straight as Elder Wu’s, if someone put a straight edge to his back, the straight edge would be the thing that needed to be corrected.

The party was silent on the shuttle, Songmei looked around while giving Mingqing a light scalp massage. Because this shuttle was a direct line from the floating islands to the transportation hub outside the mountains, there weren’t many disciples. On most of the other shuttles, there’d be a constant number of inner and even outer disciples, but on this shuttle there were just... business people and a handful of people like Songmei who were traveling out of the sect.

As the shuttle came to a stop though, descending onto the landing platform as its doors slid open without a sound, Songmei made sure Mingqing was still awake, helping her up as they left the shuttle.

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Following Elder Wu in silence, the party came to a stop in front of a small boat-like vehicle. A tad bit bigger than Xueli’s jet-like artifact, the boat had a small outside area along with a decent-sized cabin.

Made with metals, the boat was painted only in grayscale colors, with a few light blue highlights being the only real color on the boat.

Entering the boat, Elder Wu pointed to the main area furnished with couches and low tables. “You four can stay there, feel free to relax. I’ll be in the captain’s cabin focusing on steering.”

Elder Wu followed that statement up with a mechanical perfect 180 turn, leaving the four direct disciples to spread out over the couches.

“Your... Your master really is something.” Songmei murmured as she watched the shrinking back of Elder Wu, “I can see how Cai Yufei would do just fine with Elder Wu... but how are you surviving Lu Qiang?”

Shrugging as he laid down onto a couch, Lu Qiang fidgeted with a pen that he pulled out of his own space storage ring, “He’s not too strict with us so it's fine. And he isn’t a stickler for results, more for effort. And... although I’m not the best at things like academics, I put in effort.”

“Ahh... I see, that makes sense, I’m glad he likes you,” Songmei smiled in relief, turning to look at Cai Yufei, who...

Well.

He did take a seat on one of the couches, but as always, he sat straight up, back not against the backrest, hands on his knees, legs together.

Honestly, Songmei wouldn’t be surprised if Cai Yufei went into the Disciplinary Bureau one day... he could replace his master. The way Cai Yufei sat was... perfect, so perfect that it could be displayed in a store’s window.

Feeling the boat-like vehicle lift off the ground and soar into the sky, Songmei patted Mingqing who was laying in her lap, continuing the scalp massage from earlier. “I wonder why Elder Wu goes to the steering room though...”

“Why do you ask?” Cai Yufei pondered, drumming his fingers against his legs. “Elder Wu has always gone into a steering room whenever he takes Lu Qiang or me anywhere.”

That’s strange...

Having only taken Xueli’s personal jet–like, artifact vehicle, Songmei remembered that Xueli would always collapse onto one of the couches, spending the journey napping or chatting with her and Mingqing.

She never did any steering...

At most, Xueli did some fancy hand-motions...

Explaining how Xueli steered her artifact vehicle, Songmei’s description confused Lu Qiang and Cai Yufei even further, with Cai Yufei further detailing, “We actually went and looked around the first time Elder Wu brought us both out of the sect. We were curious about the steering mechanism and stuff, and seeing us peer through the window into his captain’s cabin, Elder Wu let us in and then explained it all step by step...”

Songmei’s eyebrows furrowed hearing Cai Yufei’s anecdote, did Xueli have some secret attendant that steered the plane for her? Or was her artifact different from Elder Wu’s?

Moving on from the topic though, the three direct disciples, everyone except for Mingqing who was nursing a headache, decided to talk about what they were planning on doing in the upcoming journey.

“We’ll have an apartment, Lu Qiang and I chose to share one, I’m assuming you two did as well?” Lu Qiang asked, having just compared the different items they all got in their spatial storage rings.

“Yeah, we’ll be sharing,” Songmei answered with a light nod, now just patting Mingqing as Mingqing hovered between being awake and asleep. “They also encouraged us to do a lot of quests of different types to gain a vast breadth of experiences... Apparently it’ll make cultivation progress faster, yeah?”

Still sitting in picture-perfect posture, Cai Yufei recalled, “You’re right about that, in order to increase your Shen at the fastest possible pace, you should go through adversity. Lu Qiang and I are planning on completing more collection, exploration, or other more mundane helping tasks while waiting for our cultivation base to improve and our fighting skills to become more stream-lined. After that we’ll focus mostly on hunting.”

“I see...” Songmei hummed, she had to admit, she didn't discuss any sort of plan with Mingqing, she had planned to do it in the morning but Mingqing was... not very functional.

With that though, they continued the conversation, talking for the couple of hours it took to reach Westriver, the isolated city on a plateau.