After showing Liu Xueli, Lin Songmei expected her to have a more... visceral reaction. Sure, she was surprised, but it didn’t last long. Moments after turning the camera, Xueli’s joking expression disappeared as she scrutinized the landscape in front of her.

“Yeah, don’t go near it.” Xueli began, tapping her chin as a light of recognition flickered behind her eyes. “I’ve seen this before. It’s an offshoot species of the drug-plant. It’s found on the central continent just like the drug-plant. Well, I should call it by its commonly used name, Red-Edged Swamp Leaf, but that’s... a mouthful. Anyway, yeah, stay away, this one’s strategy is luring the animals that have eaten the smaller plant, then wrapping around those animals and draining their Qi before eventually blooming. For you all, it doesn’t pose a threat, but be careful of the beasts it lures.”

Opening her mouth to continue, Xueli paused, deciding against sharing more. “Well, this pushes the deployment of the extermination team, so I’ll be there soon. No need to worry. Just a lot of... ew bureaucracy in the way. I could wipe them out all by myself but nooo... they want to assemble a strikeforce from a number of different sects.”

A laugh escaping under her breath after hearing Xueli ridicule the circular bureaucratic processes once more, Yan Mingqing shrugged, pointing to the small trash can in the corner of the screen behind Xueli. “Master, you’re still not at full strength, so it's not good to push yourself. Maybe it's a good thing to have some more support.”

“Eh,” Xueli waved her hand before snapping her fingers and making the trash can disappear. “You two haven’t seen your master in action yet! Even if I was on the brink of death I could still take care of this! They’ll just be useful for cleaning up the smaller plants dotted around the plateau.”

Watching Xueli fall silent, then nod a few times with a confident smile, Songmei was... unsure what to say. She wanted to believe in Xueli... but what if this was just like Xueli bragging about her card game skills... Songmei had already learnt the hard way that Xueli’s card skills were worse than Yan Mingqing’s ability to appear warm and friendly to those she hadn’t met before.

With Mingqing continuing the conversation though, Songmei once more, thanked Mingqing’s endless extrovert energy, listening along as the topic shifted to just catching up.

----------

The “visual communication call” ended after 10 minutes or so, with Xueli apologizing as she had a meeting to attend. Songmei and Mingqing, now technically with nothing to do, lowered the terminal, a little listless while just sitting there on the rock.

Leaning her head against Songmei’s, Mingqing offered a hand. “What now?”

“I’m... not sure.” Songmei murmured, looking over towards Han Youhong who was still engaged in a serious conversation with his master. “We’re supposed to just stick in the area. So we can’t go anywhere. But there’s also nothing to do here...”

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“Yeah...” Mingqing agreed, letting out a long sigh as the fatigue of the last few weeks began to catch up to her. “I honestly miss that little apartment... That soft bed.”

Songmei missed that apartment too! It was so cute and cozy... Also, Plum was still there, sitting on the bed all alone...

Sitting on the rock together though, Songmei just took a moment to take in the scene in front of her. There wasn’t much else to do anyway.

With wind blowing her and Mingqing’s hair, forming a bit of a whitish, silverish, blue hair cloud behind them, Songmei was perched on top of one of the many large rocks that dotted this slope. Before them stretched out a massive crater ringed by a web of ravines. This crater, though, was filled with... life.

A large bulb in the center of the crater, propped up by tendrils, thick trunk-like, vine-like growths, beat like a large heart as the roots spread out from below it, forming a web-like net that blanketed the crater itself. Being a mass of green, gray, and brown all flecked and decorated with red, this offshoot species of the Red-Edged Swamp Leaf plant was... honestly pretty nice to look at.

If only it didn’t make her eyes hurt.

The discomfort having stopped growing, now instead just settled at a solid constant OW level. Solid. Really Solid, yep.

Just what Songmei wanted.

Of course, the plant being nice to look at was also hurt by the fact that it probably was pretty dangerous and like... shouldn’t be kept alive. But hey, that was for the Northern Continent, the Central Continent was weird, everything was crazy there. There were demons, other worlds, constant battles... and... apparently poop-reproducing drug plants.

The bulb itself, although Songmei thought of it as a bulb... wasn’t reallyyyy a bulb in the end. It was more of a bud shape, and probably served more of a bud function too. Made up of green leaves, and who would’ve guessed, that were red along the veins and edge of the leaf, the inside of the bud was a glowing... something. A bright ocher color, the inside bulb glowed through the leaves, growing in brightness, size, and every other metric as time went on.

Other than the weird plant that had taken over the crater, the sky was blue, dotted with fluffy white clouds as wind blew past them.

It was a nice scene to just sit there and take in...

Especially while leaning against Mingqing.

Maybe it was weird, but Songmei hoped that she and Mingqing could be friends forever. She hoped that they could be best friends forever... She didn’t really know, she had been thinking about stuff, but that was HARD while on the road.

Mingqing was just cool... Songmei wanted to be around her all the time... and also hug her all the time... and also yeah... Songmei felt warm and safe around her...

Maybe there was a little more to these feelings than she thought.

Pushing that thought aside though, Songmei shook her head a few times, clearing her mind. ‘Of course, no idea if Mingqing even feels the same way so... yeah.’

Songmei knew that Mingqing, though good at appearing tough, had her own troubles, so Songmei didn’t want to bother her too much with these vague feelings of ‘I want to be friends yes, woahhh, revolutionary I hope we can be the best of friends...’

A long sigh escaping her lips, Songmei squeezed the hand she was holding, getting a “Yes, Songmei?” from Mingqing.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I just... felt like giving your hand a squeeze.”