Wang Taigang was a cool person, from the short amount of time he’d been around, Lin Songmei had managed to gather that without much effort. He navigated social situations like a fish in water, bringing up connections, making funny jokes, among other things. Overall, he could just do... social things, much better than Songmei ever could.

Like, even now, he had managed to rally all the people he had brought up the slope with him to do an impromptu workout session. Upper body, lower body, conditioning, the whole package!

Because of that, Songmei was now sitting on her little rock, watching these 8 shirtless dudes all run up and down the hill drenched in sweat.

If she liked boys, this probably would’ve been a great sight, who knows though, that was for a parallel universe Songmei.

Other than the sight of shirtless disciples running up and down the slope, a sight that honestly wasn’t the most appealing, there was still the ever present bulb plant thing in the crater.

It was just... hanging out. Doing its little pulsating thing and giving off Qi waves that seemed to be growing in strength as time went by.

Of course, this wasn’t... good, by any means. From what Songmei had heard from Youhong and Xueli, this meant the plant was maturing and getting closer to blossoming, which anyone with a brain could probably realize wasn’t good.

As a bonus, it also was making Songmei’s eyes hurt more... which wasn’t good.

“How are you doing?” Mingqing’s voice interrupted, pulling Songmei out of her thoughts. “Sorry I’ve kinda clamped up... It’s hard to talk with so many unfamiliar people.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” Songmei reassured with a smile, patting the area of rock next to her to let Mingqing sit. “I’m doing pretty well, in all honesty, a little bored too. But it kinda feels like the calm before a storm. How are you doing?”

“I’m... okay.” Mingqing nodded, staring off into the distance, her eyebrows creasing as her eyes fell onto the area where the plant was. “Tired.”

Pulling Mingqing into a hug, Songmei gave her a few pats, melting the icy glare Mingqing had by a touch before Youhong walked over. “Hey, hey, Youhong! How are you?”

“Fine...” Youhong sighed, a similar air of depression and lethargy around him. “Too many people, and too many dudes who don’t know what upper body wear is.”

Pulling out a lychee jelly to assuage his stresses like an alcoholic would with their whisky, Youhong shrugged. “It’s true, I've probably spent more time wearing a shirt today than all of them combined.”

Squish.

Giving a short prayer to the lychee jelly that was disappearing into Youhong’s mouth, Songmei couldn’t help but agree. She never quite understood why people would just take off their shirt while exercising...

Silence. A comfortable silence.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Watching a few of the faster runners finish their slope workout and begin to do some bodyweight training, Songmei broke the silence while looking back towards the crater. “So... about the plant. It’s definitely maturing, right? Did your master Xiao Feng say anything about it, Youhong?”

“Yeah,” Youhong mused, pulling out another lychee jelly and murdering it with a practiced effeciency. “He pretty much raised his eyebrows and was like, ‘you definitely don’t want to be around in the area then.’ Though, for more detail uhh... I can send you a research article if you want that discusses the blossom effects of this plant.”

“Sure, send it over.” Songmei nodded, she didn’t mind doing some reading, especially reading that wasn’t the stuff she should be doing for the hall of learning.

Bzzt. A notification signaling that Youhong had sent something over, Songmei clicked it open, blinking a few times at the dense text that now covered her terminal’s screen.

... Damn that was dense. It was like a word soup, like the instant soup that she ate so often...

Expanding the screen it is.

Furrowing her eyebrows and leaning against Mingqing while immersing herself in the article.

[... When blossoming, the first sign is a massive spike in Qi energy levels... below is a graph of our data collected using our Qi measuring machines. The graph is a function of Qi over time.]

Scrolling down, Songmei did in fact see a graph... and it did in fact show a function of Qi over time... Amazing! This graph kinda showed a general slow increase in Qi emitted, sort of rising and falling mirroring the wave-like pulses the plant was giving off. However, in the section that had the time of blossoming, there was a HUGE, ABSOLUTELY GARGANTUAN, spike in Qi.

[As can be seen in the graph, there was a massive spike in Qi before the levels plummeted back to what they were before. During this period, from our observations, the large bud in the center of the plant web opened up into a large flower. This flower, bearing a striking resemblance to the red-edged swamp leaf, released a number of seeds into the sky while also spreading a chemical stimulus that caused all beasts in the surrounding to experience a total loss of reasoning.]

Huh.

That’s not good.

That really wasn’t good.

Maybe... maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be hanging out in this area. To set up camp and hang out within... within, honestly, a very loud shout’s distance of the plant...

Reading on, Songmei also saw that the plant, if not contained properly, would spread very quickly. So... that wasn't good either. Also, prolonged time spent in the area of blooming would also wear down the minds of human cultivators too, causing them to eventually also lose their sense of reasoning.

Big yikes.

Very big yikes.

Was it time to reconsider some life choices?

Songmei wasn’t sure... Xueli had mentioned that they should be fine, and the bureaucrats that were making this strike team had requested the disciples to just stay put to minimize the variables... so...

Why was everything so complicated?

Well the bureaucrats’ reasoning was sorta sound

There was also... less danger if they didn’t move? If they chose to move they’d have to reenter the ravines and now that they couldn’t retreat, there was more danger... blah blah, more ‘natural’ rockslides.

Other than that, there were also reports of increased numbers of roaming animals that had gone a little... cuckoo to say the least. It seemed that there were some areas of plants that had been totally missed, and now more and more animals were suffering the consequences.

Songmei had even read in the latest Daoist Times article that this could be considered one of the largest ecological disasters of the past decade...

Eugh...

Too complicated.

At least for now she could just snuggle up in Mingqing’s arms and forget about everything that was going on.