With the plant blooming, the effects were all of the ones that Lin Songmei and the others had expected... and a little more. Of course, blah blah, the bud of the plant opens up, so pretty wohoo, you go girl, blossoming during these trying times...

They had bigger problems though. Much... bigger problems.

For one, there was a chaotic brawl happening in the crater, as if every spiritual beast in the area decided that they’d host the next ‘battle beasts’ episode in the middle of the crater. Songmei and the others didn’t even have time to look at this probably once in a lifetime situation. Crazy beasts the size of small houses being tossed around as if they were candy as a pile of corpses formed as every beast fought to establish dominance.

Other than that, there were a bunch of seed clumps falling from the sky, which, not only was a PR nightmare in the making for those brick-for-brains bureaucrats, but also meant that Songmei and the others now had to make sure they didn’t... didn’t eat any fist sized seeds floating down from the sky.

Lucky they were fist sized, if they were normal seed sized, Songmei and the others might’ve just been better off laying down and waiting for their deaths to just come to them.

Other than those two, Songmei had heard there were a lot of other things going on... emphasis on heard.

Songmei couldn’t open her eyes right now. Negligible problem in all honesty, just a skill issue on her part.

Rewinding a bit, Songmei had been doing fine, she had just been laying down nursing the growing discomfort behind her eyes when the Qi in the area spiked. And it spiked hard. Like a professional volleyball player’s hardest hit.

Curling up into a ball and clutching her eyes, Songmei had let out a scream that had caused Mingqing to come running as what felt like two blazing hot needles were pressed into her eyes.

“A-Are you, okay?” Mingqing had whispered to Songmei after the pain had begun to subside after a minute of tortuous burning that had caused Songmei to scream until her voice went hoarse.

With tears running down her face, Songmei had cracked her eyes open, glancing at the world with a newfound... utter bewilderment. The world... was no longer normal?

Songmei was in too much pain to understand, closing her eyes before reaching out to accept Mingqing’s hug. “Everything looks different. Everything looks wrong. You look like a bunch of streams. Your face is barely even visible anymore. The world looks too saturated to be real. What’s going on? Mingqing... help...”

Pulling Songmei close to her, Mingqing suppressed the surprise and worry in her own voice while comforting the now tear-stricken Songmei. “It’s going to be okay... I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on, but the plant just bloomed. So... I need to start packing up, okay? Just sit tight, I’ll be right here.”

“Okay... yeah... you... you do that... Sorry I can’t help...”

“Just sit tight, packing up is mostly a one person job, anyway,” Mingqing reassured with a soft pat, standing up and bolting out of the tent, collapsing it down while making sure she didn’t collapse Songmei into the tent as well.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Mingqing’s hands shook as she packed up the tent, storing it into the prepackaged bags before shoving it into her spatial storage ring. Her breathing shallow, Mingqing calmed herself down breath by breath.

It was just... a little... surprising.

Songmei’s usually gray irises were... not gray. They were a rich amethyst, cracked, but like gemstones.

It didn't take someone with a big brain to realize that wasn’t normal, in fact, the plant that just bloomed in the crater could probably also realize it. Furthermore, the fact that Songmei was seeing the world differently along with experiencing a lot of eye pain was... really honestly, just problematic.

Hoisting Songmei onto her back piggyback style, Mingqing soothed the crying girl with quiet murmurs as they made their way to the lift. “It’ll be okay Songmei...”

“Mhm... Sorry...” Songmei apologized, giving Mingqing a squeeze as tears began to dampen the area between the base of Mingqing’s neck and her shoulder. “Sorry to make you do so much...”

“Why are you sorry?” Mingqing sputtered, shaking her head while leaning her head against Songmei’s, “You’re fine. I know your stubborn brain likes to think that I’m always just giving to you and you’re not helping, but you do so much. You summarize and explain all the readings to me, you train with me, you even listen to me every night bitch about my parents and random other people I’ve met throughout my life.”

“But still...” Songmei began, before opening and closing her mouth a few times. “Fine... Let’s just concentrate on not dying for now...”

“Smart, I whole-heartedly agree with the ‘not dying’ plan.” Mingqing laughed, running across the crude training area that everyone had marked out towards the unmanned lift that the group had found earlier. “Everything will be okay, if you just tell yourself that enough times, you’ll manifest it.”

“That... doesn’t seem right, but I’ll believe you, everything will be okay. Everything will be okay!” Songmei proclaimed, her voice somehow both cracking as much as a puberty-riddled teen and a being as hoarse as a elderly citizen who had lived for the past 700 years.

Getting a laugh from Mingqing and a “That’s the spirit!” Songmei cracked her eyes open to see where they were before... immediately regretting her decision and suffering the consequences.

The world didn’t look normal. Some reason, Songmei could see little wisps in the air, little streams of... something. Beyond that, the color of everything was weird, too saturated, as if someone had gone through and moved the saturation bar so far that it had broken through the upper limit and come back around to the other side...

To reward her efforts of opening her eyes, Songmei received another bout of immense pain to her eyes, pushing another fresh stream of tears out of them.

Inhale... Exhale...

‘Don’t cry Songmei... you’re a big girl, don’t cry. At least if you’re going to cry, make it about something fancy, like love...’

Deep breaths. Everything was going to be okay, just like Mingqing said...

... Deep breaths. Mingqing was here. Everything was okay when Mingqing was around...

Already in a piggyback position, Songmei gave Mingqing another little squeeze before changing the topic to dispel the thoughts that were swirling in her head. “Where are the others? And also... erm... What’s the situation right now?”

“I’m gonna be honest, the situation is prettyyyy bad.” Mingiqng laughed, sliding into the lift where Youhong had been waiting. “Youhong’s here by the way, so that’s one of the others. The rest have already taken the lift down. So.... yeah. I’ll update you once we get to the ravine. I can tell you, just from above, there are a buttload of monsters surging through the ravine, so we’re going to have a great time getting out of here.”

“... fun... sounds like a blast...” Songmei murmured, getting a pair of “Totally!”’s from Youhong and Mingqing.

Deep breaths.

Inhale...

Exhale...

Mingqing was here. Everything was okay when Mingqing was around...