“Can’t we have breakfast first?” Wang Yonghao whined, using a dagger to pull nails out of a bookshelf.

“He who does not work does not eat,” Qian Shanyi noted wisely, choosing to conceal the fact that she ate as soon as she woke up.

“We aren’t even in a hurry,” he complained, gesturing with his dagger. “And we didn’t have dinner last night after that fight. Please?”

“You know, the more time you spend talking, the longer it will take us to get through this pile,” she noted, “and thus the longer it will take for me to make breakfast.”

He grumbled but went back to work. They were going through the large pile of things they took from the sect - a great variety of bookshelves, cupboards, tables, and so on, all in various stages of rot and disrepair - and taking it apart for the valuable iron nails inside.

Besides the furniture, there were barrels (rotting, but she could reuse the iron hoops), pots from the kitchens (rusted, and would need a lot of cleaning before she could use them to cook), ceramic and clay crockery (in strong need of washing), cutlery, and even a decent pickaxe.

Working together, it only took them an hour to go through their loot. Old wood was stacked in the middle of the world fragment, ready to be lifted out when they opened the entrance. She wrapped the collected nails in a robe, stretched, and got up off the grass.

“Alright,” she said, “I think I have a plan for how to deal with the Glowing Rosevines.”

“The what?” Wang Yonghao asked. Instead of answering, she took out her jade slate, and flipped over to a page in the cooking chapter she noted earlier. She turned the slate over to him, showing him a picture of the same man-eating flowers that attacked them last night.

“They are called Glowing Rosevines,” she said, “Apparently their vines make for good ropes, and the leaves can be turned into tea.”

Wang Yonghao nodded as he looked over the picture, then raised his eyes.

“Do we need a plan?”, he asked. “If they only come out at night, we can just move during the day, and spend the night here.”

She snorted. “Did you not hear what I said?” she asked, “Their vines can be turned into ropes. I am tired of sleeping on the ground, I want to make a hammock.”

Her makeshift nest out of spare robes had been serving her well, but she still woke up with a sore back every day. By the looks of it, so was Wang Yonghao.

“So what, we go out at night, kill a bunch of them, and then retreat?” he asked.

“No, it wouldn’t work,” she said, “they are cannibals - if we leave their corpses on the ground, they would be gone by morning.”

“We could grab them and run,” he said. She looked at him weirdly.

“And if one of us gets caught, or our spiritual energy runs out? Any cultivator, no matter their realm, can be overwhelmed,” she said, “ Or perhaps they will learn better than to be tricked by some falling trees? This would be risky.”

He laughed. “I think it’d be fine.”

Her frown deepened. “You really aren’t taking this as seriously as you should. We were in danger last night, it would be stupid to simply go in without a good plan.”

“Well, what can I say,“ he flashed her a grin, “I guess I am just naturally lucky. I don’t think I would die.”

She folded her arms, and stared at him with a blank expression. His grin faltered.

“You know, normally, lucky cultivators are harder to kill because their luck protects them,” she said, “but normally, luck stays within reasonable bounds and doesn’t force unwanted things on a cultivator. Yours does both. What makes you so sure your luck won’t straight up kill you? Especially if you keep refusing its blatant attempts to make you cultivate?”

His smile froze on his face. She grinned.

“Really, it’s me who doesn’t need a plan,” she said, “my luck is very ordinary. If I go out just before sunrise, I can probably safely grab the last couple of awake Rosevines left wandering around. If you go out, who knows what will happen.”

He stared off into the distance, and laughed hollowly as a drop of sweat slid down his forehead.

“That’s…a good point,” he said, turning back to her, “so…what is your plan?”

“We’ll build a shelter out of tree trunks,” she said, “with a narrow hole, not wide enough to let a Rosewine through. Then we’ll hide inside. They shouldn’t be strong enough to break through a wall of wood and packed earth, and without needing to expend spiritual energy on defense, we could kill them easily. As long as we wipe out the entire pack, there would be no problem with gathering up their corpses in the morning.”

“But first, we’ll build the same shelter here, in your inner world,” she continued, heading towards the large pile of oak tree wood stacked at the edge of the world fragment, “if we screw up and they manage to get inside our shelter, I want us to have a path of retreat.”

“Hey, no way!” He shouted after her, “Breakfast first! You promised!”

“I am not hungry yet,” she said, “we can eat after a couple hours.”

“How can you not be hungry?” he asked, “We haven’t eaten last night, and you’ve been working since morning!”

“Because I had breakfast before you woke up, sleepyhead,” she said, grinning. He scowled at her.

“I am not doing any more work before I eat something,” he said, crossing his arms.

“So make it yourself,” she said, frowning, “this was always an option.”

His mouth froze open in a silent objection. Finally, he closed it, and muttered something under his breath.

“What? Speak up,” she said.

“But I don’t know how to cook,” he sighed.

She stared at him, then started laughing. Wang Yonghao scowled at her.

“How can you not know how to cook?” she said, pushing her laughter down. “Just put meat on a heated pan, it’s not complicated.”

“Well I just… don’t know how much to heat it?” he said, blushing.

“Big strong cultivator, would starve if left alone,” she shook her head, “But fine, I can cook for you.”

The fool seemed to relax, smiling.

“Just as long as you pay for it,” she said casually, heading towards her cooking station.

“Pay?” he asked, far too slow to catch on, “What do you mean?”

“Surely you’ve been to a restaurant before? Food is not free,” she said, shaking her head in disappointment. “If you want me to work as an immortal chef, I deserve some remuneration.”

“But…You already can use everything in here,” he continued, confused.

“Hm,” she grinned, preparing to deliver her strike, ”Last night, you said you, ah, ‘wouldn’t let me ride you’ I believe?”

“You can’t be serious,” he scowled.

“Deadly,” she said, ”How about it? For the next two months, I’ll cook for you whenever you want, and you’ll let me fly around on your shoulders whenever I want. Do we have a deal?”

Wang Yonghao stared at her for a while without responding.

“Well?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. His scowl deepened, and he stormed off towards the trench where the meat was stored. She settled down on the grass near the pan to watch his attempt.

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She had only started to study the dao of cooking a short while back, but by watching Wang Yonghao work, she already felt like a virtuoso. To heat the pan, he brought over nine igneocopper bricks: far more than what he needed. Back when she was cooking the egg, she used six, and even that was too much: if she had not been actively mixing the egg, it would have burned. For the bear meat, she only used four bricks.

When Wang Yonghao dropped the meat on the pan, she smirked, and he glared in her direction.

“What?” he said, “You said meat on the pan, didn’t you?”

“You are doing great!” she flashed him a thumbs-up, “This here cultivator believes you can rebel against the heavens and cook this bear!” she continued, drawing out a second thumbs-up with her other hand like a poisoned dagger. Without a hand to support herself, she had to arch her neck to look up at him. “Even the kitchens of the netherworld demon kings could not compete with the fiery taste of your cooking!”

This fool dropped the frozen meat directly on the pan, without holding it next to the igneocopper bricks for a couple minutes to let it unthaw. Not that she was going to tell him this.

She kept encouraging him until he snapped at her to keep quiet. The look on his face when he flipped the meat and realized the other side of it had been charred black was priceless.

Stubborn to the end, he tried to eat it, but it was impossible: charcoal on the surface and still frozen on the inside, the meat was completely ruined. Giving up, he covered his face with one hand. She saw a single tear slide down his cheek.

“Fine, damn it,” he said, “You win. I’ll do it.”

“Excellent,“ she smiled, getting up and approaching him, “Now let me teach you what you did wrong.”

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It took some figuring out - as well as a complete redesign once she realized her earlier idea was far too ambitious - but four hours later they had built a shelter that was up to Qian Shanyi’s standards. It was a squat construction, halfway buried into the ground, made out of oak planks as thick as her thigh and reinforced with packed earth. Glowing Rosevines could burrow, but her manual did not say how deep: nonetheless, she made sure that their shelter was completely enclosed in wood on the inside. Honk of the Solar Goose technique turned out to be useful for more than just gardening - its sharp cutting strikes could easily make flat boards out of the oak wood they brought with them.

There was only a single cramped room, its ceiling low enough you could only stand on your knees, with a heavy trap door covering it from the top. On the inside, the trapdoor could be locked to the ceiling by sliding a thick plank into it. A single narrow slit served as the window, leading into a two meter-long tunnel before coming out on the outside. The flowers would need to either slide into this tunnel, or try to slip their tentacles inside - neither of which would be easy. On the other hand, they could easily strike them with a long spear. As far as defense was concerned, it was almost perfect.

She knocked on the wall of the shelter a couple times, and climbed out through the trapdoor, nodding towards Wang Yonghao.

“I think we are ready. Let’s go outside,” she said.

“If you don’t want to fly yourself, can’t you at least let me carry you normally?” he complained as she settled down with one foot on his back and one hand on his collar, “this way is far too embarrassing.”

“Do you dare to not give face to your elders?” She said, “It’s impossible for me to be carried any other way. It would go against many profound and sacred principles we don’t have the time to go into. Come on, up we go.”

He walked upwards, grumbling throughout, and opened the entrance when they reached the top of the world fragment. Qian Shanyi drew her sword as they went through.

Outside, it was night. As soon as she saw the darkness, she yanked Wang Yonghao by the collar.

“Back,” she said, “go back!”

In the distance, she saw the glint of red reflecting from the trees, coming closer.

Wang Yonghao listened, and ducked back into his Inner World, closing the entrance, and descending back down to the ground.

“Ha, pretty unlucky for it to be night again,” he laughed, “I guess we’ll need to wait until morning?”

She glanced at him, debating wherever she should tell him.

“It’s not luck,” she said, deciding that there was no reason to hide this fact, even if it was possible, “the time in your Inner World flows at a different rate when it is closed.”

“What?”

“You probably never noticed, if you have never spent the night here,” she said, “From the time we went to sleep, eighteen hours have passed here. It should be midday or late evening outside, but it is night.”

She watched him carefully. He didn’t seem too shocked to be hearing about warped time, no doubt having had an experience with something like this in the past.

“Couldn’t the darkness be because of something else?” he asked uncertainly, “A big cloud covering the skies?”

“It’s not just this night,“ she said, “I’ve spent a good week inside of the Inner World before you showed up, while for you it must have been only a couple days. Unless you lied about what you did after you left Golden Rabbit Bay?”

“I am not a liar,” he scoffed.

“Then it must be the time,” she shrugged. “At a guess, it should be flowing three or four times faster here than on the outside, when the entrance is closed.”

“Man, that must have sucked, being here alone for a week,” he ruffled his hair, “I’m sorry that happened.”

“I had the excruciating pain of my healing body to occupy myself,” she said, heading back over to their stores of wood. “Come on, we have an entire day ahead of us before the sun rises,” she said, “I want to make some furniture.”

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“You don’t need this much fat,” Qian Shanyi said, looking over what he was doing, “use less. Even less. Yes, much better, that’s enough.”

Wang Yonghao carefully cut off a small piece of bear fat and threw it on top of the shield they were using to cook. He moved it around, making sure enough of the shield was covered with grease so that the meat wouldn’t stick to it.

He glanced at the mysterious woman sitting by his side, carving a wide oak plank with a small axe to make a shovel. Even though she stayed focused on her work, she had an uncanny ability to glance up just as he was about to make some kind of mistake.

He put his foot down on having dinner first, and she agreed readily, offloading the cooking on his shoulders. He tried to argue that she agreed to cook, but she responded that if she left he would have nobody else to cook for him, and he had no real argument against that. Even though he felt annoyed at being forced to do it despite their deal, he still appreciated the pointers she was giving. If he could eat better in the future, it would all be worth it.

He still didn’t really know who she was or why she was originally looking for him, and when he tried to find out more, she kept deflecting his questions.

“After we are done with dinner, we really need to make a table,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, “I need a workbench, my back is starting to hurt after working on the ground for many days.”

“Haven’t we done enough work for today?” he sighed, “Where’s the rush?”

“Do you have somewhere else to be?” she asked, throwing him a baffled look.

“Well, no,” he said, “but we could just relax. Talk about stuff, like normal people.”

“I’ll relax when I can live like a civilized person instead of a barbarian that sleeps on the ground,” she said, “and for that I need a woodworking station, which means I need a workbench, which means I need a table. So, we are making a table.”

“We’ve spent the entire day digging and lugging wood around,” he said, “My arms are tired, and you said your back hurts. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“So?” she snorted, “Work while tired. Are you a cultivator or a baby? I work with a broken leg and don’t complain.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Some of the things she said had to be jokes or exaggerations, but he could never tell what was true and what wasn’t.

“You don’t have a broken leg,” he said, testing her, “We’ve been walking around all day yesterday. You don’t even limp.”

Instead of answering him, she stretched out her leg in the air, and for a moment, her shin flopped around like a limp noodle. He recoiled at the sight, a shiver going down his spine. After a moment, her leg snapped back into shape.

“Why are you like this?” he complained, recovering his composure, “Aren’t ladies supposed to be gentle and kind?”

“Why?” she laughed, putting her carving to the side, and focusing fully on him, “Because it would make you more comfortable?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” he said, crossing his arms and crossing glares with her, “We basically live in the same house! What’s wrong with making your housemate comfortable?”

“Keep your eyes on the meat, junior,” she snorted, “it’s going to burn.”

The memory of eating burned meat made him flinch, and he looked down.

“To cultivate is to spit in the face of heaven,” she continued as he carefully flipped the bear stakes on the pan with a pair of chopsticks made from long oak splinters, “If I only did what made other people comfortable as opposed to what I want, I wouldn’t be much of a cultivator, would I?”

“But then people will do things that make you uncomfortable,” he sighed, “Why do you want to be mean to others?”

“They already do, what of it?” she said, “Did you think of my comfort when you and your brothers in drink approached me at the Northern Sky Salmon?”

“That’s…different,” he said, shifting in place. The memories of that night were still hazy, but he could remember the basics now. “I was drunk, for one.”

“Drunk men do what sober ones want to but dare not,” she snorted.

“Well you seem pretty comfortable now, don’t you?” he snapped out, “Alone with a man, in the middle of nowhere?”

“I am comfortable because if you were to try anything I would open you up from your balls to your ribcage,” she replied grimly, “In the city, my hands were bound by law. Do not think that a fight outside would go the same way, no matter how weakened my body may be.”

He gulped, and glanced down at her hands. For a moment, he could swear he could see drops of bear blood rolling off her fingers.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he muttered, “I am a good person, I don’t do things other people don’t want, and I already said I am sorry for that night. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to get into a fight if I was sober. I just mean, well, isn’t it natural for men to approach women?”

“Isn’t it natural for a cultivator to be accustomed to the sight of shattered limbs?” she noted.

“That’s not the same!”

“That is true,” she nodded, “there is no cultivation technique that relies on unnerving others. Human cauldrons, on the other hand…”

He flinched again.

“That’s really not fair,” he said, “Only the vilest of villains do that.”

“Yet the context is still there, is it not?” She said, “Well, no matter. Let us eat.”