"Alright, alright, I get it, young miss! I'll contact him about it..." The support agent spoke helplessly as Mei ranted angrily.

Meanwhile, from further down the tunnel, footsteps could be heard, Wang Wei and Su Qing rushing up.

"What happened? Where's the centipede?" Wang Wei said frantically, his face full of anxiety.

"I almost died because you left me there! I tried to teleport away, but that stupid array didn't let me!" she shouted.

"I... I saw you didn't follow me, so I thought you wanted to take a rest!"

"I didn't follow because I thought you didn't want me to!"

"Oh... I'm sorry." Wang Wei said weakly.

Finally, Mei began to calm down.

"Nevermind, I'm, uh, sorry too. It's not your fault."

Wang Wei glanced around, worried.

"How did the centipede sneak up on you? I thought you would be fine, since you could use soulsense." he muttered. "Is it that it could hide its soul somehow? Maybe we should leave..."

Mei bit her lip frustratedly. It was because she was too busy using her soulsense on the teleportation token instead!

Suddenly, Myriad Heavens spoke once again.

"Brat, you are quite something! How'd you almost get yourself killed in 2 minutes?" he complained. "I just redirected you to one of my agents, and in the next moment, he told me you almost died!"

That stupid old bastard? Mei whipped out her token and immediately argued back.

"It's because I was waiting to see if you'd respond! You left me hanging for half a minute! Then I got attacked since I stopped looking around with soulsense!"

"What type of hellscape are you in, that you can die any minute? You shouldn't be in that sort of place at your cultivation!" Myriad yelled. "And you're quite the bumbling idiot too, aren't you? Why would you stop using soulsense on your surroundings while waiting?"

Grrr... and she just promised herself earlier she wouldn't get careless with soulsense.

She looked over and saw Wang Wei and Su Qing staring at her while she complained.

"Um... I'm not interupting something, am I?" Wang Wei whispered.

Mei shook her head.

"Brat. I've never been left this speechless in a decade." the spirit continued. "Fine, since this incident was partially my fault, abeit small, I'll let you teleport for free for the next week. But don't test my patience!"

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With that, the connection was cut.

"What happened?" Su Qing asked. "Why did Myriad stop you too? Were you copying my flashy techique on the boat?"

Why would she copy that here?

"No, it's different. But he said he'll let me teleport off for free as an apology. I think I'll just head back to the sect now." she said. "Wang Wei, do you want to leave with me too?"

"It's not an apology!" a shout came from the token.

"Wait... back during the bandit practice, weren't we not allowed to go back to the sect? Why is it we are now allowed?" Wang Wei looked confused.

Huh. Honestly, Mei already forgot about that.

"No clue."

"I'll head back too after collecting the lotuses." he said. "Otherwise we would have dug the tunnel for nothing..."

"Oh, then I want to watch as well."

Watching lava drain down a tunnel seemed pretty fun.

"If it's so dangerous, then we should go back now!" Su Qing protested. "We're not fire cultivators like him!"

"Go back! Go go go go!"

The little spirit was showing his cowardly side again... Under Su Qing's insistance, Mei reluctantly agreed.

----------------------------------------

Back at the sect, Mei found it was still night. Tired, she teleported into her room directly and went to sleep.

...

When morning came, Mei immediately teleported to the canteen to have a quick meal, then teleported to Song Woodworks, a vegetable bun still in hand.

This unrestricted teleporting sure was convenient! She was going to abuse it to the fullest while it lasted.

"Here you go!"

The burly man plopped the wooden puppet down cheerfully. It was a girl her height, with a slight frown to her, dressed in the sect's robes.

On its head, a wig of medium length black hair was attached. The wood was a light peach similar to that of the shade of skin, the eyes and lips painted black, white and pink.

Mei stared at it with an odd look.

"Didn't I say to make it look like me?" she asked.

The man coughed awkwardly.

"Well! When me and my brother were carving it, it suddenly occured to us how awkward it would be to carve it!" he said. "This is actually the first time we've been asked to carve a puppet exactly like our customer, and it felt kind of messed up, since you know..."

He coughed even harder, tugging at the puppet's sect robes.

Mei: ...

Alright, she just wasn't going to speak of it then.

"Thanks, it's fine like this too."

She picked up the puppet and left, just as the man tossed her another discount card, which Su Qing happily caught.

Mei thought to herself that the Song Brothers were rather bad at making exact orders.

...

She teleported back to her room and stared at the wooden puppet.

Now that she looked at it closer, she noticed the eyes were actual balls embedded, and with eyelids that could be closed. She reached out her finger and began to roll them around in their sockets.

Why was this kind of fun?

"Can you not?" Xiao Mei grumbled.

"Haha. So uh, can you actually possess it?"

"I can't directly possess it, but I should be able to control it. Technically, I am a wood spirit like Su Qing, so I should be able to do something similar."

Mei felt a strange force stir within her dantian, a mass of qi suddenly flowing out.

Under Xiao Mei's control, part of Mei's cultivation base was being refined into the puppet.

Back to early Foundational... Mei felt a huge sense of loss... At least she could get water chestnuts easily now.

Seeing that the refinement was going to take a while, she took out the chestnut pills Wang Wei refined and ate two of them. Might as well cultivate while she waited.

She exhaled as the qi surged through her. He didn't disappoint at all! It was too bad she couldn't just hand them all to him, or he would grow suspicious.

Wait...

"Who taught you how to refine stuff?" she asked Xiao Mei, who didn't answer.

Half an hour passed uneventfully.

"It is done..."

The puppet girl immediately tripped and fell flat on her face.