"Eh?!" Mei let out a cry of dismay. "Now you're making me nervous..."

"Idiot." Xiao Mei said.

"Ahh!!" Mei shouted.

Xiao Mei was getting too much! She could tolerate being ignored, but now her faulty clone was straight up insulting her!

"You..."

Mei was furious and wanted to shout back, but miraculously managed to stop herself. Hmph. There was no point in arguing with Xiao Mei. She would be the better person here!

She walked off in a huff.

A strange thought came to mind... was it technically considered a self esteem issue for a clone of herself to berate her?

"Wait. Big Mei, stop."

"What is it this time?" Mei grumbled.

"Footsteps."

Tok, tok tok.

Mei froze. Xiao Mei was right, there were faint footsteps echoing from the distance! And from the sound of it, there was more than one person.

She looked around frantically in search of somewhere to hide. But in such a massive open space, there was little to hide behind. And because the windows had metal shutters, there were no curtains to hide behind!

Finally, Mei spotted something in the distance and rushed over. It was a ridiculously massive table as tall as a building, the one the sect master said was reserved was "large guests". She hurriedly ran behind one of the seats and hid.

What was going on? Was it really as Xiao Mei said, that the windows had activated some sort of mechanism? Were mechanical golems now patrolling the palace?

The footsteps got closer. Mei began to panic.

She pulled out her teleportation token and tried to activate it, but-

"Disabler!" Qiao Shun's voice echoed.

He rushed towards her with a glowing formation plate the size of a plate in hand! Before Mei could process what was going on, he had snatched her into the air by the back of her neck!

"Ahhhhh!" Mei yelled. "Let me go, let me go!"

Then Qiao Shun suddenly dropped her, waving his hand about in disgust. Mei hit the ground face-first and let out a yelp.

"Urgh! Why in the world are you soaked in field water?"

Field water? How in the world could he even tell?!

Mei looked up from the floor and rubbed her slightly red forehead, only to see Qiao Shun wiping his fingers clean with a towel.

AHHH!!! Mei was fuming now! Why was he acting like he had just touched a sewer rat?

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What was he doing here anyway? Stupid stingy uptight no-fun annoying bastard with a tofu house!

"Now now, Qiao Shun..." another voice said. "Don't frighten her."

A youthful looking man who looked in his twenties walked over, a helpless smile on his face. He had long black hair and was surprisingly handsome, but Mei was too angry to care about that right now.

"Mei Xiu, we are here to investigate something. Could you help us?" he said.

Mei stared at him blankly.

"Who are you?" she said.

Doh!

The man staggered as if a brick had just been dropped on his head. Seeing that, Qiao Shun began to laugh.

"...I am Yang Fei. Remember when you first came to the weapon training temple? I'm one of the Elders there, in charge of teaching the art of the spear." Yang Fei said with twitching eyes. "Back then you caused such a huge mess with the long-necked training dummy... And I heard you even stole one of the young spirits of the hall not too long after."

Ah! Mei suddenly remembered she had indeed seen this elder once, when he ran in to yell at her and the training dummies for messing around. It had just been so long that she had forgotten his face.

Qiao Shun opened his mouth to speak, but Yang Fei stopped him.

"I'll do the negotiating." he said with soulsense, too fast for Mei to sneak-read.

"So, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at the Buddhist sect?"

He waved his hands and sent a flick of qi into Mei's robes. Instantly, all the water turned into a cloud of warm steam that billowed away. Mei coughed and waved the steam away, but she nodded in gratitude afterwards. She had been freezing...

"I was looking for the sect master..." she said.

It wasn't actually the truth because she already knew the sect master was nowhere to be found here, from her last visit. Mei suddenly remembered she wanted to appraise the overpriced painting Bagai bought, and her heart began to bleed again from the loss of jade.

Yang Fei nodded.

"If you say so. Since the lions let you in, I don't see a reason to chase you out. They know the sect master's intentions far better than us Elders do."

Mei let out a sigh of relief. This elder might be forgettable, but he was so much nicer than Qiao Shun!

Qiao Shun checked the windows as the other two talked, frowning as he tugged at the shutters and their mechanisms. The sound of something being stuck echoed.

"The shutters have been modified. There's a 1-way mechanism preventing them from being closed again."

"Seriously?" Yang Fei said.

He ran over to examine the windows as well.

Mei stood there. Eh? Did she discover something big that the elders otherwise wouldn't have? It made her feel a little proud of herself.

But more importantly, the elders were distracted! Mei decided to make a run for it. Well, more of slow subdued hurried tip-toes...

"Golems!" Qiao Shun shouted.

Two earth golems suddenly materialised in front of Mei and blocked her off.

Gahh!

The two elders spent the next 30 minutes examining the area.

Qiao Shun theorised a hidden sunlight formation might be engraved onto the floor, activating under specific weather conditions. He cast a spell and cleared the endless snowstorm briefly, but the clear weather didn't do anything.

Yang Fei thought perhaps opening the shutters in a certain pattern would activate a secret mechanism of sorts, but that theory was risky to test because the shutters couldn't be closed again.

Meanwhile, Mei sat on the ground and moped in silence, drawing circles on the ground with her finger. She grumbled to herself about Qiao Shun, disliking him more and more.

Suddenly, she had an idea.

"Hey, hey!" she said with soulsense to the golems.

In her time sitting here, she realised the two golems were similar to Su Qing, just puppets of stone piloted by spirits.

"Huh?"

The stone puppets stared at her, surprised to hear her talk.

"Um... what if I gave you something? What would I have to give you for you to secretly let me off?" she said, smiling awkwardly.

The golems looked at each other in disbelief. Was this human seriously trying to bribe them?