Those Jellies Need Their Own Graveyard...

Lin Songmei and Yan Mingqing walked along the path... hanging out.

There wasn't too much to do. Sure, they both circulated their Qi to the best of their abilities while walking, doing a fair bit of training while talking, but... beyond that... nothing. They couldn't practice techniques, they couldn't explore the city of Westriver, they couldn't do actual bonding activities.

Just... hiking. On almost flat ground.

Looking in front and behind them, Songmei and Mingqing saw that there were a few groups within eyesight range. With only a few in front of them, there wasn't much to speak about concerning that direction.

However, behind them were... a lot of people. Songmei and Mingqing had passed a few groups, but more than that, there were tons of groups on this small path.

From what Songmei had gathered after walking past a few of the groups, the Starlight Lake Sect had shared the information, pushing the other sects to also issue an emergency mission.

Impressive...

Songmei was always impressed with the efficiency, power, and influence that her sect had... It just never registered during the day to day, but when looking during the most random times, the Sect would remind her of its incomparable majesty.

That... sounded like lauding praise, but it got the idea across well enough.

"So... what now? We finished another article of 'most random questions'" Songmei murmured, craning her neck to peek at the terminal that Mingqing was holding.

"Honestly... I don't know." Mingqing sighed, shrugging. Even her, in a rare event that could be counted on one hand, had run out of things to talk about. With all the time they had spent walking these past few days, they had already talked about everything they had done in the past while having tangents about the most random things.

In fact, on the way back to the city the day before, they had somehow had an entire discussion about flower colors for almost half an hour...

Still, in the defense of their exhaustive conversations, Songmei did talk about some productivie topics with Mingqing. One of the important conversations that Songmei could remember was their conversation regarding the future of their little Assignment Hall, Mission-completing group.

------

"I've been wondering," Mingqing changed the topic, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun as the small outline of Westriver appeared over the horizon. "Once we open all of our meridians, we can technically create our own hunting squad, right?"

Her legs on fire from all the running she had done today to kill monsters, Songmei nodded, plodding along the path with Mingqing half a step in front of her. "We do, yeah. Xueli mentioned it."

"So, yeah. During one of my conversations with my brother, while he was visiting home after having entered the core formation realm, he mentioned how it really doesn't matter until you're into the middle stages of cultivation." Mingqing began, lowering the volume of the song playing so that she didn't have to stress her throat too much. "He said it was good to think about. Apparently, he said he had waited too long to make connections, so he was having trouble finding members to join his team..."

"Isn't...?"

"Yeah... I know right now he's part of the 4th ranked hunting squad in terms of popularity, but... I don't know, he's crazy like that." Mingqing shrugged her shoulders with a helpless sigh. "So I was just thinking, who do I need for my hunting squad in the future... I was thinking you'd probably join, yeah?"

Nod, nod.

Songmei was too tired to talk. She might as well let Mingqing do the talking...

"So then what else do we need? There's more to think about other than just combat roles too..." Mingqing explained, massaging her eyebrows. "For combat alone, even if we have us two, we probably want another front-attacking focused person like me, we probably want a defensive focused front-line or two, another back-line support like you... and so on and so on. It doesn't have to be perfect, of course, but that's a general structure."

"Then, we need a like... a cook, a blacksmith, a tailor, whatever whatever... but some auxiliary things and jobs."

Raising her eyebrows, Songmei patted Mingqing a few times who had worn herself out a bit with that little monologue. Mingqing... she really had spent a lot of time worrying about this, even if she didn't show it on the surface.

Songmei didn't have to worry about family pressure like Mingqing had to at all, which seemed to be a little bit of a blessing in disguise...

------

Crunch.

Having put on some songs, Songmei only heard the continuous crunching of dirt during the small pause between songs at this point. A welcome relief if anyone were to ask her.

With the sun high in the sky now though, Songmei and Mingqing, after checking the time and seeing that it was a little over half an hour past noon, were considering if and where they wanted to stop to have lunch.

One positive was that their walking pace was fast, which had allowed them to pull away from the crowd behind them and even pass some of the small groups walking in front of them. That made it so they didn't have to worry about falling behind a mosh pit's worth of people if they stopped for 15 minutes or so to eat a quick meal.

Walking along though, Songmei and Mingqing didn't see any nice area to take a break...

Crunch. Snap.

With the sound of branches breaking, Songmei and Mingqing froze. Songmei's hands went to the bow on her back and Mingqing's hand went to the sword always by her waist.

Squish.

"Oh hey, what's up?" Han Youhong asked with a relaxed expression while murdering some more lychee jelly, walking out from the forest that flanked the path as he pushed the low hanging branches out of his face. "I thought I heard someone out here, turns out it was you two, want to travel together?"

"S-Sure..." Songmei answered, still startled from Han Youhong's random appearance.

And... And more than that, Songmei found it hard to get used to Han Youhong's perpetual casualness. The man was more stable than a literal mountain, there could be an earthquake where a building fell onto him, then collapsed him into a sinkhole that plunged him into a deep lake that was filled with poisonous insects or something and... he'd probably be chill about it!

He'd probably just eat some jelly...

Thinking of Han Youhong's jelly once more, Songmei pressed her hands together, giving a small prayer towards its doomed future.