It was now night, moonlight bathing the ground.

Mei was behind a bush, looking around carefully.

In the distance, the battle temple loomed. The bamboo windows were darkened, hopefully meaning no one was inside. 

She crept up to the building and walked in, easy as it didn't have a front gate. 

The hall was dark, with barely any light. There wasn't actually anything scary inside, but it made her quite uneasy regardless. She never was a big fan of the dark. Mei wished she had a lantern, deciding that the next time she visited Yang Ning, she would buy one.

Taking quick steps, she headed to the training room's door and reached for the doorknob, turning it. The rattling of the knob echoed through the halls. It was locked.

Well, she half expected that anyway. She came here to recruit the dummy spirit; a silly lock wasn't going to stop her!

Channelling soulsense, she saw hundreds of spirits lined up neatly and unmoving, which was quite unusual. 

Most of them were quite vibrant green, but one of them was closer to cyan. So naturally, she targetted that one, hoping it was somehow special. 

"Hello?"

She saw the spirit stir a little before moving forward as if having just woken. From the other side of the door, she heard walking.

The spirit conveyed curiosity to her.

"I came here to make a contract with one of you!" Mei conveyed. "Remember when we did the tall dummy thing?"

She felt some confusion from the spirit.

"Do you not know how to talk?" 

With the spirits previously, while they didn't directly use words, she got coherent thoughts from them. But this spirit only conveyed its emotions.

The spirit denied.

Looking closer, the spirits in the dummies were the smallest ones she had seen. Could it be that they had not fully developed consciousness yet? That was really annoying... how would she even explain what she wanted it to do?

She thought for a bit, then had an idea. What if she conveyed images? She focused on the events that day, when the necks of the dummies were stacked sky-high, then sent it to the spirit.

From the other side of the door, she heard jumping. She saw the spirit moving up and down excitedly with soulsense.

Well, good that the spirit was on the same page!

It was kind of annoying getting stuck outside until now, so she tried to get the spirit to open turn the doorknob from the other side.

The dummy complied and turned, finally letting her into the room. 

She went in, then froze.

Hundreds of faceless humanoid figures in the dark, standing perfectly still. It was very creepy. Maybe it was for the best that she was locked outside earlier after all...

It took a lot of effort afterwards, but with some 'creative' imagery on her part, mostly images of her and the spirit being friendly and doing things together, they finally managed to make a contract of sorts. Phew.

Previously, she only thought of the spirit as pet-like things, but now she was hoping for this little 'pet' of hers to quickly develop into more than a 'pet'. It was kind of troublesome to communicate with just images.

She got the spirit to walk the dummy all the way back to its original standing position, before flying out. Afterwards, she asked another spirit to lock the doors behind them.

Her new spirit 'pet' seemed really enthusiastic. It zipped around constantly, somehow even more enthusiastic than Xiao Huo. She wondered if the sect was being a little cruel confining them to the dummies.

After trying with images to ask if it was unhappy about being trapped in the dummy and failing for a few minutes, she gave up. Seems like this 'images only' thing was more problematic than she thought.

At the very least, it shouldn't be that hard to order the spirit to fight! She just needed to send it an image of it hitting the enemy or something.

She headed back to her dorm, satisfied. Along the way, some spirits paused to look at the little cyan spirit from time to time.

After reaching her room, she read a bit more of the 2nd volume of "Asura's Purge" before going to bed.

The alchemy elder's residence was a mansion made of bamboo, the roof painted dark green. Two glass greenhouses growing various herbs were to its left and right, and surrounding all of it was a bamboo forest. A pleasant herbal scent permeated the area.

Was it just her thinking that, or did it seem like a lot of the elders liked nature stuff?

Regardless, she liked its simple and elegant design. So much better than Qiao Shun's "crappy white box".

She came here to look for Wang Wei so she could help to clear the misunderstanding up.

It wasn't purely because of goodwill though. She felt a bit bad for not cultivating, so something like this made her feel like she wasn't just wasting her time. She also might have washed her dirty robes and hung them out to dry for the first time earlier today.

The little spirit, whom she named "Su Qing" tried to help her with the washing too, but it didn't end up being very helpful, only splashing soapy water around.

She reached out and knocked the door, which opened shortly. To her surprise, the person who answered was the weird guy who judged her for taking food for Liu Qiang. What were the chances?

"Hi?" she said.

"What have you come here for?" he asked.

From the look on his face, he didn't seem to recognise her. She decided to treat it as nothing then.

"I'm here to meet Wang Wei," she said. "I guess you can say I'm a friend of his."

"Oh, that boy." he looked thoughtful, then smiled faintly. "I didn't think he was the type to make friends. You can find him in room 15."

Mei hesitated for a moment.

"So I can just walk in and go look for him?" she asked. "Just like that?"

"Yeah. The elders aren't too strict about it."

"Okay, thanks."

Mei walked in and did her best to look as natural as possible, not just some random intruder.

While the inside of the building was as elegant, it certainly did not smell as good. It smelled faintly of burnt herbs. Were there not formations that could help to clear the smell?

She headed to room 15 and was about to knock, when-

BANG!

"AHHH!" 

Following the sound of the explosion and Wang Wei's scream, she heard pot shards hitting the ground.

Maybe it was a good thing she didn't decide to go for alchemy after all.