Mei wiped the sweat off her face as she reached the gates of the city, along with a strange wooden mannequin.

It was very blocky and crude, barely able to walk. At a glance, about anyone could tell it had just been made. Small amounts of 'bleeding' sap made it glisten in the sunlight, and it smelled strongly of mint and crushed plants.

Of course, it wasn't made by her. With how tough the wood was, there was no way she would be able to shape it into anything without spending days. Feng Shen had reluctantly cut it into shape with wind blades after Mei's pleas. That left the joints, but luckily, there was no shortage of fallen branches. They had lost most of the qi that made them tough, so Su Qing was able to fashion them into joints of sorts and fuse them to the body.

"Hard walk! Not fun!" Su Qing complained to Mei, for the 12th time.

"Bear with it!" she said to the spirit.

There wasn't much she could do right now, but when she gets back to the sect, she could get someone to help cut it into shape!

She looked at the gate of the city with excitement. From a distance, she had seen it, but up close, it was even more imposing!

It reached at least 10 metres into the air, made of a strange white metal, decorated by strange patterns and ancient words; the frame that surrounded it was black and gold. In the centre of the gate, a huge yin-yang symbol surrounded by trigrams sat, splitting the door with golden lines.

Mei was dazzled by it. Even in her sect, there was nothing as exaggerated at that! Qiao Shun's crappy white box came to mind. 

A lone guard stood before it. Disappointingly, he was donning plain, boring armour, but without a helm to show his face. It was a huge contrast from the gate. His eyes were shut as he slowly circulated qi to cultivate.

Mei suddenly had a realisation. If she could find a job that didn't require her to be active, she could cultivate and make money at the same time. That would effectively double her free time! Or at least... she would gain more from using the same amount of time.

"Halt!" the guard said as she approached. "Please provide identification and state your purpose for visiting."

Feng Shen had already drilled her on what to do.

"I am a Vermillion Phoenix inner disciple, Mei Xiu! I have come here to participate in the auction," she said, taking out the Vermillion token.

The guard merely nodded, before closing his eyes again. Mei looked excitedly at the gate, waiting for it to open. There were a few awkward seconds.

"The gate only opens for important guests." Feng Shen said. "After you present your token, you are supposed to fly over it."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Mei said angrily, with soulsense. "And how am I supposed to fly?"

A gust of wind left the ring and propelled her and Su Qing over it. She almost flailed, but somehow managed to make it look natural.

She was tempted to swear at the bird but decided she wasn't in the mood for arguing. Right now, it was time to explore! It was a pity she couldn't see that gate open though. That would have been cool.

The first thing Mei wanted to do now that she was in was to start looking around. Unfortunately, Feng Shen insisted that she look for Senior Foodie right away.

All she could do was look wistfully at the interesting shops she saw as she walked past. Three of them caught her interest especially. The first was "White Lotus Pill Establishment". While Yang Ning offered a fair selection of pills, she wanted to see what pills such a grand city would offer!

The last two were "Cao Bao's Artefacts" and "Trigram Lord Grand Techniques", for the same reasons.

Finally, she reached a large public square. It was where Senior Foodie wanted to meet them. There were stone seats all over the square and patches for soil for spirits trees to grow.

Some of the trees were even fruiting, making a pleasant aroma waft through the air. Cultivators sat on the seats, chatting with others. Some were eating, mostly food from the streetside stores, but there were a few were eating the fruits from the trees.

She wandered over to one of those trees and reached for one of the fruits, but a sudden aura stopped her.

"Sorry, little one. Only those with silver city tokens are allowed to pick the fruits." the tree said in an apologetic tone.

"Oh..."

She glanced at the vast amounts of fruit hanging from its branches.

"Not even half a fruit?" she said meekly.

The tree laughed.

"Rules are rules. Well, I am allowed to give you some of my seeds if you're interested though." the tree said. "But you must promise to plant them!"

Her eyes lit up.

"I promise!"

The tree handed her a small pouch full of little black seeds. Mei looked inside, and realised to her disgust that they were covered in little bits of fruit flesh and stank a little. Clearly, these seeds had been spat into the grass. Oh well, free stuff was free stuff. From the looks of it, they would grow up to be pretty decent spirit trees anyway.

She put the pouch in her bag and sat on one of the stone seats in a relatively empty area. It seems she was the first to arrive. Su Qing sat beside her.

"Hard walk! Not fun!" it said for the 20th time.

The little spirit left the puppet, making it collapse to the ground. Mei sighed and propped it up against a tree.

After sitting there for a few more minutes, she asked Feng Shen if she could go to one of the stores. Naturally, the bird did not agree to that.

Left with nothing to do but to sit, Mei grudgingly realised the best thing to do right now was to cultivate. She should have bought some books along with her...