Li Meiying's memories, and time skip

Li Meiying's memories:

When we arrived at Master Xia Tao's mountain, I was surprised. Such a large mountain, even though it was on the outskirts, and with only a few people in residence. We were greeted by a Red-Haired woman, about 170 centimeters tall, with an impressive bust and a refined face of an adult yet still beautiful woman. She was dressed as an Elder.

"Hello, Elder Mei" greeted Ye Chen. "Where's Xia Tao? He should have arrived here before us, theoretically."

Mei's expression froze for a moment and then turned into a polite smile.

"Oh, don't worry. He did arrive, but right now, let's just say he can't meet you. He's quite busy, and it seems he won't be available anytime soon."

"Oh, really? I wanted to ask him to look after this lovely girl for a while. He's aware of all the circumstances, and I believe he won't mind. The situation is a bit complicated."

During this time, the goose was surveying the surroundings and decided to nibble on some spiritual grass that had apparently been planted recently.

As a result, it lost its ability to move and was immobilized by some kind of spiritual force. Mei then said, "Ye Chen, please keep an eye on your goose. Everything that grows here belongs to us, and I'm afraid it's not entitled to snack on anything unless it wants to face consequences." And the goose was dragged along the ground to Ye Chen.

"Um, sorry!" He quickly grabbed the goose by the neck, keeping it in check, and said, "Of course, we won't cause you any problems!"

At that moment, Mei turned her face towards me and stared, waiting for me to speak.

"Good evening, Elder Mei. My name is Li Meiying, and due to certain circumstances, I would like to ask you to provide me shelter for some time." I bowed slightly as I spoke.

"Hmm, I see no reason to refuse, but the decision will be up to the master when he returns."

Meanwhile, the goose and Ye Chen had moved aside and were silently observing the situation. After a few seconds, something happened that I absolutely didn't expect. The goose decided to surprise us with its charming question.

"Hmm, even though she's mean and greedy, she's still quite fuckable, don't you think, Ye Chen?"

To that, I simply facepalmed. A few seconds later, a wild screech erupted from the goose, and we watched as it ran around, swearing and its tail on fire.

In a matter of moments, Ye Chen caught up to it, extinguished the flames, quickly wrapped its tail with a cloth soaked in healing potion, and held the goose's beak in his hand to prevent any more inappropriate comments. He then said:

"I think we should hurry on our business. Please tell Xia Tao that I'll return when I can and share the news. And once again, apologies for the goose!" After that, he pulled out a shuttle, threw the goose inside, jumped in himself, and they flew away. It was all quite chaotic!

Haha, but the image of the swearing, running goose with a burning tail was something to remember!

***

From Xia Tao's perspective:

It has been a month since I returned from that "easy and safe" expedition with the Protagonist. Life has settled back into its usual routine. During this time, a few interesting events have taken place. First, Li Meiying has settled in on our mountain and has been cultivating alongside everyone else. She seems to have decided to stay with us, considering it safe.

Secondly, I finally received something decent as a reward. It's a whole strawberry, from which I collected seeds. We planted them on a plot near the house, and have been watering them with spirit-enriched water.

Thanks to the growth acceleration array, they have already sprouted, and soon we'll have strawberries. Now, I need to figure out how to pollinate them. It might be a good idea to introduce bees, which would also provide us with honey.

Interestingly, bees exist in this world. And as a result, Mei somehow managed to acquire spirit bees for us two days ago. We need to interact with them in a specific way to prevent them from stinging us.

As a result, I'm looking forward to a strawberry harvest. If luck is on our side, it might happen by the end of the next month.

And thirdly, probably the most significant development, we have some new disciples on the mountain, on the other side from the summit. Currently, there are around hundred of them, mostly girls. Mei and Lin Qing chose them using some criteria I'm not aware of.

They live peacefully, performing tasks assigned by Mei and receiving rewards in the form of points, which they can then spend on additional training from Mei and Lin Qing.

We also received a letter from home, requesting that someone be sent to retrieve my friend who decided to join the sect here.

It was Lin Zhi, the one I met shortly before leaving the city. He's joined by Liu Qing, as far as I understand, his girlfriend.

She's a lady of questionable reputation who seemed to be involved with two brothers initially, then got engaged, and eventually left for another man, Lin Zhi himself.

Well, such is life! Haha. The unfortunate thing is that Zhang Jing and Hu Mei had to leave to bring them back here. They left two days ago and will return in a month or two, all because we don't have a fast shuttle, and they'll have to travel using our regular one.

As I sat and pondered over these events, admiring the leaves on the branch that I had nurtured a month ago, a cloud approached our house, catching me off guard.

"I wonder who else fate has brought to us?" I mused aloud, tossing some feed to the fish in the pond.

As it turned out, it was Mei who had arrived, and I was pleasantly surprised.

"You've indeed mastered this technique!" I exclaimed with joy.

"Oh yes, Master, don't worry about the details" she replied neutrally, but her cheeks slightly reddened, indicating that my praise was well received