Looking warily at the sweet orange spirit fruit Sofie handed to him, Yang Meng let out sigh and put on the expression of someone giving up as he made his way to the counter where the disciple from earlier was standing.
"50 mission points."
Handing over all the mission points he earned from the mission, Yang Meng felt extremely depressed as he made his way back to Sofie, who was staring hungrily at the remaining sweet orange spirit fruits in the store.
"Quick, try it!"
Seeing Yang Meng coming back with a sweet orange spirit fruit in his hand, Sofie urged him to quickly try it out.
"O-okay…"
Opening his mouth, Yang Meng bit down and took a bit off the sweet orange spirit fruit. Following this, Yang Meng was immediately met by the sweet taste of the spirit fruit and couldn't help himself from closing his eyes and enjoying the flavour.
The sweet orange spirit fruit was indeed worth the mission points…
Thinking this, Yang Meng opened his eyes and looked down at the half-eaten spirit fruit… at least where it was supposed to be…
"Sweet orange spirit fruits are indeed delicious~" Swallowing something, Sofie showed a satisfied expression.
"…"
Yang Meng felt the corner of his eye twitch a little, as he found out where the rest of his spirit fruit had gone.
Sofie on the other hand smiled brightly, as she turned around and looked a Xiao Yao. "Didn't Yue Wan need to buy a spirit fruit for me and Yang Meng?"
"Yes… but it was only one-"
"It's fine~ it would be unfair if only one of us got a spirit fruit after all!"
Feeling a little speechless listening to the weird logic of Sofie, Xiao Yao internally decided that it was a good idea not to correct her. The one suffering was Yue Wan and not her, so everything was fine.
…
Looking around the store filled with all kinds of spirit fruits, Sofie had to disappointedly leave as she had already used up both her and Yang Meng's mission points and Xiao Yao had insisted that she had forgotten her sect badge back home in her room, so even if Sofie suspected that it was not true. Nothing would come out of it, if Xiao Yao continued to insist on it.
Xiao Yao was more than relieved when she saw Sofie giving up on her and could not help but breath out a sigh of relief in secret.
If Sofie found out that I have my sect badge on me, I would most likely end up broke…
Not knowing Xiao Yao's thoughts, Sofie decided that when they found Yue Wan, they would return to the store and pick a few spirit fruits.
One of the spirit fruits that Sofie especially had her eye on, was a mid mortal-grade sweet orange spirit fruit. The reason for this was that even though it was a mid mortal-grade spirit fruit, it only cost around 500 mission points. Making it the cheapest mid mortal-grade spirit fruit in the store.
Compared to the most scary and expensive spirit fruit in the store, a low earth-grade spirit fruit costing over 10000 mission points. The 500 mission points seemed almost insignificant and trivial.
…
The spirit garden market was big, way bigger than Sofie had first thought when she arrived. From what she heard Yang Meng talking about, the store they were in earlier was also a part of the spirit garden market, but compared to the stalls outside, the store had stable prices.
The stalls outside on the other hand had the same things as the store, just more expensive or cheaper in some cases.
Sofie could only stare angrily at a stall owner when she saw a low mortal-grade sweet orange spirit fruit selling for 10 mission points each.
Didn't this mean she got scammed 40 mission points back in the store?
The more she thought about it this way, the darker Sofie's thoughts became.
Daring to scam me and make me loss four sweet orange spirit fruits!? J-just you wait!
As Sofie was hatching a plan to take revenge on the store, which made her lose out on four sweet orange spirit fruits, Yang Meng and Xiao Yao was attentively searching around for Yue Wan.
"Where did she disappear to…?"
"No idea, but let's go to the flower viewing platform, she might be there."
"Why there?"
"… A lot of female disciple goes there to view the flowers of the spirit garden, especially the young and new female disciples… Yue Wan often goes there…"
"…"
Not knowing what to say upon hearing Xiao Yao's reason, Yang Meng could only silently agree to what she said. The flower viewing platform in the spirit garden was famous and most of the new disciples knew about it. Sofie, who had yet to even read the simple informal guide about the sect of course had no idea what the spirit gardens flower viewing platform was.
Not having heard what Yang Meng and Xiao Yao talked about, Sofie just followed behind both of them as she focused on creating her revenge plan against the shameless store that scammed her out of 40 mission points.
…
The flower viewing platform was a big platform suspended a few meters above a part of the spirit garden. The entire place was filled with all kinds of spirit flowers, which had in turn earned the place the name. Flower viewing platform.
Looking at the stairs leading up to the flower viewing platform, Sofie was amazed at the scenery. The flower viewing platform alone was decorated in all sorts of ways, with vines filled with flowers made of wood entwining with one another going from one side of the platform to another.
Walking up the stairs leading to the flower viewing platform, Sofie was also amazed at the different spirit flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. Seemingly going on forever.
"How big is the spirit garden…?"
Sofie could not stop herself from blurting out the moment she saw the spirit flowers disappearing in the horizon.
"Don't think the spirit garden is big, it is actually quite small… Seeing as we always have a shortage on spirt herbs… And the spirit flowers here is only one part of the spirit garden. The other parts specialise on another type of spirit herb, like spirit roots and so on."
"Shortage…? Only one part of the spirit garden…?!"
Sofie was left speechless upon hearing what Yang Meng said, how can they even have shortage with so many spirit flowers? And that was only one part of the spirit garden! Just imagining how big the spirit garden actually was, Sofie started to wonder how they managed to harvest all the spirit herbs.
Though the one thing that bewildered Sofie the most was that Yang Meng said they had a shortage on spirit herbs…
From what Sofie knew, there were only around 10 or so thousand disciples in the scorching sun sect…
"Alchemist use a lot of spirit herbs when concocting spirit pills and most of the spirit herbs you see here are only mortal-grade, which are mostly used for new alchemist to train up their skills… To be honest most of the spirit herbs end up as useless dregs… Other than that, some of the spirit herbs are used to produce more spirit herbs and it generally takes a long time for spirit herbs to mature, therefore the shortage."
Seemingly having guessed what she thought, Yang Meng explained how there could be a shortage on spirt herbs in the sect when there seemingly was an endless amount of spirit herbs in the spirit garden.
Sofie could only stare at the beautiful spirit flowers silently, as the three finally made their way up to the flower viewing platform.