As they walked through the slums, they started getting closer and closer to the green zone. It did take a while until they arrived in front of a giant building. It was a five-story tall building towering over the east part of the Yellow Zone, serving as a main place to do all important things in the Yellow Zone.
They entered the main hall and quickly went to the clerk. It didn't take long, and Xia enrolled in the public school for ten mid-grade spirit stones. During the process, Xia was curious about becoming a cultivator.
She learned that awakening was possible, but she needed to be at least twelve years old, and the cost was considerably higher than that of learning to read and write. Despite the expense, Xia felt excited at the prospect of becoming a cultivator, and obtaining a new identification token, which would grant her access to the reading classes made her immediately more important than she was until now. They quickly finished and were on their way back.
On their way back to the tea-house, they made a brief stop at the market where they purchased ingredients for making a rice wine. Xia once again found out, how bad their bargaining skills were, because Yu Lan skillfully bargained with the shop attendants, she managed to acquire twice the amount of everything at a significantly lower price than originally quoted.
Amazed by Yu Lan's negotiating skills, as they went back, Xia was not able to hold back and asked.
"How did you do that? We managed to buy everything extremely cheaply."
Yu Lan smiled at Mei Lin. She didn't say anything and gave her more of the bought things. Mei Lin was suddenly equipped with the things and didn't understand what was Yu Lan thinking. She felt that there must be some kind of trick with the merchants.
*****
Two days later. Morning.
Mei Lin cultivated for two days without encountering any issues. No one bothered her and she stopped only for the night. Though that time she made slow progress, she was still far away from the early stage of the second stage of BT.
As soon as Xia left, she retrieved a blood flower from her storage ring and began pouring blood from her wrist onto it. After a while, Mei Lin decided to transfer the blood flower into a larger pot, but the whole tea-house was out of everything which was not useful thanks to Xia. Mei Lin was stopped by this and headed to the market to purchase a bigger one. Along the way, Mei Lin thought about what to do with the blood flower.
'It will be better to plant it in the garden, but someone will certainly find it. It will be best to create more space for the flower and wait till she multiplies. In the book was nothing about breading more, so it still be gamble what will happen. I will need to ask someone if it is good to replant the flower or not.'
Mei Lin stopped along the street and used her natural energy to find out where she was. She was originally not lost, but she wanted to use her cultivation as much as possible to train because, unlike the cultivators she saw so far, she was completely useless compared to them.
Mei Lin stopped moving and stepped not the side street and tried to use her natural energy to feel what was around her. It didn't go according to her expectations, because she could only feel people moving close to her. Mei Lin tried to follow one of the people, so she could find out, how far she was able to track the people, but she lost them as soon as they blended among other people.
Mei Lin stopped after a while and went into the market. It didn't take long before Mei Lin arrived on the market. The market was much more chaotic than she thought, so she started finding one of the sellers, who was selling the pots. It didn't take long and Mei Lin found out just the thing she wanted.
What she found out was the shop, which was selling the ceramics. Inside the shop was a middle-aged woman who was just in the middle of creating another piece from clay. All pottery around her was already created and burned to sell. Mei Lin felt that there was also someone else deeper inside the shop next to the furnace which was burning like never before and made the whole shop hot.
Mei Lin entered the shop and started to look around. There were a lot of vases and other clay pottery, and she was lost in them. There were a lot of different kinds of pots, which were for different things.
After more walking around, Mei Lin bought a pot for the blood plant and also bought ten wine jars for Xin Meng's vine. Mei Lin paid for everything with spirit stone, which surprised the shop owner,r and went back to the tea-house. She felt somehow strange about everything and about what was happening in the city.
Mei Lin went slowly back and thought. 'Caravan already arrived long before us, but I was not able to hear anything about their arrival or the fact, that they were here. Feng Shi also didn't say anything and didn't contact them despite their relationship.'
As Mei Lin arrived back into the tea-house was silent Xia and Xin Meng were outside so she placed jars on the floor and placed on one of them a page from the book with the word "瓶". After doing everything that she thought was important, she went to the second floor and started to make a place in the second room next to theirs. The room was as big as theirs, but unlike their room, it was more like a storage room. Mei Lin put everything into her storage ring and placed it outside, so others would take care of that.
With the room finally clean, Mei Lin took out a book, tore another page from it, and drew the symbol on it. "栽培室" Mei Lin tried to be as accurate as possible, to not mess up the word "Cultivation room," but she was not sure if Xia would be able to read it, and placed it in the doors.
All preparations complete, she entered the room, arranging the cultivation mat and tea table from Xu's tea-house. Mei Lin replanted the blood flower with quite a lot of dedication and just as she was about to prepare a blood tea, Mei Lin realized she didn't have any more second-stage blood and only had three liters of third-stage BT and a little blood from Feng Shu. Mei Lin felt that if this went on, she would be out of blood and would have problems finding more in the city.