Now that Wang Wei was fully paying attention, he was now getting his grubby little hands all over random roadside plants. Xiuying chastised him for taking way too much earlier and making things hard for Da Xing, having overhead his laments, so he was being fairly restrained. Though, he wanted to say he wasn't even going to harvest that much and that it was just Su Qing.

"Ah, don't worry too much about it. It's just that we were sitting at a rather popular spot, and it will look a little ugly with that patch of riverweed gone... yellow striped weed isn't actually all that useful to us," he said. "Um, though, are those plants really that useful to alchemy, boy? They're not particularly precious."

"Beats me," Ying Yi said. "I've read through all the basic recipes and none of them called for ingredients like that. Are you making pills from unorthodox manuals or something?"

"I'm experimenting! Qian Feng, um, he's one of the alchemy elders said it was good to try to comprehend the role each ingredient plays and adapt pill recipes to your own style, rather than blindly relying on formulas!"

"Hmph. Isn't that a bit too high level for a beginner?"

"Ehehe... yeah, it's not easy. This was my only successful recipe..." Wang Wei reached into his bag and pulled out a murky green pill, which she noted was the same type he gave her previously as thanks.

"That's a pill..? it looks more like condensed slag..." Yingyi squinted at it.

"Let me see," Da Xing said, as Wang Wei passed it over. "Despite its appearance, this indeed passes the criteria of being an alchemic pill, just barely! It doesn't seem to have much use, but it's still impressive work for a newbie... Perhaps it could be used as a wood qi supplement for regular crops when ground up?"

Yingyi was speechless.

Cool. So Wang Wei was an alchemic genius and was going to rack in even more money. Wow. She was totally not jealous.

Next thing she knew, maybe he would find some random legendary bing bong spite herb here and create a pill that made him skip the foundational stage entirely.

At the side, Su Qing was still sulking, after being told he wasn't allowed to harvest the herbs...

"Hey, Da Xing, man! What's up!"

Swinging from the branch of a large tree, a monkey hopped onto the massive gorilla's shoulder.

Wait. Was it just her or was that monkey really familiar? No, there was no way it was actually that monkey from Qiulan that fed her the poisoned peach, probably just the same species. Hah, telling animals appart was hard...

"Wait what! Dude, why is that human here? You know her?"

...nevermind.

"Eh?" Da Xing seemed a little confused.

Monkey hopped off and stood before Mei, squinting at her, making her a little uncomfortable.

"Hmph. I'm in no mood to talk anymore. I shall take my leave!"

Saying those words, he leapt off into the air... only for Da Xing to grab one of his legs.

"What the heck?"

"Don't just leave like that! I want to clear things up here. What happened?"

"He fed me a weird peach and made me pass out... then stole my herbs..." Mei said, crossing her arms.

Hmph. Didn't want his friend to know he was robbing disciples. Not that she was going to rat the monkey out.

"What? Hou Jian, what are you thinking?"

"Hey! She's giving the wrong side of the story! And that's my brother's name!"

"Sorry!"

In the next few minutes, Monkey explained about how the elders were making disciples harvest herbs from the herb gardens of the Qiulan beasts, and Mei had taken a particularly valuable herb, angering the owner, who hired him to snatch it back.

"Ah... I see... Well, I don't think she's a bad human, she probably just got a little greedy. The disciples aren't to blame for what the elders pull. How about we try to talk for a little?"

Mei: ...

"Hmph. If you say so."

With the monkey as a new addition to the group, it was now a lot quieter. Mei and her friends looked at each other, not sure what to say. Even Wang Wei stopped picking up random plants.

"Um, sorry about back then, I guess?" Mei said. "I guess the relationship between spirit beasts and people here isn't the best... Is it because of the elders doing stuff like that, sending disciples to collect herbs as taxes?"

To be honest, that didn't seem that bad to her... hiring someone to snatch it back seemed a little petty.

"Hmph. Those are just small things. We're not angry just because of such petty reasons, there's much more to that. A lot of you humans don't realise this, but the area the sect occupies didn't always use to belong to them."

Da Xing nodded sadly.

"Sects aren't started just anywhere. Say, have you noticed how rich the qi is here?"

"I guess..." Mei said.

"Exactly. Sects are built upon huge spirit veins, not barren wastelands without a spot of life. Qi is essentially the lifeforce of the planet. In areas like that, life will flourish, creating landscape draped with forestry. Do you catch my drift?"

Mei thought about it for a bit.

"Errr..."

Monkey sighed and put a hand to his face.

"In places like that, that's where us spirit beasts live! Essentially, thousands of years ago, before the birth of the sect, your sect master and elders waltzed into the forest and claimed it as theirs. I wasn't born back then, but you can be sure there was a war..."

"Oh..."

"Hah. At least from what I heard from the ancient beasts that were around back then, amazingly, there were no casualties. So, get this. You get your land stolen from you without being reimbursed, and now the robbers want to tax you for living in your own homes. And that's not even mentioning the forests that were straight-up removed to make space for sect infrastructure. Hilarious, isn't it?"

"Um..." Da Xing said. "Well... I feel like things have been improving as time passed, at least. More and more of our reserves are being exempt from taxes, and our wages have been going up too... I'm sure the human elders have their hands tied by red tape too..."

"Da Xing, you're just being soft. And on top of all of that, we get paid less than human disciples for working the same hours, and our living spaces are separate. It's straight-up discrimination!"

For the next 30 minutes, Monkey continued to complain about all sorts of things. Mei and her friends felt rather awkward, not to sure what to say.