Fifteen minutes later—
"Two travelers for the Twin Leaf Peak Sect!" a voice called.
Xu Qing stood up. "Come on."
Han Yu practically jumped to his feet.
They were led toward a small door at the back of the hall.
'...This looks underwhelming. Maybe the inside is grand?'
The door creaked open.
Han Yu looked inside—
It was not a grand palace gate. It was not a swirling vortex of power. It was not even shiny.
It was just a plain stone archway with faintly glowing runes.
Han Yu had never felt so disappointed in his life.
Even the room was rather small, about the size of his hideout. The whole thing looked more like a cheap parlor trick than a mystical gateway of boundless power.
"It's rather small," Han Yu muttered.
"Do you even know what you're talking about?" Xu Qing replied. "Do you know how complex a Teleportation Gate is? How difficult and expensive the arrays are to set up?"
"No?" Han Yu admitted.
"What did I even expect..." Xu Qing shook her head.
"Though, how much would something cost?" Han Yu asked curiously while the gate began to activate.
"A gate of this size? Hmm... About a million High Grade Spirit Stones," Xu Qing estimated.
"A M... M-million!?" Han Yu was stunned. "Wait, what's a High Grade Spirit Stone?" he realized belatedly.
"Spirit Stones are divided into four grades: Low, Mid, High, and Peak," Xu Qing explained. "The ones I paid with earlier were Low Grade Spirit Stones."
"And this thing costs three times as much?!" Han Yu was horrified.
"No... It's at least three thousand times or even more expensive," Xu Qing corrected him.
"What the..." The boy was taken aback.
"Every rise in the grade of Spirit Stone increases its value exponentially. You can't even buy High Grade Spirit Stones with Low Grade ones."
"And what about Peak Grade ones?" Han Yu wondered aloud.
"Those aren't something you will see... probably never in your lifetime," Xu Qing stated.
"Damn, they're that rare?" Han Yu muttered in surprise.
"In an entire Spirit Stone mine, there might not be more than a few kilograms of Peak Grade Spirit Stones. They are a tactical resource that even the sects might not have more than a few of at any given time." Xu Qing explained further, knowing that the boy needed to understand the cultivation world better.
This was part of her duties as a recruiter anyway. Normally, this information would be taught over the span of a few days during travel, but since Xu Qing was rushing back, she needed to speed things up.
And just as she finished speaking, the Teleportation Gate finally activated.
A swirling white portal opened within the archway, its surface quickly stabilizing into what looked like a plain, white sheet.
"Enter!" the cultivator overseeing the gate ordered.
Before Han Yu could react, Xu Qing grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him forward.
"WAAAAAA!" Han Yu shrieked, stumbling forward. "Why are we in such a hurry?!"
"Do you know how much it costs to keep this thing active?" Xu Qing said, and that was the last thing he heard before they disappeared.
The portal flickered as they passed through, then snapped shut behind them.
The runes dimmed, and the gate returned to its dormant state.
Inside the portal, Han Yu experienced something truly bizarre.
His body felt weightless. He couldn't see anything—just an endless, depthless void. If it weren't for the fact that he could still feel his own limbs, he would have thought he had ceased to exist entirely.
It was incredibly disorienting.
'Shouldn't I feel like I'm moving?'
To him, it felt like he was just floating in absolute nothingness. He reached out, but there was no sensation of wind, no feeling of motion. Just eerie silence.
He tried to understand what was happening, but before he could grasp it, the experience ended abruptly.
His vision turned stark white, like he had just stared directly into the sun for far too long.
"Ugh!" he groaned, suddenly feeling his weight return.
In the next moment, he hit the ground face-first.
"OW!" Han Yu yelped, his nose throbbing in pain.
He struggled to push himself up, eyes watering from the impact, only to see Xu Qing already several feet away, watching him with an amused expression.
"Where are you going?!" Han Yu called after her, only to see her take another step back.
He didn't have to wonder for long.
"I feel sick..." he mumbled as his stomach churned violently. "UGUAAAAAAA!"
Unable to hold it in, he emptied his stomach right then and there.
"Disgusting," Xu Qing muttered, stepping further away.
Han Yu had never regretted a decision so fast in his life.
Now he understood why she had told him not to eat beforehand. Since he had only drunk water, what came out was mostly stomach acid—a clear but horribly vile-smelling mess.
The stench of vomit quickly filled the room, making the teleportation staff collectively wince.
"Ugh, another first-timer," one of them groaned, already grabbing a mop.
Han Yu continued to dry heave for another minute, his body desperately trying to expel something that wasn't there anymore.
Xu Qing, ever the pragmatist, grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him toward the exit.
"Can't let you hold up the line," she said simply.
Han Yu could do nothing but dangle limply, still recovering from his misery. It took him a full five minutes to feel remotely human again, though his stomach remained queasy.
"That was the worst!" Han Yu groaned. "I am never using a Teleportation Gate again!"
His initial excitement was long gone. The grandeur of teleportation was a lie.
Xu Qing merely smirked.
"Oh, you'll be using it again. Many, many times." Xu Qing smirked. "Maybe not soon, but probably in the future." She spun a looming sense of doom over him.
He had a bad feeling about this.