Chapter 28: I Heard You Ate Tofu Every Day for a While?

Lu Yang and his two companions silently withdrew their gazes, doing their absolute best to diminish their presence.

Judging by the ferocious expressions on the faces of their five senior brothers, it seemed they might well have the urge to silence witnesses permanently.

"Speaking of which, do you want to guess what good things I ordered for you? They're definitely all your favorites," Meng Jingzhou whispered, terrified of drawing the attention of the five senior brothers currently devouring the pig-slaughtering feast.

Lu Yang was utterly bewildered; how on earth could Meng Jingzhou know what he liked to eat?

"How do you know what Senior Brother Lu likes to eat?" Tao Yaoye asked in an even softer whisper.

Meng Jingzhou flashed a thumbs-up, revealing a brilliant smile that showed eight teeth: "I made a special trip to ask Eldest Senior Sister."

A sudden, ominous premonition welled up inside Lu Yang.

"Stuffed tofu coming through!"

"Freshly made tofu pudding!"

"Scallion tossed tofu!"

"Mapo tofu!"

The waiter announced the names of the dishes while serving them, presenting a full tofu banquet vibrant in color, aroma, and taste right before Lu Yang. Even Tao Yaoye, who usually had little interest in tofu, felt an urge to indulge upon smelling the fragrance.

With every shout from the waiter, Lu Yang's face turned a shade paler.

Meng Jingzhou felt rather triumphant: "Eldest Senior Sister told me that for a while you wouldn't eat anything else. You ate tofu every single day, at every single meal, and you even muttered something about the 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable' in your sleep."

"So I figured you must really love eating tofu."

"No need to be too moved. My family taught me that when inviting someone to dine, one must ascertain their preferences to show true sincerity. Although I disagree with my family's views most of the time, I agree with them on this point."

"I specifically came to Baixiang Restaurant to order a whole table for a tofu banquet. Don't look down on these dishes; though they look plain, the soybeans used are actually spiritual beans chosen as one in a thousand, the side ingredients are aged spiritual herbs, and the water used is pure water obtained by melting the core ice from the extreme north..."

In an instant, Lu Yang's face turned whiter than the tofu itself.

What kind of preference did you even find out!

...

Once the diners left Baixiang Restaurant satisfied, patting their bulging bellies, the waiter swiftly wiped down the tables, arranged the stools, and finished clearing away the bowls and chopsticks. Finding himself free, he recalled Lu Yang's question.

If one consumes an Inedia Pill, does it count as eating a meal or practicing inedia?

This seemingly ordinary question harbored a hidden depth, and the more he thought about it, the more philosophical it felt.

It appeared that among this batch of newly recruited disciples, there was someone of exceedingly high comprehension who would surely achieve great things in the future!

"Hey, chef, let me ask you a question." The waiter walked into the kitchen and threw the question to the one slaughtering pigs.

The kitchen was a rolling wave of scorching heat. If someone at the Qi Refining stage caught even a glimpse of it, the lucky ones would be left with a chronic fire-poison ailment that would torment them for a lifetime, while the unlucky ones would have their internal organs burned clean through, leaving nothing but a skeleton.

To cook heavenly materials, earthly treasures, immortal flora, and rare delicacies, using ordinary mortal fire was naturally out of the question. To say nothing of the rest, just to singe the hair off a Nascent Soul stage wild boar required a flame refined by someone at least at the late Golden Core stage; such a flame was naturally terrifying in power.

The waiter completely ignored the horrifying heat of the kitchen, casually fanning himself with the towel on his shoulder, and the high temperature vanished without a trace, replaced instead by a wave of coolness.

"What's up? Want to learn how to slaughter pigs from me?"

The waiter glared: "Why would I learn that? I thought of a philosophical question related to cooking and came to test you."

The chef, who was washing the stove, laughed. He stopped his work, tossed the brush aside, and crossed his legs: "Ask away."

"Tell me, if someone consumes an Inedia Pill, does it count as eating a meal or practicing inedia?"

The chef sneered and without a second thought prepared to give an answer, only to find himself struck dumb.

Indeed, did it count as eating a meal or practicing inedia?

The chef looked at the waiter suspiciously: "Something's not right. Your intelligence is plain for all to see. With your brain, how could you possibly think of such a question?"

The waiter said angrily: "Let me tell you, pig-slaughterer, don't look down on people!"

"So you're saying you thought of this question?"

"No."

The two of them discussed it and felt that with their brains, it was still too early to ponder such questions, so they brought the matter to the Proprietress.

The fragrant tea drifted through the air, condensing into ancient characters that were obscure and mysterious. The Proprietress warmed the pot, placed the tea, heated the cups... and tasted the tea, her movements flowing like water and dressing the eyes beautifully.

The Proprietress was a beautiful woman of noble temperament, fair and pure as jade, with a faintly visible star imprint marked upon her forehead.

She looked helplessly at the waiter and the chef, wondering if they simply had too little work to do, since they had the leisure to ponder such boring questions.

"Do not be misled by the name of the Inedia Pill. The purpose of the Inedia Pill is fundamentally not to practice inedia, but rather it is a pill refined from food that slowly decomposes in the stomach to achieve the effect of going without food for a long time."

"In essence, the Inedia Pill is food."

"Understand?"

The chef looked thoughtful: "Understood. So the alchemists who refine Inedia Pills are actually in the same trade as me."

The waiter sneered and mocked: "Don't go putting feathers in your cap. At most, you're in the same trade as the alchemy boy who fans the fire."

The chef flew into a towering rage, grabbing his meat cleaver and hacking toward the waiter.

The waiter was no pushover either. With a fierce snap of the towel on his shoulder, it let out a faint metallic clinking sound, and the towel instantly transformed into a massive iron-white staff.

One wielding a knife and the other wielding a staff, the two tangled in a brawl like street thugs, using all sorts of underhanded tricks continuously. The Proprietress's face was full of helplessness; were it not for the fact that these two were cheap to hire, there was no way she would have recruited them.

The Proprietress gently blew a breath along the fragrance of the tea. The rich tea aroma enveloped the minds of the two men, causing them to temporarily lose their direction. By the time they snapped back to their senses, they had already arrived downstairs.

From their ears came the Proprietress's slightly irritated, cool voice: "Go fight downstairs. Anything you break will be deducted from your wages."

...

Lu Yang had no idea what happened at Baixiang Restaurant after they left. When he finished the Foundation Establishment feast and returned to Tianmen Peak, his face was so white he looked as if he had been dead for three days.

Eldest Senior Sister wore an indigo-blue long dress and a simple Daoist hairpin. She sat cross-legged, hovering three feet above the ground, meditating and cultivating like a fairy transcending the material world, completely untouched by the dust of the mortal realm.

Yun Zhi slowly opened her eyes. Her gaze seemed to contain a thousand worlds, brilliant as the night sky. The illusion flashed and vanished. Lu Yang rubbed his eyes, only to see Yun Zhi looking at him calmly, as if the vision in her eyes had never appeared.

An illusion?

"Why is your face so white?"

Lu Yang said testily: "You're asking what you already know. Meng Jingzhou heard from you that for a while I ate tofu at every meal, so on the pretext of celebrating my foundation establishment, he treated me to a whole table of tofu."

Lu Yang suspected that his beloved Eldest Senior Sister had something to do with this behind the scenes.

"Meng Jingzhou asked me what you ate the most. In my memory, when you practiced your techniques with tofu, you ate several jars of it. I merely told him what actually happened, what is the problem with that?"

"Then the Tofu Heavenly Venerable..."

Before Lu Yang could finish, Yun Zhi replied once more in an entirely flat tone: "You shouted in your dream that you had obtained a legacy, and loudly called out the four words 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable'. I merely relayed that as well."

Lu Yang silently looked into Yun Zhi's desireless and innocent eyes, completely defeated.

He always suspected that Eldest Senior Sister was playing with him, but he had no evidence.