Dawn had not yet fully broken. The distant sky held a faint whiteness, while nearer places remained bathed in a cold blue hue. In that brief moment of blurred vision, he couldn’t make out the person before him clearly—as if he were still on the battlefield of Xingxiu River, where his comrades-in-arms reached out their hands toward him.
Zhou Yan’s voice rang out: “Uncle Shen? Uncle Shen?”
Shen Cangming felt momentarily disoriented, then came back to himself. His expression remained unchanged as he responded with a low grunt, using the motion of sitting up to conceal the traces at the corners of his eyes. He saw Zhou Yan roasting chunks of meat beside the campfire, along with several bamboo segments that emitted a faint fragrance.
Food…
Shen Cangming’s stomach stirred, and a wave of hunger surged through him.
Gripping his blade, he sat upright and asked, “This meat—did you hunt it yourself?”
Zhou Yan nodded. “I woke up earlier and saw Uncle Shen was still sleeping, so I thought I’d look around for something to eat. I got lucky. As for this rabbit… it ran into a tree and killed itself.”
Shen Cangming said, “Killed itself?”
Zhou Yan replied, “That’s right.”
His thoughts drifted back to what had happened earlier.
About an hour ago, Zhou Yan had activated the Hungry Ghost Jade Talisman for the first time. The overwhelming hunger had become unbearable, forcing him to search the vicinity for food. Thanks to his demonic talents, all potential food sources appeared remarkably clear to his eyes.
Zhou Yan had first found wild vegetables, then discovered wild rice. He’d come across mushrooms too, but uncertain of their toxicity, he’d discarded them. Grasshoppers? Too fast to catch—he’d given up on those.
After gathering various items, he’d spotted a rabbit. Zhou Yan’s heart had leaped with joy as he gave chase, but the rabbit ran incredibly fast, nearly disappearing in just a few bounds. Seeing his meal about to escape, Zhou Yan instinctively channeled his power.
A [Karmic Flame of Hunger] shot forth.
Zhou Yan felt something being drawn from his spiritual essence, and then a dark red flame flew from his fingertips, surpassing the rabbit’s speed and piercing through it before striking a tree ahead.
Zhou Yan had been somewhat annoyed at first. Even if the rabbit became hungry, it would only run faster—what was the point?
Indeed, the rabbit struck by Zhou Yan’s spell seemed to go mad with hunger, its speed suddenly surging. Then, under Zhou Yan’s grief-stricken gaze as he watched his food flee, the rabbit became so desperate with hunger that it rammed headfirst into a massive tree ahead.
Thud.
It smashed its head bloody and died on the spot.
Zhou Yan had stood there dumbfounded, only then vaguely realizing that magic was, after all, magic.
“Uncle Shen, please sit here for a moment. The food will be ready soon,” Zhou Yan said.
He first retrieved the bamboo segments that had turned golden from roasting. These were bamboo tubes he’d found nearby, cut to length, with holes drilled in one side using the screwdriver from his Swiss Army knife for ventilation. Inside, he’d stuffed processed wild rice and water, sealing the opening before roasting them over the fire. When the bamboo turned golden, the contents were nearly cooked.
Two other bamboo tubes contained wild vegetable soup, made by adding water and then dropping in red-hot stones to heat it. To this vegetable soup, he’d added the rabbit’s blood—animal blood could supplement their salt intake.
Along with the roasted rabbit meat and a handful of pine nuts, Zhou Yan arranged all the food items.
Shen Cangming fell silent.
The warmth hidden within these foods, what they represented, made this man filled with self-destructive, penitential fighting spirit feel uncomfortable. He sensed a strange sensation at his fingertips, or perhaps deep within his body.
As Zhou Yan arranged the food, he mentally reviewed his wilderness survival knowledge. Rabbit meat was too high in protein and too low in fat. Eating only rabbit meat would consume more energy to process the protein, and without adequate supplementation of other nutrients, it could lead to weakness. Moreover, consuming protein alone might overburden the liver.
They needed to eat a balanced diet.
Too bad there were no chili peppers.
Tsk, to be able to prepare such a feast in the wilderness—I’m truly incredible!
Though this was probably racial talent at work. What to do when stranded in the wild? In any case, having come this far, might as well start by caramelizing some sugar.
Shen Cangming looked at these items without refusing. He set aside the blood-stained horizontal blade and, using his hand bound with wrist guards and arm armor, picked up a bamboo tube. After a moment’s silence, he brought it to his lips. The faint salty taste, the flavor of vegetables, the soup flowing between his lips and teeth.
He paused silently, then tilted his head back and drained it.
His stomach began to move, and he picked up the roasted meat to bite into it. Though lacking much seasoning, in their state of hunger and thirst, in the desperate darkness, warm food itself was meaning enough.
Shen Cangming was driven by his body’s needs, eating in large mouthfuls.
Zhou Yan breathed a sigh of relief. He felt tremendous guilt and gratitude toward Shen Cangming. He too drank a couple of sips of soup, feeling the food flowing through his body. Food comforted the heart, and his initial panic from arriving in this world gradually dissipated.
No matter what, he had to survive well first.
Zhou Yan thought to himself, his gaze falling on the rough man across from him with his severed arm and single eye.
Zhou Yan added another thought: Hmm, and repay his kindness.
He wondered if Shen Uncle’s arm could somehow be restored. Since there were demons and monsters in this world, surely there was hope? And there was also Wang Chun… and Pei Xuanbao… that Master of Qingming Workshop.
Zhou Yan pondered these matters, mentally marking several items in his little notebook.
Unconsciously, Shen Cangming had finished all the food in front of him and still felt unsatisfied, but he restrained himself. Then a roasted rabbit leg was passed to him, as Zhou Yan said, “Uncle Shen, here.”
“The taste isn’t bad, is it?”
At that moment, the sun finally emerged, the sky brightened, and clouds drifted across the sea of mist. Sunlight flowed over the pine forest, and Zhou Yan sat in the sunlight, wearing his tattered clothes, his eyes bright, taking on a faintly translucent quality in the sunlight.
When he smiled, this young man who had been mad enough to fight desperately against hungry ghosts radiated a sense of smug satisfaction:
“No matter what happens, you must eat well first.”
“I think that if you eat good food, you’ll at least feel that today has some meaning, and things won’t seem so bad.”
“When you’re in a bad mood, you should eat.”
Deep in Shen Cangming’s heart, somehow, the thought suddenly arose that perhaps living like this wouldn’t be so bad.
He frowned, casting this weak notion from his mind.
No, he couldn’t be weak.
Zhou Yan stuffed the meat into Shen Cangming’s hands and sat there eating ravenously himself.
As the food settled in his stomach, the power of the Hungry Ghost Jade Talisman continued to take effect, rapidly digesting the food. Zhou Yan could almost directly feel his body beginning to grow stronger.
It seemed he had gained some strength.
His previous fatigue disappeared at an absolutely unreasonable speed.
Zhou Yan’s eyes widened slightly.
This was…
The power of the Hungry Ghost Jade Talisman?
Hungry ghosts constantly ate but could digest everything rapidly, yet couldn’t retain anything—it would leak out through their seven orifices. The Hungry Ghost Jade Talisman possessed the hungry ghost’s power to rapidly digest everything, but since Zhou Yan was human, those nutrients wouldn’t leak out through his orifices—they would remain in his body.
A hypothesis formed in Zhou Yan’s mind.
This meant that as long as he ate enough food, his physical body would gradually strengthen. If he ate food of sufficiently high quality, might he even grow to match Zhao the Butcher’s level of power?
Zhou Yan looked at the food as if staring at precious elixirs.
After finishing their meal, Zhou Yan packed the remaining gathered items into bamboo tubes. Shen Cangming gripped his blade, paused silently, then said, “Let’s go.”
Zhou Yan, who had been enthusiastically cataloging his salvaged items, asked curiously, “Where to?”
Shen Cangming replied, “The village.”
Shen Cangming and Zhou Yan, along with the big black horse, departed together. The place returned to its previous state—wind calm, clouds scattered lazily across the sky, just as they had been for countless centuries.
In the pine grove where Zhou Yan had chased the rabbit that crashed to its death, the great tree swayed gently. A squirrel scampered across it, perching on the trunk with a small pine cone, nose twitching.
Suddenly, the trunk released a great puff of white vapor with a poof. From the white mist emerged a small old man, one hand clutching his belly, the other gripping a walking stick, swaying unsteadily. His expression looked as if he hadn’t had a bite to eat in ages.
The old man clutched his belly, staggering and stumbling, weakly murmuring, “So…”
The squirrel tilted its little head in confusion, as if asking, “So what?”
The little old man took a long while before finally wailing out his answer:
“So hungry…!!!”
Zhou Yan’s spell had pierced through the rabbit and struck this very tree.
Rustle, rustle—
Zhou Yan heard the sound of wind through pine needles and turned back to see the pine forest swaying and making noise, though there was no wind. Being naturally carefree, having survived the night and eaten his fill, his mood was expansive. He actually laughed and said, “Uncle Shen, the pine trees are seeing us off.”
He waved farewell.
Clear skies stretched endlessly, not a cloud in sight. The youth spurred his horse forward.
With a wave of his hand, he departed, pine winds singing.
Within the pine forest, the old tree spirit clutched his belly, his face wrinkled like pine bark.
“So hungry, so hungry.”
He held his stomach, sitting there sighing and lamenting, with only his own long sighs for company.
“Where did this little immortal come from?”
“Yet he comes here to tease me?”
