Cultivating Immortality by Raising a Cat (GL) Chapter 65

As soon as Lin Mianmian teleported over and the white light before her eyes scattered, she had not even had time to sigh that she had finally reached the cultivation place she had imagined before Xiong Lanlan half-pushed her to a single-story wooden building more than ten steps from the teleportation array. It looked like a small palace.
The building had no outer courtyard. At a glance, it seemed rather tiny, about the size of one main hall in a temple, unable to hold many people. The dark raw wood and fine carved designs made it look more like a small place of worship than a place to eat.
But now that she had reached a world of cultivation, things could no longer be judged by their surface. Just like the tents in Yingxian City, the difference between the space outside and inside could be very large.
While chatting in the forest, Yuan Zhaoyang had also said that cultivators had many methods. Take residences, for example. From outside, a place might look like one house, but inside, it might be a tiny space that barely held one person, or it might hide a secret realm with countless waters and mountains. The naked eye could no longer make a certain judgment. After becoming a cultivator, divine sense would gradually replace the five senses as the more effective way to observe.
So what surprised Lin Mianmian was not this building’s outer appearance, but…
In the middle of the building was an arched main door that took up almost most of the front wall. On each side was a closed square side door. The one Xiong Lanlan pushed open with one paw was the small door on the left of the main door. And inside…
“We should still be inside the Five Elements Sect, right?” Lin Mianmian hesitated, looking into the door Xiong Lanlan had opened, then looking at the cultivators outside who were walking, flying, coming, and going. She could not make herself step forward.
“Of course.” Xiong Lanlan laughed loudly. “Could I have teleported you outside? My disciple plate does not have such advanced authority for now. Besides, that has to be done through a special teleportation array.”
“You foolish bear. Is that what she was asking you?” Gui Changshou stretched out his neck and cast Xiong Lanlan a sideways look. He slowly crawled to Lin Mianmian’s feet, patted the tip of her shoe with one claw, and pointed inside the door to explain.
“Doesn’t it look like we arrived at the Ten Thousand Demons Sect? Actually, they are only our senior brothers and sisters. Behind this door is the room where one meal ticket lets you eat until full. It is a Five Elements Sect benefit and demon cultivators’ favorite. Human cultivators usually go through the door on the right. Over there, you buy whatever you eat.”
No wonder…
The space inside was indeed much larger than it looked from outside. Setting everything else aside, the three elephants standing in one corner of the room could never have fit in the space she had seen from outside. Not to mention the demons inside, sitting on the floor in groups of three or five, eating and drinking. Added together, there were at least several dozen.
“You sure know a lot!” Xiong Lanlan stepped on Gui Changshou’s provoking face with one bear paw again. Then she turned and spoke gently to Lin Mianmian. “Yes, they are all our senior brothers and sisters. Do not be afraid. They are like us, all at the Qi Refining stage. Also, they do not eat fellow disciples.”
“I am not afraid. I was only a little startled.” Lin Mianmian glanced at Xiong Lanlan’s foot. “If you step on him like that, will he be all right?”
“He will be fine. It is only a difference of one cultivation level. It is not as if I can crush him.” Xiong Lanlan said it was only one level, but pride could not be hidden from her bear face.
As she spoke, she stepped into the door. Then she suddenly slapped her forehead and backed out again. “Honestly, once we go in, we cannot use storage bags. I was so angry at this stupid turtle that I forgot to take out the meal tickets.”
This time, Xiong Lanlan patted five plain-looking paper slips out of the storage bag on her neck. Only then did she pull Lin Mianmian inside.
The group followed Xiong Lanlan into the room. The door slowly closed. The five tickets in Xiong Lanlan’s hand gave off a faint light, then vanished. In their place, five large plates and several sheets of paper appeared at everyone’s feet.
Xiong Lanlan skillfully scooped up the plates and papers, looked left and right, and said, “There is space over there. Let us sit there.”
So where was the food?
Lin Mianmian looked around but did not see any food counter. When she looked at Feng Liang, Feng Liang had the same confused face as her. Meng Tianhe, on the other hand, followed Xiong Lanlan without question, still carrying his unchanging gloom.
“You human cultivators do not come to this side often. Actually, this place is about the same as the right side.” Gui Changshou slowly squeezed over and waved a claw at Lin Mianmian and Feng Liang. As he crawled, he explained, “For both sides, the cultivation level of the person opening the door decides which dining room you enter. You go to the dining room for that same cultivation level.”
“The dining room on the right requires you to exchange spirit stones for meal points first. Then, at the storage counters where the dishes are placed, you brush meal points to take the food you want. You get however much you pay for.”
“Here on the left, you use one meal ticket when you enter. After that, you can keep eating here. By keep eating, I mean that as long as you do not leave this room, after that one meal ticket is used, even if you live here and eat for several years, it is allowed. But not many demons do that. After all, storage bags cannot be used in this room, and the spiritual energy provided by food cannot compare with what you get outside from the Great Lecture Hall and completing sect tasks.”
So it was the difference between ordering dishes and a buffet… Mm, an unlimited-time buffet.
As the group listened to Gui Changshou explain, they followed Xiong Lanlan around patches of demon cultivators sitting on the ground and eating heartily.
The Five Elements Sect had quite a lot of demon cultivators. Just among the Qi Refining demon cultivators who had come here to eat, there were twenty or thirty, not counting those who had not come.
The most eye-catching were naturally the three elephant demons who could be seen first even from a corner. Aside from those three, most of the other demon cultivators were half-demons. Only one deer demon, and one fish demon lying in a big soup basin and looking at first glance like a dish, were pure demons.
Although everyone eating in the room was a demon cultivator, they did not react much to human cultivators like Lin Mianmian entering. When Feng Liang accidentally bumped into the deer cultivator’s antlers, the deer cultivator even said, very gently and kindly in a charming low male voice, “Junior Sister, be careful.”
And so the strange unease born from their different appearances gradually scattered in this friendly, peaceful eating atmosphere.
Very soon, they reached the empty spot Xiong Lanlan had picked. Everyone sat on the ground. It had a bit of the feeling of coming out for a picnic.
So… where was the food counter?
Lin Mianmian looked left and right. She saw that not far away, the deer demon’s bowl, which had held green vegetable soup earlier, was now full of small red fruits.
What kind of fruit was that?
Lin Mianmian stared carefully, trying to match the fruit’s appearance with a description in the Food Classic.
“Hey, stop looking. Let us eat too.” Xiong Lanlan stretched out a bear paw and waved it in front of Lin Mianmian’s eyes. Then she stuffed a plate and a sheet of paper into her hand. “If you want to eat something, peel it off and stick it to the edge of the bowl. Then just wait.”
What?
Lin Mianmian looked at the paper in her hand. On the thin sheet were labels stuck on for seven dish names.
“Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig left hind rump, Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig right hind rump, Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig front ribs, Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig tail, Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig cheek, Bitter Jiji Grass Soup, Blood Vulture Rock-Bottom Orange-Red Fruit…” Feng Liang read through the menu and frowned. “Five dishes are all Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig. When I bought food from the other side before, I ate Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig belly, and it felt a little gamey… Has anyone eaten Eastern Sea Bitter Jiji Grass before? Is it bitter?”
“It is gamey. I do not like it either.” Xiong Lanlan peeled off a Bitter Jiji Grass label and stuck it to the edge of her big plate. “I will taste this grass for you.”
“I will try the orange-red fruit. I saw a demon cultivator eating it just now, so it should be all right.” Gui Changshou peeled off the orange-red fruit label.
Meng Tianhe looked at Xiong Lanlan, then at Gui Changshou, and stuck the orange-red fruit label onto his own plate.
Stone-Foot White-Skin Pig… Bitter Jiji Grass… Orange-Red Fruit…
One main ingredient and two supplementary ingredients. The Food Classic had mentioned all of them.
Lin Mianmian’s hand holding the menu trembled slightly. So after Red Essence Five-Scale Fish, this world really did have other things from the Food Classic.
“Mianmian, you can try whatever you want to eat. Each serving that appears is not big. If you do not like it, you can stick on a different dish next time.” Xiong Lanlan pushed the plate where green vegetable soup had already appeared toward Lin Mianmian to prove one serving was truly not much. “If you do not like anything on the menu, you can also wait. This menu updates. If a dish has been ordered out, or a new dish suddenly appears, it will show up here.”
Lin Mianmian looked at the dark green vegetable soup in Xiong Lanlan’s bowl and nodded. She also stuck a Bitter Jiji Grass Soup label onto her plate.
“Tsk… bitter…” Xiong Lanlan took a sip of the soup in her bowl and frowned. She drank the second mouthful in one go, smacked her lips, and said, “The aftertaste is a little sweet, but it is a dish I do not want to order a second time…”
“The orange-red fruit is good.” Meng Tianhe rarely offered his opinion on his own. Then he handed the fruit in his bowl to Lin Mianmian. “You eat this. The grass soup is bitter. I will drink it for you.”
Lin Mianmian shook her head and refused.
Meng Tianhe drew back his hand.
Feng Liang looked at the two people sitting on her left and right. For some reason, she felt that something was not quite right.
Bitter Jiji Grass, supplementary ingredient, half-palm serrated leaves, grows in patches.
In the Food Classic, Bitter Jiji Grass only appeared as a supplementary ingredient in several fish-type strange beast dishes. But because it grew in patches, reproduced quickly, and had no attack ability, it was one of the first mutated plants discovered and transplanted by humans during the apocalypse.
Because it grew quickly, did not damage the land much, had a high success rate when replanted, and caused no bad reactions when eaten alone, Bitter Jiji Grass existed as a staple food on the base menu for quite a long time.
The taste of Bitter Jiji Grass…
At this moment, Lin Mianmian actually felt a strange nostalgia.
Almost the instant the Bitter Jiji Grass Soup label was stuck to the edge of the plate, dark green vegetable soup appeared out of thin air in Lin Mianmian’s large plate. It looked like the label had activated a teleportation array on the plate? Lin Mianmian, who knew very little about the cultivation world, could only guess that much. She kept feeling that this kind of small thing seemed very impressive…
But the important point right now was still this bowl of soup…
Lin Mianmian took a small sip from the plate. There was a faint astringent bitterness, a slight sweet aftertaste after swallowing, and the unique grassy fragrance of Bitter Jiji Grass.
Yes…
Aside from the fine bits of grass in the soup being a little more tender than the ones she had eaten during the apocalypse, the flavor was almost no different. Mm… the salt seemed more blended into the soup. It was probably made with Glow-Shell Salt. During the apocalypse, it had already been good enough if they could add a little ordinary salt that floated on the surface of the flavor.
“It is bitter, right? If you cannot drink it, I will help you. My mouth is big anyway. It will slide down in one go.” Xiong Lanlan kindly stretched out her empty plate.
Lin Mianmian refused. She slowly drank all the grass soup in her plate. The taste was still as familiarly unpleasant as before, but her body had a new and strange feeling.
A very comfortable feeling spread out from her stomach. It slowly rose and washed through her mind, like thin mist, like a fine stream, gathering in one place into one tiny drop.
The night before, Lin Mianmian had nearly failed when drawing spiritual energy into her body. After that, she discovered the existence of her internal core, let the spiritual energy pass through the internal core, and finally succeeded in gathering it in her dantian.
In the end, drawing spiritual energy into her body had succeeded, and she had found the internal core too. But the internal core was empty. Even after most of a day, it had not recovered even the slightest bit of ability power. It was as if the power she had during the apocalypse, which could recover with time, had disappeared.
Lin Mianmian had tried circulating the spiritual energy in her dantian through the internal core again, but the internal core was like only a passage. It could not store even the slightest bit.
Lin Mianmian could only think that in the future, she would find a chance to obtain a wood-type crystal core and try again.
But unexpectedly… this Bitter Jiji Grass Soup, though it had restored less than one ten-thousandth of the ability power inside the internal core, had at least stored it.
Even if it was only one drop of water in a vast empty reservoir, at least it had not leaked away.
When she ate Bitter Jiji Grass during the apocalypse, it clearly had not had this effect… Or had her ability power been able to recover on its own then, so she had ignored it?
Lin Mianmian could not figure it out for now. But that did not stop her from sticking the Bitter Jiji Grass Soup label, which had reappeared on the menu, onto her plate with excitement in her heart.