"Slow down. If you really like meat, I can have the merchant guild bring in some high-quality fatty meat, the kind that's easy to digest and has less mixed energy. If you can't digest this high-element meat, it'll produce Composite Energy fat. That will affect your elemental perception, for one thing, and make magical beasts less willing to approach you..."
Ni Lan lowered her voice. "Magical beasts are wary of all carnivores, including flower spirits. If you want magical beasts to be sufficiently friendly toward you, you can't let your scent become too much like that of a large carnivore. You're still young, so the impact isn't that great. Once you grow to a certain point, though, it'll have a major effect..."
"Oh..." Little Cabbage nodded earnestly, then viciously bit into the leg of meat in front of her!
Ni Lan: "..."
She was certain now. This girl was the sort who let everything go in one ear and out the other...
So she put on a stern face and dragged the plate of meat away from Little Cabbage. "Did you remember what I just said?"
"I remembered, I remembered!" Little Cabbage panicked when she saw the plate being taken away and hurriedly nodded.
"Then repeat what I said about the various factions at the beginning," Ni Lan said with a displeased expression.
"Oh..." Little Cabbage stared unblinkingly at the plate the other woman had snatched away. "The Crown Prince enrolled this year, and the other royal contenders enrolled too, so there'll be factional struggles. We're neutral..."
Ni Lan naturally had no intention of returning the meat so easily and continued asking, "Neutral is neutral, but you still have to avoid conflicts with these factions, so you have to recognize them. Tell me about the factional divisions I just explained..."