Heard you ate tofu every day for a while?

Lu Yang, Meng Jingzhou, and Tao Yaoye silently withdrew their gazes, desperately lowering their presence.

Judging by the fierce looks on the five senior brothers' faces, they probably even had the urge to kill them to silence them.

"Speaking of which, do you want to guess what good things I ordered for you? They're definitely all things you like to eat." Meng Jingzhou spoke in a low voice, afraid of attracting the attention of the five senior brothers eating the slaughtered-pig feast.

Lu Yang was utterly confused. How did 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 voice.

Meng Jingzhou gave a thumbs-up and flashed a brilliant smile that showed eight teeth. "I specifically asked Eldest Senior Sister."

A bad feeling suddenly rose in Lu Yang's heart.

"Stuffed tofu coming right up!"

"Freshly made tofu pudding!"

"Tofu with scallions!"

"Mapo tofu!"

The waiter called out the dishes as he served them. One exquisite tofu dish after another appeared before Lu Yang, and even Tao Yaoye, who was not particularly interested in tofu, wanted to have a good meal after catching the aroma.

With every shout, Lu Yang's face grew one shade paler.

Meng Jingzhou was rather smug. "Eldest Senior Sister said that for a period of time, you didn't eat anything else. You ate tofu every day, tofu at every meal, and even said something in your sleep about the 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable.'"

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

"Don't be too moved. My family told me that when treating someone to a meal, you have to find out their preferences first in order to show sincerity. I disagree with my family's views most of the time, but I agree with them on this."

"I specifically came to Hundred Fragrance House and ordered a whole tofu feast. Don't look down on these dishes. They may look plain and ordinary, but the soybeans used are all spirit beans selected from among a thousand. The side ingredients are spirit medicines that have aged for many years, and even the water is pure water obtained by melting the marrow of the ice from the Extreme North..."

Lu Yang's face turned paler than tofu in an instant.

What sort of preference did you find out about?!

After the diners ate to their hearts' content, patted their bulging bellies, and left Hundred Fragrance House, the waiter swiftly wiped the tables, arranged the stools, and cleared away the bowls and chopsticks. Once he had some free time, he remembered Lu Yang's question again.

After eating a Fasting Pill, did that count as eating a meal, or did it count as fasting?

This seemingly plain and ordinary question concealed profound mysteries. The more he thought about it, the more philosophical it seemed.

It seemed that among this batch of newly recruited disciples, there was someone of exceptional comprehension. He would certainly accomplish great things in the future!

"Hey, chef, let me ask you something." The waiter went to the kitchen and tossed the question to the butcher.

The kitchen was filled with waves of scorching heat. A Qi Refining cultivator who took even one hit would, if lucky, be left with the root of a fire-poison illness that would torment them for life. If unlucky, their internal organs would be burned through, leaving behind nothing but a skeleton.

Naturally, ordinary mortal flames were not enough to cook heavenly treasures and immortal flowers or rare treasures. Not to mention anything else, just burning the hair off a Nascent Soul Realm wild boar required flames refined by a late-stage Golden Core cultivator at the very least. Such flames were naturally terrifyingly powerful.

The waiter ignored the kitchen's dreadful heat and casually fanned himself with the towel over his shoulder. The high temperature vanished without a trace, replaced by a refreshing coolness.

"What is it? You want to learn how to butcher pigs from me?"

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

The chef, who was washing the stove, laughed. He stopped washing, tossed the brush aside, and crossed one leg over the other. "Ask away."

"Do you think eating a Fasting Pill counts as eating a meal, or does it count as fasting?"

The chef gave a scornful snort. Without thinking, he was just about to give the answer when he suddenly fell silent.

Right. Did it count as eating a meal or fasting?

The chef looked suspiciously at the waiter. "Something's not right. Your intelligence is plain for all to see. How could someone with your intelligence have thought of a question like this?"

The waiter shouted angrily, "Butcher, I'm telling you, don't look down on people!"

"So you thought of this question?"

"No."

The two of them discussed it and decided that their brains were still too underdeveloped to ponder a question like this. Thus, they took the question to the House Master.

The fragrance of tea floated through the air, coalescing into ancient, obscure, and mysterious characters. The House Master scalded the pot, placed in the tea, warmed the cups... and savored the tea. Her movements flowed like clouds and water, pleasing to the eye.

The House Master was a beautiful, dignified noblewoman with jade-white skin and a faint star-shaped mark on her forehead.

She looked helplessly at the waiter and chef, wondering whether they had too little work to do that they still had the leisure to think about such a boring question.

"Do not be misled by the name Fasting Pill. The purpose of a Fasting Pill is not actually to fast. It is food refined into a pill, which slowly decomposes in the stomach, thereby allowing someone to go without eating for a long period of time."

"A Fasting Pill is food in essence."

"Understand?"

The chef pondered this. "I understand. So the alchemist who refines Fasting Pills is actually in the same line of work as me."

The waiter gave a scornful snort and mocked him. "Don't flatter yourself. At most, you're in the same line of work as the alchemist's assistant who fans the fire."

The chef flew into a rage, grabbed his butcher's knife, and hacked at the waiter.

The waiter was no pushover either. He violently snapped the towel over his shoulder, producing a faint metallic clang. The towel actually transformed in an instant into a white iron staff.

One wielding a knife and the other wielding a staff, the two wrestled with each other like street thugs, constantly using all sorts of dirty tricks. The House Master wore an utterly helpless expression. If their wages had not been so cheap, she would never have hired them, no matter what.

The House Master gently blew along with the fragrance of the tea. The tea fragrance grew thick and wound around the two men's hearts, causing them to lose their way for a moment. By the time they came to their senses, they had already arrived downstairs.

The House Master's cool voice, tinged with irritation, reached their ears. "Go fight downstairs. If you break anything, I'll deduct it from your wages."

Lu Yang had no idea what happened at Hundred Fragrance House after they left. After finishing his Foundation Establishment feast and returning to Heaven Gate Peak, his face was as pale as if he had been dead for three days.

Eldest Senior Sister wore a dark-blue long dress and a plain Daoist hairpin. Sitting cross-legged three feet above the ground, she was meditating in cultivation, like a transcendent immortal untouched by the mortal world, without a trace of worldly aura.

Yun Zhi slowly opened her eyes. They seemed to contain a thousand worlds, brilliant as the night sky. An illusion flashed past. Lu Yang rubbed his eyes, only to see Yun Zhi calmly looking at him, with no trace of the phenomenon ever having appeared in her eyes.

An illusion?

"Why is your face so pale?"

Lu Yang said crossly, "You already know the answer. Meng Jingzhou heard from you that I had eaten tofu at every meal for a period of time, so he treated me to a whole table of tofu on the pretext of celebrating my Foundation Establishment."

Lu Yang suspected that his dear Eldest Senior Sister had meddled in this somehow.

"Meng Jingzhou asked me what you ate the most. As I recall, you ate several vats of tofu while using tofu to practice cultivation. I merely told him what actually happened. What was the problem?"

"But the Tofu Heavenly Venerable..."

Before Lu Yang could finish, Yun Zhi replied again in her utterly toneless voice, "In your dream, you shouted that you had received an inheritance and loudly called out the words 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable.' I merely repeated what you said."

Lu Yang silently looked at Yun Zhi's innocent, desireless gaze and admitted defeat.

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