Devour, This Is an Order

The afterglow sank completely below the horizon.

Su Chen fished the small emerald porcelain bottle from his robes, rubbed his thumb against the lingering warmth of the bottle, and tucked it back away.

He had just prepared to take a short nap when the light screen of the Eye of Omniscience flickered without warning.

Golden characters popped out, shining with a somewhat blinding intensity.

[Daily Bond Quest released for Binder No. 001 Bibi Dong: For seven consecutive days, personally prepare three meals a day for the Lord of Creation and supervise him until he finishes eating.]

[Reward: Each completed meal provides a minor increase in spiritual power; seven-day perfect attendance grants an additional reward: Rakshasa God Trial Eighth Stage Pass x1.]

[Failure Penalty: Soul-Devouring Pain, with increasing intensity.]

Su Chen's gaze lingered on the words "personally prepare" for two seconds, and a smile appeared on his face.

He had been lying low in Martial Soul Hall for sixteen years, eating coarse grain cakes and pickled vegetables for sixteen years.

A meal personally prepared by Her Holiness the Pope?

Forget eating it; just thinking about it felt surreal.

However, he was more interested in the reward.

Seven days of perfect attendance meant twenty-one meals in total.

The accumulated spiritual power increase, plus the hundredfold critical return on the trial pass...

Su Chen quickly finished calculating the math and closed his eyes, feeling satisfied.

This, he looked forward to.

Pope Palace, top-floor bedchamber.

Bibi Dong had just kicked her blood-stained shoes into a corner when that damned mechanical voice rang in her mind again.

After hearing the quest details, she froze in place, struck as if by lightning.

Personally.

Prepare.

Three meals.

She recognized these three words individually, but combined, they were nothing short of a fantasy!

Since being brought into Martial Soul Hall by Qian Daoliu at the age of six, she had cultivated, killed, and seized power... For these forty years, her hands had been stained with blood, gripped swords, and crushed the throats of countless powerhouses.

But she had never touched a kitchen knife!

[Failure Penalty: Soul-Devouring Pain, intensity increases by 20% based on the previous instance.]

Blood-red warning characters flashed frantically in her mind, like a death warrant.

Bibi Dong clenched her fists, her sharp nails piercing her palms. She gripped the oozing beads of blood tightly, as if only pain could suppress the monstrous rage in her heart.

Late night, Martial Soul Hall Imperial Kitchen.

Angela stood with four guards outside the kitchen, standing as stiff as wooden stakes, each one more rigid than the last.

Half a quarter-hour ago, Her Holiness the Pope, dressed in moon-white casual attire, had descended from the sky and tossed out a "Get out, all of you." The eight imperial chefs had scrambled out, running so fast they lost two of their shoes.

Through the thin window paper, Angela could see that slender, noble silhouette... picking up a kitchen knife.

Her brain instantly crashed.

Twenty years.

She had served in Martial Soul Hall for twenty full years; she had seen the Pope kill, seen the Pope pass God Trials, and seen the Pope cover the sky with one hand and hold the world in her palm.

But she had never seen the Pope... chop vegetables.

A guard beside her leaned in, his lips trembling, his voice lower than a mosquito's: "Lady Angela, Her Holiness... what is she doing?"

Angela's eyelid twitched wildly.

"Shut up," she squeezed the words through her teeth, "you saw nothing."

"Yes! This subordinate is blind! And deaf!"

Inside the kitchen.

Bibi Dong stood before the stove, a piece of raw meat, a few stalks of green vegetables, and a dish of coarse salt laid out before her.

She stared at the piece of meat for a full ten seconds.

She could easily dismember a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, yet she had no idea how to cook a piece of dead meat.

Bibi Dong took a deep breath, picked up the kitchen knife, and with the same precision she used to strip a soul bone, brought the blade down.

"Bang!"

The meat exploded instantly, shattering into seven or eight uneven pieces. The largest chunk even flew three feet away with a "splat," plastering itself against the wall.

Veins throbbed rhythmically against her smooth temples.

Start a fire.

She condensed a wisp of purple-black soul power on the index finger of her right hand, precisely controlling it to the lowest output, and tapped it lightly against the stove hearth.

"BOOM—!"

Flames leaped three feet high, and the wooden lid resting on the iron pot was blown off entirely by the blast, slamming into the rafters before bouncing back, nearly striking her forehead.

Billowing thick smoke surged outward.

Bibi Dong coughed violently as she was choked, raising her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth, her eyes turning red.

She gritted her teeth, forcibly suppressed the fire, and dumped all the minced meat into the pot at once.

She didn't add oil.

She had no idea that one needed to add oil to stir-fry.

The chunks of meat stuck to the bottom of the scorching iron pot, emitting a harsh "sizzling" sound, and a pungent, burnt odor rapidly permeated the air.

Bibi Dong scrambled to flip them over.

One side was completely black, while the other still bore the bloody color of raw meat.

She flipped them again.

This time both sides were black, yet the center felt soft and mushy to the touch; it was clearly undercooked.

She tossed and turned them like this for two full hours.

On the stove counter, six batches of failed "remains" had already piled up.

The walls were scorched black, the cutting board was covered in knife marks, and coarse salt was scattered all over the floor.

Finally, Bibi Dong stared fixedly at the thing on the plate.

The edges were charred black like charcoal, the center was half-raw, and the shape was so distorted that it was impossible to tell the original ingredient had been meat.

Her jawline was pulled taut.

She broke off a small piece of the charred edge and resolutely placed it into her mouth.

After chewing only twice, her entire beautiful face twisted into a knot.

It was both bitter and fishy.

The bitterness of the charcoal mixed with the stench of raw meat made her stomach churn, nearly inducing vomiting.

In her mind, the countdown jumped to [10:00], flashing with red light.

Bibi Dong grabbed a pure silver tray, placed the unidentified object inside, and covered it with the lid.

A crisp "clang" sounded, as if nailing the coffin lid shut on her final shred of dignity.

The morning mist had yet to disperse.

Outside the Library Pavilion, sixteen Temple Knights were anchored to their posts like iron stakes.

A faint sound of footsteps drifted from afar.

Everyone lowered their heads instantly, not daring to look directly.

Bibi Dong passed through the blockade, her pace as steady as ever, her expression as icy as always.

Yet, the peripheral vision of the knights captured a detail they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

Their supreme Pope, who never touched anything mundane or worldly, was holding a gleaming silver tray in her hands.

Sixteen heads bowed even lower.

The lead knight's Adam's apple bobbed frantically, the veins on his temples nearly bursting.

He had served in Martial Soul Hall for twelve years; forget about her carrying something, he had never even seen the Pope pour a glass of water herself!

In front of the door, which had been fitted with new wooden planks, Bibi Dong paused for two seconds.

She smelled that damned burnt odor seeping from the gap in the lid, and her stomach churned once more.

Pushing the door open.

Su Chen was sitting on a bamboo chair, holding an ancient text in his hands. His face was pale, his lips colorless, looking as if he had suffered a severe injury to his vitality.

Hearing the door open, he put down the book and slowly stood up, his knees having just bent halfway...

Bibi Dong swept a cold gaze over him.

Su Chen immediately straightened his knees, stood where he was with his hands at his sides, and lowered his head obediently.

Bibi Dong walked to the tea table and set the silver tray down heavily.

Her fingertips pinched the edge of the lid.

She paused for a second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

She suddenly flipped the lid open, then swiftly turned her head to look out the window, chin slightly raised, her gaze seemingly captivated by the gnarled old locust tree outside, striking a pose that screamed, "I just set something down, it has nothing to do with me."

An indescribable burnt stench instantly permeated the Library Pavilion.

Su Chen lowered his eyelids, his gaze falling upon the plate.

It was an irregularly shaped polygonal object, its surface covered in a layer of shiny black carbonized crust, with charred crumbs scattered sparsely around the silver platter.

And in the center of that carbonization, a hint of undercooked pink still faintly shimmered.

This thing... are you sure it's meant for human consumption?

Su Chen's gaze quietly shifted to the system screen.

[Bibi Dong's current emotions: Shame 99% / Guilt 90% / Nervousness 95%]

[Inner monologue: Don't look at the plate... you are not allowed to look at the plate... If he dares to show even a hint of disgust, This Seat will throw him and this wretched chair out the window together... Yes, that's exactly what I'll do!]

Su Chen nearly lost his composure, forcibly swallowing the cough that had reached his lips.

Bibi Dong remained standing stiffly by the tea table, her hands gripping the sides of her skirt so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Her gaze remained nailed to that gnarled old locust tree from start to finish, as if it were the greatest miracle she had ever seen in her life.

A deathly silence lasted for five seconds.

Bibi Dong finally spoke, her voice extremely low and cold, as if tempered in ten thousand years of glacial ice.

"Eat it."

"This is an order."

Six words, each one seemingly squeezed out from between her teeth, the trailing notes taut like a zither string on the verge of snapping.