Lin Yan Stewed Gu Yue with Mushrooms! Gu Yue: "Y-You Want to Eat a Dragon?"

Lin Yan withdrew his gaze and looked at Gu Yue on the other side.

The Silver Dragon King's body was rapidly expanding.

From an initial two centimeters, it had surged to ten centimeters.

And it was still growing.

What surprised him even more was—

She was devouring the entire world.

The whole world had evolved from mushroom energy.

She absorbed all that energy into her body and, in a sense, achieved "materialization."

A flicker of understanding flashed through Lin Yan's eyes.

So that was it.

After his space-time martial soul fused, it had formed this special space.

He called it the "Creator God's Petri Dish."

By tossing things into it, he could evolve worlds.

He could also use the data from the River of Time to open up branching timelines.

But a false world had no matter to support it. In the end, it was still fake.

To pull the things inside into the real world, he would have to expend an enormous amount of energy.

Over the past few days, he had poured quite a bit of soul power into the pot.

He had also thrown in some miscellaneous materials, wondering whether he could cultivate something useful.

But now that he calculated it—

Materializing this silver dragon would consume all the world's origin.

In other words, all that work had been for nothing.

Still...

Lin Yan lowered his head and looked into Gu Yue's cold dragon eyes, his heart burning with excitement.

This dragon could purify the toxic mushroom energy in the air.

That meant that if he kept her in the Petri Dish, she would be a natural purifier.

When he created worlds in the future, he could toss mushrooms inside without worrying that the life within would be poisoned to death.

"Fine."

Expressionless, Lin Yan sealed off the space inside the pot.

He let Gu Yue devour the world within to her heart's content, destroying era after era.

Then he picked up a shovel, slung a sack over his back, and went out.

There was a patch of wild woods on the outskirts of Donghai City.

It was filled with all kinds of mushrooms.

The most numerous were blue-staining boletes, growing densely across the ground.

Others would take one look and walk around them. Lin Yan's eyes lit up at the sight.

He squatted down and shoveled them into his sack scoop by scoop, dirt and all.

As passersby went by, they saw a young man crouching amid a pile of poisonous mushrooms and digging frantically. They all quickened their pace, their eyes full of, "Another one's gone crazy."

Lin Yan did not care in the slightest.

He filled two whole sacks, then picked up some dead branches and rotten leaves to toss in as organic matter.

By the time he got home, it was already night.

When he pushed open the door, the living room was still a complete mess.

One of the kitchen lights had broken. The remaining yellow bulb glowed weakly, making the whole room look gloomy and eerie.

Lin Yan walked over to the stove and looked down at the pot.

Then he froze for a moment.

The ball of silver light in the pot was gone.

In its place was a tiny silver-white dragon, curled up at the bottom of the pot and sleeping soundly.

Its body was only about fifteen centimeters long, twenty at most with its tail included.

Its scales were quite beautiful, glowing softly under the light like a layer of flowing moonlight.

Its four little claws were tucked beneath its belly, while the tip of its tail swayed lightly and unconsciously.

"The dragon that devoured the world?"

Lin Yan looked at her expressionlessly, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.

That was it?

The world-ending dragon that had been so unstoppable in the Petri Dish, swallowing an entire era in one bite—this was all it amounted to in reality?

He looked away, washed the mushrooms from the sacks clean, and dumped them all into the pot.

Then he rummaged through the cabinet for salt, soy sauce, cooking wine, ginger slices, and star anise, lining them up beside the stove one by one.

Then he turned on the gas stove.

The flames licked the bottom of the pot, and the temperature began to rise.

Gu Yue felt the heat wake her.

She opened her eyes groggily, and all she saw was dim yellow light.

A strange fragrance filled the air—

It smelled like mushrooms, but also like the base of some kind of stew. There was ginger and cooking wine in it, and it smelled... rather nice.

She swallowed instinctively.

Then her body stiffened.

Wait.

Stew?

She abruptly lowered her head—

The water in the pot was boiling, densely packed mushrooms floated all around her, and a few slices of ginger bobbed beside her.

And she was soaking right in the middle of this pot of soup.

Gu Yue's pupils shrank into vertical slits.

She raised her head and saw Lin Yan.

The young man stood before the stove with a pair of chopsticks in hand, stirring the soup in the pot expressionlessly.

"You're awake?"

Lin Yan's voice was calm, as though he were merely greeting her.

Gu Yue instinctively tried to fly.

She suddenly spread her wings and flapped hard—

She could not move.

An invisible force sealed off every inch of space around her, like transparent walls trapping her inside the pot.

She flapped with all her might, her wings striking the water and splashing it everywhere, but she could not fly at all.

"Raaah—!"

She let out a babyish roar, trying to convey her anger and dignity.

Lin Yan glanced down at her without expression.

"You ate an entire pot of my mushrooms."

He used his chopsticks to stir the pot, pushing away several mushrooms that had floated onto Gu Yue's head.

"So if I eat you now, there's no problem, right?"

Gu Yue's roar caught in her throat.

Eat... eat a dragon?

This human wanted to eat a dragon?

Her entire body went rigid. Her little claws curled against her chest, and her dragon eyes widened round.

She stared at Lin Yan's utterly calm face, trying to find even the slightest hint that he was joking in those eyes.

There was none.

Not even a trace.

He was stirring very seriously, seasoning the soup very seriously, and even poking her scales with his chopsticks as though judging whether the flavor had seeped into the meat.

The water grew hotter and hotter, bubbling away.

Gu Yue began trembling all over, her scales standing on end.

She desperately shrank back, pressing her spine against the side of the pot. Her little claws pushed frantically at the chopsticks, while soft, threatening "wuwu" sounds came from her throat.

But those threats were thin and soft, sounding more like a little kitten hissing.

Lin Yan's chopsticks reached toward her again.

She jolted in fright and opened her mouth to bite the tip of the chopsticks, trembling as she bit down.

The dignified Silver Dragon King, ruler of all soul beasts, half of the Dragon God, the world-ending dragon that devoured worlds—

Was now soaking in a pot of mushroom soup, being poked with chopsticks by a human.

She released the chopsticks and let out a whimper.

There was no anger in that whimper, nor any unwillingness.

There was only fear and grievance welling up from the depths of her soul.

She had thought she had shattered the dimensional barrier and become a complete dragon beyond even the Dragon God.

She had thought that the Creator God had favored her, granting her power and making her the ruler of the new world.

But in the end, she had merely crawled from one world into another.

And the people of this world were holding chopsticks, preparing to stew her.

The temperature rose higher and higher, and the soup had begun to boil.

Gu Yue gave up resisting. Curled up at the bottom of the pot, she could not stop her tears from falling.

"Ding-dong—"

The communicator rang.

Lin Yan put down the chopsticks, wiped his hands, and took out his communicator.

The screen lit up, and a text message popped up:

[East Sea Academy Finance Office]: Dear student Lin Yan, it has been detected that your tuition has been overdue for fifteen days. According to academy regulations, your student registration has been canceled. Your place will be transferred to another student in need. If you have any questions, please call...