Yan Xiang and the others chatted warmly with Li Chen, then took him to see Zhao Ke's book collection and the place where ordinary spirit materials were stored. Before he could take a close look, however, they eagerly dragged him off to eat, insisting on treating him to a lavish feast.
When Yan Xiang said a lavish feast, he truly meant it. Using a communication artifact, he summoned a dedicated cook from another Master Artisan's residence in the Octagonal Fort, then paid out of his own pocket for several small, spiritually imbued beasts that Li Chen could not even name. The cook roasted and seasoned them on the spot, and stir-fried several vegetable dishes that were a delight in color, aroma, and flavor. Those, too, were made from spirit materials and cost no small sum.
Only then did Li Chen realize that the diets of these sect disciples and Puppet Master artisans differed vastly from those of ordinary people.
They mostly ate fruits and vegetables grown in spirit fields or medicinal gardens, along with specially domesticated spirit beasts. Their cooking methods included pan-frying, boiling, steaming, deep-frying, stewing, slow simmering, braising in spiced stock, and cooking in sauces. It was nothing like the simple fare of the rough wanderers he had seen before, who ate little beyond roasted meat and stewed meat soup.
Li Chen even drank a mellow liquor brewed from spirit fruit, clear as spring water. It gleamed in a glass chilled by its own refrigeration array, icy as snow as it slid down his throat, then burning like fire.
Li Chen specifically asked about it and learned that the liquor was called Snowfire. It took five jin of spirit rice to brew a single jin, and those five jin of rice alone cost over a hundred talisman coins,