The green radiance beneath the willow gradually faded.
Shi Hou was in no hurry to go back and catch up on sleep.
He stared thoughtfully at the three enormous eggs covered in dense golden patterns at the Willow Deity's feet.
A piercing cry rang out overhead.
Air currents swirled, and an enormous shadow fell over him.
The Green-Scaled Eagle had arrived.
Circling low overhead, her keen eyes weren't fixed on the eggs, but on Shi Hou. There was actually a hint of... anticipation in her gaze?
Even a trace of fawning.
Shi Hou rubbed his fingers together.
This big bird had practically become a spirit. Was she looking at the eggs? No, she was looking at his pot.
She knew this pot could help her children defy heaven and change their fate.
"Accept someone's gifts, and your hands are tied. Eat someone's food, and your tongue is bound."
Shi Hou sighed.
He had eaten the goat she brought last night. Now that she wanted a favor, it was hard to refuse.
He stepped forward and swept his hand.
The Stone Pot trembled. The three enormous eggs vanished into thin air, entering the space within the pot.
Immediately afterward, a sensation of being drained hollow surged through him.
Shi Hou's eyelid twitched.
It was like bleeding from a major artery.
The 8,000 blood qi he had just replenished began plummeting wildly.
7,500... 7,000... 6,500...
The speed was absurd.
"Stop!"
Shi Hou shouted inwardly.
The number barely stopped at the 6,000 mark.
In the blink of an eye, 2,000 blood qi was gone.
Shi Hou promptly put the eggs back where they had been, his face pale as he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Even a landlord had no grain to spare. These things were a bottomless pit.
He looked up and shouted at the Green-Scaled Eagle overhead:
"Hey!"
"If you want me to help your chicks, one goat isn't nearly enough."
The Green-Scaled Eagle checked her wings and hovered in the air, tilting her head to listen closely.
Shi Hou pointed at the eggs on the ground, then at his pot, and finally mimed eating.
"Go catch fierce beasts."
"No need for powerful primordial remnants. You couldn't beat them anyway."
"Ones nearing adulthood, like yesterday's. The bigger, the better."
The Green-Scaled Eagle stared at Shi Hou for three seconds.
She nodded her enormous head.
Then she beat her wings fiercely, whipping up a gale, and instantly dwindled into a tiny black speck that vanished deep into the wild mountain forests.
"She really understood."
Shi Hou muttered to himself and turned to head back.
This was a good deal.
His source of ingredients was settled.
After just two steps, Shi Hou suddenly stopped.
In Auntie Zhang's vegetable patch at the village entrance, a bed of lush green garlic chives was flourishing.
An idea stirred in Shi Hou's mind.
This pot claimed it could "stew anything." If it could nurture living eggs, what about plants?
Pondering this, he bent down and casually pulled up a garlic chive.
With a thought, he tossed it into the pot.
Through his mental perception, he sensed the lone garlic chive floating in the murky gray space.
A wisp of extremely faint gray mist coiled around it.
His blood qi value decreased extremely slowly.
Shi Hou grinned.
This consumption was practically negligible.
"I'll let it grow. What if it turns into a divine herb?"
The days that followed became routine and monotonous.
Every day, the Green-Scaled Eagle brought ingredients.
At first, they were first-tier Black-Scaled Goats and One-Horned Pigs.
Later, they became second-tier Redflame Bulls and saber-toothed tigers.
Their tiers kept rising. Sometimes she even came bearing bloody wounds. Clearly, this fiercely protective mother bird was risking her life too.
Evening.
Shi Hou fired up the pot.
All sorts of maddeningly catchy BGM invariably rang out at the village entrance.
Sometimes it was "Catching Loaches," sometimes the "Leek-Swinging Song."
The villagers went from shock and worship to taking it in stride. A few aunties even clapped along to the beat.
Shi Hou danced like a shaman in front of the pot.
Shi Hao and Kang drooled beside it.
Once they finished eating, the hundredfold return came through.
Morning.
Under Shi Yunfeng's guidance, the village children huffed and grunted as they lifted rocks and practiced bone text.
Shi Hao was like a little glowing sun. The runes on his body grew increasingly intricate, and the rocks he lifted grew ever larger.
Shi Hou brought over a recliner and lay beside them, watching.
He had tried many times.
If it didn't work, it didn't work.
Those runes shattered the moment they entered his body. His body was like a dense, solid iron ball, with no room whatsoever for any "fancy" rules.
He could only look at his own panel.
Blood Qi Value: 30,000. Blood Qi Value: 60,000. Blood Qi Value: 90,000.
The sensation of power piling up inside him was tangible but painful, requiring him to keep honing his control.
Night.
That was another scene entirely.
Because Shi Hou cooked larger portions every day, the children couldn't finish everything, and all the leftovers went into the adults' bellies.
And so, throughout Stone Village's nights, the sounds of fighting rose one after another.
For the first few days, Dazhuang, Ermeng, and the others complained that they couldn't sleep.
A few days later.
"Ermeng, did your dad and mom settle down last night?"
"Nope. I think they knocked your wall down in the second half of the night."
"Oh, that's fine. I'm used to it. Yesterday, I dreamed there was an earthquake and didn't even wake up."
The children even learned to fall peacefully asleep amid the rhythmic vibrations from next door.
The eleventh day.
Shi Hou stared at the number on his panel, lost in thought.
[Blood Qi Value: 110,000]
One hundred and ten thousand.
That meant one hundred and ten thousand jin of pure physical strength.
He remembered that Shi Hao would later break through the ultimate limit of the Blood Moving Realm, lifting a hundred-thousand-jin piece of divine iron and shaking the Great Wilderness.
"What does that make me?"
Shi Hou clenched his fist.
The air burst with a sharp crack in his palm. No runes flashed; he had simply crushed the air.
"Should be... pretty decent, right?"
He kept it to himself.
As long as the result was good, that was enough.
And on that very day.
When Shi Hou once again habitually put the three eggs into the pot to "pocket the difference."
His blood qi value didn't decrease.
They're not draining it anymore?
Shi Hou froze, then took the eggs out and put them back beneath the willow.
Crack.
An extremely faint snapping sound rang unusually clear in the quiet morning.
A fissure appeared on the surface of the largest Gold-Patterned Jade Egg.
A dazzling beam of golden light shot through the fissure, piercing straight into the clouds like a sharp sword.
"Chief!"
"Someone, come quick!"
Shi Linhu, who stood guard nearby, nearly shouted himself hoarse.
"That divine egg... it's about to hatch!"
That shout jolted all of Stone Village awake.
Whether they were children practicing their skills or adults left aching all over from last night's exertions, everyone charged toward the village entrance as though injected with chicken blood.
Shi Hou stood at the very front.
Watching the widening crack, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
He had fed it blood for so many days.
If the prize inside this mystery box didn't deliver, there would be an extra dish tonight.
Before you continue