The fried bamboo worms were seasoned with salt and pepper, crisp, salty, and tingling on the tongue. The sliced pork with bamboo fungus only looked strange on close inspection; it tasted delicious too.
It was simply a slightly more lavish spread of local home cooking, but with Chen Jue, an outsider, joining them, everyone was a little reserved when they first sat down.
Brother Biao's son, in particular, who was already seven by traditional age reckoning, had come home from school and was exceptionally quiet at the table. Every so often, he would steal a glance at Chen Jue, this unfamiliar uncle whose outstanding bearing somehow made him seem even more approachable than his teachers at school.
This was actually because Chen Jue had gained a foothold in Internal Alchemy and reached the realm of Embryonic Breathing. He now possessed some of the qualities of a return to the primordial state, similar to those of an adept who had formed an internal core. In children's eyes, he therefore seemed gentle and approachable, making them instinctively want to draw closer to him.
Aside from that, Chen Jue sensed the fetus in Brother Biao's wife's belly several times during the meal, and also took the opportunity to sense the aura of Brother Biao's seven-year-old son.
Unfortunately, he found none of that sense of a fetus's Primordial Qi. Instead, the boy was lively and active, brimming with the vigorous vitality of growth and development. It was a quality unique to young children, something paunchy middle-aged men could not compare with.
An unborn fetus has it... but a child doesn't... Once born, they're tainted by the turbid qi of the mundane world, and the primordial no longer exists. Is that what it means? Chen Jue speculated inwardly, but that did not seem right either.