Devouring Demons

The strange mist appeared in an instant and vanished just as quickly.

Mixed with the venomous blood the python had sprayed, it was noticed only by the few people closest to it.

"Snake stewed with chicken, dragon and phoenix together-an auspicious sign!"

Zhang Baojia looked at the python and thought its buy-one-get-one-free service was pretty good.

He disliked venomous snake meat too, finding it tough and stringy, but golden pheasant was different. That was a first-rate ingredient.

"Could these two have some kind of important background?" Zhang Zhong asked gravely.

"No matter how important, what of it?" Zhang Baojia shook his head. "Grand General Li guards the north, and everything's as secure as a fortress. There's no way those demons could cross the border and find a village like ours. Give it ten days or half a month, and they'll have to search the latrine pits!"

Both Zhang Baojia and Zhang Zhong had served as soldiers on the frontier, and both had held the minor rank of squad leader.

They exchanged a glance, each weighing the matter in his own mind.

But there was no chance they would give away meat that had fallen into their hands.

They would have to give up their earlier plans for bowstrings made from snake sinew and armor made from its skin.

They would even deal with the multicolored golden pheasant the same way.

Eat what they could and burn what they couldn't. That was the best way to handle it.

"Did you ever eat this stuff in the Flying Feather Army?"

As they gutted the giant python, Zhang Baojia quietly questioned Zhang Zhong.

They had both been squad leaders, but they hadn't served in the same camp, and their duties had differed.

Zhang Zhong shook his head at the question.

"In the Flying Feather Army, I only helped fight demons. I wasn't qualified to eat them," Zhang Zhong replied quietly. "But I saw how they prepared demons for eating. We can follow their example!"

"Are there risks?" Zhang Baojia asked quietly again.

"There are definitely risks, but there are benefits too," Zhang Zhong replied. "I saw Colonel Lu enter the realm with my own eyes after he ate demon meat. From then on, he was no longer a mortal!"

Zhang Zhong's words set the Qi and Blood in Zhang Baojia's chest surging.

Ordinary mortals relied on the strength of their bodies, and no matter how strong they were, they could only surpass the two men by so much.

But after entering the realm, one could learn martial skills to mobilize Qi and Blood and unleash unrivaled might. Their strength transcended the ordinary and far surpassed that of the two men, and they could even display the formidable ability to stride through the air.

It was another world, one Zhang Baojia had never touched.

He knew only that it was power possessed by important figures.

Zhang Baojia had never imagined that, at his age, he would still have a chance to touch it.

Whether he succeeded or failed, he had a sliver of a chance, at least.

There were even more than three hundred seeds in the village.

Even if the failure rate for drawing on demonic power was outrageously high, with so many trying, there was bound to be a chance that some in the village would succeed.

"Set up the sacrificial cauldron and light a roaring fire!"

After only a brief, hushed discussion, Zhang Baojia waved his great hand.

Several elders in charge of ancestral sacrifices were just about to speak when they saw Zhang Baojia hurry impatiently toward the ancestral hall.

Even the elders couldn't stop what the clan leader had decided to do.

Using the sacrificial cauldron to cook was disrespectful to the ancestors, but rules were dead and people were alive. Before an empty stomach, even the ancestors had to step aside.

The elders kept shouting, pointing, and muttering, but none of them tried to stop Zhang Baojia.

"Erbaozi, eat as much meat as you can later. Drinking the broth is fine too. There's no need to stuff a huge amount of food into your belly; just have a reasonable amount, enough to feel something!"

While Zhang Baojia returned to the ancestral hall for the cauldron, Zhang Zhong called Zhang Xuezhou by his other name and kept giving him quiet instructions.

His lips moved slightly; clearly, he was also instructing Lady Yourong, who stood beside him.

Lady Yourong looked at Zhang Xuezhou with considerable worry.

A fortuitous opportunity might be right before one's eyes, but one still needed to be qualified to seize it.

Lady Yourong didn't expect Zhang Xuezhou to gain the great power of entering the realm. She was only worried that eating the meat might cause him some kind of trouble.

As the weakest of all the villagers his age, Zhang Xuezhou really did inspire little confidence when it came to cultivation.

By now, whispers were spreading, and some who had pricked up their ears and overheard bits of information kept looking toward Zhang Changgong and the others.

Young, strong, with a solid foundation in cultivation and few hidden injuries...

With all those conditions, the younger generation had a higher chance of successfully entering the realm.

Zhang Changgong, Zhang Cigong, and the others were all smiles, repeatedly stretching their arms and legs in an attempt to get their bodies ready before eating and drinking.

The young people had seen little of the world and knew little about demons, but since the clan leader was cooking a communal meal in the cauldron, they were sure to eat until they were stuffed.

"Entering the realm!"

Beside them, Second Elder Zhang Houtu gazed on with longing, murmuring the words several times.

To Zhang Xuezhou, the longing on his face looked no different from his own desire to enter the imperial capital's academy and pursue further studies.

Those are all fanciful thoughts!

Zhang Xuezhou muttered to himself.

He wasn't as interested as the others in eating, drinking, or entering the realm.

As far as he was concerned, sitting in the village and passing his days with food and drink suited his needs better.

In the vast world, he was just an ordinary person drifting with the current, going wherever it carried him and asking only that everything be peaceful.

"Once I've cured my illness..."

Zhang Xuezhou murmured under his breath.

With clan leader Zhang Baojia cooking in the cauldron, he was spared the task of dividing the meat.

A communal meal meant a full belly one day and hunger the next; once this meal was eaten, there would be no next one.

Unless something unexpected happened, everyone would eat their fill, apart from Zhang Xuezhou and the others whom Zhang Zhong had instructed.

Judging by how everyone looked like starving ghosts, hungry as wolves and tigers, even the more than two thousand jin of meat, weighed before preparation, would most likely be eaten clean, with little left over.

Zhang Xuezhou was quite happy to be spared the trouble.

At least this round of distribution wouldn't require him to offend anyone.

His elders were reluctant to make him the butt of their jokes, but his peers and juniors had never shown him any such courtesy.

Take Zhang Changgong, who wanted to carry ten buckets of water for Zhang Xuezhou. In the past, his method had been to beat Zhang Xuezhou ten fewer times during martial arts sparring; Zhang Cigong and the others had tripped him up plenty of times too.

They tried good and bad approaches over and over, until Zhang Xuezhou made an unfair distribution.

But that would also mark the start of someone new replacing Zhang Xuezhou.

In the village, it was an unsolvable cycle.

As long as food was scarce, there was no chance of such things changing.

"Nothing we plant grows right, and nothing we eat gets left behind!"

Zhang Xuezhou glanced beyond the village in the gathering dusk, where wheat, cotton, and hemp grew pitifully.

The wheat was their winter food supply, while cotton and hemp cloth provided clothing, quilts, and the like.

There were few other crops besides.

That left the village with a very limited food supply. Apart from raising some cattle and sheep to supplement it, they relied mostly on hunting to survive.

Zhang Xuezhou had heard Zhang Zhong mention some distant villages, most of which were worse off than Zhang Household Village.

A village like theirs might not be one in a thousand li, but it was a good village, one in a hundred li.

A great fire blazed to life.

The great cauldron used for ancestral sacrifices was nearly full of clear water.

The scorching heat of the fire didn't drive the crowd away. On the contrary, everyone gathered several rows deep around the cauldron, not caring in the least about the mounting waves of heat.

"This meat has a rather pungent taste. If you can't stand it when you eat it, boil it in the water a few more times!"

As Zhang Zhong kept slicing meat with the Wind-Breaking Blade and dropping it into the cauldron, Zhang Baojia continued calling out instructions. After Zhang Zhong quietly reminded him of a couple of things, he added another.

"Let it sit. You can eat it after it cools too!"

Zhang Baojia walked eighteen circles around the cauldron. Once the water and meat had come to a boil, he picked up an iron skewer and stabbed at it, lifting out a finger-thick piece of white meat.

"Damn it!"

The moment the white meat entered his mouth, Zhang Baojia felt a shock like a swig of scorching liquor.

He cursed and forced the indescribably awful white meat down his throat.

"Delicious! Everyone, come eat the meat!"

Zhang Baojia shouted, then told the others to help themselves.

"It's so delicious!"

Zhang Xuezhou took a bite of the python's white meat, also wearing a smile of satisfaction.

As the scapegoat in charge of distributing food, he had a certain amount of priority: he could inspect and sample the food beforehand, judging which cuts were good and which were ordinary, so he could balance the portions when distributing them.

That counted as one of the small benefits scapegoats could gain while offending people.

But Zhang Xuezhou had never expected to eat meat this hard to swallow in his lifetime, and he didn't want this particular advantage one bit.

He smiled at Zhang Baojia and saw that the corners of the man's eyes were faintly wet with tears.

"It's just a piece of hard-to-swallow meat. Is there any need to..."

Zhang Xuezhou was just about to mock the clan leader inwardly for being so bad at controlling his expression when a chill suddenly swept through him. Every hair on his body stood on end, and goosebumps broke out all over him.

Though he was beside the great fire, Zhang Xuezhou still felt cold all over.

The Qi and Blood in his chest surged without end, blue veins bulged across his body, and his stomach and intestines churned as though turning rivers and seas upside down.

In just over ten seconds, a sweet taste rose in Zhang Xuezhou's mouth, followed by a sensation of heaven and earth spinning in his head.

His body toppled straight backward.

"I actually mastered the essential recuperation method Doctor Ren taught me!"

In a room in a high-rise building, Zhang Xuezhou jolted awake.

He wiped the cold sweat covering his forehead and felt that a tiny white seed, formed from condensed breath, had appeared inside his body.