I Heard You Ate Tofu Every Day for a While?

Lu Yang and his two companions silently averted their eyes, doing their utmost to diminish their presence. Judging by the savage scowls on the five senior brothers' faces, they looked practically ready to murder every witness to silence them. "Speaking of which, do you want to guess what kind of good stuff I ordered for you? I guarantee it's all things you love to eat," Meng Jingzhou whispered, terrified of drawing the attention of the five senior brothers enjoying their pig-slaughter stew. Lu Yang was utterly baffled. How on earth did Meng Jingzhou know what he liked to eat? "How do you know what Senior Brother Lu likes?" Tao Yaoye asked in an even softer whisper. Meng Jingzhou flashed a thumbs-up, beaming an eight-toothed grin. "I went out of my way to ask Eldest Senior Sister." An ominous premonition instantly crept into Lu Yang's heart. "Stuffed tofu coming right up!" "Freshly made tofu pudding!" "Tofu tossed with spring onions!" "Mapo tofu!" The waiter reeled off the names of the dishes as he served them, presenting dish after dish of an all-tofu banquet bursting with color, aroma, and flavor right in front of Lu Yang. Even Tao Yaoye, who had never cared much for tofu, felt an appetite stirring at the mouthwatering fragrance. With every shout of a dish, Lu Yang's face paled a shade further. Meng Jingzhou puffed up with a hint of smugness. "Eldest Senior Sister told me that for a period of time, you wouldn't touch anything else. You ate tofu every single day, tofu at every meal, and you even muttered something in your sleep about a 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable.' "So I figured you must be head over heels for tofu. "No need to get all sentimental! My family always taught me that if you want to treat someone to a meal, you must look into their preferences beforehand to show your sincerity. I disagree with my family's views most of the time, but on this point, I agree. "I went out of my way to reserve a full tofu feast here at Baixiang Restaurant. Don't look down on these dishes just because they seem ordinary—the soybeans are one-in-a-thousand spiritual beans, the garnishes are aged spiritual herbs, and the water used was melted down from the pure marrow of glacial ice in the extreme north..." Lu Yang's face turned whiter than the tofu. *What kind of "preference" did you think you were digging up?!* ... Once the diners had eaten their fill and patted their bulging bellies as they left Baixiang Restaurant, the waiter briskly wiped down the tables, straightened the benches, and cleared the dishes. With a moment of spare time on his hands, Lu Yang's question resurfaced in his mind. *If you eat a Fasting Pill, does it count as eating a meal, or does it count as fasting?* A seemingly ordinary question that concealed a hidden mystery—the more he pondered it, the more profoundly philosophical it felt. It seemed this new batch of recruits had someone with extraordinary comprehension. That disciple was bound for great things in the future! "Hey, cook, let me ask you something." The waiter headed into the kitchen and tossed the question to the boar-slaughterer. Inside, waves of sweltering heat rolled thick and heavy. If a Qi Refinement cultivator took a single hit from this heat, they would be lucky to come away with a chronic fire-poison ailment tormenting them for the rest of their days; if their luck was bad, it would burn straight through their internal organs, leaving nothing behind but a skeleton. To cook heavenly treasures, immortal herbs, and rare delicacies, mundane fire naturally would not suffice. If nothing else, simply singeing the bristles off a Nascent Soul stage wild boar required a flame refined by a cultivator at the late Golden Core stage at the very least, and such a flame possessed terrifying might. Ignoring the kitchen's blistering heat, the waiter gave an offhand flick of the towel slung over his shoulder. The scorching heat vanished cleanly, replaced by a refreshing breeze. "What is it? You here to learn how to butcher a pig from me?" The waiter glared. "Why would I learn that? I just thought of a philosophical question related to cooking and came to test you." The cook, who was washing the stovetop, chuckled. He stopped scrubbing, tossed his brush aside, and kicked his feet up. "Go on, shoot." "Tell me, if you eat a Fasting Pill, does it count as eating a meal, or does it count as fasting?" The cook let out a scoff. Without a second thought, he was just about to blurt out an answer when the words caught in his throat. *Wait... does it count as eating or fasting?* The cook narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the waiter. "Hold on. Everyone knows how much brains you have. With your intelligence, how could you possibly come up with a question like that?" "Listen here, pig-butcher!" the waiter snapped. "Don't you go looking down on people!" "So you came up with it?" "...No." After a brief discussion, the two of them agreed that tackling such a question was far too advanced for their brains, so they carried the problem to the restaurant master. The fragrance of fine tea drifted through the air, condensing into archaic, obscure characters that carried a mysterious aura. The restaurant master scalded the pot, laid out the tea leaves, warmed the cups, and sipped the brew—every motion smooth and fluid as flowing water, a delight to behold. She was an elegant, noble-looking beauty with skin as fair as jade, and a faint astral sigil marked her forehead. She looked helplessly at the waiter and the cook, wondering if she had given them too little work since they had the leisure to ponder such pointless questions. "Do not let the name of the Fasting Pill deceive you. The pill's purpose is not fasting in itself, but rather taking food and refining it into an elixir that slowly dissolves inside the stomach to achieve the effect of going long periods without eating. "A Fasting Pill is, at its essence, food. "Do you understand?" The cook stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Understood. So the alchemists who refine Fasting Pills are actually in the same trade as me." The waiter scoffed, sneering, "Don't flatter yourself. At most, you're in the same trade as the furnace boy fanning the flames." Furious, the cook grabbed his cleaver and swung it straight at the waiter. The waiter was hardly a pushover either. With a fierce snap of the towel on his shoulder, a crisp metallic chime rang out as the cloth transformed instantly into a hefty white-iron cudgel. One wielding a blade and the other a staff, the pair began brawling like back-alley ruffians, trading underhanded moves without restraint. The restaurant master sighed in resignation. If the two of them hadn't come so cheap, there was no way she would have hired them in the first place. She gently blew along the drifting tea fragrance. Rich and concentrated, the scent wrapped around their minds and disoriented their senses. By the time they came to, they were already standing downstairs. Her cool, slightly annoyed voice echoed in their ears: "Go fight downstairs. Whatever you break comes out of your wages." ... Lu Yang had no idea what transpired at Baixiang Restaurant after they left. By the time he finished his Foundation Establishment feast and returned to Tianmen Peak, his face was as pale as if he had been dead for three days. Eldest Senior Sister sat cross-legged, hovering three feet above the ground in an indigo robe, her hair secured with a plain Daoist hairpin. She was absorbed in quiet meditation like an immortal untainted by mortal dust. Yun Zhi slowly opened her eyes. For a fleeting moment, a thousand worlds seemed to dwell within them, radiant as a starry night sky. The illusion vanished in a flash. Lu Yang rubbed his eyes and saw her gazing placidly at him, with no trace of any otherworldly phenomenon ever having been there. *A hallucination?* "Why is your face so pale?" Lu Yang grumbled in exasperation, "You're asking what you already know! Meng Jingzhou heard from you that I ate tofu for every meal for a while, so under the pretense of celebrating my Foundation Establishment, he treated me to a table covered entirely in tofu." Lu Yang strongly suspected his dear Eldest Senior Sister had played a mischievous hand in this. "Meng Jingzhou asked me what you ate the most. In my memory, you ate several vats of tofu while training your techniques. I merely told him what actually happened. What is wrong with that?" "Then what about the 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable'..." Before Lu Yang could even finish, Yun Zhi answered once more in a flat, unrippled tone, "In your sleep, you cried out that you had obtained an inheritance, and you shouted those very four words, 'Tofu Heavenly Venerable.' I simply passed that along as well." Lu Yang stared at Yun Zhi's innocent, desire-free gaze, thoroughly defeated. He always suspected that Eldest Senior Sister was messing with him, but he had no proof.