What the heck happened while he was under!?

****

The roasted Monarch Gale Crow was a masterpiece at the moment. Its golden colour highlighted the crispiness of its skin whilst it also glistened with the natural oils that were still on its body.

Some of the oils even dripped from it, and every drop caused a collective gulp to sound out.

In addition, the aroma it gave off was intoxicating. It could drive any glutton mad with desire.

Long Di planned to have a humble dinner with his friend, but there was… an issue.

The issue here was the dinner guests. There was Yaomu Shou, Long Di, a suspicious monk and a rabbit.

I don’t think it needs to be said, but two of these things are not like the others, and one of them definitely doesn’t belong.

Long Di looked to Yaomu Shou expecting answers, but she only gave him an ‘I dunno’ shoulder shrug in return.

“How is that possible?” he asked. She had to be the worst lookout ever!

“Dear benefactor, allow me to introduce myself. My dharma name is Shi Jiaohua,” the monk said politely with the Anjali mudra making him appear like a wizened monk.

Long Di thought it would look better if there wasn’t a dinner plate in between the monk’s hands, but who was he to judge?

“I am hoping that dear benefactor can have mercy on a starving monk?” he asked with that same warm, inviting smile.

However, when Yaomu Shou heard the name of the monk, it was like lightning struck her!

“Y-You’re Untethered Monk Shi Jiaohua of Golden Buddhist Ground!” she pointed at him in shock.

The monk kept his smile even though his title was known by Yaomu Shou.

“I’m confused, are w-” Long Di started, but was cut off by Yaomu Shou, who proceeded to explain.

“His title is Untethered Monk. He is the successor of Golden Buddhist Ground, one of the ten great sects! He’s a super genius that’s received focused nurturing from his sect and is not to be underestimated!” Yaomu Shou stated with a wary expression, her sword firmly in hand.

Untethered Monk was unperturbed by the introduction and stated, with his hands still together, “Amitabha dear benefactors, this insignificant monk is only here for a meal.”

One couldn’t see the air of an expert from this monk who was touted as the successor of one of the ten great sects.

“Yeah, okay, thank you for the introduction. Not the focus of my confusion. With that being said, are we not going to talk about that?” Long Di pointed at the overly bombastic brawler rabbit waiting patiently to the side with a plate in hand.

“Right, dear benefactor,” Untethered Monk chose to answer. “I gave it the plate.”

“Noted, but not what I’m asking.” Long Di was wondering if he was the only one who saw the weirdness of the situation.

“Oh!” Yaomu Shou chose to answer him this time around. “It suddenly got up and was ready to charge after us, but when it smelled the Monarch Gale Crow, it immediately calmed down and came to sit down beside us.”

Long Di looked at her for a while before asking, “That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“Long Di, I’ve seen some of the weirdest sh*t with you at the centre. I honestly stopped questioning everything that happened around you and just accepted it as is.” Yaomu Shou admitted.

Long Di had effectively broken Yaomu Shou because since she had been with him, things that shouldn’t be possible became possible.

She had been shocked so many times that she used up all the shocking moments for the rest of her life with him alone.

So what if an unintelligent magical beast came here to have dinner with them after being given a plate by the successor of one of the ten great sects?

Long Di befriended a Shidashi Mao and could speak its language for no discernible reason. He cultivated divine tribulation lightning, could mend and create cultivation techniques and pooped out martial techniques on the daily, that’s the type of colon one could only hope for.

As far as she was concerned, this was a Monday for Long Di.

On the other hand, Long Di stared at the overly bombastic brawler rabbit and it stared back with zero killing or murderous intent.

‘These things aren’t supposed to be intelligent… meh,’ and just like that, Long Di accepted the overly bombastic brawler rabbit’s presence.

Sure, if it were another person, they would harp on the issue, calling for some kind of explanation. However, one must realise that Long Di wasn’t necessarily sane.

The boy’s thought process was a 69 Shelby GT speedrunning Mario World. Did that analogy make sense? No? That was the point.

Long Di just realised that he had no knife on hand to slice the meat for his dinner guests.

Untethered Monk saw this and quickly summoned a knife and offered it to Long Di with both hands.

The blade was as thin as a cicada wing and crystalline in appearance, practically see-through. The handle was silver, with intricate patterns running the length of it.

The whole thing was around 13 inches long, and it flashed with a spiritual light. Anyone with half a brain knew that this knife was a treasure.

“A spiritual artefact,” Yaomu Shou was able to see the clues that placed this knife in the spiritual artefact category.

“Good eyes.” Untethered Monk smiled.

“I found this within the realm.” He didn’t expound on this particular point and instead looked to Long Di.

“Dear benefactor, for the action of feeding a starving monk, I offer you this knife.”

Long Di accepted and brandished it with a few swings. He had to admit that spiritual artefacts had a different air about them than secular weapons. It was one thing to read about them in books, but it was another thing to experience them.

Even though it was a knife, Long Di was sure that were he to imbue this knife with tribulation lightning, it would fare much better than the bronze saber.

Though the latter was of extraordinary quality, it was still only a secular weapon. Whoever that bronze seat was, he was of a low rank in the Iron Body Forge Sect.

After getting a few practice swings in, Long Di felt much better handling the knife.

Suddenly, his aura changed as he prepared to cut the ‘turkey.’ Untethered Monk’s smiling expression didn’t change, but he opened his eyes a crack to observe Long Di deeply.

Shing! Shing! Shing! Shing! Shing!

Several knife lights flashed for an instant, sending five pieces of meat flying. These were all from a leg and they filled the plates they fell on.

Long Di didn’t have any plates, but he did have two metal rods that he used as shish kabob spikes.

He gave one spike to Yaomu Shou, who took it with a smile. Though it was one leg, everyone received a sizeable portion. The Monarch Gale Crow was a massive beast and as a result, just one leg was enough for everyone here and there was still more than half of the leg remaining.

Long Di didn’t start eating and just observed everyone else to see their expressions whilst eating.

He never received any sort of acknowledgement from his uncle. Then again, the old man was the embodiment of the term ‘toxic fam.’

Putting the abuse aside, he never smiled once when eating the meals he ordered Long Di to cook a specific way.

Because of this, Long Di likened his cooking skills to crap. This was one of the reasons why he never cooked or offered to cook anything while he travelled with Shen Ling, Feng Yu, and the others.

Of course, this was also why he failed to understand why, when he sat here with Yaomu Shou, a wave of nostalgia hit him.

Now he didn’t want anything to remember his uncle by, however, the rare moments of peace he remembered in his past life were those he had with Pebbles and the times he curled up in the corner eating his food.

Pebbles wasn’t here, but his cooking, he could bring it here himself. This was why he felt possessed to suddenly start cooking.

Still, he didn’t look forward to their reaction, only an inexplicable curiosity to see how much of it they would spit out.

Untethered Monk didn’t stand on ceremony, and took up the large slab of roast meat before him and bit into it.

Crunch!

A satisfying crunch echoed out as the monk’s teeth tore through the skin of the Monarch Gale Crow’s leg.

The minute his teeth dug into the meat itself, his eyes widened in shock as an explosion of flavour erupted in his mouth.

The pure flavour of the meat came in full force as the succulent and juicy nature of it overwhelmed him. The natural oils that were trapped in the meat splashed in his mouth and even drained down the side of his mouth.

“Mmhhmmmm…”

Untethered Monk couldn’t help himself from moaning as he lost himself in the richness of the taste.

Yaomu Shou and the overly bombastic brawler rabbit’s eyes grew red when they saw the state of the monk and they forgot themselves as they took a bite of the leg meat as well.

“Mhm!”

“Squeak!”

The girl and the rabbit went through the same thing as the monk, as they were lost in ecstasy.

Yaomu Shou, in particular, was amazed at how much of the spiritual energy was trapped in the meat.

She could actually feel her cultivation rising at a steady pace as the spiritual energy converted to somatic essence as she consumed the meat!

She looked at Long Di in shock, wondering how he crafted such a wonderful meal with such wondrous effects. Though she didn’t have chefs under her who cultivated the dao of cooking, they were still highly skilled chefs. Yet not even they could prepare such a sumptuous and effective repast.

The monk naturally felt the spiritual energy of the meat as well, but he couldn’t care less about that. The only thing he cared about was the taste, and it was even more than what he imagined!

For the love of god! It was WAY more than he imagined!

The overly bombastic brawler rabbit was ravenous as it devoured the meat on the plate before it.

It didn’t possess the intelligence to truly enjoy the nuances and peculiarities in the meat.

It tasted good. That was all it understood, and all it needed to know.

“Mhhhhmmm…”

“Squeeeeaaaaakkk…”

Long Di was surrounded by several emissions of moans and squeaks. He didn’t know what to make of this and shrugged his shoulders.

He took a bite of the meat on his kebab spike and savoured the taste for a bit before swallowing it.

“Meh…” was his only response after tasting it. Though the meat was of much better quality than what he was used to, he still couldn’t use his spiritual force as well as he could his hands. This, in turn, didn’t allow him to bring the meat to a much higher standard.

In short, the better quality meat with the subpar techniques made this meal only slightly better than what he was used to in his previous world, hence his bland reaction.

“So sad…” he whispered to himself.

If any chef heard what Long Di just said to himself, they would beat him to death with a stick, and then commit suicide by bashing their heads against a block of tofu.

What did he mean!?

He used mortal ingredients and was able to create something that nearly rivalled the taste of an overlord class rank 5 magical beast!?

What were they living for!? They were all failures compared to him.

Whoosh!

A powerful surge of energy swept from Yaomu Shou’s direction.

Everyone looked over toward her to see her staring at herself in shock. She was experiencing a breakthrough!