Chapter 160: Peers

"Feng Xue, I'm hungry!" Chi Xiaobai tugged at the corner of Feng Xue's garment, flashing a disarmingly adorable expression that made her look just like a younger sister acting spoiled in front of her older brother.

"Alright, alright! Didn't you always swallow things whole before you met me?" Feng Xue sighed helplessly as he cleaned and gutted the hound he had just caught, setting it over the fire to roast.

So far, Feng Xue was quite satisfied with this fast-friend-making Gluttony partner. Their compatibility seemed remarkably high, with their fighting styles and Gourmet Demons complementing each other perfectly. Of course, this complementarity was entirely one-sided, with Feng Xue doing all the adapting because whenever a fight broke out, this girl's only strategy was to smash, smash, and smash!

The attributes of her Gluttony Gourmet Demon were similar to Toriko's Red Oni, focusing on extreme physical attack enhancement. Combined with Chi Xiaobai's concept of Devouring, she could counter both magic and martial arts with a single punch.

However, Feng Xue wasn't the kind of fool to lose his mind the moment he laid eyes on a pretty girl, so naturally, he couldn't fully trust her just yet. They were still in a transitional period of mutual adjustment. Although they nominally took turns keeping watch at night, Feng Xue had never truly slept soundly.

Ironically, when it was Feng Xue's turn to keep watch, Chi Xiaobai would sleep soundly, leaving him to wonder whether she was truly thick-skinned or just feigning sleep.

Yet, if she had any flaws, this certainly counted—

Chi Xiaobai got hungry far too quickly!

This wasn't simply because her Gourmet Demon possessed an insatiable appetite akin to Toriko's, as Feng Xue had initially imagined.

To understand the deeper reason, one had to look at her conceptual nature and origin.

Chi Xiaobai's concept was Devouring, granting her the ability to absorb all forms of energy (though it was strictly absorption; without a specialized technique, she couldn't utilize them directly. Much like a force-redirection technique, she had to expel the energy afterward, otherwise she would risk bursting from within). Her origin, on the other hand, was Ingestion, which initially manifested as accelerated digestion. This digestion applied not only to food in her stomach, but also to the energy she devoured.

Coupled with Xiaobai's soul technique known as the *Gluttonous Heaven-Swallowing Art* (which allowed any controlled energy to strengthen her soul, perfectly complementing the Devouring concept by consuming the absorbed energy), she was essentially a girl who had maxed out every single talent point in eating.

Therefore, any food that entered Chi Xiaobai's mouth would first have its energy extracted by her concept before being passed to her digestive system, where it was rapidly broken down thanks to her Ingestion origin. As a result, her digestive speed was at least four times that of a normal human (and that was just her passive state; if she actively invoked her concept, eight or sixteen times was effortless).

This meant that while a normal person ate three meals a day, she needed at least twelve!

However, unlike ordinary people, Chi Xiaobai's appetite actually decreased after a battle. According to her, the Devouring concept consumed the enemy's "damage" (including both physical and energetic damage) and converted it into nutritional sustenance for her soul. This left her concept in a state of satiety, meaning she only needed to satisfy the physical demands of her stomach.

Still, Feng Xue remained remarkably indulgent toward this girl who acted spoiled, acted cute, and rolled around demanding to be fed every two hours. How did that saying go again?

——Of course, that only applied to pretty girls.

Yet, as their journey progressed, Feng Xue finally understood the locust-swarm phenomenon he had witnessed earlier. While her daily food intake was only twice that of an average person, her digestion was so rapid that her Gourmet Demon had evolved a specialized skill to store food in a pocket dimension. To put it simply, it was similar to a gundam's storage, but far more advanced—instead of stuffing her cheeks, she stored things in a spatial dimension within her mouth.

Normally, before entering any other world, she would pack that room-sized space completely full, but who could have foreseen that this preliminary round would strictly forbid bringing any food!

As a result, upon entering the Constant, Chi Xiaobai practically ate anything and everything in sight!

During the first few days, before she figured out the rules of this world, she had even eaten trees!

That's right, actual trees, not just bark!

When Feng Xue listened to her tearful recounting of those trials, the image involuntarily popped into his mind of this cute girl swallowing an entire pine tree whole like a sword-swallower—he had almost laughed out loud. (How was he supposed to get the image of eating trees from Dota out of his head?)

Yet, as the time they spent traveling together increased, Feng Xue found himself actually enjoying the girl's cute pleas for food. From the perspective of both a man and a chef, it was quite a fulfilling experience!

"Where are you planning to go next?" After finishing the roasted meat, Feng Xue leaned against a large tree to aid his digestion, habitually taking out the Book of Nightmares to stroke its cover. It had been nearly ten days since he met Chi Xiaobai, but the second page of the Book of Nightmares remained un-flipped. It wasn't that Feng Xue hadn't met the appraisal requirements for the second page; rather, performing a willpower test before fully trusting Chi Xiaobai was simply too risky.

"Hmm..." Chi Xiaobai squatted nearby, rinsing the tableware using rainwater collected in her pocket dimension during the storm—ah, spit it out, no, rainwater! Ever since they had partnered up, the two had maintained a tacit division of labor where Feng Xue cooked and Xiaobai cleaned up.

"Xiaobai hasn't thought about it!"

"I knew it." Seeing Chi Xiaobai's reply, Feng Xue could only cover his face in exasperation. His new partner was truly an airhead. Whenever he asked about any plans other than eating, she would put on an adorable expression and reply that she hadn't thought about it.

"Then do you want to participate in the East-West Human Grand Tournament?" Feng Xue asked knowingly. In his heart, he was certain Chi Xiaobai had no desire to participate, because he had already figured out her personality. For Chi Xiaobai, rather than taking part in some survival challenge, she would much rather find a culinary realm and eat her fill.

To his surprise, however, Xiaobai's answer caught Feng Xue completely off guard—

"Xiaobai wants to participate!"

"Why?" Feng Xue looked at Chi Xiaobai in confusion. Although the East-West Human Grand Tournament was an event akin to the Olympics, for a girl whose world revolved entirely around food, grand notions of all-human glory or bringing honor to her country should have meant nothing to her.

"Because there's good food!" Xiaobai replied simply.

"You know which realm the finals are in?" Feng Xue was even more surprised. He had previously asked Xia-Mi about it, but even a seasoned veteran like Xia-Mi had no idea!

"I don't know!"

"If you don't know what realm it is, how do you know there's good food?" Feng Xue's curiosity deepened. Based on his days of getting to know her, Chi Xiaobai was not the type to make baseless claims. For her, spending energy on lies was far less efficient than spending it on eating.

"The teacher who gave me the special-entry quota told me so. He said, 'As long as Xiaobai can make it to the end of the finals, I'll have the Fantasy-class Gourmet Club prepare a grand feast just for you! No matter how rare the ingredients are, the academy will foot the bill!'" Chi Xiaobai bit her thumb, mimicking a teacher's words with the tone of a shady middle-aged man trying to lure a little girl with candy. By the looks of it, that was precisely the tone the teacher had used...

"So you're actually a seeded player, Xiaobai!"