Chapter 163 Cultivation

"Feng Xue, Little Bai wants to eat geoduck!"
"Feng Xue, Little Bai wants to eat geoduck!"
"Feng Xue, Little Bai wants to eat geoduck!"

"Enough! Stop calling out! If you want to eat geoduck, you have to find a koala elephant first!" Feng Xue was on the verge of going crazy. To be precise, he had already gone mad. There was no helping it; if you had a beautiful young girl doing nothing in front of you except repeating the exact same sentence over and over again, you would go crazy too.

Ever since Feng Xue steamed the previously aged geoduck and fed it to Chi Xiaobai, this girl seemed to have regarded the geoduck as her lifelong menu. That made sense, however, because a partner hunter's and a partner chef's Full Course Menus are usually identical, except that the chef refines the Full Course into specific dishes, while the hunter's menu merely lists the ingredients.

"But Little Bai can't find a koala elephant!" Chi Xiaobai drooped as she pulled a piece of dried meat out of her mouth, took another bite, and chewed, causing the corner of Feng Xue's eye to twitch violently.

After Chi Xiaobai consumed the steamed geoduck, her Gourmet Cells awakened hyper-perception. Unfortunately, her hyper-perception was entirely taste-based: as long as she took a bite of an ingredient, she could obtain all information about it, including its memories, physical structure, and special abilities. Logically speaking, this was an extremely powerful ability, but making an adorable girl like Chi Xiaobai bite people in combat was simply challenging Feng Xue's bottom line!

However, for Chi Xiaobai, biting people did not seem to carry any sense of shame...

"If you can't find one, you can't find one. Once we return to the academy, I'll submit an order, and then I'll open a breeding dimension right in the backyard of my dormitory to raise a flock of koala elephants! Whenever you want to eat them, I'll cook them for you!" Feng Xue stroked Chi Xiaobai's head. He thoroughly enjoyed this head-patting routine; Chi Xiaobai's hair quality was wonderful, feeling as smooth as silk, and Feng Xue found it impossible to put down.

"Mhm..." Chi Xiaobai narrowed her eyes like a kitten. "It's a promise, then!"

"Mhm, a promise!" Feng Xue nodded. The so-called breeding dimension was actually a feature of the student dormitories, but most transmigrators never bothered to activate it because it was far too expensive.

If it were a one-time purchase, that would be one thing, but that contraption required continuous consumption. Its essence was a sub-space capable of time dilation, roughly the size of a pasture on the inside. The water within was connected to spring water from a nutrient-rich and spiritual-energy-dense environment (which could be customized depending on the plants or animals being raised), and the soil was top-tier spiritual earth cultivated using boundless breathing soil.

Transmigrators could freely let various flora and fauna roam inside, or use it as a simulation laboratory. The time dilation could even reach a ratio of one hundred to one; precious medicinal herbs that normally took a century to mature would ripen in just one year within this space.

Generally, though, only transmigrators who also practiced alchemy had the wealth to activate a breeding dimension to serve as a medicinal herb garden. But who asked Feng Xue to be so filthy rich?

As a lavish tycoon, Feng Xue didn't even have to think twice before setting this breeding dimension as his pasture for raising the ingredients of his future Full Course Menu.

"Wow! Feng Xue is so rich!" Chi Xiaobai made an exaggerated, astonished expression as another piece of dried meat was pulled from her mouth and swallowed down once more.

"That's right!" Feng Xue stretched lazily, finally managing to handle Chi Xiaobai. He had already confirmed it: Chi Xiaobai was a natural-born airhead!

She was fine during combat, but in daily life, she could practically trip over flat ground. Even though they had only known each other for a few days, this creature could entirely hand over the night watch duty to Feng Xue at night and then fall asleep peacefully, seemingly without a single worry that Feng Xue might do all sorts of unspeakable things while she was asleep.

Feng Xue had met Chi Xiaobai two or three months ago, and the climate in the Don't Starve world had begun shifting from the gentle breeze of March to the scorching heat of summer. During this period, they continually discovered traces of battles fought by other transmigrators, but they hadn't actually run into many of them. Whether it was because everyone was hiding extremely well, because this map was simply too massive, or because the transmigrators had already mostly killed each other off, was unclear. At any rate, even the swamp—which Feng Xue had originally assumed would become the main battlefield for the transmigrators' slaughter—had been reduced to a desolate landscape bearing only the scars of transmigrators passing through.

That made sense when you thought about it. Given the sheer scale of the entire swamp region, having three or four hundred people might make it feel crowded, but if only fifty or sixty remained, finding each other was far from guaranteed. Furthermore, the surviving transmigrators weren't necessarily all gathered in the swamp.

Moreover, after numerous battles, the freshman transmigrators, who initially lacked combat experience, had begun to grow accustomed to fighting peers who also came from the Babel Tower era. These were no longer plot-driven enemies with obvious shortcomings, but opponents developing in all-round, well-rounded ways.

Surely anyone who managed to survive until now understood the importance of concealing themselves?

Feng Xue set up camp beside a small pond and transplanted various flowers from the surrounding area as experimental subjects, beginning mass production of Evil Flowers. Although Chi Xiaobai heard that these flowers could be used to brew wine, she showed not the slightest intention of getting close to them. To her, the kind of power that caused SAN values to plummet drastically was somewhat terrifying; while it wouldn't cause her any genuine physical harm, it was much like stepping in a pile of dog feces—though stepping in it wouldn't hurt, very few people would go out of their way to step in it, right?

However, these experiments allowed Chi Xiaobai to be the first to acquire her second Full Course Menu item—the floral dew of the Evil Flower.

That's right, floral dew.

The dew on the Evil Flowers seemed to be radiated by the power of nightmares, yet it lacked the effect of lowering SAN values. Instead, it carried a dreamlike, illusory fragrance. Once collected, whether brewed into tea or used as drinking water, this floral dew offered a peculiar and wonderful experience.

Although Feng Xue also felt that this floral dew tasted truly exceptional, it hadn't reached the level of a Full Course Menu item for him. Chi Xiaobai was different, however; after drinking just a small cup, she broke out into a signature Food Wars-style facial expression. To Feng Xue's surprise, her appetite returned completely to normal for the entire following day!

In Chi Xiaobai's own words: "This dew can satisfy my appetite!"

This floral dew was critically important to Chi Xiaobai because there were often times when she simply didn't have the opportunity to eat constantly. If her Gourmet Demon remained unsatisfied, it easily triggered an auto-cannibalism phenomenon! Therefore, if a battle dragged on into a war of attrition, Chi Xiaobai would likely suffer defeat due to starvation.

Everyone's Gourmet Demon was different, which meant the suitable ingredients varied as well. However, this was the first time Feng Xue had ever heard of a situation like Chi Xiaobai's, where a mere sip of water could completely satisfy her appetite.

Precisely because they had achieved results, Feng Xue expanded his flower field even further. Every day, alongside collecting the floral dew he intended to use for brewing wine, he had to gather extra portions to store for Chi Xiaobai.