Chapter 168: Before the Departure

"I really envy how you can go play wilderness survival and end up bringing back a girl!" Xia Mi sat lazily at the dining table, teasing Feng Xue.

"Don't talk nonsense, she is my partner!" Feng Xue placed a plate of braised geoduck on the table. Before he even had time to sit down, a third of the meat on the plate had already vanished. This was actually the result of Bai's restraint; if she hadn't left some for Feng Xue and Xia Mi, the entire dish would have disappeared in an instant.

Ever since the first batch of koala-elephants was harvested (the time ratio in Feng Xue's breeding space was one day to one year), Chi Xiaobai had taken up permanent residence in Feng Xue's dormitory, even bringing her own maid and luggage over, showing a strong tendency to treat the place as her own room.

"A partner, right? I understand! A gourmet hunter and a chef as partners... Hehe!" Xia Mi chuckled weirdly, picked up a slice of geoduck, and shoved it into her mouth. "Is this the meat dish for your Full Course Menu? Are you really this confident that this thing can surpass Jewel Meat? Given your current financial status, it's not like you can't afford Jewel Meat."

"Not confident!" Feng Xue shook his head. "While I am quite confident in the taste of the koala-elephant's trunk, it still falls a bit short compared to the Toriko-style Jewel Meat. But that's not important. For a gourmet hunter, the best-tasting ingredient isn't necessarily the most suitable one! Besides, hunting and cooking together with a partner is the true essence of the gourmet genre! Food that you simply buy cannot possibly be part of a Full Course Menu!"

"Mm-hmm!" Chi Xiaobai chimed in while chewing her side dish, wearing an expression of complete agreement.

"Fine, whatever, I was just saying. Go ahead and show off your affection all you want!" Xia Mi spread her hands with a do-as-you-please expression.

"By the way, how do you have time to come over here? Where is Mu Qianrou?" Feng Xue suddenly remembered that he still had another comrade-in-arms and asked.

"Don't even mention it. That girl is throwing a tantrum!" Xia Mi wore a helpless expression.

Hearing this, Feng Xue was startled. "What? Was she eliminated in the preliminary rounds?"

"As if, though it's pretty close. In the last preliminary round, she ran into a high-level expert whose name she didn't catch—probably a senior from the top fifty classes. Anyway, she was easily dealt with by the guy. It seems he spared her life just because she was a woman, which was a huge blow to her!" Xia Mi's playful expression vanished, and she spoke in a flat tone. One had to admit that the advantage held by transcendent-level senior students who had studied for at least an extra year was indeed quite significant.

Mu Qianrou was inherently an extremely proud and competitive girl; otherwise, she wouldn't have chosen martial intent as her soul cultivation method. Yet, the more competitive she was, the more severe such a blow would be.

"However, it seems that precisely because of this failure, Mu Qianrou has somewhat grazed the threshold of the Origin!"

"What?" Feng Xue's face suddenly darkened. "The threshold of the Origin? Just because of a single failure? If it were that easy, I'd fail a few times too!"

"Of course it's not that simple, it's just that Mu Qianrou's Origin is rather special." Xia Mi also looked quite envious. "However, according to the unwritten rules of past exchange tournaments, barring any accidents, the world chosen as the competition venue should be very helpful for awakening the Origin."

"Oh?" Feng Xue brightened up; this fellow Xia Mi always managed to dig up some inside information.

"I checked the records of past exchange tournaments. Most of the worlds are settings like Toaru Majutsu no Index, Bleach, Soul Eater, or Katekyo Hitman Reborn. If you can get in touch with the mainstream power system of the current world, you are basically guaranteed to touch the threshold of the Origin."

"I see..." Feng Xue wanted to ask more, but Xia Mi suddenly asked out of the blue, "By the way, how did you use the loan granted by the academy?"

"You know as well as I do, what can't I afford with my net worth? And the things I lacked couldn't possibly be acquired within a week, so I spent it all on this outfit!" Feng Xue pointed to the white ceremonial robe he was wearing—the classic Quincy blue-and-white color scheme, styled somewhat similarly to the white suit Lelouch wore upon his ascension.

"This is..." Xia Mi carefully inspected Feng Xue's outfit, but failed to find any traces of enchantment, and couldn't help feeling puzzled.

"It's a secret!" Feng Xue blinked, wearing a look that said he simply wouldn't tell.

"Forget it if you won't tell." Xia Mi just asked casually, and instead began to show off her own guqin. "Take a look! A phoenix tree burnt-wood base, dragon tendon strings, Kunlun jade essence inlaid at the bottom, South Sea agarwood infused into the lacquer, and unicorn horn used as the under-lacquer ash foundation. This is truly the guqin of a super-tycoon among tycoons!"

"Weren't you trying to nurture your old guqin into a magical artifact? Why did you switch guqins again?" Feng Xue asked curiously. Given Xia Mi's state of mind, she shouldn't have abandoned her "old partner" of many years just for the sake of a nice guqin.

"That's precisely the point!" Xia Mi stroked the body of the instrument excitedly. "This is my old guqin!"

"Good grief, you mean...?" Feng Xue suddenly realized something, and his face darkened. "Just how much did you borrow, you lunatic?"

"..." Xia Mi's face suddenly stiffened. "Sh-should be fine... Anyway, as long as I make it into the top ten, the academy will foot the bill."

"Fine, you're confident, you're amazing! You... I'm glad you're happy..." Feng Xue spread his hands; he was already too tired to even make a sarcastic remark.

"Relax, relax! At worst, I'll just work for free for another ten years. Anyway, the value of this guqin is enough to keep me striving for twenty years!" Xia Mi's expression flickered between sunny and stormy before she finally gritted her teeth and said.

"That's true. As long as this guqin undergoes 'spirit infusion' (meaning combining with the Origin to sublimate into a magical artifact, part of the ritual to promote to the Heroic rank), it can become an A-rank or higher magical artifact. Even if a Heroic-rank expert spent twenty years, they might not necessarily be able to forge one. You really struck gold. But speaking of which, did you use the Horadric Cube or the [Polymerization] magic card?"

"Are you kidding me? If I had used national treasures of that level, selling myself wouldn't even be enough to pay it back!" Xia Mi waved her hands hurriedly as if her tail had been stepped on. "I just used the Monster Hunter equipment enhancement skill to hammer high-level materials into low-level equipment."

Hearing this, Feng Xue recalled the unscientific enhancements in Monster Hunter. While reinforcing metal weapons was somewhat justifiable since they could be melted down and recast, even wooden and bone weapons could be upgraded using superior materials, which defied logic. Translated into reality, it meant that the Wyverian blacksmiths possessed a special technique capable of fusing materials, a skill that countless crafting-class lifestyle professionals dreamed of acquiring.

Of course, to this day, not even a handful of the entire Eastern human race had truly mastered this forging technique. (Contacting it wasn't difficult, but it was the closely guarded secret technology of the Wyverians. However, humans were forbidden from acquiring alien bloodlines, making it extremely troublesome to learn. As for directly bringing a Wyverian blacksmith out, that was even more troublesome, because the Wyverian blacksmith himself didn't understand the materials science of the Babel Tower world, and yet couldn't use the cross-world gates. By the time he relearned the materials, he would probably be close to death.)