Chapter 3652 — The Gluttonous Meng Zhou
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
To shirk work and seek ease—that is human nature, born in the bone. Compared with grubbing away in the mines day after day, trading a few worthless jade scraps from Meng Jueming's hands for Wei Zhao's fine jade was plainly far more to his liking.
In fact, Meng Zhou had already begun to feel some regret—regret that he had been such a big mouth back then and let slip that Wei Zhao, that idiot, could not tell good jade from bad. Looking back on it now, he had been a complete fool!
If he had not let it slip, then the other newcomers would never have learned they could take worthless jade to that idiot Wei Zhao and trade it for fine jade. And then every fine piece in Wei Zhao's possession would have been his, would it not?
A full fifteen pieces of fine jade—even if he slaved away in Mine No. 7 for three whole months, he could not earn half of those fifteen! If things had gone that way, he would not have to burrow into the mines every cursed day like this; he could have lain about in his cave dwelling, counting spirit jade for fun!
But such good fortune could only be savored in his head. Even if Meng Zhou's wits were none too sharp, he knew well enough that if things had gone that way, most of the fine jade traded from Wei Zhao would still have ended up in Meng Jueming's hands, and he himself would have been lucky to lap up a little of the thin broth.
After a spell of sighing and lamenting, Meng Zhou had no choice but to report to the mines as usual. Yet when he had passed through the long underground corridor and was just about to enter the mining area, he suddenly stopped in his tracks.
"What in the world?" Meng Zhou could not help glancing about. For an instant just now, he had distinctly caught sight of a black-and-white shape darting past his eyes, and it had moved with considerable speed.
An ordinary person might not have been able to react in time, but Meng Zhou was, after all, a consummate master of the Heaven rank. Though he had not clearly made out its form, he could already be certain that the shape which had just flashed past him was unquestionably a spirit beast.
"A spirit beast! Its meat will be far more delicious than any ordinary wild game!" At the thought, Meng Zhou could not keep himself from swallowing again and again.
By rights, once a cultivator's strength reaches the level of a Heaven-rank master, he can already subsist entirely on qi, drawing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth through his daily cultivation, which is more than enough to meet his body's needs; there is no longer any call to replenish his energy by taking food.
But that does not mean every master above the Heaven rank stops eating altogether. In fact, out of long-ingrained habit, the great majority of cultivators still eat something from time to time. Of course, by then eating is no longer a necessity—it is purely to satisfy the palate.
Take Meng Zhou himself: years ago he had already been a Heaven-rank master capable of fasting on qi, yet he still kept up the habit of eating all manner of rare delicacies every day, and every few days he would even go out and hunt a few hard-to-find wild beasts to tickle his taste buds.
And in his experience, however rare the beast, the flavor of its meat still fell far short of a spirit beast's.
One must understand that a spirit beast is, so to speak, a cultivator among beasts. Even the weakest and lowest-ranked of them is a quintessential being nurtured by the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Their flesh is not only far more savory and delicious than ordinary game—more importantly, it brims with spiritual energy. Even for cultivators it is a rare tonic; if its efficacy cannot quite match that of pills, it comes close enough.