Chapter 45 Food Path

A/N ( and with this chap I've now written the same amount of chapters as my friend and author of Reverend Insanity: Poison Refining Demon Venerable. Next goal is 71 the same as the author of white shadow demonic Venerable.)

Due to having to wait for Steep Tea Gu to advance, I had a lot of time on my hands. I had already refined the bulk of the Gu I would need and left the Masked Wills to handle the rest. The only Gu that really needed more refinement were the Time Path Gu, like Fast Forward, which were one-time use.

I went up to Shapeless Land Spirit, whom I had ordered to constantly drain and store blood from the beasts in his blessed land, along with using Liquid Gu on some excess Qi materials to refill his Qi ocean. He was doing the latter when I found him.

"Master, how can I help you?" he asked, stopping what he was doing and bowing down to me.

"How many Liquor Worms have you refined?" I asked. Previously, Shapeless had been tasked with mass refining Liquor Worms by creating a type of wine that had a chance of refining the Liquor Worms alongside it.

"Ah, a total of 347 Rank 1 Liquor Worms have been collected and refined, Master."

347? Well, that's not too bad. But if I want Rank 2 and Rank 3 Gu Masters to join my sect, I'll have to refine higher ranks of the Liquor Worms. So, I'll need more Liquor Worms to successfully refine them to a higher rank.

"Good. Keep making more, and while you're at it, use Wine Gu to create Qi wine with Qi ocean to feed them."

Shapeless nodded. "I will do as you say, Master."

With that, I returned to the Masked Immortal's Blessed Land, where the Masked Land Spirit was hard at work turning Primeval Essence Stones into Primeval Water and creating some small formations he had been making since the completion of the first one.

The Masked Spirit was much more capable at these tasks than Shapeless. Be it refining or formations, he was much better, and with Wisdom Path Gu, he was even more efficient. With Liquor Worms and Primeval Dao Water, the number of players willing to join me would outnumber any non-preexisting player guilds.

Only loyal players and real-life paid players would want to stay in their faction. Most would hop ships to mine as soon as they'd see how nice mine was. People valued benefits, and my benefits simply outweighed most sects' benefits.

After spending so much time inside my two blessed lands, I needed to go out and take in Heaven and Earth Qi. As the Qi was coming in, I took a look at it. My dragonfish were developing immensely, to the point that there were already three sperate hundred Beast Kings. Once there's a good amount of Beast Kings, or enough strong ones, their offspring will be of better quality. Those will be the perfect ones to upgrade their quality.

My Wills had dug the lake into one long stream, cutting my Blessed Land in half, with the dug-out earth spread evenly across the rest of the land. In the sky, I had set up a basic formation to hold the Dead Sea and the Salt Plague. Formations like these were very well known in the Eastern Sea to separate different bodies of water and materials.

As for the bottom half of my Blessed Land, I replaced most of the shrubs and bushes with berry bushes and herbs. For the top half, I used a mortal method to turn the trees into different fruit trees. However, since I had changed so much, their food requirements had increased.

Water wasn't an issue, with the Dragon Stream right in the middle. Worst-case scenario, I could have some Wills water the further parts of the Blessed Land from time to time. But now, these plants required more nutrients.

I have several mortal methods that can resolve this, but an ideal Blessed Land should be self-sufficient. So, I needed ways to provide nutrients and water naturally. I decided to introduce a third living being into my Blessed Land, and they were also a Food Path being. Under one of my fruit trees, eating the leaves that fell off, was a dark brown millipede the size of an adult's middle finger.

This bug is common everywhere and found in most immortals' Blessed Lands. It's called a Nutripede, a bug that eats decaying materials and lives in the dirt. Their feces return nutrients to the soil and are full of healthy nutrients for any other being that eats them. So, they're technically Food Path beings, though mortal ones.

They'll take care of the nutrients for the plants and eat away the discarded foliage. I even left the uprooted plain shrubs and bushes for them to devour and return the nutrients to the Blessed Land. I also want to get some aquatic plants to feed the dragonfish something else, but here in the Eastern Sea, I'm bound to find something I like.

Now, I'd like to have some animals that eat berries and fruit, and I know exactly what I want, but they're not from the Eastern Sea. So, I had to put a request in the player shop with a very high reward for them, but even then, it will likely be at most a hundred Beast King that I'd get.

The current players are too weak, with the decent ones at Rank 2. Only the top players are at most Rank 3, though there are outliers like those with extreme physiques. Since I earned the reward for becoming the first immortal, those who tried failed or suppressed their cultivation to slow down their progress.

So right now, the majority of the players are too weak to obtain anything beyond a hundred Beast Kings. Well, I'll be happy with several normal beasts too, but I'll have to wait for them. As I was thinking this, the system rang out.

System: [Introducing the new event "The Sounds of Harmony." The event will begin in two weeks.]

Two weeks. Just like last time, they gave us a heads-up. Those who participated in the last event would believe that only Sound Path Gu would be allowed, and they'd be right. That's why we were given a heads-up to prepare for it. Strength Path and Sound Path, though I don't care for them, will be the paths most players follow in the future.

Only the Blood Path was able to contend with their popularity. If the system ever had a Blood Path event, I'd dare say it would be the most popular path. But that hasn't happened, so only those who worked on it would walk down that path. However, free Gu recipes and Gu, especially immortal ones, are not something I'd say no to.

They can all be used to benefit my soon-to-be sect. Just because I won't walk that path doesn't mean my sect members won't. As for the necessary Gu, they've already been prepared. This is fortunate, as now any Gu or materials in the player shop related to the Sound Path will be far too expensive due to the event.

I went over to the formation that was refining Steep Tea Gu and took a whiff. Hmm, I'd say it'll take over a month, maybe two at most, to complete its refinement. Even with all the Food Path materials and Time-Accelerating Gu, Gu refinement cannot be instant. So, it should be ready just before the Sound Path event starts.

With my free time, all I could do was refine some Gu, such as Grip Gu, as it needed my full, undivided attention to refine to Rank 5 after some previous attempts. But what I really wanted to refine were the incomplete Gu recipes Insatiable Drinker gave me.

After some alterations and using Wisdom Path Gu, I was able to complete one recipe fairly quickly. Refining it was simple, but once I succeeded, I was left with a Gu that looked like a cherry tomato but gave off the aura of a Rank 2 Gu. No wonder Insatiable Drinker didn't refine it. The recipe was an incomplete Rank 2 Gu recipe that needed better ingredients to complete.

Now, what does it do? That's the question of the day. I brought out a Masked Will from my Blessed Land and gave him the new Gu while taking all the others he had. I instructed him to use it. The Gu activated, but it appeared nothing happened. I took the Will back to learn what it went through, and as I observed, it didn't know what had occurred.

Well, the Gu is still okay and hasn't weakened, so it's not a one-time-use Gu at least. It also activated with Primeval Essence, but what was its effect? I repeated the process, this time using some other Gu to see what was happening. The Gu that saw something was my Aurora Scent Gu. It detected a beam of small, invisible dots shooting out from the Gu.

They landed on the ground as I observed and tested what it was. After some trials, I figured out that it created fermentation bacteria. It made me laugh for a bit. Insatiable Drinker, you really were a Food Path master who specialized in alcohol. With this Gu, I could speed up the process of making alcohol and Gu recipes that refined alongside alcohol.

It wasn't useful to most Gu Masters, but it could help me in many ways. It even gave me inspiration to use this Gu as a core to recreate the Tribulation Withering Downpour. It's very possible I could create many variations of that tribulation with this Gu. I decided to name it Fermentation Creation Gu.

As for the other drink recipe with good potential to become a Gu, it needed more work than the first, but it wasn't bad either. With its refinement complete, I was left with a small blue caterpillar. After experimenting with it, I discovered the Gu had the effect of turning some solid foods into juicier versions of themselves in exchange for turning some of its solid parts into juice.

It's not as good as Fermentation Creation Gu, but it could be used to empower my killer moves that used Liquid Gu as the core. Insatiable Drinker's Gu inheritance was truly an alcoholism treasure trove. His Food Path inheritance focused on feeding oneself or others. After all my years of delving into Food Path, my understanding of it is that it can be explained by two things: feeding and eating. Gu that creates things that can be eaten, like Snack Gu and Fermentation Creation Gu, fall under feeding.

While Gu like my Small Appetite and Large Appetite fall under eating, as they influence how much one needs to eat. Some Gu fall under both categories, like Liquid Gu, as it alters how some may eat and feed others. Of course, there are some outliers, but most Food Path Gu fall under these two categories. Fang Yuan's understanding of Food Path was not wrong, but it was simply a different perspective from mine. He believed that the best and true use of Food Path was to assist in cultivation, but that's not all true.

To eat is to survive. To survive is to grow. To grow is to thrive. It's a circle of life, and Food Path is but a part of it. One cannot exist without the other, or they will die and continue the process in another way, by becoming another being's food to be eaten.