Chapter 58: Consumption Plus Body Strengthening—Definitely Worth It

“Consumption,” one of the spells Feng Xue bought from Nine Aunt, belongs to the [Transformation] school according to the Four Basic Techniques of the Mortuary Scripture, granting magical energy a [pre-digestive] property akin to spider venom; in simple terms, it uses magical energy to process food, making it easier to digest and absorb.

It seems a highly practical skill, capable of effectively replenishing the essence depleted by xuan cultivators’ extraction of primordial energy.

But in reality, few xuan cultivators use this spell.

The reason, naturally, is an imbalance between input and output.

Although the Consumption Spell increases the nutrients the body extracts from food, these nutrients must still be transformed by the body into essence, then converted into primordial energy through breath meditation, and finally absorbed by the soul to produce magical energy.

With such layered transformations, the magical energy gained through the Consumption Spell is even less than the magical energy consumed to activate it.

Though the spell’s focus is on enhancing primordial energy available for the soul’s growth, if magical energy cannot balance input and output, a xuan cultivator’s risk resilience declines—let alone that pre-initiation xuan cultivators have extremely weak control over magical energy; a single misstep leads to total loss.

Thus, except for those full-time cultivators who never leave their sect before initiation and rely entirely on their sect for resources, most xuan cultivators only use the Consumption Spell when obtaining rare immortals’ herbs or fungi to boost absorption efficiency—or after initiation, to extract primordial energy from materials like jade that they normally cannot absorb.

But Feng Xue himself doesn’t care—he has more magical energy than he knows what to do with, and he doesn’t rely on the Consumption Spell to increase primordial energy; he practices it solely to strengthen essence, combining it with Nourishing Essence and Body Strengthening to rapidly enhance his physical condition.

If there had been any dark arts that returned primordial energy through consumption, Feng Xue might have literally made an electric meter spin backward.

After quickly familiarizing himself with the Body Strengthening movements, Feng Xue turned to the Nourishing Essence spell, roughly studying the suitable ingredients and cooking methods, ranking them by difficulty, and planning to gradually teach them to Liu Yunxi…

“Wait a minute! I’ve got a new tool now!”

Feng Xue snapped his fingers—“pop!”—and the translucent Mo Ying drifted out of the scroll, blinking around in confusion; seeing several books before Feng Xue, he assumed: “I haven’t digested the one I copied this morning yet—give me time to study it before I look at anything else…”

“Who mentioned books? I’ve got a task for you!” Feng Xue interrupted, pointing to the cookbook before him:

“You’ll teach Liu Yunxi to read and cook.”

“You’re making me…” Mo Ying started to refuse, but seeing Feng Xue’s raised palm, his face flushed red; his half-extended body instantly retracted into the scroll, leaving only his head visible:

“I can’t cook! I’ve never learned! I can’t even tell salt from sugar, soy sauce from vinegar!”

“I don’t need you to cook!” Feng Xue rolled his eyes, glancing at Liu Yunxi, who was already bringing dishes to the table:

“Just use the cookbook as a reading textbook for her. She knows oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar! Oh, and it’s time you practiced your Chuanmo illusion—pull Liu Yunxi into the illusion to teach her; it’ll save time.”

“Who’s Chuanmo ?!” Though still unsure what “ Chuanmo ” meant, Mo Ying knew it wasn’t a compliment and immediately retorted; unaware of what awaited her, Liu Yunxi smiled and called out:

“Dinner’s almost ready—come eat!”

“Coming.” Feng Xue grabbed the jade tablet inscribed with the character “Eat” and engraved with the Consumption Spell’s transformation glyph, sat down, and began devouring the food.

As magical energy flowed into the tablet, a warm current, guided by Feng Xue’s intent, enveloped his body; a sensation neither unpleasant nor entirely comfortable rippled through him, and the satisfaction from the food increased several times faster than normal eating.

Then Feng Xue realized—this entire table of dishes left him with zero feeling of fullness!

He looked like those cartoon characters with bottomless stomachs: having devoured massive quantities, yet his belly showed no bulge.

Seeing the Consumption Spell’s immediate effect, Feng Xue was pleasantly surprised, but he didn’t pause—he immediately rose and began performing the Body Strengthening postures.

Normally, one shouldn’t exercise vigorously after eating, but due to the Consumption Spell, Feng Xue had no fear of issues like gastric ptosis; as he moved through the motions—somewhat resembling broadcast calisthenics—he faintly felt a warm current slowly flowing along with his movements.

It resembled primordial energy, yet wasn’t as tangible—merely following his consciousness at a steady pace, accompanying tendon stretches and muscle contractions.

With this sensation emerging, what had felt like mere exercise now gained an air of mystery, and Feng Xue felt greater accomplishment in practicing it.

Unfortunately, this training still failed to trigger his cheat skill—no Body Strengthening technique popped up.

Recalling the descriptions in “Body Strengthening,” Feng Xue realized his sensations were far more intense than normal; he didn’t believe himself some rare martial genius—clearly, this warmth was the Consumption Spell’s enhancement.

“Consumption plus Body Strengthening—definitely worth it!”

Feng Xue nodded in satisfaction, not wondering why others in this world didn’t do the same—after all, no xuan cultivator would waste precious magical energy to help a wu cultivator solve a problem solvable by simply eating more and training harder.

After half an hour of training, Feng Xue felt the warmth begin to fade; he silently calculated, pulled out a sheet of paper, and began revising his schedule—

Body Strengthening isn’t taxing, but the body needs time to consolidate; one session after each meal suffices, then morning, when his body is in peak condition, is ideal for standing Zhuang . Evenings remain unchanged: extracting primordial energy to feed the soul.

“So really, it’s just added morning exercise and post-meal movement.” Feng Xue nodded, finalizing the schedule.

Seeing it was only four-something, Feng Xue reached out and patted Liu Yunxi, who was slumped on the table—then remembered she’d been pulled into Mo Ying’s illusion for lessons; he immediately contacted his spirit ghost.

But due to the illusion’s interference, the signal was poor; Feng Xue sighed at his low-grade spirit soul, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a jade tablet engraved with the character “Ghost.”

He carried over a dozen jade tablets; retrieving the one he wanted wasn’t done by Majiang -style groping or shoulder-view peeking, but through the spell “Summon Object.”

In simple terms, this spell is straightforward: use the [Spirit-Attaching Charm] technique to fix his magical energy onto an object, then encode specific annotations into the energy based on the object’s nature.

Thus, when he needs something, he merely senses the magical imprint on the object to quickly identify it; if he integrates the magical energy’s [Transfer] property, he can even make his spirit ghost retrieve objects from afar (Note ①).

But Feng Xue, a low-grade cultivator who still relies on artifacts to transform magical energy, is far from that level—he can only distinguish the types of artifacts in his pocket.

Now, as magical energy flowed into the tablet, the weak signal sharpened instantly; Feng Xue heard Mo Ying’s soft, cute voice—

“A little is a little—how should I know how much? Just try it yourself when you cook… Ah, M—Master! You called me?”

Feng Xue paid no mind to Mo Ying’s still-resisting address and ordered directly: “Release Liu Yunxi… Wait, just tell her—from tonight’s dinner, increase her portion by two… no, three times! We’ve got enough ingredients for the next two days; after that, I’ll have the agent deliver supplies regularly—she handles the cooking!”

Note ①: A spirit ghost normally just hands you an object. But if you integrate Transfer and Spirit-Attaching, you can tag an object with a coordinate, teleport the spirit ghost hundreds or thousands of li away to that location, have it retrieve the target, then use the spirit-master spiritual bond to teleport the spirit ghost back—achieving something like spatial teleportation. Alternatively, you can reverse it: send objects dozens or hundreds of li back home.

But this demands high magical sensitivity—not direct scanning, but keen awareness of where your own magical energy resides, like Bluetooth find-my-device; the protagonist clearly lacks this precision—he can’t sense beyond two li, making it practically useless; currently, it’s only useful for quickly identifying which artifact in his pocket is which.

PS1: The Consumption Spell essentially converts food into nutrient broth (though waste still exists, it’s far less than normal eating); nutrients are absorbed, but there’s no sense of fullness.

Also, this magical energy aids absorption—there’s no scenario like eating massive supplements in reality and getting no benefit.

PS2: Post 52 was accidentally published with the wrong date—fortunately, I could delete it.

PS3: Regarding dice—each world in this book is a large module. I first write the worldbuilding, then outline several paths, placing different events along them. For this world, it’s a phantom-comedy tone: Pingan County has zombies, evil ghosts, infant spirits; the harbor has triads; inland branches lead to Suzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Kunshan, with villages and shady inns along the way. Which path you take and what you encounter depends on the dice.

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(End of Chapter)