Chapter 336: Daylight Feast, Fresh Blood (Seeking Monthly Votes)

Colorful Mist Coast, Firefly Firefly Lake.

This was a Firefly Lake located 833 kilometers in a straight line from the entrance of the Spatial Node.

Under the night sky.

Fluorescent ferns along both shores swayed in the wind, scattering pale green light particles into the air, intertwining with the dancing fireflies to form a flowing river of light.

A lone figure sat quietly amidst the amber-colored fluorescent ferns, the hem of his cloak soaked in the Firefly Lake water, holding a fishing rod in one hand as he fished.

The moonlight reflected off the Firefly Lake surface, outlining his youthful Iron Face; his profile was lean, with eyes cast downward.

The water rippled gently, blurring that reflection for an instant.

"Too crazy."

A faint glow flickered deep within Cheng Shan's pupils.

His black eyes, originally reflecting the Firefly Lake's light, now mirrored a different scene: a semi-transparent interface of the Evolution Shop auction hovered in his vision, where four items had frozen at astronomical prices the moment the auction ended.

At these prices, ordinary players simply lacked the ability to accumulate such sums at the current stage.

Unless, in the future, player combat power soared and sacrificial power output increased explosively alongside it.

"So rich; it feels like I'm not even playing the same game," Cheng Shan sighed inwardly.

He had seen posts on the forum by lore-expert players analyzing player wealth.

Regarding wealth rankings among player organizations, the Gold Coin Chamber of Commerce inevitably took first place.

Earning spreads externally, collecting fees internally, and generating revenue through various service channels, its expanding scale made it akin to a money-printing machine.

Ranking second was the Divine Hall Society, along with other top-tier joint warbands.

Following them, most likely came Little Little Mage.

However, some players replied in the thread expressing disagreement, believing that while the Gold Coin Chamber of Commerce had limitless future potential, Little Little Mage was currently the wealthiest player.

He controlled a population numbering in the millions.

He had also led the Lingxi Clan in opening up multiple resource production channels; the Gold Coin Chamber of Commerce's current scale might not necessarily rival Little Little Mage's.

Secondly, although the daily revenue output of the Divine Hall Society and other top-tier societies was high.

They generally converted it into strength on the same day rather than hoarding sacrificial power, leaving them with little spendable sacrificial power in reserve.

If truly comparing financial strength, they were certainly no match for Little Little Mage.

Regarding the assessment of player wealth, different players held their own views.

Unable to use the Guide to inquire about other players' information, the discussion over who was truly richer never yielded a definitive answer.

But one thing was certain: those players on the wealth leaderboard commanded sacrificial power reserves far exceeding those of ordinary players.

With these players making moves in the newly launched Evolution Shop, ordinary players stood no chance.

They could only watch the spectacle.

Cheng Shan withdrew his gaze, and in the blink of an eye, closed the official website page zoomed in the upper-left corner of his vision.

His focus returned to the Firefly Lake surface.

He had traveled thousands of miles to this Firefly Lake to fish because, while researching in the library, he had found records of a rare spiritual fish here: the Moon-Hidden Silver Scale.

He had personally explored this region, dispelling the fog of war on the map.

However, he was not a fishing-enthusiast player, but a professional Spirit Chef player.

This long journey was no accident.

Three months ago, he had decided to undertake a challenge: to complete a top-tier spiritual meal that no player had ever attempted before.

For over three months, he had been rushing about solely for this purpose.

Three days ago, within the library's book "Colorful Mist Coast - Rare Aquatic Ingredient Illustrated Guide," he had found records regarding the "Moon-Hidden Silver Scale."

To locate this untouched Firefly Lake, he had spent two full days exploring the unknown regions south of the Colorful Mist Coast.

Now, only two final ingredients remained to complete the top-tier spiritual meal, the "Daylight Feast."

The Moon-Hidden Silver Scale was precisely the core ingredient among them.

The flesh of this fish contained special spiritual essences, making it a top-tier ingredient for crafting high-grade spiritual meals, something fundamentally unavailable in the Trading Row.

As a Spirit Chef player, traveling across mountains and rivers was already a routine for him.

The Spirit Chef profession sounded like a highly lucrative trade.

Many players, upon hearing the words "Spirit Chef," imagined daily fortunes and easily earning sacrificial power with relaxation and joy.

They saw only the astronomical prices of dishes in the Trading Row, unaware that behind every new spiritual meal lay countless days and nights of frantic travel.

Their line of work amounted to being lore-expert players specializing in a single field.

They needed to memorize the taste, effects, and dosage of every ingredient, all requiring deep study and accumulation within the library.

To become a top-tier Spirit Chef, one had to possess a vast reserve of knowledge.

The ingredients in the Monster World were too abundant; they had to learn until they died, with an endless path of climbing ahead in this lifetime.

Speaking of making money, it was not easy either.

In the Spirit Chef line, having ingredients did not guarantee the creation of a spiritual meal; failures occurred during the production process.

After investing painstaking effort, a carefully cooked spiritual meal would result in total waste of ingredients upon failure.

The daily life of a true Spirit Chef player was exactly like this, requiring their time to be divided into three parts.

One-third of the time was spent traveling externally to seek ingredients, one-third studying knowledge in the library, and the remaining time dedicated to producing spiritual meals.

Although ingredients could be purchased via the Trading Row, many rare ingredients were simply unavailable there.

This necessitated consulting the library, searching for information on nearby regions, and then setting out personally to find them.

He still remembered last month, while seeking "Frostfire Peppers," he was besieged by magma lizards at a volcano crater, dying a full eighteen times back and forth before successfully obtaining the ingredients.

Half a month ago, he had chased a group of invisible "Mist-Shrouded Mushrooms" across half the rainforest in the Colorful Mist Coast region before finally killing them to process and preserve them as ingredients.

Sometimes, after great hardship to find top-tier ingredients, the cooking process might fail due to a slight difference in heat control, causing the spiritual structure of the entire pot of spiritual meal to collapse into an indescribable mess.

A scan from the Analyzer would sweep over, and the Guide would considerately offer a handling suggestion:

[Suggest sacrificing to Emperor Omen; 7% of material costs may be refunded.]

Those rare materials collected over days or even weeks would, at the moment of failure, transform into a discount feedback equivalent to Emperor Omen slashing at one's ankles.

This was the life of a Spirit Chef player: glamorous on the surface, miserable behind the scenes.

Yet, he happened to love this profession.

Whenever he lifted the lid and saw a pot of spiritual meal perfectly formed in an instant, it filled him with immense pride and a sense of accomplishment.

He still clearly remembered the scene when he first successfully crafted "Clear-Stewed Moonlight Soup."

The soup in the pot was clear as moonlight, with silver-tailed fish slices faintly visible within; the moment he drank it, every pore in his body seemed to breathe in the night breeze.

During that time, challenger prompts constantly rang in his mind; besides an increase in Body Tempering level, there were also permanent attribute boosts.

That success had made him complacent for several days.

It was precisely the success of that spiritual meal that led him into the Spirit Chef profession.

As he explored and understood it further, he increasingly found the Spirit Chef gameplay particularly interesting.

Surprising discoveries occurred from time to time.

For instance, stewing Thunder Fruits together with Calming Lotuses could actually neutralize the ferocity of the lightning attribute, transforming it into a gentle body-tempering medicinal diet.

Or, accidentally discovering that after three distillations, Rotten Bone Grass could instead refine a special plant essence combining with the spiritual energy in the air, a specialized treatment that even extracting a Soul could not achieve.

These unexpected surprises hidden behind ingredients were like puzzles waiting to be solved, fascinating him.

Although occasionally he felt frustrated, disheartened, or irritable... the moment of success turned all negative emotions into a driving force for emotional sublimation.

Amidst surging thoughts, the float suddenly jerked violently.

Realizing a fish had taken the bait, Cheng Shan flipped his wrist, bending the fishing rod into a precarious arc.

Immediately, blue light exploded on the Firefly Lake surface as a small, completely transparent fish leaped out of the water, its scales swirling with a pale blue halo under the moonlight.

Cheng Shan flicked his wrist, and a golden kitchen knife appeared in his hand, drawing an arc of light under the moon.

The moment the blade touched the fish's body, time seemed to slow down.

As light circulated, the fish scales were entirely removed.

The blade edge cut precisely along the gills, moving between the scales and the air, stirring up fine blue light particles.

With the first diagonal cut, the fish head separated from the body while still trembling slightly.

After the second horizontal slice and a lift, the semi-transparent fish bones were peeled away intact like a work of art and flicked into the air.

With the third light spin, the fish flesh bloomed in mid-air into thirty-six slices of sashimi as thin as cicada wings, each maintaining nearly identical thickness, revealing a texture like ice cracks under the moonlight.

As the sliced fish pieces fell, Cheng Shan vibrated his wrist.

Instantly, all the fish slices landed neatly stacked upon the surface of the blade.

From the fish leaving the water to being sliced into sashimi, the entire process took less than two seconds.

This was his signature skill.

Players of different systems each had their own specialized investments.

Monster-Flow players invested their sacrificial power primarily in Soul growth, Hunting-Party players mainly in perfecting the Star Vein system... while for Spirit Chef players, the largest expenditure lay in forging and upgrading Rune Resonance weapons.

Too many ingredients in the Monster World were difficult to process; having a good kitchen knife was more important than Soul growth.

With shoddy weapons, it was difficult to even penetrate the defense of ingredients.

Next came the processing of the ingredients.

Cheng Shan gently rotated his wrist, sliding the fish slices stacked on the blade onto an ice-crystal cutting board taken from his Spatial Sack.

He then took three more items from his Spatial Sack: a small packet of sandy salt, a bottle of Morning Dew Flower nectar, and several segments of emerald-green scallions wrapped in oil paper.

Striking the ice board with the back of the knife, he stirred up a burst of frosty mist; the fish slices danced within the mist, precisely coating themselves with crushed ice shimmering with starlight.

Putting down the fishing rod, his fingers picked up a spiritual scallion and pressed it lightly onto the cutting board.

The kitchen knife rose and fell rapidly against his knuckles; in the blink of an eye, the scallion segments transformed into fine threads, each uniformly maintaining the thickness of a single hair.

The fish slices on the ice-jade plate were already arranged, spread out like flower petals.

Cheng Ye used a bamboo skewer to dip into condensed dew, lightly dabbing the center of each sashimi slice, then sprinkled a pinch of sand salt over them.

The instant the salt grains touched the fish flesh, a faint "sizzle" sounded, and a pale blue glow rippled across the surface.

Finally, rubbing his index finger and thumb together lightly, he scattered the shredded scallions over the fish slices in an artful, scattered pattern.

It was as if he had draped a thin veil over this dish of "Water Perch Sashimi."

Crafting this spiritual food meal required no great technical skill; the main ingredients were all quite ordinary, so there was no need to make a huge fuss over it.

After finishing, Cheng Ye cast an Analyze glance at it:

[Water Perch Sashimi (For Sale)]:

Spiritual Food Grade: Level 2 - Quality 47.

Crafting Player: Life Class Dog Doesn't Play.

After confirming the quality, Cheng Ye skillfully opened the Trading Hall interface, entered the price, and clicked to list it.

The Challenger prompt sounded a second later, indicating the item had been purchased by a player.

To this, Cheng Ye was not surprised.

As the player population expanded, the number of Spiritual Chef players gradually failed to meet the demand for spiritual food.

This caused the prices of spiritual food to continue rising.

Secondly, in the Monster World, as long as one made a name for their game ID, there would never be a shortage of buyers.

Even for spiritual food meals of identical quality and price, players would prioritize choosing those crafted by famous Spiritual Chef players.

For example, the recognized leader of their Spiritual Chef Faction, also the "Great Chef" who unlocked the Spiritual Chef gameplay, could sell his spiritual food meals at a premium.

This was because the quality of spiritual food meals had little relation to their taste, whereas a skilled Spiritual Chef could endow the meal with a more delicious experience; this was the core reason players were willing to pay extra.

Delicious spiritual food meals remained one of the best-selling product categories in the Trading Hall.

As factions grew, the Sacrificial Power players invested in spiritual food meals also gradually increased.

This profession held a promising future.

Putting away the trading interface, Cheng Ye turned his gaze back to the calm Firefly Lake surface.

A night breeze swept past, carrying the faint fragrance of glowing ferns; the fragmented moonlight on the Firefly Lake was churned into countless silver scales, filling him with immense contentment.

With a light flick of his wrist, the fishing hook traced an elegant arc through the air before plunging into the Firefly Lake.

The bobber swayed gently amidst the ripples, soon returning to stillness.

When the second fish took the bait, it was another ordinary spiritual fish; after preparing it into a meal and listing it on the Trading Hall following the same method, he continued fishing.

As the night deepened, the thin mist over the Firefly Lake grew thicker.

The third cast, the fourth cast... the catch remained those common spiritual fish, or strange aquatic monsters.

Cheng Ye unhurriedly organized his fishing line and continued his efforts.

When the eighth cast went down, the cry of a night bird echoed from the distance.

Swarms of glowworms circled above his head, like countless floating small lamps.

This time, what he caught was a Water Skeleton Shrimp, its body entirely transparent, revealing the blue blood lines flowing within.

After Cheng Ye analyzed it and discovered it was a new species, he processed it into ingredients and stored it in his Spatial Sack.

When the first light of dawn tinged the horizon, he still had not caught a Moon-Hidden Silver Scale.

It wasn't that he hadn't considered jumping directly into the water to search.

But Firefly Firefly Lake covered a vast area, and the Moon-Hidden Silver Scale was one of its rarest fish species; such an action would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

The most feasible method was to craft a bait that the Moon-Hidden Silver Scale favored, enticing it to take the hook voluntarily.

Consulting relevant materials in the library, he had crafted a batch of bait using "Moon-Seeing Grass," the aquatic plant the Moon-Hidden Silver Scale loved most as the main ingredient, choosing to obtain the fish through angling.

But it seemed he had failed.

The sky had brightened, yet he still hadn't caught this crucial ingredient.

Putting away his fishing rod, he began to prepare breakfast for himself.

Firefly Firefly Lake in the morning light possessed a unique scenery; the glowing ferns gradually dimmed, while morning dew condensed into pearls on the grass blades.

Cheng Ye sat on the ground and took ingredients out of his Spatial Sack.

These were all leftovers from previous spiritual food meal preparations; adhering to the principle of avoiding waste, he would always use them to treat himself.

Half a Crimson Cloud Mushroom, three Mist Fruits with their seeds removed, a small packet of Star-Patterned Rice, and the very last pinch of remaining Golden Thorn Salt.

He rubbed his fingertips together, causing dark red powder from the Crimson Cloud Mushroom to flutter down.

A clay pot rested atop stones; Star-Patterned Rice spread across the bottom, and as soon as it was heated, it emitted a mellow aroma reminiscent of aged wine.

He smashed the Mist Fruits with the back of his knife until they cracked; milky white juice seeped from the flesh, shimmering with a pearly luster in the morning light.

While simmering over a low flame, Cheng Ye casually sprinkled the Crimson Cloud Mushroom powder into the pot.

The instant the powder touched the juice, a wisp of mist rose, carrying a scent similar to pine wood.

He then took a small slice of Ice Crystal Mint leaf from his Spatial Sack; with a pinch of his fingers, it transformed into fine, emerald-green snowflakes that drifted down onto the thickening porridge surface.

The Crimson Cloud Porridge displayed a marvelous gradient of colors in the morning light.

The bottom layer was the amber hue boiled from the Star-Patterned Rice, the middle layer mixed with the milky white of the Mist Fruit juice, and the top layer floated with the sunset red dyed by the Crimson Cloud Mushroom.

As the Golden Thorn Salt was sprinkled down, a rich fragrance immediately permeated the entire bowl of porridge.

Cheng Ye lifted the clay bowl, the rising steam blurring his features.

Although these scraps lacked the core ingredients, they were nonetheless quite delicious.

Most importantly, they saved money.

Others had to spend money to buy spiritual food, whereas he only needed leftover scrap ingredients to craft a delightful meal.

Lifting the scalding clay pot, Cheng Ye stirred gently with a wooden spoon, then scooped up a spoonful.

The instant the porridge entered his mouth, the mellowness of the Crimson Cloud Mushroom, the clear sweetness of the Mist Fruit, and the dense texture of the Star-Patterned Rice bloomed sequentially in his mouth, finally, the coolness of the Ice Crystal Mint perfectly bound all the flavors together.