Chapter 1413 The Bandits Who Abduct Chefs
Bu Fang felt a terrible force tearing at his body, and all that remained before his eyes was a bright white light. He seemed to have sunk into an ocean, drifting aimlessly as the storm kept pounding at him.
The dreadful crisis brought by the blood-colored monster in the void traveling pa.s.sage was gone, but the latter still weighed on Bu Fang like a nightmare. A creature that could imitate its opponent’s fighting techniques and could not be killed was utterly disgusting.
Bu Fang had no idea how long he had been drifting, but suddenly, his body rushed out of the pa.s.sage and began to fall rapidly like a cannonball. In the blink of an eye, he hit the ground and created a large pit. The impact was so strong that he thought all his bones were falling apart.
He slowly climbed out of the pit. Whitey stood beside him, its mechanical eyes flas.h.i.+ng. Bu Fang envied its tough metal body, which suffered no damage at all from the fall. The bright light in the surroundings made him narrow his eyes, and it took him a few moments to get used to it.
Glancing around, Bu Fang found that he had landed in a wheat field. There was no doubt that these were all spirit wheat, for he could sense vast energy in them.
“These are excellent wheat, about the same quality as those in my Heaven and Earth Farmland…” He pulled out a stalk from the ground and studied it. Then, with a thought, he sent it into the farmland and gave it to Niu Hansan, who was known as the father of hybridization. He thought the latter could produce something even better from it.
Bu Fang did not know where he was. He swept the dust and dirt off his Vermilion Robe, then turned and walked toward the west, where his divine sense had found the auras of living beings. Whitey followed him.
Perhaps because there was a problem with the void traveling pa.s.sage, Bu Fang and Lord Dog were separated. There was a good chance that they were thousands of miles apart. He wasn’t too worried about Nethery and the others, though, because they were with Lord Dog. Of course, he still needed to think of a way to regroup with them.
He walked at a steady pace. Soon, Bu Fang saw a small village in the distance. He hastened his steps, and in a flash, he and Whitey had arrived in front of the village.
Many experts gathered at the gates, full of vigilance. When they sensed Bu Fang, they all raised their weapons and looked coldly at him.
Their att.i.tude gave Bu Fang pause. Were the people outside the Netherworld all so cruel and violent? In any case, he wasn’t worried or threatened at all, for the strongest experts among them were merely Nine-revolution Great Saints.
He didn’t want to cause trouble as well. He just wanted to ask the way to the capital of the Xiayi Divine Dynasty. After that, he would leave immediately.
Bu Fang had just taken a few steps and had not even come to the gates when the pounding of hooves rang out behind him, rumbling like thunder. He turned and glanced over his shoulder doubtfully, and then he saw a group of fierce, grinning burly men on dragon-scaled horses galloping toward him, led by a man who carried a huge hammer on his shoulder.
The men on dragon-scaled horses and the villagers confronted each other with Bu Fang in the middle. For a moment, the atmosphere became somewhat awkward.
Whitey’s mechanical eyes flashed as it touched its round head. Bu Fang glanced at the villagers, then at the fierce-looking men behind him. He could not help but twitch the corner of his mouth. It seemed to him that the people outside the Netherworld were really not friendly.
The cultivation bases of the men on dragon-scaled horses were clearly much stronger than that of the villagers. They were led by a DemiG.o.d, the man with the huge hammer, and he was staring disdainfully at the group of villagers who seemed ready to fight back.
As for Bu Fang, he was cla.s.sified as one of the villagers because in the DemiG.o.d’s divine sense, his cultivation base was too weak. Perhaps it was because his aura was not stable at the moment. The energy in him had been completely drained by the void storms when he traveled through the void. He was empty inside, so it was normal for the burly man to sense that he was weak.
Suddenly, a young man bolted out from among the villagers and pulled Bu Fang back into the village. That confused Bu Fang, and he did not know what was going on.
“Those guys are the bandits from Misty Mountain! They want to abduct the remaining few chefs in our village!” said the young man.
“Abduct chefs?” Bu Fang’s face grew stranger. Why did bandits today seek neither wealth nor girls? Instead, they were abducting chefs? Were chefs so popular outside the Netherworld? He wondered if he had returned to the Immortal Cooking Realm?
“You don’t know, do you? The Divine Dynasty has established the Divine Chef Temple and is recruiting chefs. Any powers who send talented chefs to the temple will be richly rewarded! And the rewards are source stones!” the young man quickly explained when he saw Bu Fang’s confused face. When he had finished, the way he looked at Bu Fang became more and more strange. How could anyone not know the news? The whole Xiayi Divine Dynasty was shaken when the announcement was made by the court!
Since then, the nearby great worlds were constantly sending outstanding chefs to the Divine Chef Temple. Bandits smelled the profits in it, too, and they began to visit one village after another, abducting talented chefs and sending them to the temple.
They did not need the chef from every village to be accepted by the Divine Chef Temple. As long as one was accepted, the rewards would be enough to recover their costs because the rewards were source stones! With just one source stone, a One-revolution Great Saint could cultivate himself to a Nine-revolution Great Saint!
“Well… It is springtime for chefs,” Bu Fang said expressionlessly, twitching the corner of his mouth.
“You are a pa.s.serby, aren’t you? There are often pa.s.sersby in front of our village, but you are really unlucky… You’ve come at the wrong time when the bandits are here to raid us,” the young man said with a sigh. “All the chefs in our village had been abducted… But this group of bandits is still forcing us to give them a chef. Where are we going to find a chef for them? And they said they will slaughter the whole village if we can’t give them a chef… We have no choice but to fight them back.”
Bu Fang was somewhat speechless. It seemed to him that these bandits were asking for the impossible. Cooking was about talent, and not everyone could become a chef.
Just when the young man was talking with Bu Fang, the bandits moved. The villagers trembled with fear, while the Great Saints among them growled furiously, trying to guard their village. Unfortunately, they were facing a DemiG.o.d, and none of the experts in the village was his match.
Soon, all the Great Saints were thrown back, coughing blood. As the bandits laughed wildly, the villagers all turned pale. Suddenly, the young man who talked to Bu Fang picked up a hoe from the ground and rushed out of the villager to join the fight.
Bu Fang was surprised. The world outside the Netherworld seemed a little different from what he had imagined. He thought it would be filled with DemiG.o.ds and G.o.ds, as someone had claimed. ‘Why are they fighting with such primitive tools?’
It was a one-sided battle. The bandits effortlessly suppressed all the villagers. Afterward, they jumped off their horses, clasped their hands behind their backs, and stepped leisurely into the village with the att.i.tude of a victor, glancing coldly and disdainfully at the people.
“Bring me the chefs you are hiding… then I will spare your lives. If you don’t, I will kill you all. The villages slaughtered by my brothers of the Misty Mountain are more than the salt you have eaten!” said the DemiG.o.d bandit, sneering.
“My lord, there are really no chefs in our village. All the chefs have either gone to the capital or been abducted by other bandits!” said an old man in a bitter and grievous voice.
The villagers would surrender if what the bandits wanted was money or other worldly possessions. But they had demanded chefs and would slaughter the whole villager if that was not fulfilled. That was like asking for the impossible.
Should they call up all the women in the village? But the village women’s half-baked cooking skills did not make them chefs.
“Tsk, tsk… Why are you so stubborn, old man? If I find out that you still have chefs, I’ll kill every man, woman, child, chicken, and dog in your village!” the DemiG.o.d said coldly. His divine pressure spread out in an instant, sending s.h.i.+vers through all the people present.
The face of the old man, who was also the village head, turned red with grief and indignation. He knocked the b.u.t.t of his staff on the ground and said, “Go and find them yourself! If you can find a chef, I’ll let you… let you…”
The village head still wanted to say something, but the DemiG.o.d, too lazy to talk, raised a hand and pulled him over, clutching him by the neck.
“The chefs in the village, are you coming out or not? If you don’t want to come out… We will begin to slaughter the villagers, starting from this old fool. Don’t blame us for being merciless. As long as you show yourself, everyone in your village will live,” the bandit said in a cold voice.
No one walked out of the village.
A strange look came over Bu Fang’s face as he looked at the young man, who had pulled him into the village and was trembling in the distance. ‘He’s not a chef, is he?’
The youth, who looked like he was struggling, was held back by a young woman, whose face had a pleading look.
“I’ve told you… There are no chefs in our village!” said the old man with great difficulty, his face red.
The bandit just smiled indifferently, then turned and fixed his eyes at the young man, who was held back by the woman. As a DemiG.o.d, he was not stupid. He already sensed the young man’s unusual behavior. The corners of his lips curved upward into a faint smile.
Suddenly, his smile froze. A strong fragrance permeated the air, but it was not coming from the young man. The DemiG.o.d turned again, but this time he rested his eyes on Bu Fang.
At this moment, Bu Fang was holding an Oyster Pancake. He took a bite from it, and steam and a delicious aroma immediately rose from it.
He sensed the DemiG.o.d’s gaze, so he waved the Oyster Pancake and said, “Hmm… You carry on first, let me eat an Oyster Pancake to recover myself,”
Everyone around him was struck dumb.
“Eat an Oyster Pancake to recover himself? Where did that pancake come from? This guy is a chef?”
No one had thought that this young man who just came into the village was a chef!
“How dare he, a chef, wander about in these troubled times?!”