Bao Gu sat up and copied Ba’s posture, folding her legs on the ground.
She waited until Ba finished the spirit fruit, then took out another one and handed it over. Every time Ba ate one, Bao Gu passed her the next, and only when the meat in the small cauldron was fully cooked did she pull Ba to a different spot and bring out a jade table.
Ba had eaten a huge pile of spirit fruit; her mouth was already sour, and the smell of demonic beast meat was making her almost drool. The moment she saw Bao Gu extinguish the fire under the cauldron, she couldn’t wait—she plunged her hand straight into the little cauldron, grabbed a chunk of meat, and stuffed it into her mouth.
Bao Gu looked at the boiling broth in the cauldron, then at Ba’s greasy hand. She had a strong urge to smack that hand with a pair of chopsticks.
She took out some chopsticks and a bowl, just about to hand them over, when she saw Ba reach into the cauldron again. This time Ba scooped up a whole handful of sliced meat. The soup ran off her hand, dripping from the cauldron all the way down onto her snow-white, full chest, then pattered across the spotless floor, leaving a messy trail of grease.
In her heart, Bao Gu slapped a two‑character label on Ba: “Savage.”
The Heavenly Emperor’s own daughter brought this low—this was miserable on a cosmic level. That saying about “a fallen phoenix not being as good as a chicken” really applied anywhere.
When Ba reached for the meat a third time, Bao Gu decisively shoved the chopsticks into her hand.
“Use chopsticks.”
Ba, annoyed, flicked the chopsticks aside. Her hand hadn’t yet touched the cauldron when Bao Gu swept it into her oversized storage pouch.
Bao Gu fixed her gaze on Ba.
“Use. Chopsticks.”
Ba’s eyes flashed viciously as she glared at Bao Gu, full of threat.
“You still want to eat cooked meat and spirit fruit in the future?” Bao Gu asked.
Ba stared furiously at her, then snatched up the chopsticks and squeezed. The jade chopsticks instantly shattered to dust.
She glared at Bao Gu.
“The chopsticks broke.”
Bao Gu calmly pulled out another pair and handed them over.
“If this pair breaks too, the pot I use for cooking meat will break as well.”
Ba was almost shaking with anger, and the thought of smashing Bao Gu into paste flared up in her heart. But then she remembered that full cauldron of meat she’d waited so long for, and in the end she couldn’t bear it.
She took a deep breath, properly gripped the chopsticks, her expression stiff, and squeezed out one word.
“Meat.”
Bao Gu glanced, surprised, at the way Ba held the chopsticks. She hadn’t expected Ba to actually know how to use them.
She drew the small cauldron back out of the oversized storage pouch and set it on the jade table.
Ba used the chopsticks to pick at the meat in the cauldron. After a few clumsy attempts, she decided it was too much trouble, threw the chopsticks away, and at the exact same moment, lightning‑fast, hugged the cauldron to her chest, afraid Bao Gu would snatch it.
Bao Gu’s stomach hurt just from watching, a deep, bleak sadness spreading through her.
Ba ate all the meat and soup in the cauldron clean, then finally put the cauldron down, lifting her gaze to Bao Gu.
Bao Gu saw Ba’s hands and chin were slick with grease. The last thing she wanted was to let Ba smear her pristine flying treasure in oil.
She filled a basin with water, wrung out a cloth, and wiped the grease from Ba’s chin, then pressed Ba’s claws into the jade basin and scrubbed them carefully clean. After that she cleaned the grease drops on the floor and tidied up everything Ba had messed up inside and outside the flying treasure.
Only when she finished did she ignore Ba again, pull out a jade slip, curl up on the soft couch inside the treasure, and start “reading.”
Ba followed her in, sat cross‑legged beside the couch, propped her cheek on her hand, and stared at Bao Gu without blinking.
Bao Gu didn’t even lift an eyelid. But having Ba sit next to her like that made her skin crawl.
This was a Ba who ate living humans raw.
Right now she was crouched there like a puppy, but the feeling she gave off was nothing like a puppy begging for pets. It was much more like a predator eyeing its prey.
Bao Gu put away the jade slip, stared at Ba with a pounding heart, and asked, “What do you want?”
Ba’s eyes shone as she looked at Bao Gu.
“I’ll give you half of the people.”
Demonic beast meat stewed with spirit herbs was indeed tastier than bloody raw human flesh.
Bao Gu thought for a moment.
“As long as you don’t eat people, I’ll cook for you whenever you want to eat. When I need to use those people, I’ll ask you for them. Until then, don’t eat them, and don’t kill them. How about it?”
Afraid Ba would refuse, she added, “I have great use for them. Eating or killing them now would be a huge waste.”
Ba had already been tricked by Bao Gu once; how could she trust her again so easily?
She stood up and said coolly, “We’ll see.”
As she spoke, she opened her Blood Prison World again.
Bao Gu’s eyes lit up, the corners of her lips lifting slightly in delight.
“Done,” she thought.
Inside the Blood Prison World, the cultivators caged there once again erupted into panic.
Bao Gu rose. She was just about to step into Ba’s Blood Prison World and pick out a third of the people first when she heard Ba shout:
“Who here knows how to cook human meat? If you can cook it tastier than she does, you can keep your life and stay to cook for me.”
Bao Gu froze, red lips half parted, staring at Ba in stunned silence.
Ba caught her dazed expression and glanced back proudly, as if saying, “You think you’re the only one who can cook?”
Bao Gu gave a faint shake of her head, lay back down sideways on the soft couch, and pulled out her jade slip again.
Seeing no one in the cages speak up, Ba asked:
“You all want to die? This is your chance to live.”
Some cultivators shrank to the back of their cages, some stared at Ba in horror, and some had hesitation on their faces.
Ba swept her gaze around, grabbed one of the hesitant ones, and asked, “Do you know how to cook human meat?”
The cultivator was so terrified his legs went weak. He shook his head frantically.
“N‑no… I don’t…”
With a crack, Ba twisted his neck.
“If you can’t cook human meat, what use are you?”
She tossed the corpse onto the ground. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the thick, soft carpet.
Bao Gu’s gaze shifted from the jade slip to the body on the carpet, then to the open Blood Prison World.
One of the cultivators in a cage saw Bao Gu’s expression and shouted in anguish,
“Bao Gu! You actually walk with Ba! You disgrace to the cultivation world!”
Another started trying to persuade her.
“Bao Gu! It’s not too late to turn back!”
Bao Gu took out the small cauldron from her oversized storage pouch, swept her sleeve, and sent it sliding to Ba’s side in the great hall.
“Borrow it to cook your human meat.”
Ba caught the cauldron, staring at Bao Gu in surprise.
“Weren’t you trying to save them just now?”
“I forgot they’d all harmed me,” Bao Gu said calmly. “Dying is the least they deserve. Go ahead and cook them all. Oh, and don’t dirty my place.”
The main culprits behind her unsealing Ba were right there among those people, and they still dared to criticize her?
If she hadn’t fused the Xuantian Sword, she would have died on Ba’s hands hundreds of times already—or even been eaten the first time they met.
Some cultivators burst into tears at her words, admitting their mistakes, begging Bao Gu to forgive and save them. Others simply sat cross‑legged in silence, as if resigned—if they had to die, so be it.
Bao Gu couldn’t even be bothered to glance their way. She did want to save people, but she didn’t want to save *them* and then disgust herself every time she saw them.
Ba set the cauldron in place, then looked over.
“No stove.”
Bao Gu lifted her head, looked at Ba standing in the palace hall, and said, “Whoever’s doing the cooking is who you ask for a stove. I don’t owe you one. How are you supposed to cook without a pot or a stove anyway?”
Ba was struck speechless. Having eaten a loss there, she felt stifled and unhappy, so she grabbed another cultivator from a cage, simply because she disliked his face.
“Do you have a furnace?”
“T‑tablet… a pill furnace, will that do?” the man asked.
Ba tilted her head.
“Can you stew human meat in a pill furnace?”
The man stammered, trembling, “I‑I’ve never used humans to… to refine pills—”
He didn’t even get halfway through before Ba’s hand closed around his throat. He screamed hoarsely in terror,
“You can—!”
Ba released him and pointed at the corpse whose neck she’d already broken.
“Use your pill furnace to stew him.”
The cultivator scrambled to his feet, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and shot a glance toward Bao Gu outside the Blood Prison World. The wielder of the Chopping Blade Order was sitting there unhurriedly, head lowered over her jade slip.
He was instantly filled with envy.
Everyone said the master of the Chopping Blade had incredible fortune and deep karmic luck, but he hadn’t expected… she could even coexist peacefully with a man‑eating Ba.
Feeling Ba’s displeased gaze on him, the cultivator hurriedly took out his own pill furnace from his storage treasure and stuffed the corpse into it.
In the cages, some cultivators sighed in secret, some shook their heads.
So this was what it looked like when humanity rotted.
The man lit the furnace fire with spiritual power. Flames flared to life under the pill furnace.
He kept wiping his forehead, but the more he wiped, the more he sweated, like it was raining from his skin.
Ba sat cross‑legged beside the pill furnace with immense patience, waiting for the stewed human meat to be done. From time to time she’d glance at Bao Gu in smugness, only to find that Bao Gu wasn’t paying her the slightest attention.
Ba got up and strolled unhurriedly over to Bao Gu, lifted one snow‑white bare foot, and nudged the leg of the soft couch.
“Don’t think you’re the only one who can cook tasty food.”
“You really think meat stewed in a pill furnace is going to taste good?” Bao Gu asked.
Ba’s gaze went cold.
“If it doesn’t, I’ll eat the one who stewed it.”
The cultivator went limp with terror and collapsed on the ground.
Ba snorted heavily.
He scrambled back up, afraid to stop, and continued controlling the pill fire. Hands shaking, he simmered and simmered, too terrified to open the furnace.
Not that he could avoid it forever—if he let the meat inside burn and Ba forced him to open the lid, he’d truly have no way to live.
Finally he opened the pill furnace. A wave of meat smell rolled out.
Bao Gu’s brows twitched almost imperceptibly. She didn’t dare extend her divine sense into the pill furnace, or even imagine it too clearly.
The cultivator looked at Ba, shaking.
Ba flicked her hand and fished out the steaming, thoroughly cooked cultivator from inside. She tore off an arm, lifted it to her nose and sniffed, frowning, then took a bite.
A moment later she tossed it away in disgust.
The man darted straight at Bao Gu, like an arrow loosed from a bow. He raised his hand to grab her, clearly intending to seize her as a hostage.
Bao Gu hadn’t expected an attack so suddenly. By the time she reacted, he was already right in front of her, fingers like an eagle’s claw reaching straight for her throat.
She was just about to fight back when the man suddenly let out a scream. It was as if some huge suction force had grabbed him from behind; he flew backward in an instant, crashed at Ba’s feet, and hit the floor hard. Ba stomped down once more, and his skull burst like a melon.
Ba grabbed another cultivator from a cage, pointed at the corpse whose head she had just crushed, and said, “Do you know how to cook?”
The man stared at the body on the ground, trembling all over, and nodded like a pecking chicken.
“If it doesn’t taste good,” Ba said, “you’ll end up just like him.”
The man nodded again and again, then moved almost automatically—he took out a large pot meant specifically for cooking demonic beast meat, then another small table. On it he set out oil, salt, sauces, and spices of all kinds—dozens of types, all neatly arranged.
Forcing down his revulsion, he turned sideways, stripped the corpse, pulled out a big tub, tossed the body in, and filled it with water from his water‑storing treasure to scrub it clean. After that he opened the belly and cleaned the inside thoroughly, then finally threw the cleaned corpse into the large pot, added seasoning, covered it, and set it to stew.
Professional or not, you could tell at a glance from how practiced his movements were.
Ba was very satisfied.
“When it’s done, you can keep your life and cook for me from now on.”
Bao Gu added quietly, “And if it doesn’t suit your taste, don’t kill him. I can teach him more; he’s still a decent cook.”
From the man’s clothing, she could tell he was probably a rogue cultivator, and he even looked faintly familiar. Very few people were familiar to her. Could they have crossed paths once?
The man gave a bitter yet grateful glance at Bao Gu.
Time passed bit by bit. After checking the heat several times, pinching his nose each time, the man finally said cautiously to Ba,
“It’s ready.”
Ba plunged her hand into the boiling broth and hauled the fully stewed cultivator out of the pot. She sniffed, carefully tore off a small piece of meat, and put it in her mouth.
The moment it touched her tongue, her brows furrowed. She forced herself to swallow with difficulty.
“Not good,” she said. “Not tasty.”
The flavor was lacking.
She frowned and thought for a moment.
“There’s no spirit herbs.”
She glared at the man.
“You stew meat without putting spirit herbs in? How is meat without spirit herbs even edible?”
The man’s smile grew even more bitter as he shut his eyes in despair.
How could *he* possibly have extra spirit herbs to stew into meat?
That was when Bao Gu finally remembered where she had seen him.
“Did we meet outside the Primordial Wilderness Mountain Range, when the Godstep Sect broke the formation to seize the divine artifact? You blocked my way back then. You were wearing a scholar’s robe, and there was a female cultivator with you.”
The man opened his eyes and looked back toward a corner of the cages.
Bao Gu followed his gaze and saw a female cultivator squeezed against the bars, tears in her eyes as she stared at him. When she noticed Bao Gu looking, she dropped to her knees with a thud.
Only then did Bao Gu notice that Ba had actually separated male and female cultivators into different cages. The cage with that female cultivator held a dozen or so women, which was very few compared to the other cages that held hundreds or even thousands.
Then she thought about it again. Female cultivators were already few in the cultivation world, and even fewer were willing to risk themselves in the Primordial Wilderness. It made sense there wouldn’t be many here.
She said to Ba,
“You can kill as many as you like, and they still won’t be able to reproduce the flavor I cooked. No one else has that many spirit herbs to stew meat with.
“This world’s cultivators are already short on spiritual treasures and rare herbs. Even when they have them, they’re planted in sect gardens and spirit fields. Almost no one has a world‑type treasure like mine. And even if they do, none of them have the foundation I do—carrying entire swathes of spirit fields and medicine gardens full of ten‑thousand‑year herbs around with them.
“Even if you strip these cultivators of every spirit herb they have, it still won’t come close to what I’m carrying. Without spirit herbs, you can’t get the taste you want.”
Seeing the unwillingness and frustration in Ba’s eyes, she added,
“You can kill him if you want. But what good will it do? You’ll vent a bit of anger, that’s all. It’ll just make you look childish.”
Ba took one step and appeared right in front of Bao Gu, glaring at her, feeling thoroughly humiliated.
Bao Gu said, “In the upper realm’s human race, the Heavenly Emperor holds the most power, right?”
Ba nodded.
“In the current cultivation world’s human race,” Bao Gu went on, “do you know who holds the most power?”
Ba slanted a disdainful look at her. She didn’t care in the slightest which human ruled the lower realm.
“Me,” Bao Gu said. “I’m the master of the Chopping Blade Gang, the greatest power in the cultivation world.
“I’m the only one who can take out this many rare treasures and spirit herbs. Not only have I collected a huge amount from this world, I also inherited the legacy of War God Xuantian of the Battle King clan.”
As she spoke, she opened the entrance to the oversized storage pouch on her arm, and projected the scene inside.
The Jiao Dragon Medicine Garden.
Monkey Ridge, where the Duobao Spirit Monkeys brewed their monkey wine, the mountain covered in Nascent Soul Fruit trees and Primordial Spirit Fruit trees.
And the Xuantian Mountain Range sealed within formation arrays, holding the Xuantian Sect’s ancient medicine garden dating back to Patriarch Xuantian’s era.
Everywhere was filled with ten‑thousand‑year spiritual herbs, enough to make Ba’s eyes go blank.
“Herbs like these,” Bao Gu continued, “are extremely rare even among the great sects. Only the most deep‑rooted powers have a few of them as their foundational treasures.
“Why do you think I dared to go into exile in the void with you? As long as you don’t kill me, I can rely on all these treasures to keep living. And as long as I can live, I can slowly cultivate, slowly build a cross‑realm gate, and go up to the upper realm.
“You’re the Heavenly Emperor’s own daughter. Instead of thinking of avenging your father and yourself, instead of thinking of taking revenge for your death, all you can think about is your next meal?
“If you’re really like that, then even if you reach Great Luo Golden Immortal, I’ll still look down on you.”
Ba rushed right up to Bao Gu, grabbed her by the front of her robe, and snarled,
“The people are yours! Build the cross‑realm gate. If you can’t build it… then even if you chip my teeth, I’ll still eat you.”
Bao Gu nodded.
“You can let go of my clothes.”
Ba released her, face still taut, and then, almost casually, asked,
“You’ll keep me full? Keep me fed? I mean meat stewed with spirit herbs…”
Maybe she felt a little embarrassed, because her eyes flicked everywhere. When her gaze landed on the cook who’d just stewed the meat, her expression turned into one of bitter disappointment and anger—as if to say, *How can you be so poor? Not even a few stalks of spirit herbs!*
Inwardly, Bao Gu sighed in sympathy.
“Poor thing,” she thought. “She’s been starved half to death in that Ba coffin.”
She herself had lived through times of famine, and even she hadn’t been this food‑fixated. Then again, she’d never actually gone a day without food. From the moment Ba had sealed herself into the coffin, her food supply had been cut off completely…
