anwhile...
’Huh...why do I feel like I just dodged a massive bullet?,’ Zhen Liu mused as he paused mid-bite while eating a bowl of sesa noodles.
’h. It’s probably nothing.’
...Now back to the estate’s kitchen where sothing was clearly happening...
Zhen Feng was understandably stunned silent as Nun Hua, a respected alchemical master from the upper echelons of the Pearl Scale Empire, proposed he marry either her son or daughter. He had heard of pushy parents before, and tactical marriage, but this was absurd!
Off to the side though, as Zhen Feng was still ntally processing this proposal of insanity, Corriandis has gone over to where Zhen Xing was sitting for the sake of answering a simple question.
"Uh...Master Zhen Xing?"
"Huh? What’s up, Corriandis?"
"Forgive if this question is too forward, but I’ve kind of notice that you scions of the Zhen Clan seem to get involved in rather spontaneous romantic relationships. Is that normal or..."
"Actually...kind of."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. My father t my mother under unusual circumstances, I honestly forget the whole story, but it’s a joke amongst the elders that all the n in this family will get shanghaied into whirlwind romances."
"Just the n?"
"Learned about this from when we were in Roaring Tide, the won of the Zhen Clan are the ones to sweep others off their feet."
"Huh..."
While this conversation occurred, Nun Hua still had Zhen Feng right between the palms of her delicate yet surprisingly strong hands. However, this state of being wouldn’t last much longer.
Having finished her fried rice, and now no longer amused by her friend’s emotional surge, Zhen Xun Tian proceeded to separate the Imperial Alchemist from her descendant.
Nun Hua complained as Zhen Xun Tian pulled her ear.
Now that they were separated, Zhen Xun Tian proceeded to give the actual reason why she and Nun Hua had shown up today.
Zhen Feng shrugged in response. He had no idea how stacked up against other practitioners of his newly learned craft, because he had no idea if they existed or not.
But the fact that a master(?) of alchemy praised him so was probably a good sign...right?
Regardless of his confidence or lack thereof, Zhen Xun Tian extracted a scroll from her person and laid it in front of Zhen Feng. From what the latter could read, it appeared to be the recipe for an elixir of so kind.
Curious of what this recipe entailed, Corriandis returned to over where Zhen Feng was to take a look as well. The mont he did, Corriandis’s pupils dilated like crazy.
"I haven’t heard of so of these before and I can already tell that they’re high tiered components," Corriandis comnted as he looked over the list.
He had no idea what [Sapphire Ocean Lilies] were, but it already sounded like sothing that would cost him at least ten lifetis worth of his current paycheck, which was already quite generous.
Seeing as Zhen Feng was silent, probably stunned into being so, Zhen Xun Tian decided to explain a bit more.
Zhen Xun Tian stated without mincing words.
Zhen Feng was silent for a solid five minutes as he looked over the components on the list a couple tis over. Once he did, he made a declaration that shocked everyone in the room.
Under the gazes of his matriarch, an Imperial Alchemist, his cousin and a servant, Zhen Feng went about searching his collection of recently acquired alchemical cook books until he found what he was looking for, a book with a title that loosely translated to, [A Thousand als for a Thousand Different Mutations].
It was originally written in Shadowspeak, the language of the Umbral Spider continent, so it probably sounded a lot more interesting in that original translation.
Regardless, with the recipe book now in hand, Zhen Feng proceeded to flip through it’s many pages until he settled on a page in the "soup" section of the book.
A page titled, [Carrier Bouillabaisse].
Zhen Feng stated as he pointed towards the ingredient section of the recipe.
At this point in ti, Nun Hua had recovered from her ear pulling long enough to be able to do a proper analysis between the elixir recipe from the lost Omninari Empire with this soup recipe from sowhere in the Umbral Spider continent.
Unlike when she was analyzing the kinpira dish, Nun Hua ca to her conclusion a lot faster.
Nun Hua stated after looking over everything a few tis over.
Zhen Feng asked as he began to feel a mildly threatening gaze being pointed in his direction.
"I do?," Zhen Xing asked, kind of forgetting that he just tad the damn thing a literal al ago.
Zhen Feng nodded while trying his absolute best to not freak the fuck out.
Nun Hua said as she pulled out several lacquer boxes out of thin air, all of which were radiating a level of cold Zhen Feng never felt before.
________________________________________
*Bing-Bong*
For the first ti in awhile, we’re ending this chapter with a historical explaination that could not be added in the main story because it would’ve ssed with the flow.
While this part isn’t mandatory, it does provide context.
*Ahem*
The recipe that Zhen Feng produced from the Umbral Spider cookbook, [Carrier Bouillabaisse], is actually a century older than the [Mutant Arc Elixir] that was created by the Omninari Empire.
Created during an era known as the [Shadowtide Era]. This was a point in ti in which Umbral Spider was absolutely flooded with [Shadow Water], to the point where people made the comnt that the Umbral Spider continent should’ve been renad to Umbral Spidercrab continent.
People weren’t exactly creative with the nas back then either.
As a result of all of this flooding though, many different thods of traversing [Shadow Water] were developed in the land of darkness, with hundreds and possibly thousands of thods being produced by all sorts of sects and factions.
However, near the end of the [Shadowtide Era], all of the flooding [Shadow Water] ended up draining away to the [Abyssal Lands] of Roaring Tide, causing a dramatic change in topology for both continents.
Records are incredibly sparse about how and why this event occurred, but there have been speculative rumors and guesses.
The most popular of these rumors being that a teor had impacted a fault line between Umbral Spider and Roaring Tide in just the right way that the all of the shadow water in the forr just...flowed right into the latter’s underground.
The less popular, but more believable rumor, was that a pair of Aether Demi-gods had gotten into a dispute and had caused the landscape to irreversibly change as a result of their fairly petty squabble.
The reality though, as recorded by a certain library by a pair of tiless weirdos, is sowhere in-between.
A teor did impact the continents, Aether Demi-gods were involved and there was a big battle.
However, this wasn’t an internal conflict.
Not many people know this, but Otherlander are not a modern phenonon, rather they’ve been a part of Valresta’s history for as long as Valresta has been a thing.
In those ti, so Otherlanders had ans of visiting Valresta in a two manner.
And sotis, so of those Otherlanders had less than...pleasant reasons for visiting this world.
After all, the locals at the ti had no idea what to do with opponents that could move mountains with just their minds...
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