Chapter 133 Canghe Banquet
After the performance, it was time for dinner.
With its dragon head held high, Jiaojue led Ji Rong and her entourage gracefully down the jade platform. Upon seeing this, the other cultivators made way for them.
After settling down at the white jade table beneath the jade platform, Jiao Jue said to Ji Rong, "Foolish birds, I ask you, what is the purpose of acquiring treasure?"
Upon hearing this, Ji Rong raised her head and said with wings, "For survival, for becoming stronger, for not going hungry!"
The Wu tribe members all agreed and nodded in agreement.
These remarks caused the cultivators sitting at the nearby table to cover their mouths and burst into laughter.
One of the tiger cubs broke free from its mother's embrace and pointed at Ji Rong, saying, "No!" But its mother immediately covered its mouth with her paw and whipped its bottom several times.
Jiao Jue looked at the tiger cub and said, "Don't hit him, let him talk."
As he spoke, he took out a six-turn Hua Shi from his storage ring and placed it on Xiao Hu's table, saying, "Little Tiger, you said this is for you."
Little Tiger bit the paw his mother was using to cover his mouth, and said, "If I make money, I can stay on the Canghe River every day and ride a crane without having to leave." Then he grabbed the Huashi fruit and started gnawing on it.
Ji Rong and the others from the Wu Clan listened with a sense of melancholy. Jiao Jue said, "The Great Dao is endless, but cultivation has its limits. If one lives only for survival and sits in meditation without any purpose, one will not be able to attain the Great Dao."
Ji Rong couldn't help but ask, "But I've heard that those saints and deities who live in seclusion in the deep mountains are all pure of heart and have few desires, and they don't appear in the world."
Jiao Jue squinted and smiled, "Silly bird, they have countless followers, and their treasury is filled with countless rare and exotic fruits. There is nothing in the world that they have not tasted, and few things that they have not obtained. Naturally, they are pure of heart and have few desires."
As they were talking, rows of white egret servants stood before the table, stopping at the command of the steward Bai below the white jade platform.
The evening meal is about to begin.
Jiao Jue kept his eyes straight ahead and said nothing more.
Ji Rong looked around. Since Gu Qingqing sat down, she had lost her usual carefree demeanor and adopted a proper posture. Ji Rong thought that she looked somewhat like a young lady from a noble family.
The egret waiter respectfully placed the wooden food plaques from his wings on the table and said, "Guests, these are the ingredients for tonight. Please take a look; if you see anything you like, please let me know and I will fetch it."
Ji Rong looked at the ingredients from front to back and found that there were more than a hundred kinds. For a moment, she was overwhelmed by the choices.
The boat includes meals, and Ji Rong rolled her eyes and asked, "After you bring all this over, are we supposed to eat it all?"
The waiter bowed his head and said cheerfully, "Guest, there is no such rule."
If the guests cannot finish their food, after the table is cleared, we will sort it and share it with the ship's waiters along with the remaining ingredients from the kitchen.
Ji Rong understood, and said generously, "Give me one serving of all the ingredients on this list."
Guests like Ji Rong may often make such requests, but the white egret waiter remained calm.
She said in a low voice, "Guest, the table can only hold a maximum of thirty-six ingredients at a time. May I serve them to you in three separate servings?"
Ji Rong happily said, "Okay, go ahead and do it."
These one hundred kinds of ingredients include spirit meat, spirit herbs, spirit grains, and spirit fruits. Although they are not of high quality, they are fresh and plentiful!
Ji Rong ate voraciously, using her beak to pick up food from the central plate while her two wings and claws continued to stuff food into her mouth from the plates on the side.
Ji Zhuang stretched his neck and buried it in the plate.
From the moment the food was served, his beak never stopped nodding.
However, Ji Rong and her group did not eat in an unusual way. Looking around the large hall, only a few people ate in an elegant manner.
Some meat-eating cultivators stuffed plates of meat into their mouths.
Some herbivorous cultivators swallowed small bundles of spiritual herbs.
Some cultivators were even putting some food into their storage rings while they were eating...
The myriad aspects of human life are vividly displayed in this hall at this moment.
Jiaojue stretched out its tail and smacked Ji Rong, Ji Zhuang, and Wu Ziqi on the head, saying, "Don't just focus on eating. Learn from the ugly fox and take a look at the ingredient list."
If you eat like this now, will you still be able to eat when the main course is served at the banquet later?
"There's a banquet?" Ji Rong suddenly pulled her head out from the pile of spirit grains, her head covered in them, and looked at Jiao Jue, saying, "I didn't see any."
Jiao Jue looked at Ji Rong with disdain and said, "Take a closer look."
Ji Rong and Ji Zhuang picked up the ingredient list and looked at it carefully. In the center of the list, they found the dishes for tonight's banquet: freshly roasted wind wolf meat, steamed marrow bone of Zhuan Niu, Fallen Dragon Pastry, roasted spirit carp, raw salmon, South Bank Poison Bird Herb Soup, spirit cabbage, and vinegar drink.
Ji Rong stared at the inscription for a moment, then beckoned to the white egret attendant who was serving her and asked, "In this dish of freshly roasted wind wolf meat, was the wind wolf killed on the spot?"
The egret waiter replied, "Yes."
For no reason, Ji Rong thought of the past, but the words that came out of her mouth were: "With so many diners, there must be quite a few wolves, wouldn't you be losing money?"
The egret waiter grinned and said, "You don't know, these wind wolves were rebels from the South Bank Mountain. They pretended to surrender, but secretly started a rebellion. They were killed by the Great Man of the Canglan Mountain Range. These are their relatives. You won't lose money by buying them."
The Wind Wolf Clan's demon king, Youqiong, ate half of it, and the remaining half was transported back and used to host a banquet on the Tiger Wind Tower. It's said that all the guests who came that time were extremely satisfied.
"The victor is king, the loser is villain." Upon hearing this, Ji Rong was at a loss for words.
Miao Wu and Wu Zi, who were standing nearby, became interested. They beckoned the servant over, handed him a few spirit crystals, and asked, "Didn't Lord Canglan always dislike causing trouble under his jurisdiction? From what you're saying, how come the entire Wind Wolf Clan of the South Bank Mountain was wiped out?"
The egret attendant accepted the spirit crystal and said solemnly, "You two honored guests should not make wild guesses. The Wind Wolf Clan was not exterminated. In Canglan, rebels are only punished by the main branch."
The shaman then asked, "On the Cang River, are there natives and outsiders among you?"
The egret attendant replied, "Our clan migrated here because we couldn't survive in the Danshui area of Buzhou."
If I told you there was no difference, I would be lying to you; most of the local people have their own businesses and would not go on the boat to make a living as a whole tribe.
But we never dared to dream of such a life back in Shanshui.
Wu Pei also asked, "Have you met the God of Canglan and the God of Canghe? What do you think of them?"
The egret attendant shook his head and said, "Our cultivation is too low to have seen anything like this before; but as soon as we arrived, Canghe Prefecture designated a habitat for us and had our entire clan work on the boat. They provided food and wages, which we are very satisfied with."
At this moment, the two black birds that sang "Lord Canghe" flew up to the white jade platform again. Each bird held a leaf in its beak and began to play a tune lightly.
Yin Lian, the shipmaster of the Flower and Bird Pavilion, personally dragged four mortal-level wind wolves and one profound-level wind wolf out of the cage. He transformed into a celestial being and recounted the disrespectful behavior of these wind wolves. Then, a black pheasant of the profound-level used its beak to pierce the throats of all of them and bleed them out. Two white pheasants of the mortal-level used their beaks to cleanly disembowel these wolves and cut them into pieces.
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