"Y-yes... yes... Yi... Ji..." Mantou stared blankly at the four 100-denomination Eerie Coins on the table.
She wasn't a very smart girl, but this wasn't hard to figure out.
Yi Ji hadn't wanted her to go without a single sale, so he had specifically sent this human to buy her steamed buns.
To give her confidence.
He had done it just for her.
If she had been on the verge of tears before, her nose now burned as if she had inhaled pepper, aching so sharply it made her tremble.
Looking at Mantou's red-rimmed eyes, Yan Jing suddenly felt a little despicable.
The girl wasn't smart, so deceiving her had been easy.
If the Ghoulish Life Role-playing Game's text prompt had triggered just then, it definitely would have said something along those lines.
Taking a deep breath, he smiled at Mantou."Alright, I've paid. You make sure to keep it safe. I have to go back and report."
"O-okay..."
Yan Jing's words snapped Mantou out of her daze.
She hurriedly and shakily reached out with her other hand—the one that hadn't turned into a tentacle—tucked the money from the table into the pocket of her oversized clothes, and carefully buttoned it shut.
This was her and Yi Ji's money; she couldn't lose it.
She looked up, wanting to thank the human man in front of her, but he had already walked away.
"Thanks for the steamed buns."
Leaving behind those words, the man took a bite of the steamed bun and disappeared into the crowd.
Watching this scene, the surrounding players finally broke from their frozen states and started whispering among themselves.
Many of them had seen Yan Jing eat the steamed bun without anything happening to him.
This shook their resolve.
Staring at the two remaining steamed buns on the table, people gradually stepped forward to ask for the price.
They were going to die either way. Since someone else had already taken the plunge, just maybe...
Little did they know, Yan Jing wasn't completely fine.
He had felt something wrong the moment he took a bite of the steamed bun. The hot current that had previously hidden itself in his heart resurfaced, spiraling and roaming through his body, burning so fiercely it made him panic.
[You have consumed the destiny meal of an inner world resident.]
[This is already the second destiny meal you have eaten. Fortunately, this destiny meal is too ordinary to let you touch another Inner World Pathway.]
[Otherwise, if you touched two Inner World Pathways simultaneously, you would only be able to choose one to assimilate into.]
Inner World Pathway again.
Yan Jing wiped the sweat from his forehead, trying his best to keep his breathing steady. He had a premonition—he couldn't eat another destiny meal.
Otherwise, that hot current inside him would burst straight through his blood vessels, or even ignite his body.
Even at this stage, he tried his best to keep thinking.
The pathway contained in Mantou's destiny meal and the one in the Cameraman's destiny meal actually weren't the same. Why? What was the difference between them?
What exactly was an Inner World Pathway, and why had he never seen it mentioned on the forums before?
The more questions filled his mind, the faster he walked.
As long as he found Xu Weizhou, he might be able to get some answers.
While hurrying along, he caught sight of a takoyaki stall out of the corner of his eye. His heart stirred, and he stopped in his tracks.
This takoyaki stall happened to be set up right next to the malatang stand Old Liu had pointed out to him yesterday. Unfortunately, the two-headed girl wasn't there today.
He had no way to verify if the girl's legs were as pretty as Old Liu had claimed.
But he could verify something else.
Soon, the stall owner—a man as skinny as a monkey—finished making a box of takoyaki and served it to a waiting customer.
"5,000 each. You want this box?"
The stall owner held the takoyaki in his left hand while keeping his right hand stuffed into his apron pocket, looking rather cool.
"...I'll take it!"
The customer had been waiting for a long time. He had passed on the previous three boxes, but he had to make a move on this one.
Because the stall owner's right hand was tucked into his apron pocket.
This was a signal.
The information he had bought at a high price mentioned that only when the stall owner's right hand was in his pocket did that batch of takoyaki have a chance of being safe.
Looking at the six plump, round, steaming takoyaki balls in the box, he hesitated for a long time before finally picking the one in the top right corner.
He grabbed the toothpick sticking out of it, closed his eyes, and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
The monkey-thin stall owner seemed to already know the outcome. Ignoring the nervously waiting customer whose eyes were screwed shut, he started greeting the next person.
After a long while, the customer opened his eyes in excitement, tears welling up:
"I survived! I survived!!!"
The customer behind him wasn't so lucky.
After he chose a different takoyaki, the blood vessels bulged beneath his skin. They turned a bruised, blackish-blue, densely creeping across all his exposed skin.
Before he could even scream, something seemed to try to burrow out of his throat, rapidly squirming up from his bulging stomach.
"Hrrk—"
He fell to his knees, propping himself up with both hands as he vomited up whatever was in his throat.
Along with saliva and stomach acid, a black, octopus-like tentacle violently thrust out of his mouth, thrashing on the ground like a fish.
And this was only the beginning.
Soon, thumb-thick octopus tentacles were vomited from the man's throat one after another.
Among the squirming tentacles covering the ground, the man rapidly withered and shriveled up until he no longer looked human, finally collapsing dead.
The monkey-thin stall owner simply chuckled and walked out from behind his counter, gathering the octopus tentacles from the ground one by one, for who knew what purpose.
Yan Jing watched all of this unfold, then turned and left.
His attention had been focused on the stall owner's hands earlier. He had caught the exact moment when the stall owner, while making the takoyaki, chopped off four fingers of his right hand with blinding speed and tossed them into the batch.
Those four fingers had looked exactly like octopus tentacles.
Xu Weizhou hadn't lied to him.
"Wei Zhou, oh Wei Zhou, ours is a gentleman's friendship."
Yan Jing muttered to himself, heading back in the direction he had come from.
He had originally planned to go straight to Xu Weizhou, but now, he needed to visit one more place before doing that.
...
Near the front of the Rotten Vegetable Market.
An archway made of steel rebar stood here, just like at the back gate. However, compared to the rust-mottled back gate, this one was clearly maintained regularly.
Every arm-thick steel bar on it gleamed with a silvery-white luster, and the large characters spelling "Rotten Vegetable Market" at the top were even wrapped in ribbons and balloons.
This area was completely unlike the narrow, crowded stalls near the back of the market.
Near the front gate, there were only four stalls in total.
Each one occupied a massive expanse of Domain. They looked clean and tidy, their storefront decorations exuding an air of absolute prestige.
Right now, a group of human players with extraordinary auras stood in the center of the four stalls. Judging by their positioning, they were split into three factions.
And Xu Weizhou, the person Yan Jing was looking for, was in one of those groups.
At the very front of the lines, a man with a faint black horn on his forehead smiled as he looked at the leaders of the other two teams.
"Everyone, there are four shops and three groups of us to split them. There's no need to fight over them this time, right?"
The leader of the team to his front left was a man wearing a blue-and-white dinosaur onesie.
He rubbed his bleary eyes.
"I don't want any trouble either. How about we pick first?"
"Heh."
One of the two leaders on the front right—a woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses and professional office attire—stepped forward with a smile.
"I can agree to let us pick last. But since we're yielding, I hope you all can offer a little compensation."
She looked very young, only in her early twenties, which clashed somewhat with the tailored blazer and pencil skirt she wore.
Even so, she possessed a unique, youthful beauty.
Beside her stood a man of few words. He was exceptionally muscular and his expression remained unchanging.
It seemed that the woman's opinion was his opinion.
"Aren't there four shops? There's no need to waste time over these things."
The woman next to the horned man spoke coolly, her voice melodious and pleasant to the ear.
Despite her words, the other leaders across from them kept their expressions indifferent. After all, nobody here was an idiot.
Every one of these four stalls had a nearly 100% rate of producing good batches. But perhaps because they had reached some sort of consensus, all four stalls only accepted full groups.
Nine people.
Once they took customers, it had to be nine guests at once, and they only served one group per day.
This also happened to be the exact number of people their teams had brought in this time.
Rotten Vegetable Village was a place that strictly followed the rules. Here, trying to change someone else's established rules was no different from cutting off their path of cultivation.
Cutting off an inner world resident's path of cultivation was equivalent to taking their life.
If that happened, they really would fight you to the death.
And among these four stalls, the effects of the destiny meals they provided were all different, and their quality varied as well.
If possible, they all naturally wanted to go to the best one—
Which was Elephant BBQ.
The destiny meal provided by this shop could boost a person's physical strength by ten jin out of thin air.
It also provided 5% experience.
In the early stages of the Dungeon, this was undeniably like winning at the starting line.
Even if this advantage seemed slight, no one wanted to yield.
And while the leaders were still discussing who got to pick first, near the back of the horned man's team, Xu Weizhou furrowed his brow tightly.
His mind was a mess right now because of what Old Yan had said to him.
He was wondering what exactly those words had meant.
Off to the side, a man with purple hair swooping over half his face saw Xu Weizhou's expression and sneered.
"Xu Weizhou, you aren't still thinking about Yan Jing, are you?"
"Didn't I tell you? When I found him, I just played a little trick on him. I didn't do anything else."
"I gotta say, though, his expression was pretty hilarious when I tripped him with my Purple Cut."
Hearing the purple-haired man's words, Xu Weizhou rolled his eyes and ignored him entirely.
Based on what he knew about the purple-haired man, if he had found Yan Jing, it definitely wouldn't have been as simple as just tripping him.
And that 'Purple Cut' thing—wasn't it just a clump of hair contaminated by weird energy? At best, it could help someone walk.
A common, white-tier item worth only a hundred-odd thousand that you could find anywhere on the street, and he even specifically gave it a name. He couldn't even be bothered to comment on it.
He went back to pondering Yan Jing's words.
While he was lost in thought, the team leaders finally reached a conclusion.
They all agreed that in the early stages of the Dungeon, there was no need to get enraged and waste their strength fighting each other over such a small advantage.
So, in the end, it was decided that the team led by the horned man and the woman with the melodious voice would pay 90,000 Eerie Coins to each of the other two teams in exchange for the right to choose Elephant BBQ.
Hearing this result, the color drained from Xu Weizhou's face instantly.
Beside his ear, the words Yan Jing had said as they brushed past each other seemed to echo once more:
"Don't pick Elephant BBQ, Wei Zhou. Just pick anything else."