GA: Chapter 188: Since You've Chosen to Hide in the Darkness — Stay Hidden There Forever.
Worst Spirit: "Your world doesn't have strawberries?"
Ordinary Group Leader: "Strawberries are a fruit — sweet with a slight tartness. But putting them in mapo tofu is a genuinely mind-bending idea."
Ordinary Group Leader: "Different places have different tastes, I get that — but even if you thought about it until the day I died, I never would have come up with combining mapo tofu and strawberries."
Ordinary Group Leader: "Though — does the Little Chef's world not have strawberries?"
Child of Nature: "It's not that the world doesn't have them — they just hadn't been introduced to Huaxia yet at that time."
Child of Nature: "Strawberries were brought to Huaxia during the Republican era. The Little Chef's story is set considerably earlier."
The Little Chef of China: "A food that hasn't yet made it to Huaxia? I'd love to try it."
Worst Spirit: "As it happens, I have some right here."
"Ding — group member Worst Spirit has sent a red envelope."
Worst Spirit: "Give it a taste."
Komai asked with some anticipation.
"Ding — group member The Little Chef of China has received the red envelope."
The Little Chef of China: "So this is a strawberry — sweet with a gentle sourness. I think it would suit sweet-and-sour style dishes."
The Little Chef of China: "But combining it with mapo tofu... I'd need to experiment. I can't think of a good method to harmonize both flavors right now."
The Little Chef tasted the strawberry carefully, thought about it, and said as much.
He then asked the other members what else they'd like, but the answers mostly came back to the same things Su Yunqing had mentioned — mapo tofu and golden egg fried rice.
They didn't know enough about the Little Chef's cooking ability to ask for anything more ambitious. And besides, everyone in the group stood at the pinnacle of their respective worlds — what cuisine hadn't they tasted? How much more delicious could something really be?
Before his experience with mutated creature meat and the culinary traditions that had emerged from Su Yunqing's world, Bai Xuan would have said the same. His imagination for food had hit a ceiling — he couldn't picture how far deliciousness could actually go.
But that experience had given him a new understanding. So now he was genuinely curious what the Little Chef's cooking would taste like.
Since everyone was ordering the same dishes, only Whitebeard, Uchiha Madara, the Holy Lord, and Marquis Voban had specifically requested the highest spice level for their mapo tofu — so those four were served first.
And then—
Ordinary Group Leader: "I'm going to cry. This flavor — I'm genuinely moved."
Ordinary Group Leader: "It feels like standing inside a volcano with lava flowing through my body. Sweat is pouring out of me from everywhere. My tongue has gone completely numb — it's so spicy! Genuinely, unbearably spicy!"
Ordinary Group Leader: "But I absolutely cannot stop. Unimaginably delicious."
Ordinary Group Leader: "This is glowing cuisine. It's terrifying."
Lighthouse Richest: "Hissss — haaah..."
Lighthouse Richest: "Is this not an unreasonable level of spiciness? But why does something this spicy taste this incredible?"
Lighthouse Richest: "And what was that vision just now? I saw a bunch of people who seemed familiar but not quite familiar wearing swim — ahem, I almost said something I shouldn't. No wonder the Group Leader was so eager to try this. No ordinary cuisine could produce a flavor like this."
Glory of the Northern God: "This feeling — this taste — I'm so moved, wuwuwuwu."
Glory of the Northern God: "Shiba Inu crying .jpg"
Glory of the Northern God: "Even the Devil Fruit I ate before wasn't this good!"
Child of Nature: "I understand you meant that as a compliment — but using a Devil Fruit as your point of comparison is something only you could manage."
Child of Nature: "Though this flavor really is difficult to believe came from such ordinary ingredients."
Bai Xuan savored the food in his mouth and couldn't help feeling the same quiet astonishment.
Ingredients this common producing something more delicious than the dishes made from high-tier mutant creatures and spiritual materials from Su Yunqing's world.
In both taste and the satisfaction it brought to something deeper than the palate — it was simply unmatched.
If cooking of this caliber were paired with high-quality ingredients, the result was beyond imagining.
"This could be the basis for a trade."
Bai Xuan's eyes flickered with thought as he looked at the vegetables and fruits in his small world — nurtured by spiritual energy to the point where they essentially qualified as rare natural treasures. He could control time within the pocket dimension. Supply would never be an issue.
There were very few things in the world now that could stir any emotional response in him — but truly delicious food was something no one could refuse.
While Bai Xuan and the others were savoring the Little Chef's cooking, the skies above the capital had undergone a dramatic transformation — the heavens blazed red.
Unlike Chen Bing, who had already finished absorbing the dragon blood, or Huo Yu, who was waiting for the Blazing Beast to hatch — Qin Tian was still in the process of absorbing the tremendous energy contained within the Dragon Pearl.
Seemingly because his ability was tied to dragons, his compatibility with both the blood and the pearl was exceptional.
Throughout the absorption process, something within him was fundamentally transforming.
RUMBLE RUMBLE—
RUMBLE RUMBLE—
RUMBLE RUMBLE—
High above the Spiritual Energy Bureau headquarters in the capital, crimson clouds gathered across the sky, forming an enormous vortex.
Within the vortex's depths, lightning and fire churned and collided — and faintly, if you looked closely, a tall silhouette could be seen coiling within it.
The initial shock gave way to quiet calm once the Bureau announced that Dragon Emperor Qin Tian was in cultivation. After that, civilians began treating it almost like a spectacle.
Qin Tian was the guardian of the capital. The pride of the capital.
It was because of him that the city had remained this safe.
Those hiding in the shadows only dared stay in the shadows. They didn't dare show themselves.
Even as the cultivation continued on and on, even as some minds began to flirt with ideas — no one actually made a move.
Because they understood they were nowhere near a match for Qin Tian. And it wasn't only Qin Tian.
Ability and cultivation talent showed no favoritism toward good people or bad people. They simply gravitated toward genius.
Who had more — the good or the bad — no one could say. But ordinary people were the most numerous of all.
And ordinary people weren't necessarily saintly — but they were almost never truly evil either.
When an ordinary person awakened powerful talent and ability, their choices were shaped by their experiences, their families. Not everyone's life was defined by struggle and bitterness, by every hardship converging upon them at once. Most people had passed through the years before in relative stability. Their choices, when the moment came, were apparent.
In circumstances like these — what could those hiding in the darkness actually accomplish?
This wasn't only a technological age anymore. It was a spiritual energy age. Just because technology couldn't find you didn't mean ability couldn't.
Where would you even hide?
Those who chose darkness were condemned to spend their lives within it. Step out — and only death awaited.
For everyone watching the phenomenon Qin Tian had produced in the sky, there was only one thought in every heart.
Let it come even more fiercely than this.
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