Building a sect from scratch.

Chapter 125 You didn't become an immortal, is it because you didn't want to?
Do you prefer sweet or sweet and sour? We also have milder flavors, or milky flavors?

Baili Shuang distributed the milk tea shop's menu to the group, explaining, "These are all milk teas, which are milk and tea. The toppings are listed here. The ones on top are fruit teas and juices, and this honey lemon tea is the best-selling. The lemon is actually citron, and the name 'lemon' comes from... somewhere else. And these are pure teas: bamboo rice tea, Yunding Golden Buds..."

After a few choices, the group soon sat down outside a nearby barbecue restaurant, each holding a bamboo cup.

Dozens of skewers filled with all sorts of ingredients were placed on the long stove. The aroma of cumin and chili invaded the surrounding air, and the spicy and pungent smell went straight into people's nostrils.

"Senior sister, it smells so good..."

The junior disciple of the Taiyi Ziwei Sect swallowed hard and whispered to another disciple beside him.

Cultivators often subsist on wind and dew, sometimes meditating or comprehending the Dao for ten days or even more than a month, rarely eating.

After most cultivators abstain from grains, the few formal occasions they have to eat are social events such as banquets of various sects. In these occasions, the main focus is not on eating their fill, but on appreciating delicacies, fine wines and elixirs. Their common feature is that they are light and natural in taste. Barbecue, a domineering hodgepodge of various strong aromas, is something they have never seen before.

The player who was flipping the grilled meat skewers mustered up his courage and greeted Baili Shuang with a grin, still not giving up, and asked, "Senior Sister, do we really not have any chili peppers like small red chilies in our Guixu Realm? This Golden Finger Chili is spicy enough, but it's not fragrant enough!"

Jiao Xueling coughed a few times from the spiciness and asked, "Golden Finger Pepper? Isn't that a spicy spiritual ingredient used in alchemy?"

"Hey, in our Taiyin Sect, these are all seasonings! And what about this dried tea seed, which we call cumin? They're all for seasoning. Sigh, I don't know how you guys manage to live, you have everything but you don't know how to use it!"

As the player spoke, he clicked his tongue repeatedly, feigning regret.

“My junior brother cultivates the five flavors and has a great understanding of food,” Baili Shuang explained. “Sometimes he researches new dishes and lets everyone try them here. If you’re willing to stay at the Taiyin Sect for a few more days, you can come and visit often.”

No sooner had Baili Shuang finished speaking than the player with the ID [Large Intestine Sashimi] blushed with excitement—he had actually been remembered by the Senior Sister! She even remembered his profession… no, I mean his lineage! Out of so many players on the server! To be remembered by the Senior Sister! He'd be bragging about this for days!

He excitedly wiped the oil off his hands on his clothes and said, "Since Senior Sister is coming to eat, what are we waiting for! I'll make her a few fancy dishes in a bit! These are new dishes I just came up with! Even Master Huang said they were delicious!"

"Then thank you very much, junior brother!"

Baili Shuang casually thanked her, then turned to the two Taiyi Ziwei Sect disciples beside Jiao Xueling and asked, "May I ask the names of these two fellow Daoists?"

Jiao Xueling said, "These two good-for-nothings, this one is called Chaoyan and that one is called Lü Wenyuan. One studies alchemy and the other practices swordsmanship. They are both only at the Foundation Establishment stage, just one step away from the Golden Core stage. That's why I brought them out to gain some experience. Who knows, they might become successful."

Perhaps the surrounding noise eased her previous tension and fear, and Junior Sister Chaoyan relaxed a lot, asking curiously, "Is this also part of the Taiyin Sect? Why does your sect allow its disciples to do business within the sect?"

"It is the Taiyin Sect, but this city was built by the disciples of the Taiyin Sect themselves. The disciples of the Taiyin Sect do not have a strong sense of belonging to their sect's lineage. Instead, they tend to band together in the form of communities. This Chang'an City was built by the Taiyin disciples of the Chang'an community."

Upon hearing this, Chaoyan and Lü Wenyuan looked around carefully, but their doubts only grew stronger.

"A city? But there are no city walls here."

"It really doesn't look like a city!" Before Baili Shuang could answer, Da Chang Cishen, who had been eavesdropping on the gossip, couldn't help but speak up again. He said confidently, "City walls are only needed when firepower is insufficient! Our Chang'an City has plenty of firepower! We don't need any city walls at all!"

"Firepower... not enough?"

"Senior sister, what does he mean by 'ga ga'?"

"I don't know, why do the people from the Taiyin Sect sound so strange?"

Jiao Xueling looked at the crowd of people coming and going not far away, her doubts no less than those of her junior brothers and sisters: "More than the city wall, I'm curious why there are so many ordinary people here, and they can even afford 'celestial food'?"

The so-called 'celestial food' refers to food cooked with spiritual ingredients, which is mostly favored by cultivators who cultivate the five flavors, such as chefs and food cultivators.

The five flavors are sour, bitter, sweet, spicy, and salty. Using spiritual ingredients to cook and discern these five flavors, one can replenish qi and spiritual energy through food, which is also a form of cultivation. However, this method of cultivation is both expensive and highly dependent on talent, and the results are not ideal. Therefore, major sects rarely have cultivators of this kind.

He casually flipped the large intestine sashimi skewer over, sprinkled some homemade barbecue seasoning on it, and scratched his head: "Why can't I afford it? It's not expensive!"

Jiao Xueling was momentarily speechless at the confident words of the large intestine sashimi, and said tactfully, "I thought that most ordinary people had to work day and night in the fields and weave cloth just to have enough to eat."

"Relying entirely on them to farm is such a waste of effort! We cultivators can easily use spiritual energy to accelerate growth, or find someone with earth or wood spiritual roots to do something with, and our efficiency is equivalent to that of a hundred ordinary people!"

Chaoyan and Lü Wenyuan frowned: "How can cultivators do such things?"

"Isn't this just letting them reap without sowing?"

The large intestine sashimi emitted a disdainful hiss from its nostrils, retorting, "How is it freeloading! It's labor-intensive! For example, planting, sorting after harvesting, and fine processing, these kinds of jobs are for ordinary people... uh, why should they do them! Besides, the people employed at my barbecue restaurant are all ordinary people, good quality and cheap!"

Chaoyan and the other two were even more shocked. Even Jiao Xueling couldn't help but exclaim, "How can someone with incomplete Five Elements cultivate the Way of the Five Flavors?"

What does "incomplete in five elements" mean?

The large intestine sashimi hissed, also finding it incomprehensible to the logic of these NPCs: "Regardless of whether the five elements are complete or not, cooking is a simple task with no skill level. What matters is what you use to cook it? As long as it tastes good, that's all that matters!"

Lu Wenyuan was the first to get agitated: "You, you're talking nonsense! Incomplete Five Elements means a broken spiritual root, the path to immortality is severed, how can one cultivate?"

These words made sense – ever since the Guangcheng Sect disciples flooded into Chang'an City, players had been hearing the same old tales about how "incomplete spiritual roots" prevented one from cultivating immortality. But this time, before Da Chang Ci Shen could retort, a female cultivator's mocking voice came from the table next to them, occupied by a man and a woman: "You talk as if you can become an immortal just because your path to immortality isn't broken!"

Immediately following, the male cultivator added insult to injury: "Your spiritual root is not damaged, and your path to immortality is not severed, so why haven't you become an immortal and attained enlightenment? Is it because you don't want to?"

Let me explain the issue regarding chili peppers. First of all, we're in a fictional world of cultivation, so worrying about whether or not there are chili peppers is a false premise. If the author says there are, then there are. Understand?
Secondly, according to reports of wild chili peppers being discovered in Shennongjia in the 1990s, chili peppers do exist native to China (and there are records of them as early as the pre-Qin period, I think it's in the Lüshi Chunqiu or something, I forget), but they were never domesticated and used in condiments. It wasn't until the Ming and Qing dynasties that chili peppers domesticated in the Americas were introduced, and the chili peppers we eat today are all from the Americas (and those domesticated in other countries also seem to originate from the Americas). However! There is no doubt that chili peppers exist native to China!


(End of this chapter)