Chapter 23: Tasting the Fruit

Taiyin arched a brow as he watched his blocky companion produce a bottle-shaped object that looked like a thin wooden board, then wave a hand, causing the wine in his own cup to vanish into thin air.

Fang Zheng, meanwhile, looked at the bottle that had appeared in his hand and his inventory, and began to try drinking it with some excitement.

After a series of "glug, glug, glug" sound effects, the liquid in the bottle was consumed, but the result left him very disappointed. "Still absolutely no taste."

As it stood, the various substances Fang Zheng had collected in this world should have possessed the same properties as the originals, meaning they ought to have had a flavor.

That he still could not taste anything only proved that this immortal blocky body of his lacked the sense of taste entirely, just as it lacked the sense of touch.

Despite his disappointment, Fang Zheng was still happy—happy to be able to communicate properly with a sentient being.

Though their languages were not yet mutually intelligible, he chuckled and said, "Thanks for the drink. Want to try some of mine?"

With that, he navigated his inventory and pulled out honey, a golden apple, a golden carrot, cake, and other items from the Minecraft version of food, attempting once again to drop them in front of Taiyin.

"You can give these a try, though you have to see if you can pick them up first."

"Oh?" Taiyin looked at the items floating and rotating on the ground, which resembled paper cutouts, and hesitated.

He remembered that a few days ago, the blocky creature had thrown these very things at him.

But back then, he had been nothing more than a wisp of resentment, devoid of reason, and naturally had no reaction.

Now, as he swept his divine sense over them, he felt nothing. He could not perceive any laws of the Dao within these floating, paper-like objects, nor could he determine how they hovered or what they were made of.

These things seemed like nothing more than illusory light and shadow...

No! Even if they were pure light, Taiyin would have been able to capture them; these things were not even that.

Taiyin did not hesitate and immediately tried to reach out to pick one up.

But as his hand approached, the floating items drifted away, as if a layer of invisible force field repelled all matter from coming near them.

He raised an eyebrow, extended a sliver of divine power to form an invisible hand, enveloped the items entirely, and then constricted it.

Yet, even with their escape routes completely blocked, the items simply phased through his entire field of divine power, just as Fang Zheng could phase through solid matter, passing directly through to the outside.

Seeing this, Fang Zheng looked a bit embarrassed. "Uh, well, it seems you really can't touch them."

Lowering his head to think, Fang Zheng suddenly had an idea.

In the Minecraft world, the vast majority of blocks were unaffected by gravity; as long as they were placed, they would hover in mid-air even if there was nothing underneath them.

Only a few blocks like sand, gravel, water, or lava, along with dropped items, were affected by gravity.

When collected into an inventory and dropped again, these items generally appeared as smaller versions of the original blocks or tools.

Dropped items were different from thrown projectiles like splash potions, or fired projectiles like arrows and tridents.

In their dropped state, they did not possess the functionality of the original blocks or tools; they only reverted to their true form when picked up by a player, zombie, skeleton, or Enderman to be equipped or placed.

If not picked up and used, they would automatically refresh and disappear after five minutes.

However, although Taiyin could not directly touch or pick them up, it appeared that the laws of their two different worlds must share some commonality; otherwise, he shouldn't have been able to collect matter from this world in the first place.

Therefore, if he could make them appear in a three-dimensional state, he might be able to bypass the issue of not being able to touch them directly.

After a moment of consideration, Fang Zheng opened his inventory, took out a chest, and placed it directly on the ground.

He then placed the honey bottle, cake, golden apple, and other foods and potions unique to the Minecraft world into the chest one by one.

Fang Zheng shouted to Taiyin, "Hey, do you want to try taking something from inside?"

Witnessing Fang Zheng's actions, Taiyin couldn't help but feel curious.

He stared at the blocky wooden chest and remarked, "This box is truly full of sharp edges and corners, just like you, my friend."

Taiyin reached out to touch the chest, only to find that although it appeared to have seams, it could not be opened.

He applied a bit more force than a mortal could muster, and many crack-like traces appeared on the surface of the chest; but the moment he stopped, those cracks vanished.

Taiyin tried to probe it with his divine sense, but gained nothing. To his senses, it was a black void whose interior was completely impossible to observe.

After a moment of contemplation, Taiyin, filled with curiosity, mimicked Fang Zheng’s movements and waved his right hand at the chest from close range.

In an instant, an inexplicable square interface suddenly appeared in the right half of Taiyin’s field of vision. It was a rectangular interface divided into many small squares, segmented in the middle, directly obscuring a portion of his view.

One must understand that Taiyin, as a Supreme of the Extreme Path, possessed the "Taiyin Moon Eyes," which could look through galaxies below and pierce through the laws of heavenly tribulation clouds above. Ordinary objects could never obstruct his vision.

However, at this moment, the vision in the right half of his field of view had inexplicably vanished. Even when he secretly channeled his Taiyin power, causing a moonlit glow to appear in his eyes and the strange phenomenon of shifting lunar phases to manifest, he still saw nothing but the clear outline of the box composed of many small squares.

Nevertheless, as a cultivator, Taiyin’s senses were not limited to sight; his divine sense and other perceptions remained functional.

He curiously observed the objects in the small square grids on the right. They were very crude, pictures pieced together from different small squares, appearing to be bottles of liquid, a piece of pastry, and two fruits.

Taiyin’s intent shifted, and one of the items in the box on the right vanished.

He stepped back, and with a creaking sound, the opened chest closed, and the interface that had obscured his vision closed along with it.

Taiyin wore a strange expression. He looked at his hand to see a golden fruit glowing with purple light clutched in his palm.

This golden apple did not appear as a thin piece of paper like the dropped items in Fang Zheng’s hands, but as a three-dimensional golden apple—though it was still in a pixelated style, looking like a toy constructed from a pile of tiny golden blocks.

Seeing this, Fang Zheng walked up excitedly, circling around Taiyin.

"I knew it! The laws of the two worlds can interact. That means as long as the conditions are met, people in this Xianxia world should be able to use some Minecraft items!"

"Hurry, taste it! Taste what the golden apple is like!"

"Taste what it is like..." Taiyin glanced at the excited Fang Zheng, having already roughly grasped the meaning of his words.

As a powerful cultivator standing at the pinnacle of his realm, although he could not communicate with Fang Zheng via divine sense, Taiyin had learned a portion of Fang Zheng’s language through the latter's incessant chatter over the past few days.

As long as they chatted a bit more and he gathered enough linguistic data, Taiyin would be able to fully understand Fang Zheng’s language and communicate normally.

Looking at the golden fruit-shaped object in his hand—composed of many small golden blocks and radiating a purple glow—he probed it with his divine sense and still discovered nothing.

Without hesitation, he brought it to his mouth and took a bite.

"This... what a strange sensation."