Chapter Seventeen: Curse of Death

The newly appeared divine ability on the system interface took Zhou Bai by surprise, yet on second thought, it seemed entirely logical.

Zhou Bai
Abilities Mastered: Yin-Yang Eyes (5%), Curse of Death (1%), Blade Tempering Technique (1%)
Points: 0

"Curse of Death? How is this divine ability connected to the previous Flesh-Eating Method?"

Zhou Bai studied the new divine ability, but couldn't make sense of it. He had no choice but to focus his attention, trying to discern if anything unusual had happened to his body.

As soon as he closed his eyes, he was startled to discover that the state of his body was laid bare before him; every blood vessel and meridian stood out in crystal clarity.

First, he noticed the changes the Yin-Yang Eyes had wrought on his body: deep within his eyes, wisps of yin energy flickered in and out of existence.

Although Zhou Bai could control these wisps of yin energy, their total amount was meager. He feared that a single attempt to circulate them would exhaust them completely.

"Could this divine ability be some sort of inner vision? No, that's not quite right..."

The Curse of Death was certainly not as simple as an inner vision technique. Very soon, he discovered its true nature within his lower dantian.

A golden speck, no bigger than a sesame seed, glimmered there, pulsing with light.

The moment his consciousness touched the speck, the Requiem Chant reverberated endlessly, and a host of memories regarding the Curse of Death surfaced unbidden in his mind.

This new divine ability had indeed been born from the foundation of the Flesh-Eating Method.

Yet, the Curse of Death was not built around the skill of slaughtering livestock, but rather, the Requiem Chant had taken precedence, while the remaining essence was curiously linked to the act of "eating."

Such a peculiar divine ability—perhaps unmatched in all of history, if not unique in all ages.

Regardless of that, Zhou Bai decided to test out the effect of this new divine ability.

He rose from bed, washed up briefly, changed his clothes, opened the door, and stepped into the outer room of the butcher shop.

Immediately, he caught the scent of sandalwood in the air, and the room seemed fuller than usual, filled with all manner of odd little trinkets.

One of the storerooms in the meat shop, which had originally been used for miscellaneous items, Zhou Bai had lent to Daoist Hou for temporary lodging. These trinkets, naturally, were deliberately placed there by the eccentric old Daoist, who claimed they were part of a ritual array.

Zhou Bai made his way to a cabinet in the corner, where he kept emergency provisions—mostly dried foods that wouldn't spoil easily.

He picked up some dried rations and began to eat. He wasn't truly hungry—the medicinal effects of the yellow elixir still lingered in his body, and he could have gone two or three days without food and felt little discomfort.

Rather, it was that this Curse of Death divine ability was related to eating. As he consumed large amounts of food, the golden speck in his dantian began to flicker more rapidly.

Under the influence of the divine ability, the food in his stomach was being digested quickly, and warm currents surged toward his dantian, where they were absorbed by the golden light.

After five or six minutes, the divine ability seemed to reach saturation. Suddenly, the golden speck spat out a golden character: "Tai." The character floated around the speck.

But that was far from the end. Soon, a second character, "Shang," was also formed, though Zhou Bai noted that the interval between each character was growing longer.

He stopped eating. Although his digestive speed was faster than usual, it wasn't anything extraordinary, and he was starting to feel full.

He pondered upon this: the Curse of Death divine ability could generate the characters of the Requiem Chant through the digestion of food, transforming it into wish-power.

In a way, although the new divine ability that emerged from the advancement of the Flesh-Eating Method was unexpected, it did fit its underlying nature.

Zhou Bai clearly felt that when digesting meat, the speed at which the characters formed was noticeably faster than with vegetarian fare.

With that in mind, he decided to further test the improvement this divine ability could provide.

He left the butcher shop and headed for an open space in the alley, then closed his eyes and tried to commune with the characters in his dantian.

"Tai... Shang..." Zhou Bai murmured, reciting the characters.

The words "Tai Shang" dissolved in his dantian like snow melting into water. His skin emitted a faint golden glow, and a look of delight appeared on his face.

Suddenly, a surge of newfound strength flooded his once-weak body.

Though the power had appeared abruptly, it was completely under Zhou Bai's control.

He tried lifting a stone in the alley that weighed fifty or sixty pounds. With just a bit of force, he picked it up easily—his strength had increased by thirty to forty percent.

Clearly, the Curse of Death divine ability was far more useful than he had imagined. By digesting food, he could obtain Requiem Chant characters imbued with wish-power, and could store up to ninety-six such characters.

As long as he recited the characters, he could temporarily gain the blessing of the divine ability. The magnitude of the boost depended on how many characters he could recite at once.

After about ten minutes, the faint golden glow on his skin faded, and the power of the Curse of Death faded with it.

Though the duration of the divine ability wasn't long, that was likely due to the small number of characters he'd managed to accumulate. As long as he could store enough, this would become an ability capable of catching opponents off guard in battle.

Of course, speeding up the accumulation of characters was something Zhou Bai needed to focus on. He had originally intended to sell the wild boar meat to a restaurant for a handsome profit, but now he naturally decided to keep it for himself—the consumption of meat greatly accelerated the generation of the characters.

However, preserving the meat presented a problem. Zhou Bai had no perfect solution for now, so he settled on smoking the meat, hoping that the process wouldn't slow the formation of characters too much.

As the day drew to a close, he hurried to make preparations. Aside from the portion he’d set aside as a gift for Old Li, he intended to turn the rest into smoked meat in one go.

Smoked meat, as the name suggested, involved the use of smoke. But to make it truly delicious, the process was rather elaborate.

First, he cut the pork into pieces about five inches long, then boiled them, adding star anise, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorns, cloves, spices, and cardamom in turn.

Once the gamey odor was mostly gone, he added scallions, ginger, garlic, and sweet bean paste to the pot.

Finally, he simmered everything over a low flame for three hours, turning the meat every half hour to ensure full absorption of the flavors.

After cooking, he placed the meat on racks to smoke for about ten minutes. This produced smoked meat that was outstanding in both taste and color.

When Zhou Bai finished his work, he immediately sampled some.

To his delight, he found that wild boar meat generated characters even faster than domestic pork; he was close to accumulating five characters in his dantian.

The first four characters formed the phrase: "By the Supreme Command," rising and falling within his dantian.

The only drawback was that Zhou Bai would henceforth need to keep his stomach constantly filled.

In the long run, only after all ninety-six characters were fully accumulated would he be able to return to a normal diet.