“Please get us a private room for six,” Shangguan Yun said to a waitress passing by with a tray.
“Of course. For a private room, you’ll need to order dishes to open it,” the waitress replied very politely, showing no disrespect even though all six women before her were her Junior Sisters and had lower cultivation levels than her own.
“Naturally, I know. Just take us to the room,” Shangguan Yun nodded in confirmation.
The waitress respectfully tucked the tray under her arm and led the six women to a private room on the second floor named “Colored Glow.”
Mu Yanxi noticed that the neighboring and opposite rooms, named “Rainbow” and “Auspicious Clouds” respectively, were already occupied, their antique wooden doors tightly shut. There weren’t many empty rooms left; business was clearly booming.
Mu Yanxi already knew that cultivators in this world didn’t practice fasting; instead, they frequently ate and drank, with appetite even being linked to cultivation speed.
She had seen bustling restaurants on the streets, but this was her first time actually entering one.
The private room was beautifully decorated, surrounded by green bamboo and flowing water, with a redwood round table featuring a lazy Susan in the center.
The room was set up with a barrier formation. After the waitress led them in and bowed, she left.
***
Once the door closed, all the noisy chatter and laughter were completely cut off, becoming only a faint murmur. The room instantly transformed into a secluded paradise, isolated from the world.
The waitress just left? Then who’s going to take our order? What are we supposed to eat without ordering? Mu Yanxi found the situation rather baffling. Shouldn’t the waitress have stayed to take their order?
“Everyone, take a seat. I’ll order,” Shangguan Yun said. “If you don’t order, the Spirit Moon Ring content isn’t as high, but it’s cheaper. However, ordering from the serving window is only for dining in.”
“The restaurants in the Sect also offer ordinary food at the window, though the quality is lower.” As she spoke, she gently tapped the table with her Spirit Moon Ring.
Mu Yanxi saw a complex square rune appear on the table’s surface. When the Spirit Moon Ring touched the table, both the rune and the ring lit up briefly. Shangguan Yun added, “You can all order whatever you like. I’m paying.”
Yu Qiuyu and Hai Lingxue also touched the table in front of them with their own Spirit Moon Rings. Bai Jia and Lei Mulan didn’t move. Seeing this, Mu Yanxi also touched the square rune with her Spirit Moon Ring.
When her finger touched the virtual menu, the pages automatically turned. Categories like “Main Dishes,” “Soups,” “Vegetarian Dishes,” “Desserts,” and “Dim Sum” were displayed on the side. A rich menu instantly unfolded before Mu Yanxi’s eyes.
So this is how you order. You don’t even need a waitress; you just choose what you want yourself. Mu Yanxi turned her gaze to the specific dishes.
The first item was braised golden-winged eagle, which startled Mu Yanxi. If she remembered correctly, the golden-winged eagle was a demonic beast with roc bloodline.
Even fledglings possessed strength at the golden core stage, were extremely fast, and were an excellent choice for a spirit pet.
This single dish of braised golden-winged eagle cost seventy spirit stones. Mu Yanxi felt it seemed a bit expensive, but then, considering the ingredients, it also felt absurdly cheap.
The next dish was chilled azure cold fish slices. Although the azure cold fish didn’t have a Divine Beast bloodline, it was still a quite rare demonic beast. Its monster core could suppress fire-attribute cultivation methods and non-cold flame types of Heavenly Fire.
The hardest part about catching them was that azure cold fish could only be found thousands of meters deep in the extremely cold icy seas.
This dish sold for fifty spirit stones, still an unimaginably low price. The most valuable part, the azure cold fish’s monster core, was worth several thousand spirit stones. The other body materials would cost at least nine hundred spirit stones.
The dish after that was stir-fried earth-shaking ox with purple bamboo shoots.
Mu Yanxi didn’t recognize what kind of demonic beast the earth-shaking ox was, but the dish’s description guaranteed the purple bamboo shoots were over a hundred years old. This entire dish cost only fifty-eight spirit stones.
Mu Yanxi skipped the main dishes and looked at the vegetarian options. Similarly, they were all made from spiritual herbs or immortal flowers. Even the desserts and dim sum often featured hundred-year-old Immortal Fruits.
It wasn’t that Mu Yanxi had never eaten ingredients of this grade. In her previous life, she had eaten even higher-grade ingredients at Sect banquets and had used many thousand-year spiritual herbs and monster cores for pill refining. The ingredients themselves weren’t what surprised her.
What surprised her was that a group of Qi Refining disciples could come to a restaurant and order dishes made from such high-grade ingredients at such cheap prices.
Her shock was mainly about the price and the fact that such cuisine seemed beyond their status.
Although her mother had brought home some demonic beast dishes from the club where she worked before, those were just leftovers from high-level cultivators’ meals, which was understandable. Her family couldn’t normally afford such things.
While Mu Yanxi was still pondering, Shangguan Yun had already begun ordering skillfully.
“Dry pot kui curse, medicinal sea-plundering duck soup, green dragon lobster claws, superior broth with blood sword orchid, purple ginseng and red ganoderma, green-back bear paw…”
With each dish she ordered, the corresponding item on the menu in front of her lit up, indicating it had been selected.
With this wave of ordering, Shangguan Yun easily pushed the total price to five or six hundred spirit stones.
Mu Yanxi felt too embarrassed to order anything. In her previous life, she could have set out ten tables of such food without blinking.
But now, she was truly strapped for cash, and she felt like accepting Shangguan Yun’s treat was akin to freeloading.
The others were also quite reserved. Apart from Yu Qiuyu adding a twenty-spirit-stone dessert, no one else spoke up. Only Lei Mulan leaned close to Hai Lingxue and asked excitedly, “Is there any lamb? I want to eat lamb!”
“Behave yourself. Sit properly. Miss Shangguan is treating us. Just wait to eat and don’t make so many requests,” Hai Lingxue said, her words keeping others at a distance, yet she remained very proper in her manners.
“Aww~ okay,” Lei Mulan obediently sat back in her seat, still whispering. Although her usual attitude was straightforward, her disappointment was written all over her face.
Demonic cultivators really are direct.
“Hehe, don’t worry. How could we not give lamb to a wolf? One camp thunder ram leg, one nine-colored sheep stew, and one silver-horn lamb chop each. Student Lei Mulan, you can order more if you want,” Shangguan Yun said generously.
“That’s enough, aww! Sister Shangguan is the best!” Lei Mulan tried to pounce on Shangguan Yun again in affection but was grabbed by the scruff of her neck by Hai Lingxue and dragged back to her seat.
“You two still need to work on getting along better,” Bai Jia remarked, watching their interaction. The way these two got along didn’t seem like double cultivation partners.
However, Mu Yanxi didn’t feel that Bai Jia and Yu Qiuyu acted much like double cultivation partners either. Perhaps they weren’t familiar with each other yet.
After all, it was only the second day, and in private, these two pairs might not interact the same way. Take Shangguan Yun, for example—her attitude in public and in private were completely different.
Adding three lamb dishes instantly sent the total price soaring to nine hundred. These were all top-tier lamb dishes, with one alone costing two hundred and eighty spirit stones.
Shangguan Yun added a pot of drinks and some tea snacks, pushing the total price just over a thousand.