“Take these,” commands the beast, holding out three random bottles, one in each of his three limbs. Kepa Ying obliges, leaving her master empty handed and empty tailed, moments before the boat shakes once again as a roar erupts from the upper deck. No one does anything in response to this, so she follows suit, remaining seated as threatening noises continue coming from above. It made sense, there was a closed door between them and the outside, so anyone within the ship was safe from the predations of whatever monsters may have come into existence up on the deck.

It looked like two of the bottles were empty, though one was stoppered for some reason. Kepa Ying almost drops the third one when she realizes it’s full of the deadly poison, which probably would not have ended well. Instead, she slips the containers into her new inventory system, and watches as her master strides purposefully toward the upper deck. That didn’t seem like it was a good idea, to be perfectly honest, so she just sat there.

The egg was delicious, and huge. Most of the interior parts of the egg was made up of the delicious yellow liquid, buttery and thick, which she could spoon up with a fluffy helping of the white mostly solid part. It was soft enough that her spoon would just slide into the gooey mess, allowing her to bring a syrupy dollop of buttery egg up to her mouth with no effort.

Since the shell was as thick as the yolk inside of it, there wasn’t even any need for any kind of bowl or any other sort of container for the edible parts. A body refining cultivator would have difficulty even opening the lid to begin with, likely needing a weapon to make their way to the golden treasure within. The black armor covering her arm, however, was more than strong enough to crack open the top of the inferior protection and pull off a large chunk of leathery material, allowing her easy access to the perfectly soft-boiled egg within.

Kepa Ying had never met Yang Ming before, but she now considered him her brother thanks to this egg.

Having lived her entire life in the middle of the staple grain growing area of the sect, meat and meat-adjacent food materials were a special treat. One had to have luck to make it to a supply shipment to collect a ration of perishable foodstuff before all of it was taken by luckier farmers. It was also up to luck whether the supply would come from the northern or southern districts, as the south provided meat and dairy, but no eggs, whereas the north would supply meat and eggs, but no dairy.

Considering that each sent their goods through the sect before it could go anywhere else, it was probably even more difficult to get access to the respective foods in the places that specifically didn’t produce them. At least Kepa Ying had gotten access to all of the food types at one point or another.

Working with the confined monsters and beasts they used to produce all those non-grain foods would have been a lot less boring than grains. Unfortunately, being near those creatures required far more strength than she had possessed. Until a cultivator had broken through a few realms, even farming the feed for the behemoths to the south was considered too much of a risk, seeing as an inherent part of the job was being between behemoths and the things they wanted to eat.

And while being one of the things they wanted to eat.

Most youths would either continue working with the safe, regular plants, or finish body refining and join the sect as an outer disciple to accelerate their growth. Either way, Kepa Ying wouldn’t have the chance to try and ride a behemoth any time soon. Now that she had an immortal master though, and was slowly being covered in powerful spiritual tools, she might be able to skip ahead of multiple cultivation realms to reach the fabled reaches of ‘pet the chicken’.

It had been a few seconds since the beast had gone out of the safety of below deck, which was enough for things to have gone wrong.