Very good! In the end, someone has triggered the hidden storyline.

Chicken Bro chuckled, “Everyone, pay attention. As soon as you spot him, respectfully invite him to the restaurant and have him take a seat. I’ll come and greet him personally!”

As long as you’re at the top of the food chain, no matter how fat those at the bottom get, they’re still just chickens in a poultry farm—at most, they’re just the workers feeding the chickens...

Chapter 7: So Hungry I Can’t Take It Anymore!

Wan Gu Cave.

Samuel Grant found a concave high platform. It was a dried-up pit formed by water dripping from a stalactite in the cave ceiling. A faint airflow from the surface seeped through the cracks in the stalactite, making it a bit easier for the bug-stained Big Charles to breathe.

The outside of the pit was covered in white stalactites, like the scale inside a thermos, which could easily be scraped out with a medicine hoe or spatula to form three oil-burning trenches. The three trenches could slow down and trip up the swarm, and the firepower could be adjusted according to the size of the swarm—if there were fewer bugs, only one trench would be lit.

Many of the sharp stalactites nearby were also brittle and could be easily knocked over by Big Charles. These sharp stalactites were stacked by Big Charles into a not-so-sturdy stone fence. After all, it was just to keep out bugs.

Samuel Grant personally collected the bug corpses killed along the way to refine crude oil. Since it was only for “protective trench oil,” it didn’t need to be weapon-grade purity—just half-boiled and poured into the trenches.

After three hours of preparation, the trenches were filled with oil and the fortifications were complete.

Dusk was approaching.

Big Charles seized the last moments to rest. He had to admit, he really had to thank the past six months of hauling work—otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to handle this much hard labor in just a few hours. But even so, a strange sense of hunger and exhaustion lingered! This probably wasn’t just because he’d skipped lunch?

Samuel Grant spoke up: “Tired? This is the cost of maintaining the martial general talisman. The more talismans you deploy, the higher their star level, and the longer they’re in use, the greater your consumption. My deployment time has been too long and it’s affecting you.”

Big Charles understood: “Then I need to improve my own cultivation as well.”

Samuel Grant said, “Exactly! The cultivation affecting the martial general talisman has two parts. One is your own martial strength, which varies from person to person, but that’s not the main thing. The main thing is your spirit, which shows as self-discipline, resilience, and courage—this is something anyone can train. Once your spirit reaches a certain level, you can learn immortal arts.”

Big Charles quickly asked, “So after I go through this big battle, will my spirit increase?”

“It will! You’ll also gain knowledge—practical experience is the most important kind of knowledge.”

Knowledge here is basically the intelligence stat in online games. Big Charles considered himself fairly spirited, so he asked, “So is my spirit high right now?”

“Not sure, you’d need an immortal to read your fortune and evaluate you. But I can tell you for sure, in your current state, no immortal would bother to read your fortune.”

Uh...

Of course, Big Charles knew about fortune reading. Since this is a real-life version of an online game, of course there’s a way to check your stats. But players can’t check themselves—they have to ask an immortal or a famous scholar, like the immortals Nan Dou, Bei Dou, Zuo Ci, Yu Ji, “Taiqiu Daoguang” Chen Shi, “Model of the World” Li Ying, “Mr. Water Mirror” Sima Hui, the brothers Xu Shao and Xu Jing, or Yu Fan, the reincarnation of Dongfang Shuo, and Zhu Jianping, the “Divine Calculator,” and Guan Lu. Zhu Jianping was also good at reading horses. It’s said that the two divine doctors, Hua Tuo and Zhang Zhongjing, could also read fortunes.

There was no imperial examination in the Han dynasty; instead, the “recommendation system” was used, where big families recommended each other, which frustrated lower-class scholars. So the profession of evaluation was born, the most famous being the brothers Xu Shao and Xu Jing’s “Monthly Review” of the world’s talents. The effect was: “A single word from one man could make or break a reputation; praise could make someone’s value skyrocket, while criticism could ruin them.” That’s why young Cao Cao was so excited to receive the evaluation “A capable minister in times of peace, a treacherous hero in times of chaos” from Xu Shao.

But in this world of immortals and demons, fortune reading is for real!

Once your attributes are determined by a fortune reading, that stat is basically fixed and won’t fluctuate wildly due to fatigue, diarrhea, or depression. If someone gets their fortune read at their absolute peak, it’s like they’ve reached a new level in life.

The standards for fortune reading are: 100 points is the full score, using Lü Bu’s martial strength, Zhuge Liang’s knowledge, Zhang Jiao’s spirit, and Diao Chan’s charm as benchmarks, with the comment “Unparalleled under Heaven.” If you exceed 100, it’s “Unparalleled in all ages.” Every 10 points below that is a tier:

90 points is “National Hero,” 80 is “Pillar of the Nation,” 70 is “Virtuous of the Region,” 60 is “Talent of a Hundred Miles,” 50 is “Outstanding,” 40 is “Average,” and below 40 is “Dull.” In fact, 40 is the average level for current players.

However, ordinary people never get to meet these immortals or famous scholars, and those figures usually can’t be bothered to read fortunes for commoners.

But there are special cases of “heavenly anomalies, must have special abilities,” like Zhang Song, who was short, ugly, and just over a meter tall, but had a photographic memory. Because of this, Lame Old Man has become the focus of all the players in the city.

...

After a few words, Big Charles felt even more tired and hungry. The problem now was that he hadn’t had dinner either! He’d only planned to leave the cave at dusk, so he hadn’t asked Miss Samuel Grant to bring any food.

Big Charles asked anxiously, “I haven’t eaten for two meals— is there anything to eat here?”

Samuel Grant said, “You can eat bugs.”

Damn, that’s just asking for diarrhea! Might as well die in battle and not have to worry about this.