Chapter 483: Ye Changhong's Shock
After recording Ye Changhong's order, Qi Han turned and walked into the kitchen to begin preparing the dishes for this somewhat strange new customer.
Ye Changhong kept his eyes firmly fixed on Qi Han. Only after the latter entered the kitchen did he slowly withdraw his gaze. His eyes then swept across the diners in the restaurant before quickly landing on Zhou Yuan.
Now that he was already inside Han Shi, he naturally wouldn't go up to greet Zhou Yuan and risk exposing himself. Instead, he merely gave a subtle nod from afar before turning his gaze elsewhere, settling on a broad-shouldered, powerfully built man.
The man—who was noticeably younger than Ye Changhong—noticed the gaze directed at him. He turned around and glared back at Ye Changhong. After the brief stare, he snorted and turned away again, continuing to stuff himself with the food in front of him.
That fool, he only knows how to eat.
After silently scoffing at Zhao Zhiyuan, Ye Changhong slowly closed his eyes, as if planning to take a nap while waiting for his food.
Only a few of the strongest people present—those whose strength had also reached Ninth-Level Spirit Engineer—noticed that as Ye Changhong closed his eyes, a faint wave of spiritual energy began spreading outward from him in all directions.
A Spiritual-Type Martial Spirit: Dream Tapir.
On the Sun Moon Continent, where spirit tools and spirit engineers formed the core of power, the role and importance of martial spirits had largely been replaced. Some extremists even barely used their martial spirits or spirit abilities at all, treating spirit power purely as an energy source to power spirit tools.
Because of more than ten thousand years of neglect, the overall strength of martial spirits among the continent's inhabitants had even shown signs of decline.
However, from time to time, powerful martial spirits would still appear.
For example, Ye Changhong's Dream Tapir martial spirit—a rare spiritual-type martial spirit that would be considered uncommon even on the Douluo Continent.
With this martial spirit, Ye Changhong could use various spiritual-type abilities, including some related to disguise.
That was why, when he volunteered for this mission, he specifically proposed disguising himself as a Fifth-Level Spirit Engineer.
Ordinary Spirit Engineers simply couldn't do that. Unless they completely refrained from using their spirit rings, those rings would inevitably reveal their true strength.
But Ye Changhong possessed a spirit ability that allowed him to disguise everything about himself exactly as he wished, even altering the appearance of his spirit rings so that no one would suspect anything.
As a spiritual-type martial spirit, Dream Tapir naturally also possessed abilities similar to detection techniques. Moreover, the detection fluctuations of this ability were extremely subtle. Even experts of the same level could only faintly sense it, while weaker individuals would not notice it at all.
The waves produced by spirit tool detectors were easy to detect.
But his spirit ability's detection was completely different.
At this moment, Ye Changhong was using that very ability while disguising his spirit rings completely.
The world perceived through spiritual power was incredibly strange.
It was completely different from the world seen with the naked eye.
In the physical world, a simple wall could completely block a person's line of sight. But in the world of spiritual power, all physical obstacles were ineffective—
—Hm?
Ye Changhong suddenly opened his eyes, shock flashing across them.
His spiritual detection ability—one that had never failed him before—had encountered a situation he had never experienced.
The spiritual detection, which should have easily penetrated the walls of Han Shi, was now being blocked by them just like ordinary sight.
It couldn't spread even a little beyond the restaurant's four walls.
His spiritual detection ability, which normally had a range of over a thousand meters, was completely trapped inside the roughly one-hundred-square-meter space of Han Shi, like a beast locked inside a cage.
The only outlet for Ye Changhong's spiritual power was the open front door of Han Shi. Aside from that doorway, he could not project even the slightest trace of spiritual power in any other direction.
If that situation was already strange enough, then the result of probing the kitchen, where Qi Han was currently located, was even more incomprehensible.
Inside Han Shi, the dining area and the kitchen were separated only by a semi-open partition. Even if the walls could block Ye Changhong's spiritual power, how could such an open divider possibly stop his detection?
But the reality was that every trace of spiritual power projected over the partition into the kitchen was swallowed as if by a bottomless abyss. There was not the slightest feedback, each strand simply vanished completely.
A drop of cold sweat slid down Ye Changhong's forehead, yet his expression grew even more serious.
He had once heard of a rare metal capable of blocking spiritual power detection, called Boundless Gold. It could be used to craft special spirit tools that resisted spiritual attacks. However, this rare metal had no dedicated ore veins; it could only be found in small amounts as a byproduct within another equally rare metal.
Could it be that the entire walls of Han Shi were made of Boundless Gold?
If that were the case, then the amount of Boundless Gold used just to build this restaurant would equal the total amount the Sun Moon Empire could collect in five years.
And even that explanation still couldn't account for why the kitchen where Qi Han stood behaved like a bottomless pit, absorbing his spiritual power without giving any response.
This restaurant… had a serious problem.
A force capable of doing this could not possibly belong to merely a seven-ring expert skilled in concealment.
Zhou Yuan had a rough understanding of Ye Changhong's abilities, so when he saw Ye Changhong close his eyes earlier, he had already guessed his plan. Now, seeing the unusual look on Ye Changhong's face, he immediately cast him a questioning glance.
Ye Changhong noticed but merely shook his head slightly. He didn't even dare to send a spiritual transmission.
Spirit power and spiritual power were completely different forces. The power in the kitchen that could absorb his spiritual power must also belong to the domain of spiritual power—and its source was certainly no weaker than himself.
In other words, behind Han Shi there was at least an eight -ring spiritual expert… possibly even a Titled Douluo.
Spiritual-type powers were inherently strange. If the other party wanted to eavesdrop on their mental transmissions, it might not be impossible.
Better to be cautious.
Seeing that Ye Changhong merely shook his head without speaking, Zhou Yuan quickly realized something and refrained from looking over again.
For Ye Changhong to behave this way, he must have discovered a serious problem, so serious that he didn't even dare risk sending a mental message.
After a brief moment of analysis, Zhou Yuan felt his heartbeat skip.
This time, at least one Titled Douluo from the Douluo Continent had come… and was currently lying in ambush somewhere inside Han Shi.
Clatter!
A crisp sound rang out.
Without drawing attention, Zhou Yuan bent down, picked up the cup he had just knocked to the ground, and placed it back on the table.
As Zhou Yuan performed this action, the expressions of all the officials in the dining area changed slightly. Their previously curious and openly observant gazes were instantly withdrawn, and they tried their best to make their eating appear natural.
This was one of the signals the officials had agreed upon earlier: if Zhou Yuan knocked a cup to the ground and then picked it up again, it meant everyone should raise their guard—there was a powerful expert hiding inside Han Shi.
As Zhou Yuan set the cup back on the table, Ye Changhong's expression relaxed slightly.
Stay alert, but act natural.
They absolutely could not let the hidden expert in this place notice anything suspicious.
Then Ye Changhong felt a pang of bitterness in his heart.
Later, he still had to deliberately stir up a conflict…
Now the difficulty level of that task had practically become hell mode.
"Hello, your Ginkgo Biloba Dish is here."
Qi Han brought over the dish Ye Changhong had ordered and set it down. As for the other two dishes, they were still being prepared and would take some time.
Hm?
Why did the dining area suddenly feel much quieter?
Qi Han looked around curiously at the other diners before shaking his head.
Hmm… must be my imagination.
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/becoming-food-in-155496005
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/becoming-food-in-155496005