Chapter 42 The Food Source of Black Rock City's Residents!

Just as he stepped into the herbal medicine shop, Tang Zhen caught a distinct and unusual scent.

He had smelled this fragrance a few years ago inside a bustling temple with a massive following.

People said the scent came from a rare and precious spice. Its production was so scarce that a single piece of the highest grade could sometimes be traded for a villa!

Taking a deep breath, Tang Zhen savored the sensation; the fragrance of this spice was indeed remarkable.

Following the scent, he turned his head and saw a small, bone-carved incense burner resting on a rustic stone table. The aroma was drifting out from this burner in delicate wisps.

Noticing Tang Zhen's gaze fixed on the incense burner, a delicate young girl dressed in pale green leather attire walked over and said with a smile, "This is a batch of spices our shop just had transported from the Fragrant Capital Loucheng thousands of miles away. The scent is sweet and pure, capable of refreshing the mind and awakening the senses. With long-term use, it is also immensely beneficial for cultivation!"

Unlike the vagrants outside, the girl's face showed not a trace of hardship or worry, and her clothing was clean and proper.

Tang Zhen glanced at the girl, nodded slightly, and asked for the price.

Perhaps because production in this other world was quite high, the price of the spice was not exorbitant. Without hesitation, Tang Zhen took out a brain bead and bought a packet.

After stowing away the spice, Tang Zhen turned his attention to the other commodities in the herbal shop.

After looking around, however, he discovered that while there was a considerable variety of medicinal herbs, he recognized almost none of them. This shattered his original plan to buy a few century-old ginseng roots and take them back to sell for a high price.

Tang Zhen also noticed that many of the medicinal ingredients in the shop were harvested from monsters.

Bone marrow, gallbladders, blood powder—the raw materials for these medicines all originated from the monsters of the wilderness.

In some jars, monster organs were even directly submerged in liquid. The young girl introduced these as medicinal liquors with restorative properties.

Inside a glass-fronted display counter inlaid with transparent, glass-like items, various finished medications were arranged. After inquiring about their effects, Tang Zhen casually purchased a few bottles, intending to take them back for experimentation.

Stepping out of the herbal shop, Tang Zhen was pondering how to find an opportunity to sneak into the interior of the Loucheng when he inadvertently noticed dozens of people driving a team of carriages toward an entrance resembling an underground parking garage.

A thought stirred in Tang Zhen's mind. He found a secluded spot, activated his quantum stealth light-shield, and walked leisurely toward the entrance.

This underground entrance was quite spacious, with a few Black Rock City cultivators standing guard at the threshold. Tang Zhen reined in his movements as much as possible, walking past them silently and without a sound.

After he entered, one of the Black Rock City cultivators on guard duty looked somewhat doubtfully down the underground passageway. He thought he had just heard a faint, abnormal sound echo from within.

Confirming that there were no anomalies inside the passage, the cultivator turned his head away and paid it no further mind.

Tang Zhen walked nearly a hundred meters along the underground passage before realizing he was standing inside a vast subterranean space. Judging by its scale, it seemed comparable in size to the plaza on the surface.

Perhaps this underground space had been constructed directly beneath the plaza.

He carefully observed the surrounding walls of this underground space and found their texture to be extraordinarily solid, truly living up to a Loucheng built by the immense might of heaven and earth.

The underground space was artificially partitioned into countless small areas, piled high with stone and filled with soil.

The surface of this soil was drenched with a viscous liquid emitting a faint, peculiar odor. Tang Zhen cast a glance and saw that every single small section was treated this way.

Intrigued by the sight, Tang Zhen silently wondered what might be hidden beneath the soil.

Retrieving an entrenching tool from his spatial storage, he walked over to a shadowy corner and began to dig into the ground.

After merely two shovelfuls, he felt the spade strike something solid.

Prying upward with force, Tang Zhen watched as a white, spherical object the size of a human head was unearthed by the shovel.

Tang Zhen leaned in closer to inspect it carefully, only to discover that this thing was actually an oversized "potato"!

Whether this object was truly a potato, even Tang Zhen could not say for certain, but judging by its appearance, it certainly resembled one.

However, Tang Zhen had never heard of a potato of such massive proportions.

After digging a few more shovelfuls, he discovered that the layer of soil beneath was densely packed with these objects.

Tang Zhen estimated that these items served as the primary food source for the Loucheng residents. Looking at the scale of this basement and the sheer size of the potatoes, goodness only knew how many tons a single harvest would yield!

If these potatoes could be harvested continuously, the Loucheng residents likely had no need to worry about their food supply.

Tang Zhen had once wondered what the residents of the Loucheng ate every day since they didn't clear land and sow crops.

Now he finally understood—it turned out they subsisted on these giant potatoes!

He dug up two potatoes and placed them into his spatial storage, intending to take them back to attempt cultivation. If successful, this could undoubtedly fill the stomachs of quite a few people.

Yet, Tang Zhen guessed the chances of success were likely very slim; if these potatoes were so easy to cultivate, how could there be so many starving vagrants out in the wilderness?

At that moment, the entire underground space was devoid of people, and those individuals and carriages couldn't have simply vanished into thin air. Therefore, Tang Zhen surmised that another space existed here.

After searching carefully for a short while, Tang Zhen indeed discovered another downward-sloping passageway hidden in a dim corner.

"Could there be yet another layer of space beneath this underground plaza?"

Thinking to himself, Tang Zhen stepped into the passageway.

Minutes later, another underground space of identical dimensions appeared before his eyes. Just like the plaza above, this level was also planted with those colossal potatoes.

However, in this space, a few scattered residents were pouring that viscous fertilizer onto the soil, yet the convoy of carriages remained nowhere to be seen.

After observing for a brief moment, Tang Zhen predictably discovered yet another entrance extending further underground.

Without hesitation, he stepped inside, eager to see how many underground levels this Black Rock City possessed.

Upon stepping out of this passage, Tang Zhen was greeted not by the magnificent spectacle of potato cultivation, but by vast, sweeping fields of "mushrooms"!

Well, Tang Zhen no longer knew how to describe the scene before him, but these objects—standing over two meters tall, more than fifty centimeters in diameter, with caps as large as beach umbrellas—truly grew identical to mushrooms!

These giant mushrooms grew cluster upon cluster, with smaller ones sprouting beneath them. Aside from a three-meter-wide path, the entire area was filled with these massive fungi.

Amidst these mushrooms, Loucheng residents were hacking them down, cutting them into smaller pieces, and loading them into large baskets.

It seemed these mushrooms were also part of the Loucheng residents' diet, serving to alleviate the monotonous taste of the potatoes, or perhaps combined into a pot of potato and mushroom soup—the flavor must be quite decent!

As Tang Zhen pondered this, he actually began to feel a bit hungry.

Shaking his head to banish the thought, Tang Zhen similarly sliced off a piece of mushroom flesh and stowed it into his spatial storage.

After passing through the giant mushroom forest, yet another underground passage appeared.

Tang Zhen no longer felt surprised; he simply took a step forward and walked down once more.

Compared to the upper levels, the moment Tang Zhen stepped into this level's corridor, he was met with a fishy, foul stench, very similar to the fertilizer poured over the mushrooms and giant potatoes.

Simultaneously, the sounds of conversation and the clip-clop of horse hooves reached his ears—it was precisely the carriage convoy Tang Zhen had been pursuing.

Emerging from the passageway, Tang Zhen focused his gaze and soon made a rather startling discovery: this underground plaza was similarly partitioned by masonry into numerous pool-like enclosures.

Inside these segregated pools, massive white flesh-worms, each reaching up to two meters in length, were slowly writhing.

Soaked in the same liquid used to fertilize the giant potatoes, they continuously swallowed the feed being ladled out by Loucheng residents from the water barrels on the carriages.

Roughly estimating in his mind, Tang Zhen realized the number of flesh-worms farmed in this underground plaza must number at least in the thousands!

Could these plump, massive white worms be the primary source of meat for the Loucheng residents?