Chapter 8: Ten Bowls of Spiritual Rice
The System message materialized without warning, glitchy borders flickering at the edges of Owen's vision.
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ MISSION 8 AVAILABLE! ║
║ Mission: Eat ten bowls of spiritual rice in one ║
║ sitting at the communal dining hall. ║
║ Reward: Iron Stomach (Lv. 1) ║
║ Penalty: Intense hunger for 72 hours. +5 favors. ║
║ Time limit: 20 minutes. Starts: NOW. ║
║ NOTE: Spiritual rice is delicious. ║
║ You will not taste the difference. ║
║ P.S. — The kitchen elder already hates you. ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Owen read it three times.
He was sitting on the low wall outside the dormitory, watching Fatty Wang eat a chicken leg. Fatty Wang had acquired the chicken leg from somewhere — Owen had learned not to ask — and was consuming it with the focused intensity of a man defusing a bomb.
"Hey, Fatty Wang."
"Yeah?"
"How many bowls of rice can you eat in one sitting?"
Fatty Wang's eyes went distant — the philosophical depth he reserved exclusively for food questions. "Depends on the rice. Spiritual rice? I could eat twelve. Fourteen if there's pickled vegetables. Why?"
"No reason."
"I once ate nine bowls during the Autumn Feast and the kitchen elder said I was a disgrace to the sect." He bit the chicken leg cleanly in half. "I took it as a compliment."
Owen looked at the timer. 18:55.
The communal dining hall smelled permanently of steam, overcooked grain, and the particular despair that came from eating the same meal three times a day. Between meals, it was mostly empty.
Owen walked in with the determined expression of a man walking to his own execution.
Fatty Wang walked in beside him, carrying a folding chair.
"Why did you bring a chair?"
"In case they don't have enough seating." He unfolded it and sat down with the satisfied air of a person who had secured prime real estate. "Also, it's my lucky chair."
Owen stood at the serving counter. A thin kitchen disciple was washing bowls.
"Ten bowls of spiritual rice," Owen said.
The disciple looked up. "How many?"
"Ten."
"That's a lot. Do you have a meal token?"
"I have a System mission."
The disciple stared at the empty space where Owen was pointing. "I don't see anything."
"Right. Ten bowls. Please."
The System interface flickered:
COST: Covered. Payment deducted from favor balance.
Current favor debt: 15.
This is not a reward.
"I have a tab," Owen said.
The disciple shrugged and ladled the first bowl onto a ceramic plate. The rice was white, almost luminous, with a faint shimmer that caught the afternoon light. Steam curled from it, carrying the clean, sweet scent of Qi-infused grain.
Owen sat across from Fatty Wang. He picked up his chopsticks. He took a bite.
It tasted like nothing. Not bad, not good. Just texture — soft, slightly grainy, like eating a spoonful of wet paper. The shimmer vanished. Where the rice had glowed white on the plate, it was now flat, matte gray. The steam evaporated. The sweet Qi scent disappeared, replaced by the faintest ghost of what food was supposed to taste like.
His dantian hummed — a deep, contented sound, like a cat that had just caught something.
Owen swallowed. Chewed. Swallowed. Bowl one.
The disciple refilled the plate. Fresh rice, glowing, steaming, fragrant. Owen ate it. By the fourth bite, the glow faded. By the eighth, the steam was gone. By the last bite, the rice was gray paste with the flavor of a damp napkin. Bowl two.
Progress: 2/10. Time: 14:22.
Stomach: 15% full. Flavor: DETERIORATING.
Across the table, Fatty Wang had acquired a bowl of his own.
"How did you get a bowl?" Owen asked.
"I asked." Fatty Wang's eyes were closed. His expression was transcendent peace. "Owen. Owen. This rice is incredible. The Qi — you can feel it, right? It's like eating sunshine."
"I can't taste anything."
Fatty Wang looked at Owen's gray pile. "Why does your rice look like that?"
"Doesn't yours?"
Fatty Wang held up his bowl. Bright white, steaming, shimmering. "Mine looks fine. It tastes amazing. What happened to yours?"
Owen looked at his rice. Gray. Flat. Dead.
"I think the kitchen gave me a bad batch," he said.
The rice kept coming. Bowl three — the glow died mid-bite, the flavor replaced by wet cement. Bowl four — a second kitchen disciple emerged, stared at the gray bowls, and asked, "Why is his rice gray?" while Owen shoveled paste into his mouth. Bowl five — the shimmer lasted exactly as long as it took Owen to lift his chopsticks. Bowl six — the rice was already gray when it arrived. Bowl seven — the kitchen disciples had stopped working to watch.
Progress: 7/10. Time: 05:12.
Stomach: 70% full. Flavor: NONEXISTENT.
NOTE: You are eating sad rice.
Owen was not a quitter. He was many things — unlucky, confused, the target of an elderly man's deep and abiding hatred — but he was not a quitter. He ate the paste.
Fatty Wang was on bowl four now, rice grains clinging to his chin, his nose, the collar of his robe. He was in a state of pure, unfiltered joy.
"This is the best rice I've ever had," he announced. "My meridians are tingling."
"I can feel my dantian being smug."
"What?"
"Nothing. Eat more."
Bowl eight.
Progress: 8/10. Time: 02:33.
Stomach: 85% full.
WARNING: Approaching human stomach capacity.
NOTE: You are not approaching human stomach capacity.
Your Iron Stomach reward is being applied retroactively.
This is unprecedented. Please consult a physician.
Bowl nine. A small crowd had gathered at the far end. Word had spread — the way word always spread in the sect, through whispers and sideways glances. A cripple was eating rice. A lot of rice. The rice was gray. Nobody knew why.
Bowl ten. The rice arrived already gray. The kitchen disciple set it down with something between pity and horror.
Owen's hands were shaking — not from weakness, but from the sheer mechanical repetition of shoveling rice into his mouth for the past fifteen minutes. His stomach was a full, heavy thing pressed against his ribs. His dantian hummed with satisfaction — a deep, resonant hum, like the lowest note on a pipe organ, felt rather than heard.
He ate the last bowl.
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ MISSION COMPLETE! ║
║ Ten bowls consumed. Spiritual energy absorbed: ║
║ 4,728 Qi units. (You didn't receive any of this.) ║
║ (It went into the void.) (You're welcome.) ║
║ ║
║ REWARD: Iron Stomach (Lv. 1) ║
║ Your stomach lining has been reinforced. You can ║
║ now digest things that would hospitalize a normal ║
║ cultivator. ║
║ ║
║ Favor debt: 15 (unchanged) ║
║ [Broken kazoo sound plays.] ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
The broken kazoo echoed through the dining hall.
Everyone stared at Owen.
"What was that?" the kitchen disciple asked.
"I have no idea," Owen said, and stood up, and walked out, and did not look back.
Behind him, Fatty Wang was still eating. Bowl six. He waved a grain-covered hand in farewell.
The next morning, the sect woke up to a crisis.
It started with a sound — a collective groan, rising from the outer disciple dormitory like a wounded animal. Then came the footsteps: hurried, uneven, the distinctive rhythm of people running to places they needed to be immediately.
Owen heard it through the wall. He was lying in bed, feeling surprisingly fine — his stomach was flat, his dantian was quiet, and the morning light coming through the window was almost pleasant. Fatty Wang was asleep in the opposite bunk, one arm dangling over the edge, his mouth slightly open.
Owen got up. Opened the door.
The hallway was chaos.
Disciples were doubled over, clutching their stomachs. Some were running — past Owen, past the bathroom, past the emergency washbasin at the end of the hall — with the focused desperation of people whose digestive systems had staged a violent uprising. Others were sitting against the walls, pale-faced, breathing in shallow gasps.
"What happened?" Owen asked.
A disciple staggered past him. "The rice," the disciple managed. "The rice at breakfast. Something — something is wrong with the — I need to — move—"
He was gone.
Owen stood in the doorway. His dantian hummed — a low, contented sound, the same purr it had produced the night before while he ate. He ignored it.
Down the hall, Fatty Wang emerged from the room, rubbing his eyes.
"Morning," Fatty Wang yawned. "What's all the—"
A disciple rushed past him, nearly knocking him against the wall.
"—noise?" Fatty Wang finished. He looked at the chaos. His face went through three expressions: confusion, concern, and finally, the particular dread of a person who had just remembered that he had also eaten rice that morning.
He patted his stomach. "I feel fine."
"You feel fine?"
"Great, actually. Amazing. Like I could run a mile." He paused. "Why is everyone else dying?"
Owen did not answer. He was looking at the kitchen.
From the direction of the communal dining hall, a voice rose — a voice Owen recognized from two days ago, when the same man had blamed him for the rice losing its Qi. A voice that belonged to a man who treated his kitchen the way a dragon treated its hoard: with territorial fury and zero tolerance for trespassers.
Elder Peng. The Kitchen Elder.
He was a stocky, barrel-chested man in his fifties with forearms like cured ham and a face that defaulted to the expression of someone who had just found a fly in his soup. He ran the sect's food operations with an iron ladle and a volcanic temper. He had already blamed Owen for the rice losing its Qi. He had already threatened to bar Owen from the dining hall. He had already — according to Fatty Wang — composed a formal complaint to the sect elders that he read aloud to the kitchen staff every morning for motivation.
Right now, Elder Peng was standing in the middle of the dining hall, surrounded by groaning disciples, holding a bowl of rice up to the light.
"This rice," he said. His voice was quiet. Dangerously quiet. The kind of quiet that preceded explosions. "This rice has no Qi."
A kitchen disciple tried to explain.
"This rice." Elder Peng shook the bowl. The grains inside were gray. Flat. Lifeless. "This rice was infused last night. I personally oversaw the infusion. Six hundred Qi units. Measured. Calibrated. Stored in the sealed chamber." He set the bowl down. "This morning, every grain is dead. Not low. Not reduced. DEAD. Someone tell me how six hundred units of Qi vanish from a sealed chamber overnight."
Silence. Groaning. The distant sound of someone being sick.
Elder Peng turned. He looked down the hallway, past the moaning disciples, past the panicked kitchen staff, past the morning light slanting through the windows. His eyes found Owen.
Owen, who was standing in the doorway of Room 14. Owen, who was the last person to walk past the rice storage two days ago. Owen, whose dantian was humming a song of satisfied fullness.
"YOU," Elder Peng said.
Owen closed the door.
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ ALERT: Kitchen Elder's hostility level has increased║
║ Previous level: STRONG DISLIKE ║
║ Current level: ACTIVE WARFARE ║
║ Suggestion: Avoid the dining hall for 3-5 business ║
║ days. Or forever. The System recommends forever. ║
║ ║
║ NOTE: Seventeen disciples currently experiencing ║
║ acute gastrointestinal distress. This is not ║
║ technically your fault. ║
║ (It is absolutely your fault.) ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Owen pressed his back against the door. Fatty Wang looked at him.
"Owen," Fatty Wang said carefully. "Why does the kitchen elder hate you?"
"I have no idea."
"You went to the dining hall last night. You ate ten bowls of rice. This morning, all the rice in the sect has no Qi and everyone who ate it is sick. Except us."
Owen stared at him.
"And also except me, which is weird," Fatty Wang added, "because I ate the same rice. Six bowls. I feel great."
"I didn't do anything to the rice."
"I know."
"I just ate it."
"I know."
"Then why does everyone keep looking at me like I did something?"
Fatty Wang considered this. He looked at Owen with the expression of a person who had a theory but was not sure if he should share it — which was, for Fatty Wang, an extremely unusual expression.
"Maybe," Fatty Wang said slowly, "it's because everything bad happens near you."
Owen opened his mouth to argue. Then he closed it. Then he thought about the testing stone, the herb garden, the formations, the robes, the rice. The long, accumulating list of things that had broken or died or gone wrong in his vicinity since the day he arrived.
"That's not fair," he said.
"I know."
"I didn't ask for any of this."
"I know."
"The testing stone just exploded."
"I know."
"And the herb garden died on its own."
"I know."
"And the formations—"
"Owen." Fatty Wang put a hand on his shoulder. It was warm, solid, and smelled faintly of spiritual rice. "I know. I'm not saying you did anything. I'm saying that wherever you go, weird stuff happens. That's just — that's just what it is."
Owen looked at his best friend. At the hallway behind him, where disciples were still staggering past, clutching their stomachs. At the dining hall down the corridor, where Elder Peng was composing what sounded like a war declaration.
"It's just bad luck," Owen said.
"Yeah," Fatty Wang said. "Sure. Bad luck."
He did not sound convinced.
Owen turned back to the door. Through the wood, faintly, he could hear Elder Peng's voice:
"Get me the sect elders. Get me the kitchen board. Get me — get me a formal investigation. That boy — that BOY — if he comes within fifty meters of my rice again, I will personally—"
Owen sat on his bed. His dantian hummed. The ceiling formation — repaired the day before yesterday — flickered.
Then it went dark.
Owen did not look up. He was getting used to the dark.