The small kitchen of the dilapidated cottage on Solitude Spire was bathed in soft morning light.
Through the warped glass of the kitchen window, the eastern cliffside looked pristine and still.
Barnaby the clockwork owl remained perched on his cedar beam outside, his internal gears clicking with calm precision beneath his black rubber stopper:
*Tick... tick... tick...*
Across the kitchen floor, the rustic pine table stood rock-steady, its short left leg propped up firmly by Grandmaster Vivienne’s purple Sovereign Heart Seal.
On the corner of the table, the fist-sized Soul-Pearl of the northern void held down a stack of grocery receipts and Felix’s scribbled gacha notes, pulsing with dim, subdued emerald light.
Felix Vance set the wicker basket of glowing, nine-colored rainbow eggs onto the wooden countertop.
He pulled a heavy cast-iron skillet from the drying rack and placed it on the small cast-iron stove.
He didn't bother lighting the kindling in the firebox beneath.
Instead, Felix rested his bare palm against the heavy iron rim for two seconds.
Deep within his chest, the 1.0-Earth-Mass Sol-Class stellar core hummed with a microscopic fluctuation.
A stray fraction of a billionth of a percent of fifteen-million-Kelvin thermonuclear energy trickled down his forearm, passing into the cast iron.
The skillet didn't warp. It didn't melt.
The heat distributed across the black iron with absolute, thermodynamic perfection, stabilizing instantly at a clean, mathematically flawless one hundred and sixty-five degrees Celsius.
"Nice," Felix muttered, hovering his hand over the surface. "Cast iron holds heat like a champ. No cold spots."
Felix grabbed a small utility knife and stepped out the back door into the garden.
Down in the cabbage patch, Lord Nether-Bane looked up from pulling crabgrass.
The skeletal Ghost King immediately dropped to his knees in his stained hemp apron, bowing his bleached skull until his forehead pressed into the dark loam:
"Sovereign of the Great Sun! This humble servant greets your divine presence!"
"Hey, bone man. Just need a leaf," Felix said casually.
Felix crouched by the five-star Sun-Lotus Cabbage.
With a quick flick of his knife, he trimmed away a single, crisp emerald leaf from the outer ring.
The cabbage pulsed with a warm, golden heartbeat, sealing the cut stem with sweet amber sap that smelled of honeysuckle.
"Keep up the good work on the weeds," Felix added, giving the Ghost King a nod before strolling back toward the kitchen.
Lord Nether-Bane wept silent, spectral tears of ecstasy into his hemp apron:
"He praised my weeding... The True Sun noticed my humble hoeing!"
Back inside the kitchen, Felix set the cabbage leaf on his cutting board.
*Chop-chop-chop-chop.*
The knife moved with lazy, effortless precision, reducing the crisp vegetable into fine, paper-thin ribbons.
Felix wiped his hands on a clean dish towel and reached for the first Nine-Colored Spirit Egg.
It felt warm and heavy, vibrating with faint celestial harmony.
Felix tapped the shell against the ceramic lip of his mixing bowl:
*Tink-crack.*
The iridescent shell fractured with a delicate, chime-like resonance, sounding like crystal bells chiming in a distant mountain temple.
Felix pulled the two halves apart.
Out slid a massive, golden-orange yolk that glowed with the luminous radiance of a miniature morning sun.
It settled into the bowl surrounded by thick, crystal-clear albumen swirling with shimmering rainbow ribbons of primordial essence.
Felix blinked at the bowl.
"Man, these chickens have high-protein diets," Felix murmured. "Look at that yolk color. That’s top-tier free-range quality right there."
He cracked a second rainbow egg, followed by a third.
He tossed in a pinch of coarse sea salt, two twists of cracked black pepper, and used a pair of wooden chopsticks to beat the eggs into a smooth, frothy golden batter.
Felix dropped a generous pat of sweet farmhouse butter into the hot cast-iron skillet.
*Sssssssssss.*
The butter melted instantly, foaming into fragrant, golden bubbles across the seasoned iron.
Felix poured the beaten rainbow eggs straight into the center.
*TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.*
The reaction was instantaneous.
The egg mixture puffed up like a golden cloud, curling into velvety, rippling folds as Felix gently drew the edges inward with a wooden spatula.
He scattered the shredded Sun-Lotus Cabbage across the center, folding the omelet over into a plump, crescent-shaped masterpiece.
Then, the aroma hit.
It rose from the skillet in a thick, shimmering plume of translucent white steam.
It wasn't merely the smell of cooked eggs and butter.
It was the concentrated essence of pure solar vitality, caramelized cream, roasted hazelnuts, alpine wildflowers, and primordial rebirth.
The fragrance defied every law of mortal culinary craft.
It carried the life-affirming warmth of the First Era, curling into the kitchen rafters before venting out through the stone chimney into the open morning air.
***
Out on the western approach to Solitude Spire, the suspension bridge groaned softly under the weight of iron wheels.
Grand Inquisitor Drake strode across the wooden planks, his heavy white ermine cape billowing behind him in the mountain wind.
The Grand Inquisitor was dressed in his full imperial enforcement regalia: gleaming gilded breastplate, white silk sash, and his eighth-tier Sun-Piercing Lance held vertically in his right gauntlet.
Behind him marched four elite imperial guards in silver plate.
The guards were straining their backs, manually pushing a heavy, gilded handcart loaded with the Sol-Aethel Empire's weekly tribute.
The cart was heaped with the finest mortal luxuries the capital could muster: twelve smoked wild hams cured in mountain pine, wheels of cave-aged golden cheese, crates of fresh southern scallions, baskets of sweet honey melons, and three sacks of stone-ground wheat flour.
Drake’s expression was grim, solemn, and intensely focused.
Under the Emperor's private decree, Drake had been designated the *Supreme Imperial Provisioner to the Solitary Peak*.
To the rest of the empire, Drake was the terrifying iron fist of the Inquisition.
To Solitude Spire, he was the terrified grocery delivery boy who lived in constant dread of displeasing the slumbering god.
Drake cleared his throat, mentally rehearsing the formal address he had memorized over the last three days:
*'Supreme Sovereign of the Living Sun! The Sol-Aethel Empire presents this humble harvest of mortal flavors, praying that your divine gaze shall look upon our realm with mercy and—'*
Drake froze mid-step.
The breeze suddenly shifted, sweeping down from the cottage chimney across the suspension bridge.
A single wisp of translucent white steam drifted across the bridgehead, brushing against Drake's nostrils.
Drake took in a half-breath.
His pupils dilated until his eyes were entirely black.
His lungs seized.
His heart stopped beating for two full seconds.
The aroma of the Solar Omelet entered his nasal cavity and exploded into his spiritual pathways like a thousand roaring suns of pure, liquid enlightenment.
*THUD.*
The eight-foot Sun-Piercing Lance slipped from Drake's nerveless iron gauntlet, clattering uselessly against the wooden planks.
Drake’s knees buckled.
The eighty-year-old Grand Inquisitor dropped straight onto the hard bridge timber with a heavy, unceremonious crash:
*SLAM.*
Tears—scalding, uncontrollable torrents of clear tears—erupted from Drake's eyes, streaming down his leathery cheeks and soaking his trimmed silver beard.
"The heavens..." Drake choked, clutching his breastplate with both hands as his chest heaved violently. "The... the breath of creation..."
Inside his spiritual sea, an apocalypse was taking place.
For forty years, Drake’s cultivation had been hopelessly bottlenecked at the peak of the Seventh Tier.
His meridians were clogged with the calcified residues of ancient battle wounds, corrupted by corrosive demon poisons from the northern wars.
Yet the moment that single breath of warm, buttery, sun-kissed steam entered his lungs, the calcified blockages inside his veins shattered like brittle ice under a sledgehammer!
*CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!*
Purified golden Qi surged through his body like a tidal wave of warm honey.
His withered organs swelled with fresh vitality.
The dark poison lingering in his bone marrow dissolved into thin air, expelled through his pores in microscopic puffs of harmless gray vapor.
Behind him, the four elite imperial guards let go of the grocery cart.
*CLATTER.*
The four heavily armored warriors collapsed face-first onto the wooden planks, their helmets rolling across the bridge as they sobbed in euphoric, weeping delirium:
"Mother... I see the golden fields of paradise!"
"My soul has been washed clean!"
"This is not mortal food! This is the breath of the First Gods!"
Drake crawled forward on his hands and knees, heedless of the rough splinters biting into his palms.
His gilded visor lay discarded behind him.
His armor clanked against the bridge as he dragged his eighty-year-old body across the gorge, guided solely by the heavenly fragrance wafting from the cottage porch.
"I must bear witness..." Drake wept, his trembling fingers clawing at the stone threshold of Solitude Spire. "The Sovereign... the Sovereign has ignited the Cauldron of Eternal Life!"
Up on the porch railing, Lyra Ashford stood frozen, her hands resting flat on the hilt of her sheathed silver rapier.
She looked down the path toward the bridge.
The Grand Inquisitor of the Sol-Aethel Empire—the man whose very name made provincial governors tremble in terror—was crawling through the clover on all fours, sobbing like an abandoned infant, his ermine cape dragging through dandelion fluff.
Lyra took a slow breath of the morning breeze.
Even from fifty paces away, the fragrance curling around the porch made her spiritual core spin with crystalline purity.
Her mana veins hummed, radiating soft silver light through her tunic.
She looked toward the cottage screen door, her heart pounding with reverent awe.
*'Senior Brother simply cracked three eggs,'* Lyra thought, her soul shaking with boundless veneration. *'He did not set up an alchemy array. He did not recite a single incantation. Yet the mere residual steam escaping his skillet has shattered an Eighth-Tier Grand Inquisitor's lifelong bottleneck!'*
She watched Drake claw his way through the grass, inching toward the porch steps with agonizing, worshipful slowness.
*'Senior Brother's Dao is truly terrifying,'* Lyra whispered to herself. *'He feeds the heavens, and the mortal world can only kneel in the grass and weep.'*
The screen door creaked open once more.
Felix Vance stepped out onto the cedar porch, holding a wide ceramic plate in one hand and a wooden fork in the other.
On the plate sat the folded Solar Omelet.
It glistened with a golden, buttery sheen, speckled with bright green flecks of diced Sun-Lotus Cabbage and coarse black pepper.
A gentle halo of soft rainbow light hovered over the food, curling with warm, fragrant steam.
Felix brought the plate up, admiring his own culinary handiwork.
He triggered his Inspector HUD with a lazy blink:
【Item: Fluffy Nine-Colored Solar Omelet】 【Grade: Primordial Divine Delicacy (5 Stars)】 【Nutritional Value: 450 Calories / +10,000% Health Regeneration】 【Buff Duration: Permanent Cellular Cleansing】 【Inspector Note: Cooked using three fresh phoenix-peacock eggs and one crisp sun-lotus ribbon. The yolk-to-white ratio is mathematically optimal. Casual consumption may cause spontaneous meridian ascension, temporal rejuvenation, and extreme emotional weeping in low-level NPCs. Best served hot with toast.】
Felix gave the tooltip a dry, dismissive nod.
"Typical game balance," Felix muttered. "You cook three common breakfast eggs and the tooltip acts like you forged an ancient holy grail. It’s just protein."
He walked to the edge of the porch, looking forward to enjoying his breakfast in the morning sun.
Then he looked down at the lawn.
Twenty yards from the bottom step, Grand Inquisitor Drake was currently crawling on his stomach through the clover.
The imperial official’s white ermine cape was smeared with green grass stains, his gilded breastplate clattered against the dirt, and his weathered face was completely soaked with snot and tears.
Felix stopped, fork poised above the plate.
He stared down at Drake with a deeply skeptical squint.
"What is he doing now?" Felix grumbled under his breath. "Did he drop his contact lenses in the grass? If this guy ruins my clover after I just cleared the walkway, I'm canceling my grocery subscription."