66: Chapter 66 Becoming a Big Eater

The Gluttonous Ghost stared at Wu Xi's half-empty table, the smile on his face fading bit by bit.

As Wu Xi ate, a force was awakening within his body.

"Three-Turn Heavy Origin Technique": Second Turn successful, Five Viscera Furnace, energy refining.

A thin vortex of Qi formed around Wu Xi's body; it was almost invisible to the naked eye, but one could feel the airflow swirling around him.

When ordinary people eat, they absorb at most ten to twenty percent, and the rest must be expelled.

But he was different. Once the Five Viscera Furnace opened, food reaching his stomach was immediately refined by his Protective Aura and converted into pure energy, filling his sinews, bones, and muscles. The more he ate, the stronger his body became.

But the Gluttonous Ghost did not know this.

"Do you think you've won?" The Gluttonous Ghost sneered, extending his greasy hand and slapping the stone table. "That little bit just now was merely an appetizer."

Suddenly, piles upon piles of food appeared on the stone table. Large chunks of meat were stacked into a mountain, internal organs were piled like a small hill, and there were various strange ingredients whose names he couldn't even name.

Wu Xi glanced at him without saying a word, reached out to pick up a piece of meat, shoved it into his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed.

He picked up another piece, then another, and another. His movements were neither fast nor slow, his rhythm as steady as a precision machine.

The Gluttonous Ghost's eyes began to shift in a strange way.

He saw that Wu Xi's stomach not only didn't continue to swell, but was slowly flattening. The bulging veins on his abdomen receded, and the distended curve gradually retracted. A flush of color even appeared on Wu Xi's face—a healthy, rosy glow—making him look like a completely different person compared to just a moment ago.

Something is wrong. These two words popped into the Gluttonous Ghost's mind.

But there was no turning back.

The Gluttonous Ghost's eyes turned completely red. He no longer ate with one hand; his entire upper body sprawled directly onto the stone table, his two arms like two large rakes, gathering all the food in front of him toward his mouth.

His mouth opened wider and wider. His jaw let out a dull thud as it dislocated, hanging down completely. His lips tore, the split extending from the corners of his mouth all the way to his ears.

A perfectly normal face turned into a bloody maw, with piles of food being dumped inside.

Meat, bones, and internal organs were stuffed in indiscriminately. The sound of chewing vanished, replaced only by swallowing—gulp, gulp, gulp—each swallow sounding like a stone being dropped into a deep well.

His large stomach, which looked like an overturned iron pot, expanded faster and faster. His skin stretched until it was transparent, revealing the food churning and roiling inside. Pieces of meat and bone collided within the stomach acid, emitting dull thumping sounds.

When he ate most frantically, he didn't even chew anymore, swallowing directly.

Like a snake, he swallowed whole chunks of food alive. First, half a roasted pig, then the leg of some unknown creature, and then an entire basin of offal. With every swallow, his neck would suddenly swell, the skin stretching to its limit before slowly shrinking back, only to swell and shrink again.

"I have been eating for three hundred years!" The Gluttonous Ghost's voice had completely changed, becoming garbled and slurred, like a roar squeezed from the deepest part of his throat. "No one can out-eat me! No one!"

He roared while continuing to stuff things into his mouth. Two clusters of ghost fire darted wildly in his eyes, and murky tears mixed with saliva smeared all over his face, turning his already greasy face into a mess of sludge.

He was eating too fast; the food in his stomach couldn't be digested or converted into energy in time, so it piled up layer by layer.

His belly expanded at a speed visible to the naked eye, turning from an overturned iron pot into an inverted water vat, and then from a water vat into a small hill. The textures on his skin were stretched completely smooth, so much so that even his pores disappeared, leaving only a thin, transparent membrane. Through that membrane, the various food scraps and juices inside were clearly visible.

"Stop eating, you fat dead guy!" The Bowl-Playing Ghost was the first to notice something was wrong and screamed, "You're crazy!"

But the Gluttonous Ghost could no longer hear. His entire consciousness had been swallowed by his mouth and throat.

His two hands were still mechanically stuffing things into his mouth; even though his mouth couldn't hold anymore, he kept stuffing.

Food spilled from the corners of his mouth and gushed from his nostrils, yet he still didn't stop.

He was completely controlled by a primitive, frenzied desire—he had to eat, he had to prove that he could out-eat this Mortal before him.

"Your stomach is going to burst!" the Bowl-Playing Ghost shrieked.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a crack appeared on the Gluttonous Ghost's belly.

The crack was very thin, like the crazing on porcelain, stretching from his upper abdomen all the way to his navel. The moment the crack appeared, the Gluttonous Ghost's movements paused. A flash of clarity flickered in his mung-bean-sized eyes, followed by fear—a deep fear that seeped out from the marrow of his bones.

He looked down at his stomach.

The cracks began to spread like a spiderweb exploding across an ice surface. From one to ten, from ten to a hundred. Every crack constantly branched and extended, crawling over his entire belly. Through the widest fissures, one could see the roiling food and boiling stomach acid inside, like a volcano about to erupt.

"No—" The Gluttonous Ghost's voice was squeezed from his throat, turning into a sharp hiss like that of a broken bellows.

Then, his stomach exploded.

The sound was not the dull thud of flesh, but rather the bursting sound of a water-filled skin bag being smashed onto the ground from a height.

Food scraps, stomach acid, shattered internal organs, and dark red blood mixed together, like a pot of boiling porridge exploding.

His body began to collapse. First, the large gash on his stomach tore in all directions, and then his entire torso fell apart like a smashed ceramic pot.

On the stone table, only a pool of dark red stain remained, emitting a faint, fishy stench. That was the only evidence that he had ever existed.

The bowl in the Bowl-Playing Ghost's hand nearly dropped to the ground, and he caught it in a fluster.

The Begging Ghost's broken bowl slid from his hand, hitting the ground with a smack, and a larger chunk chipped off the rim.

The Drunken Ghost, however, merely glanced blearily at the place where the Gluttonous Ghost had disappeared, let out a hiccup, and mumbled incoherently: "Dead... dead and deserved it... useless... useless thing..."

He hugged his wine jar and continued to pour it into his mouth. His hands shook violently, and most of the wine spilled onto his body.

But his drinking was not right either.

The wine poured into his mouth faster and faster, more and more fiercely, as if he were pouring the jar into a bottomless pit.

His stomach began to swell, but unlike the Gluttonous Ghost—who swelled bit by bit—he expanded rapidly in a very short time, like a balloon being blown full in one breath.

The liquid inside his stomach splashed loudly, the sound changing from dull to clear—so clear that it sounded like someone shaking a water vat half-filled with water.

His face turned from red to purple, from purple to green, from green to black. Cyan-black veins began to crawl out from the tip of his nose, spreading along his cheeks to the corners of his eyes, and then along his neck into his collar.

Those were not blood vessels; they were stasis toxins seeping out from within. The alcohol had already seeped into his bones.

"Good wine... good... good wine..." The Drunken Ghost wanted to drink more and raised the wine jar, but then his whole body stiffened.

The jar slipped from his hand, crashed onto the ground, and shattered into pieces with a smack.

The Drunken Ghost's body began to collapse inward. He stumbled forward two steps, reached out as if to grab something, but grabbed nothing. He fell heavily onto the street, his body like a piece of waterlogged, rotten wood, scattering into a pile of debris with a smack.

The Drunken Ghost was gone too.

The two ghosts were gone within the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. One died of overeating, one died of overdrinking.

Wu Xi turned around and looked at the crowd. There was still a fine layer of sweat on his face. He patted his stomach, and a soft gurgling sound came from within—a signal that the last bit of food had been refined and cleared.

But he had no time to think more, because as he looked up, he saw that the Bowl-Playing Ghost and the Begging Ghost were no longer in their original places.