Chapter 18: Feeding

Who am I?

Where am I?

What am I supposed to do?

Little Spider is confused!

Wasn’t it just playing happily with the Peach Pigs? How did it suddenly turn to poisoning?

Could all that it has just experienced have been an illusion and that this moment is the reality?

Thinking this, Little Spider couldn’t help but pinch itself.

Ouch—

That hurts! o(╥﹏╥)o

Even the overlord of the dreamweaver’s offspring is now lacking in confidence…

Finally convinced that this isn’t a hallucination, Little Spider becomes silent for a moment, quickly firms up its expression, and steadily walks to the riverbank.

Since this is the master’s choice, whether it’s to poison a group of Peach Pigs or to go against the world, it will firmly stand by the master’s side.

Crack!

The void behind Little Spider tears open, and an Eye of the Void appears.

But this time, a drop of purple liquid condenses in its pupil.

Naturally, this isn’t a tear but a Void Poison formed by the compression of light dissolved in the void.

Just one drop is enough to contaminate an entire water source, and all living beings that drink it will be eroded by the Void Poison, crystalizing their bodies until they burst into a cloud of crystal powder with a “bang”.

Goodbye, little piggies!

Little Spider turns its head away, unwilling to witness what comes next. However, in the next second, it gets picked up by the back of its neck and hoisted into the air.

Boom!

The Eye of the Void was about to retaliate, but upon seeing the arrival, it immediately turns off and retracts back into the void.

Naturally, the arrival is Lu Yu.

He just turned off the tap to prevent the running water from affecting the next steps, but when he saw Little Spider’s series of actions, he was so startled that he hurried to stop it.

Seeing that the poison didn’t drip into the water, he took a deep breath and confusedly asked:

“What are you doing?”

“Ying ying?” Little Spider asked back with a puzzled look.

Wasn’t it the master who asked me to poison?

Lu Yu: “…”

I asked you to cast the poison of dreams!

If you don’t knock them all out, where will your food come from?

If it weren’t for Lu Yu’s timely discovery, all his hard work would have been wasted, leaving him with a huge debt.

He nearly became a debtor!

His plan was simple: since human dreams can’t be devoured recklessly, it’s fine to find a smart creature to replace them.

After all, this is a magnificent beast taming world, where most of the supernatural beings possess extremely high intelligence, and many are much smarter than humans.

And the Peach Pigs are one of them; juvenile Peach Pigs possess the intelligence equivalent to that of five or six-year-old children, and adults are comparable to a ten-year-old, which makes them smarter than their magical beast counterparts. (Pigs are also intelligent in reality and are quite clean.)

This intelligence also makes them more resistant to being raised in captivity, sometimes even leading to depression, starvation, or suicide.

But even so, Lu Yu, possessing the Eye of Truth and having established a complete ecosystem, allowed them to breed and live freely.

A high intelligence implies the capacity for dreaming.

Compared to frail humans, these robust Peach Pigs, even after having a large number of dreams siphoned off, would at most feel lethargic for a day or two.

Under his cultivation, the entire Taohua Forest breeding base now had seventy-nine adult Peach Pigs, with fifty being females, deserving the title of a brothel among pigs.

Including those that were pregnant, the number of piglets was close to seventy, almost doubling the population.

The dreams of more than a hundred Peach Pigs not only fed Little Spider but significantly strengthened the dream prison.

“Ying ying!”

Having realized it was a misunderstanding, Little Spider also breathed a sigh of relief, then released dream power-infused spider silk into the water.

The silk, as smooth as top-grade silk, dissolved upon contact with water, but on closer look, countless fine strands flowed along the stream and were consumed by the weary Peach Pigs.

After about an hour, all the Peach Pigs fell asleep, even the Peach Pig King tottered and collapsed onto the ground.

In Little Spider’s perception, hundreds of dream bubbles rose from these sleeping Peach Pigs, hovering between reality and illusion.

There are generally two ways dream-based beasts feed.

The first is to hide within the dreams of living beings, manipulate those dreams to cause intense emotional fluctuations, damaging the spirit and leading to a gush of dream energy for them to devour.

Nightmares, for example, work by inducing fear in the target and voraciously consuming the power of dreams, completely draining them before devouring the soul.

Joy, anger, and unspeakable states are often used…

The second method is to directly shatter dreams, leaving behind fragments of them. This process startles the targets awake and weakens them for a while.

As for “Dream Eating,” it can fold dreams and devour them directly, similar to the second method, but it’s more efficient and is a divine skill Lu Yu is particularly covetous of.

However, Lu Yu is not a devil.

So, he choses to use both methods.

Since the Peach Pigs’ reproductive desires had recently waned, he had Little Spider weave for them wonderful dreams of reproduction, where they saw the most attractive Peach Pigs flaunt themselves, but just at the moment of consummation, the dreams were shattered.

The piglets were also induced to experience hunger in their dreams, so upon awakening, they would immediately seek food to grow rapidly.

Even though the experience might weaken their spirits, their strong physical constitution harbored a lingering desire.

Capturing the abundance of dream fragments at the peak of intense emotions also promoted the growth and reproduction of the Peach Pigs!

Lord Lu is truly too kind!

In the future, once the scale grows larger, he could directly develop illusions for pig farming.

“Ying!”

Happy with this clarification, Little Spider enthusiastically supports its master with a raise of its six legs, eager to eat after starving for so long.

Whisk whisk whisk!

Endless ethereal spider silk spread from behind it, entwining dream bubbles one by one and began to simulate dreams for them.

As the dream bubbles expanded, Little Spider discovered a sow that didn’t like anything in particular — until it found out she liked the scent of the breeder and yearned for the master to pet and play with her…

Then Little Spider, expressionless, arranged a nightmare for her.

While Little Spider was busy at work, Lu Yu surveyed the surroundings and discovered an insider.

Amidst the Taohua Forest, the great Peach Pig King lies down, eyes squinting secretly as it silently observes the dreaming Peach Pigs, a human-like smirk of disdain on its face.

The great Peach Pig King sees through everything.jpg!

Clearly, this big guy has been faking sleep all along!

“People become sly with age, and it’s the same with pigs that live long enough to become crafty!”

Lu Yu is amazed but leaves it be.

Because this guy is smart, having lived for so long.

During three months of care, Lu Yu realized that the one most receptive to human captivity was this pig. Through building a relationship, he also understood the reason behind its compliance.

In the wild, most groups also rely on strong beings, offering blood sacrifices regularly, which, in essence, is no different from being farmed: sacrificing part of their kind in exchange for the continuation of their species.

The law of the jungle is the natural order.

Moreover, the breeding base isn’t even remotely dangerous; it’s a paradise with all the food and drink you could want.

As for the other Peach Pigs, not having experienced the harshness of reality mixed with their high intelligence, they tend to act rebelliously – had it not been for Lu Yu’s intervention, they would probably have ended up directly on the dinner table.

Therefore, as long as it isn’t a threat to life or involves mass slaughter, the great Peach Pig King often opts to feign ignorance.

This is a form of survival wisdom.

Lu Yu listens to the deep croaking from the river and also squints his eyes, waiting calmly.

Hiss hiss!

As the dream bubbles continuously expand, releasing a large amount of dream energy, resembling rice grains enveloped in spider silk, they are delivered to Little Spider.

“Ying!”

Despite extreme hunger, Little Spider doesn’t rush but pinches them into the size of rice balls, consuming them bite by bite with a noble and refined grace.

After replenishing a vast amount of energy, Little Spider’s pale face becomes slightly rosy and the spreading silk more robust.

“Burp~”

After consuming over a dozen rice balls, Little Spider can’t help but burp, its face flushing a little, feeling a bit unladylike and shy.

Stealing a glance at the master and seeing he isn’t bothered, Little Spider happily extends its delicate palm and makes a gripping motion in the void.

Bang bang bang!

The dream bubbles burst instantly, giving birth to hundreds of dream fragments collected into a box made of dream silk and stored in a spatial chest opened in the void.

This chest’s space is a whole cubic meter, large enough to hold many items.

“Huff huff!”

As the dreams shatter, the Peach Pigs wake up in fright, emitting panicked cries and instinctively thinking about fleeing.

But once they realize it was all just a dream, they quickly calm down and seeing their companions around, a fire of desire reignites within them.

With just a bit of discomfort, nothing can suppress their instincts, and they head, the ladies ample and plump, toward the grove of trees for courting.

The great Wild Pig King, feeling it’s about the right time to stop pretending, tries to stand up drowsily intending to let out a couple of oinks, but then it sees Lu Yu’s cold gaze directed at him, his tone indifferent:

“Take action!”

As the words fall, the void behind him tears open, stirring up a wild wind that ruffles Little Spider’s silver hair, causing its skirt to flutter, presenting its true, fully matured form similar to a queen of the void.

Six eyes of the void emerge, the corrosion rays of the void instantaneously converge, accompanied by the brilliant purple radiance and shoot forth tearing through the air!

The great Peach Pig King is stunned.

All I did was slack off, no need to kill me, right?

Will it be enough if I just go back to sleep properly?