Monkey Wine

At dawn, the sky begins to lighten.

The abundant moisture and sudden rise in temperature caused the vegetation in the mountains to be covered with a layer of glistening dew.

"Tap, tap..."

Nan Xu bypassed the gnarled ancient pines, stepped on the steep rocks of Huangshan, and walked near the stream halfway up the mountain. The morning breeze rustled through the pines, carrying a cool and moist scent that brushed against his face.

Nan Xu stopped in his tracks, his senses, enhanced by the "Long Eyes and Flying Ears Technique," constantly capturing the surrounding scenery and comparing it with the images in his memory.

"If I remember correctly, this resource point should be around here..." he muttered to himself.

Suddenly, he caught a familiar scent.

That's... the smell of fungi!

Nan Xu's lips curled into a smile; he knew he had found the right place.

With a nearly silent leap, Nan Xu appeared dozens of meters away in the blink of an eye.

After turning a corner around a cliff, the view suddenly opened up before us.

It was an exceptionally steep rock face, its bluish-gray surface covered with a thick layer of moss. Water droplets slid slowly down the moss, refracting the crystal-clear morning light.

His enhanced vision keenly detected the anomaly. In the shady spot of a crevice in the rock wall, several thin, dark brown, ear-shaped flakes were growing close to the stone surface.

"Rock tripe, a good thing."

Nan Xu's eyes lit up. He took out a herb-gathering shovel, inserted the tip of the blade into the base of the stone ear fungus, and gently pried it off. The entire piece of stone ear fungus was easily peeled off.

【Huangshan Stone Ear】

[Rank: Upper Rank 7]

Quality Score: 91

[Description: Huangshan stone ear grows on sheer cliffs, nourished by dew and wind, and can only be found deep in the clouds and mist. It has an extremely delicious flavor and is also believed to nourish yin and moisten the lungs, clear heat and detoxify. Regular consumption can promote youthful skin and a radiant complexion, truly deserving its reputation as a mountain delicacy.]

"As expected of a resource point that was not visited by any players before the game was launched... I just randomly picked some and the quality score was over 90." Nan Xu sighed to himself.

It's important to understand that even ingredients of the same grade and type can vary in quality, and quality scores are the standard used to judge their quality.

Relatively speaking, fresher, more nutritious, and better-tasting ingredients will receive higher quality scores.

Normally, ingredients scoring above 60 are considered quite good. Even in a place as beautiful and fertile as Huangshan, most ingredients tend to score around 80.

He was able to find ingredients rated over 90 this time because he took advantage of the fact that this place had never been developed before.

Nan Xu happily put the rock tripe into his food pouch. He wasn't worried about the ingredients bumping into each other, because the pouch could be freely assembled and dispersed, allowing each ingredient to be stored separately.

After shoveling off several more pieces of rock tripe, he stopped at the opportune moment.

"That's enough." Nan Xu put away his herb-gathering shovel. "The rest can be considered as accumulating some food luck."

Then, he lightly touched the ground with his toes, activated the "Immortal Steps," and disappeared from the spot in the blink of an eye.

……

With the blessing of LV4 Immortal Step, Nanxu's Agility attribute has reached an extremely terrifying 54 points, making his movement speed extremely fast.

He stopped frequently along the way, and in less than half an hour, he had already crossed several mountains.

By this time, he had climbed to a higher place, with a surging sea of ​​clouds below. Above the clouds, several mountain peaks emerged like islands, their tips glowing with a faint golden light in the morning glow.

Before him lay a dense forest, shrouded in mist and shadows.

"...This should be the place."

Nan Xu's heart began to race. He took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his excitement.

In a past life, a player with the ID "Little Bear Gummy" obtained the highest quality ingredient available in the early stages of the entire game "Chef Soul" in this dense forest.

After that, she used this ingredient to obtain what is widely recognized as the greatest opportunity among players of "Chef Soul".

Unless absolutely necessary, Nan Xu wouldn't preemptively seize such a great opportunity that could change someone else's life trajectory. But this ingredient is extremely important to his plan.

Having made up his mind to give that player some compensation in the future, Nan Xu nimbly leaped into the dense forest without the slightest hesitation.

A short while later, he smelled a strange fragrance.

The aroma is rich and mellow, as if the fragrance of a hundred kinds of wild fruits have come together, complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses, and then enhanced dozens of times through some means, making it incredibly enticing.

Nan Xu's expression brightened. He used his machete to clear away the bushes blocking his way and followed the fragrance step by step. Soon, he arrived in front of an ancient tree that blocked out the sky.

This ancient tree is at least several hundred years old, and its trunk is so thick that it would take several people to encircle it. Perhaps due to the passage of time, there is a huge cavity near the roots, and the source of the fragrance is inside the cavity.

Nan Xu peered inside and saw that the tree hole was filled with amber-colored, crystalline liquid, with colorful petals, fruits, and pits at the bottom, continuously emitting an intoxicating fragrance.

He took a deep breath and revealed an expression of rapture.

"This aroma...it truly is top-grade monkey wine!"

Huangshan Monkey Wine has been documented since ancient times.

The book "Penglong Night Talks" once wrote: "Huangshan is full of monkeys and apes. In spring and summer, they gather various flowers and fruits in the rocky hollows and brew them into wine. The aroma is so strong that it can be smelled from hundreds of steps away."

However, the formation of monkey wine is highly accidental and has always been regarded as something that can only be encountered by chance. High-quality monkey wine like this is even more rare.

Just one sniff and Nan Xu felt his pores open up, the fatigue from days of travel vanished, and even his internal energy showed signs of breaking through a bottleneck.

Nan Xu took out a bamboo tube, carefully inserted it into the tree hole, and began to draw wine. The amber-colored wine slowly flowed into the pot through the bamboo tube, making a melodious tinkling sound like a clear spring.

As before, he left a small portion inside the tree hollow. After all, in this world where the concept of "food luck" truly exists, exhausting resources will inevitably lead to retribution.

Just as he was about to turn and leave, a sharp cry came from above!

"squeak!"

Nan Xu looked up and saw that the branches of the ancient tree were now covered with golden monkeys, one, two, ten, twenty... densely packed, almost filling every branch of the entire ancient tree!

They stared intently at the bamboo tube in his hand, emitting sharp, hostile cries.

"Squeak...squeak!"

Nan Xu felt a chill run down his spine, hugged the bamboo tube tightly, and with a light step, his figure soared into the sky like a startled swan.

The next moment, a dense series of whooshing sounds swept past as countless flying stones and fruit pits hurtled toward the spot where he had just been standing!

Having already mastered the fourth level of the Immortal Footwork technique, Nan Xu's figure moved erratically like willow catkins in the wind, weaving and dodging through the dense forest, perfectly avoiding the monkeys' attacks.

With a few leaps, he had reached the edge of the dense forest and was about to leave the monkeys' territory.

But... he didn't let his guard down.

The monkeys that launched the attack at this moment were just ordinary monkeys, and ordinary monkeys could not possibly brew such a fine wine.

Nan Xu stopped running and stood still, revealing a calm smile.

"Aren't you going to show yourself, senior?"

"If you don't come out soon, I'm really going to run away with this flask of wine, okay?"