Half an hour passed by with Ma Yuan still asleep. Yang Qing had decided to let him rest and they'd discuss matters concerning the disappearance of his wife and daughter once he woke up.
Yang Qing stored away the shard the moment they left the Wind Gliding Mercenary Escort's territory. He wasn't in a hurry to dig into the case yet, since he still had his evaluations to complete first and a ceremony to prepare for immediately after.
But even with the packed schedule looming ahead, Yang Qing, at this moment, was as chipper as he could be.
He had a bag of crispy fried sunflower seeds on his lap, which he gingerly snacked on as he sang a song he was definitely butchering. He didn't seem like he knew the lyrics to it at all and was just ad-libbing it, using whatever words came to mind.
He doesn't leave the confines of the Order often even during his leave, but in the few moments he does, one of his favorite stopovers has always been the White Baobab Kingdom.
The Kingdom wasn't exactly a powerhouse and even among rank 4 kingdoms, it could be considered average at best in terms of overall power. When it came to history, it has been around for less than 500 years. However, despite all these, Yang Qing still rates it as among one of the best places one could ever visit, though this opinion wasn't shared by many and only a select niche of people thought so, one of them being Yang Qing and the other being Feng Xin.
The Kingdom was a haven for food and foodies. Not many kingdoms around its rank could come close to the number of restaurants the White Baobab Kingdom had.
Based on Yang Qing's rough estimate from when he visited the place, he guessed there were atleast a thousand restaurants in the capital alone.
The Kingdom was founded by some fallen prince of some kingdom, who fell out of grace with the king because of his hobbies. He got removed from the line of succession, deprived of his family name and identity as a prince, and banished from the kingdom.
Though his father, the king wasn't completely ruthless as he gave him a substantial amount of money to go start over someplace else. That prince was all too glad with the banishment, as he had no interest in being the king of that kingdom. While he had zero interest in the throne, he did have an unhealthy obsession with something else, and that was food.
He would forsake everything else for food and not just any food. in his own words, "It was food that had a spirit to it, a reflection of its creator. Food that had an identity."
It didn't matter whether it was from some side road stall, or some fancy restaurant, as long as it met that criteria, he would eat it. But If it didn't have it, it didn't matter who cooked it or their reputation or their establishment, he would not eat it.
Even though he was a food enthusiast like Yang Qing and Feng Xin, he was a completely different brand of epicure.
The latter two had no scruples about what they ate, and what they called food had a loose definition to them. Sweet-smelling poison could be considered a delicacy to them as much as red braised pork could be considered one for someone else.
Whereas for that prince, food to him were ingredients that had been prepared and sealed with the unadulterated spirit of its chef. He didn't care whether it looked good or smelt nice, as long it had the sincerest efforts of the chef, that would be a delicacy to him.
His preference and Yang Qing's or Feng Xin's were almost similar in some regards, and the distinction was slim.
....
With money in hand, that prince roamed from place to place, sampling foods from different parts of the continent. It was during that journey, that a little idea sprouted in his heart.
How great would it be if he created a kingdom whose sole focus was food? Creating a place that would draw in Chefs from all over the Southern continent and potentially even pass that.
While he could travel from place to place, his cultivation base restricted the areas he could visit and how much he could cover, but having a central location that drew just even the tiniest portion of the chefs around the continent, would ensure he could sample a multitude of different foods with little risk and half the effort.
With a goal now, for the first time in his life despite constantly being pushed by his father and refusing, he finally gave attention to his cultivation base.
When he was banished he was just an eighth-stage foundation establishment cultivator despite all the resources afforded to him as a prince. He never cultivated, and whatever improvement he had, was a passive effect of the food he ate.
Despite all this, that prince had top-rank blue-grade pillars. Yang Qing remembered laughing so hard when he read his background. He could understand the anger of the King when he banished him. The prince could be considered a source of both envy and disappointment to him.
As a cultivator, it would hurt if you saw someone who barely paid any attention to his cultivation reach heights you could never reach and the only way of you reaching those heights is if you staked your life. One bitterly cultivates to the point of death to achieve glory, while the other eats to glory and that glory isn't even something he sort and was just a by-product.
Even though they were father and son, Yang Qing had a feeling the king may have contemplated killing his son a few times over the matter.
As for the disappointed bit, Yang Qing supposed the king as a parent, may have been disappointed with the prince as a waste of natural talent. Who knew the heights the prince could reach If he actually gave even the tiniest of efforts, which in all his years at the palace never did? Even when threatened with torture, he still refused to cultivate.
With no other option, to protect his sanity and the prince's life, banishment seemed like the only plausible solution at the time. Ironically though, it was as a result of that banishment that the prince who would rather get imprisoned in dark ice than cultivate, finally decided to cultivate.
He roamed around the continent, growing his strength as he looked for a suitable location for establishing his food utopia. It took him 50 years before he found a bandit hideout that fit his criteria. Sword in hand, he cleaved his way through that hideout and created the foundation of the White Baobab Kingdom from that rubble.
By Yang Qing's count, 293 years have passed since then. A prince who wanted nothing about ruling and cultivating, grew to be a quasi-palace stage palace realm cultivator and established a rank 4 kingdom in that time. And that kingdom was well on its way to potentially becoming a rank 3 kingdom should he break through to the palace realm. At that time it would have overtaken his parent's kingdom, which was still a rank 4 kingdom.
Yang Qing wryly laughed as he thought of how many cultivators had likely vomited blood when they heard of that prince's story. What about his father? The story of someone who founded a kingdom to further his hobbies. Worse, he actually succeeded and in one of the shortest times possible at that.
While tonnes of people out there surely hated his guts from envy, Yang Qing rather admired and respected him. He felt like the Southern continent definitely needed more kingdoms like the White Baobab kingdom.
The kingdom has been explosively growing over the years. When it started, it went through a period of stagnation since the idea of a food-driven kingdom was out of the norm, but with the prince's persistent efforts, his strength, and the relationships he had cultivated over the years in his food spree, he managed to get the kingdom off the ground.
The number of Chefs who came over at the beginning was few, but with time, that number slowly mushroomed and a hundred years ago when it had a solid base, their numbers experienced a massive growth that hasn't waned to date.
The only thing that may slow their numbers down, was the size of the kingdom. With it being originally a bandit's hideout, the size was small. It has grown over the years but not by much since it's bordered by a few rank 3 and well-established rank 4 organizations on all sides.
The only measures they employed to combat the size issue, was to limit the size of land allocated to each establishment, and from what the prince, now King of White Baobab kingdom told Yang Qing, he had the intention of laying a space expansion array in the capital to increase its size. However, such an endeavor was costly, both in terms of labor and the materials needed to pull it off.
The cost was beyond the kingdom's current capacity to afford it, not unless they got sponsored by a rank 2 and above organization, which the king was against. Yang Qing occasionally donates a part of his income to the goal though, along with Feng Xin and the owners of the restaurants within the White Baobab Kingdom. Who knows within a century, the amount may be enough to kick-start the project and lay the groundwork.
Just as Yang Qing was calculating the amount he'd be donating after he got his new pay as a palace court judge, the White Baobab kingdom appeared on the horizon. On reflex, Yang Qing inhaled deeply with a wide smile on his face. Even a hundred kilometers away and so high up, he could detect a faint aroma of food in the air. The welcome sign of the White Baobab Kingdom.
"Longwei, you're a genius," Yang Qing muttered as his eyes gleamed with excitement.
