Chapter 49

Chapter 49: The Ten Worst Talents

123 Wood brought the Waterwood Stone to the experts for testing, unaware that Ling Mo offered it simply because she had far more Waterwood Stones than Water-Chilling Stones.

Back on her end, Ling Mo set one slot in her shop for trade-ins, then filled the other slots with more Water-Chilling Stones and Waterwood Stones. After that, she closed the shop and opened the System store.

With seventeen thousand coins and thirteen energy rawstones, she finally scraped together the full price and bought the Illusory Cloak.

She put it on immediately.

The moment the cloak settled on her shoulders, it vanished from sight.

“Detected: Master is wearing the Illusory Cloak. Automatically connecting to smartbrain.”

A translucent interface appeared in front of Ling Mo’s eyes, visible only to her. It displayed the cloak’s information.

The Illusory Cloak had two modes.

The first was Invisible Mode, like now. It was as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all. She could eat, bathe, and change clothes normally, without it interfering.

The second was Stealth Mode. To activate it, she had to pull the hood up over her head. If she couldn’t spare the hands in an emergency, Qie Man could activate it for her.

Convenient. Ridiculously convenient.

“With this cloak,” Ling Mo murmured, pleased, “no one should be able to find me now.”

Qie Man’s voice chimed in casually. “According to Interstellar statistics, divination-type talents rank tenth on the list of the worst talents.”

That instantly hooked Ling Mo’s curiosity. “Why?”

“Because each divination requires a price. The stronger the target and the more detailed the information, the higher the cost. In Interstellar, some diviners die immediately after divining, before they can even speak.”

So divination talents were mostly used for small things: finding a lost cat, checking romance luck, trivial everyday nonsense.

“If divination is number ten, what are the other nine?”

“Number nine: flight. Before personal flyers became widespread, it was a popular talent. Now it’s obsolete.”

“Number eight: mind reading.”

Ling Mo’s eyes widened. “Mind reading is bad?”

“Mind reading can interpret another person’s thoughts and feelings, but it has range limits. If the target is prepared, it often fails. And Interstellar has already developed devices specifically designed to counter mind reading.”

“Number seven: x-ray vision. It can see through objects and view structures behind them, but it has no offensive power.”

“Number six: resonance sense. It lets you resonate with others and feel their emotions.”

“Number five: time rewind. It can rewind to a moment in the past, but it cannot change anything.”

“Number four: memory storage. It allows you to store your memories inside an object.”

“Number three: future foresight. It has been proven that a foreseen ending cannot be changed. Once the Interstellar Federation discovers someone with future foresight, that person is placed under constant surveillance. Unauthorized use is punishable by immediate execution.”

“Number two: color vision. Their world is in color.”

Ling Mo stared. “That’s… a talent?”

“Number one: twisted healing. It transfers all of a patient’s conditions onto the user, curing the patient, but the user cannot cure those conditions in themselves.”

Hearing the list, Ling Mo could only feel relieved she hadn’t awakened any of those. If she had, she honestly wouldn’t know what she’d do.

She checked the time. It was already five.

No point wasting the morning in bed. She had plans.

First, while the water, electricity, and gas still worked, she needed to prepare more cooked food.

Who would’ve thought that in the third game round, her biggest expense would be food?

In the game, her meals hadn’t been scheduled. Most of the time she’d be walking, feel hungry, pull out a lunch box, and shovel down a few bites of rice and side dishes.

It didn’t feel like much at first, until she realized she’d eaten everything she had stored.

To be safe, she’d prepared a full month’s worth of meals, three a day.

And because she’d already noticed her appetite increasing, she’d been packing three lunch boxes and two large steamed buns per meal.

When she checked pocket space after returning, every last bit of that food was gone.

Which meant she’d eaten a month of meals in seven days.

Alarmed, she stepped on the scale.

Ninety jin. Not heavier. Four jin lighter.

She weighed herself again. And again. Even switched scales.

The number stayed the same.

So the scales weren’t broken. She was.

Looks like frequent talent use burned through energy and ramped up appetite without her noticing.

Once she understood that, she decided to cook more prepared food and stockpile it in pocket space while she still could.

No more hesitation.

She pulled out piles of ingredients and shut off all the air conditioners. If she ran too many rice cookers at once, the breaker might trip. The lights had already been flickering the past few days.

Then she set out the water-chilling stone.

Rice. Steamed buns. Baozi. Vegetables washed and prepped.

She proofed the dough inside pocket space, since the temperature outside was low enough to slow the yeast.

While the dough rose, she washed all the lunch boxes she’d been hoarding and lined them up.

With Qie Man around, she uploaded everything she’d downloaded onto the smartbrain, convenient, tidy, and safe. It could even monitor cooking temperatures and track the dough’s progress.

With Qie Man’s help, Ling Mo had gone from a kitchen novice to someone who could manage multiple dishes at once.

She worked until after ten in the morning. Every empty lunch box was filled, and she made so much extra that she started packing it into large stainless-steel basins.

Steamed buns, baozi, and flower rolls piled up endlessly. She was eating them herself, so looks didn’t matter. Her hands worked on pure practicality.

Buns were barely shaped. Flower rolls were twisted however they happened to twist. Baozi only had one requirement: don’t leak.

When Ling Mo finally left the kitchen, the rest of the house was shrouded in thick steam.

Even before the extreme heat, that kind of humidity would’ve been suffocating.

Now, she only felt one thing.

The temperature was perfect.