Awakening The Gluttony Talent: I Become Stronger By Eating

Chapter 52: Only Seeking Self-preservation?

When the rest of the new members of the 4th squadron heard him, they all piped up as well.

“Count me in too. I will slay those Fearsome Beasts and avenge our seniors!”

“If we back off some more, wouldn’t the Fearsome Beasts get all of our land? We must not give in to them!”

“I want to see with my own eyes just how powerful these Fearsome Beasts are. I still don’t quite believe it!”

“I want to slay Fearsome Beasts! I want to take revenge!”

“…”

Standing by his side, Song Yu saw how easily Lu Yu was able to motivate the squadron and looked at him in surprise. She did not expect this newly minted captain to be so good at uplifting team morale.

However, she then immediately thought of the information she had read about Lu Yu. He was a veteran who had participated in the Holy War in the past. She finally understood.

These veterans were most familiar with such things, unlike many of the martial arts practitioners nowadays. Although they were powerful, none of them had the bravery of the seniors. They kept retreating and were only concerned about preserving their own lives. This inevitably led to ever decreasing territory for humankind.

Lu Yu chatted with the new recruits for a while longer, further boosting their morale.

After that, they began training hard in earnest. As Lu Yu walked to one side,

Song Yu quickly came up to him. “Mr. Lu, thank you for saving me that time.”

After saying that, she looked at Lu Yu in surprise. So this was the Great Martial Master powerful expert? At 90 years of age, he looked so young. In fact, he appeared just a tad older than she was.

......

“Don’t mention it. Your father has already thanked me.” Lu Yu replied with a smile.

Those few gifts from Song Xiaotian were a great boon to Lu Yu.

In particular, the ‘Sky Valley Culinary Method’ manual was of such a great help to Lu Yu that it was unbelievable.

Although there were only a few remnant pages left, it still contained 2 cooking methods.

Of the 2, the more ordinary method of cooking had already yielded so much benefit to Lu Yu in terms of elevating his abilities.

If he could gather better resources and utilize the second method, it would surely bring Lu Yu even more unexpected benefits.

Of course, Lu Yu understood that the reason he was able to advance so much was not simply down to the amazing powers of the ‘Sky Valley Culinary Method’. It was also due to his own Gluttony Talent.

For other people, even if they possessed the ‘Sky Valley Culinary Method’ manual, they probably couldn’t use it to level up all that much.

Thereafter, Lu Yu and Song Yu discussed the current situation with the 4th squadron for a while.

The 4th squadron’s original members had all perished, leaving just Song Yu.

Thankfully, due to Lu Yu’s fame, this round of recruitment for new members for the 4th squadron yielded many strong members, thereby raising their overall strength.

As long as Song Yu trained them up well, instill some combat awareness in them, they would become very good warriors.

At this point, Song Yu sighed with relief and said, “Thank goodness you are our captain. Otherwise, I reckon we won’t be able to recruit so many powerful experts.”

Lu Yu was very puzzled after listening to her. He then asked, “Why is that? Since the 4th squadron is the main battle force of our city, shouldn’t there be many powerful martial arts experts coming here?”

“That was in the past, or perhaps in other cities. It is definitely not the case here right now.” Song Yu shook her head and continued. “The situation in our Lunan City is somewhat different. In the past…”

As Song Yu elaborated further, Lu Yu finally understood the current situation.

The 4th squadron was stationed in Lunan City and had gone into battle many times to slay the Fearsome Beasts.

The sojourns were all successful and they managed to slay many Fearsome Beasts, thereby grabbing back much of the territories and resources.

However, once these territories and resources were obtained, other than distributing to Lunan City, they had to give a lot of their battle gains to the other people in the Federation to be re-distributed to help others.

In this way, the benefits outweighed the disadvantages for the Federation, and the benefits are numerous.

However, in the eyes of Lunan City, it was a loss to them.

With that many powerful experts lost in battle, the gains were not worth the losses.

In fact, it led to the City Lord and the dojos’ decrease in strength and drop in ranking.

In the end, after the new City Lord, who was the current City Lord, Yan Hong, came on board, he changed the strategy. Instead of taking care of the overall situation, he only cared for his own self-interests.

He deliberately directed all the powerful experts into their dojos and the City Lord’s Office to become personal guards.

Within the dojos, the powerful experts mostly spent their time training or coaching others. They did not really get involved in battles. Only when the city was in danger, like the last time when the Fearsome Beasts attacked the city in one big wave, would they swing into action.

In this way, the Lunan City lost fewer martial arts experts and were better able to preserve their strength.

However, in this way, the 4th squadron did not get many powerful experts joining them. In fact, there emerged a situation where ordinary people were sent into battle to deal with the Fearsome Beasts.

It was already tough enough for powerful experts to deal with the Fearsome Beasts, so how could ordinary people cope?

Not surprisingly, the casualties increased by a lot.

After learning all this information, Lu Yu frowned and said, “Then why didn’t you guys go and discuss with the City Lord? If this carries on, the casualty rate will be too high. You need martial arts warriors to deal with Fearsome Beasts. How can ordinary people get involved?”

“We have already discussed this many times, but to no avail.” Song Yu shook her head wearily. “Although the Military Lord controls a much broader area and his position is higher than the City Lord, ultimately it was still one civilian arm and one military arm, 2 different systems. They can’t interfere directly in each other’s jurisdiction. And the City Lord kept looking for excuses, so we are stuck at an impasse.”

Hearing this, Lu Yu thought with a frown, “If things carry on like this, it won’t bode well.”

On the surface, the City Lord did this because he wanted to reduce his own city’s loss of martial arts experts in order to preserve the city’s strength.

However, in reality, this gain to the city was achieved through the sacrifice of low-level martial arts practitioners and ordinary people, as well as the sacrifice of experts transferred from other cities.

At the end of the day, the city would also perish as a result.

Although the dojos had their uses, at most they were good for training up new warriors.

For the powerful martial arts experts, the best option for them was still to join the military.

If the powerful experts did not take the lead to repel the Fearsome Beasts at the frontline to protect the weak, then how would the weak have a chance to grow strong? How would the whole Federation, the whole humankind survive then?

He chatted a while longer with Song Yu, then she went off to continue training the new recruits. Lu Yu headed for the dojo for a look, and only went home in the evening.

On the way back, Lu Yu thought long and hard.

Today, he did a quick check of the abilities of the new members in the dojo and the 4th squadron, and made this observation.

The overall abilities of the members at the dojo were indeed much higher than those in the 4th squadron. This was not desirable.

The strong ones remained in the city to preserve their strength, while the weak ones went to battle outside and were sacrificed.

With the small gain here and the big loss there, humankind’s overall strength would inevitably decline very rapidly. After all, the newcomers did not even have a chance to grow strong before they were sacrificed in such big numbers.

Someone needed to stand at the frontline to resist these Fearsome Beasts.

If the strong ones did not take action, they could not possibly expect the weak ones to take action.

Lu Yu thought about how to resolve this conundrum as he made his way back home.

At this moment, in Lu Yu’s home, Lu Shan and Lu Shui had just arrived home with a middle-aged man.

“Mr. Jiang, our parents are not back yet. Do you really want to make a house visit today?” Lu Shan and Lu Shui asked fearfully.