Dalvin did not turn his head but could feel the furtive glances being put on him from all sides as the other entities probably wondered about the nature of his imprisonment. Luckily for them, they had this old hag to ask the obvious question.
"Hmm, well anyway, how did a mortal who has never cultivated like you even make it through the entire Immortal Ascension City to arrive at this prison?" The old woman shook off her sadness like it was a bad itch then sized Dalvin up and down with a curious look.
Dalvin thought about how to answer but kept silent in the end. He did not know these people, and even if they were utterly harmless, he was from modern Earth where a layman could dig out your nine generations of information using your name and some non-vital details, so who was he to doubt these fellows in a clearly supernormal world?
Seeing his silence, the old hag was not angry. "Well, at least for a mortal, you are slightly smart. Always remember this about cultivation, more than the danger, more than the philosophy, the most valuable thing is information. Only give out information that cannot harm you in any way, and always trade it for information that is useful to you."
Dalvin nodded. "Thank you for the advice."
There was an eerie spell of silence as everyone waited for the dining time to arrive. There was a loud ding that caused Dalvin to clutch his head and rub his temples, but all the other prisoners crazily got up and rushed towards the serving areas.
On the way, there was literally biting, scratching, hair-pulling, and every sort of despicable act one could use to get ahead. However, the moment they arrived before the display, they would immediately settle down to become esteemed gentlemen and ladies.
The switch-up was extremely visually shocking for Dalvin, who saw these beings as powerhouses whose simple look could cause him to almost lose his life, yet they were subjected to this. Just as the hag had clearly said, whatever each and every one of them was before they came to this prison, it was irrelevant.
Once they were locked behind the bars here, they were all of the same status, and acting like it was anything different was probably a quick way to die by the hands of an anomaly. Dalvin no longer hesitated and joined the line while sweat dripped from behind his back, his movements careful.
Just to be clear, not everyone was like Feng Qi who could resolutely cripple his cultivation which was all his hard work over hundreds of years, and practice lowly martial arts. Many of these fellows, even at the threat of painful qi deviations every night, still kept their full cultivation bases, meaning that a simple breath from them at close proximity was enough to turn Dalvin into a floating cloud of blood mist.
However, the strange thing was that the moment he approached the line, everyone within acted like frightened mice and gave him a wide berth. Dalvin stopped and glanced at them in shock, but they simply lowered their heads or looked away, as if not willing to make eye contact with him. He then straightforwardly walked through the line up to the very front, being given way throughout not like he was a VIP, but as if he was a plague.
Dalvin pensively pondered what was going on, even as he scooped up the pieces of meat that were laid out, and then moved to sit down where he had been before, noticing that the old hag had not moved from the beginning.
"What? Don't look at me like that, there's no point in scrambling for food when I don't even have any teeth left, hehehe." The old hag laughed and flashed a wide grin, showing her mouth that was black as night with rotting gums and yellowed teeth that were shriveled in many places and missing in others.
As Dalvin was not prepared for such a sight, he immediately showed a look of disgust and looked away so as to not spoil his appetite. It was only then that he realized his gaffe, but the soft chuckling of the old hag made him look back with raised eyebrows.
"Hehehe, I always find it somewhat funny when people react like that to the current me. Its just so amusing."
The old hag leaned back and seemed to glance into the sky. "Back then, my very same smile could cause powerful cultivators to swoon. The highlight of my youth was when two saint sons of Heaven Grade Sects fought over the right to court me, leading the respective sects into war just for that reason."
"The funny part was that I was never actually interested in either of them and made it clear, but they seemed to hear 'no' as 'yes'. I found it all so bothersome and annoying back then, but I cannot help but smile now."
The old hag then smiled thinly as she glanced at Dalvin. "And now, a young man like you who would have been one of the multitude of men in the background pining for my flesh, someone I would not even remember the silhouette of, is now cringing back with disgust. The person is the same, I am still me, but things aren't."
Dalvin felt slightly guilty when he heard that. As for being belittled as a background character, he didn't have any delusion of grandeur yet, he understood where he was situated in the hierarchy after facing so many deaths in the simulation.
"Hah, don't listen to me. I can't help but think of the past because you're not only a young man but a new face. It seems like just yesterday I was traveling through the world on Baohu, my partner White Tiger, fighting demons and living off the land." The old hag… no, the elderly woman shook her head with a soft laugh.
"Well, eat up now, you don't have forever." She eventually stopped and said this, not willing to continue her rant.
Dalvin did just that and began to dig in voraciously. Even with the xueqi pill still in his system, its effects were waning, not to mention that he still felt a slight hunger even with its effects at the peak.
As for the topic of whether the food he was eating was made from the transformed bodies of other unfortunate prisoners who came here at the wrong time like he did in the simulation, happy to be devoured because it would release them from their pain, Dalvin did not think of that nor did he want to think of it as he ate quickly.
In no time, he found that he had cleared an entire plate full of food, more than even the craziest food-eating video he had watched on social media back home. He had eaten enough to fill an entire extended family's Thanksgiving dinner, but he only felt partly sated.
He was shocked by his appetite and most of all his metabolism. The food entered his stomach and seemed to enter a mechanism that processed it within seconds while waiting for the next batch eagerly.