Since it was still early, Ling Shuying decided to head into the forest to forage for some mountain delicacies.
Eating an all-seafood feast yesterday had left her feeling a bit unwell.
As expected, a balanced diet of meat and vegetables was best.
She searched high and low.
As she ventured deeper into the woods, the undergrowth and bushes occasionally rustled—RUSTLE, RUSTLE—hinting at the presence of unknown little creatures.
Birds chirped endlessly—CHIRP, CHIRP.
Sometimes they let out a COO-CAW, and other times a CHEEP, CHEEP.
The sounds rose and fell in echoes, intertwining like a natural symphony.
Ling Shuying followed Qing Ling’s data stream, searching for edible wild greens.
Along the way, she actually found quite a few.
Thunder shoots?
They were about as thick as an index finger and as long as a chopstick, perfect for eating fresh.
Qing Ling displayed a safety rating of ninety-two percent.
She dug them up!
Spanish needles?
They could be served cold with a dressing.
Safety rating: eighty-nine percent.
She picked them!
Guanyin greens?
Edible after blanching.
Safety rating: ninety-three percent.
Harvested!
What surprised Ling Shuying the most was finding a very common vegetable in the wild—Chinese chives!
Chinese chives and scrambled eggs was a famous dish.
It had been widely popular before the Great Cataclysm, and even after the disaster, it remained a beloved staple in every household.
To think that wild Chinese chives could grow here!
Ling Shuying silently memorized the location, pulled out a broken seashell, and gently began to harvest them.
Chinese chives grew back crop after crop; the only fear wasn’t that they wouldn’t grow, but that they wouldn’t be cut.
However, there was a proper technique to harvesting them.
Cutting them correctly ensured the next batch would grow back quickly and healthily.
Leaving a height of five centimeters prevented damage to the root system.
Using a sharp tool to make a clean cut avoided secondary damage that could hinder future growth.
Ideally, they should be harvested in the early morning when they were at their most tender, ensuring the crispest texture.
The sun was already dipping toward the west, but Ling Shuying didn’t mind too much.
The difference in texture between a morning and afternoon harvest didn’t matter significantly to her.
After harvesting a full batch, she finally left, completely satisfied.
However, just as she was returning, Qing Ling projected a completely different model over the seemingly normal forest before her.
A data stream pointed deep into the woods, displaying a safety rating of sixty-three percent.
It was an unsafe signal.
What was in the forest?
Ling Shuying bit her lip, her expression turning grim.
Why hadn’t Qing Ling evaluated this data before?
Had something else suddenly arrived?
She thought about her newly enhanced body, which helped ease her anxiety slightly.
Even if it was a wild beast, she wasn’t entirely helpless against it.
And even if she couldn’t win in a fight, she could surely outrun it, right?
“Qing Ling, we can handle it, right?” she asked.
Her voice trembled slightly, betraying a mix of excitement and fear.
Swallowing hard, Ling Shuying mustered her courage and slowly walked toward the direction of the data stream.
Analyzing the surrounding information, she gradually arrived at a muddy patch of ground.
The tracks left in the dirt made her fall completely silent.
It was a massive footprint, and it didn’t look human.
Safety rating: three percent.
“Qing Ling, can we really handle this?” Ling Shuying’s courage faltered.
As a marine ecologist, she knew the ocean depths harbored many incomprehensible phenomena and countless unknown creatures.
By that same logic, if the ocean had them, the forest could too.
Then…
perhaps…
Were there really wild men?
The thought made Ling Shuying’s scalp tingle with dread, and she didn’t dare take another step forward.
The island suddenly seemed much more dangerous in her eyes.
At the very least, it was no longer a world that belonged solely to her.
Something else was here.
“Qing Ling, let’s get out of here,” she murmured.
Even though she knew ordinary creatures couldn’t defeat her, Ling Shuying still had the mindset of a scholar, not a hunter.
Faced with the unknown, fear was inevitable.
She jogged along the escape route Qing Ling provided.
As the safety rating steadily climbed, her racing heart finally began to calm down.
“That scared me to death!
Qing Ling, can you give me an earlier warning next time?”
Qing Ling wouldn’t respond to her.
It had no independent consciousness; it was simply a miraculous symbiotic algae that provided calculation and modeling capabilities.
Seeing the safety rating return to ninety-six percent, Ling Shuying’s pounding heart gradually settled.
But at this moment, that remaining four percent of danger seemed to magnify, steadily morphing into a hundred percent threat in her mind.
What if she ran into that four percent of danger?
A probability was just a chance, not a certainty.
If she actually encountered that four percent, it would translate to a hundred percent fatal danger for her!
Starting tomorrow, she would set up defensive fortifications!
Weighed down by her thoughts, Ling Shuying walked back to the campfire.
The shock of the footprint had ruined her appetite, leaving her listless as she prepared dinner.
Thunder shoots…
peeled and cut into sections.
Spanish needles…
Guanyin greens…
blanched before eating!
Chinese chives…?
Chinese chives and scrambled eggs were definitely off the menu.
Where would she get chickens on this island?
In the future, she could consider domesticating some wild fowl, assuming there were any on the island to begin with.
In that case…
she’d use them in a stew!
The sky had grown dark, so Ling Shuying didn’t wander far.
She grabbed two shrimp from the nearby sand pit trap, quickly prepped them, and tossed them into the water she had used to blanch the vegetables.
Vegetable blanching water wasn’t exactly suitable for consumption, but her water tower wasn’t fully repaired yet, and there had been no recent rainfall.
The stream’s water level was extremely low.
On an island severely lacking fresh water, she had to save every drop she could.
Iron-shell shrimp, chopped Chinese chives, kelp, along with half a piece of fish jerky she had laid out to dry yesterday, and the leftover fish bones from last night’s dinner.
Like a haphazard communal stew, she boiled everything together in the pot.
While waiting for the soup to boil, she snacked on the tender thunder shoots.
They had thick, fresh, and crisp flesh that was delightfully fragrant.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
As she chewed, the satisfyingly crisp texture and a bamboo-like aroma lingered in her mouth.
Devouring an entire shoot in just a few bites, the texture was so phenomenal that she couldn’t stop eating.
The Guanyin greens and Spanish needles, on the other hand, didn’t taste very good.
They were bitter, with a hint of astringency and an indescribable medicinal flavor.
However, after swallowing, they left a refreshing, mouth-watering sweetness—a truly marvelous side dish.
Moreover, after eating these two vegetables, her stomach felt slightly cool.
It wasn’t the freezing cold of an ice cube, but rather a chilling sensation that seemed to travel along her blood vessels.
It seemed she shouldn’t eat too much of this.
She suffered from a weak, cold stomach.
Shivering, Ling Shuying quickly grabbed her small coconut bowl and ladled out a serving of fresh fish soup, which was as milky white as actual milk.
GULP, GULP.
A surge of heat flowed down her mouth, esophagus, and chest, finally landing in her stomach.
A comforting warmth radiated outward, completely dispelling the previous chill.
For a cold stomach, drinking hot soup was definitely the best remedy.
Perhaps because she had added the extra fish jerky and fish bones, the soup was even sweeter and more savory than yesterday’s.
It completely swept away the dark cloud of fear that had been hanging over her.
Her appetite returned in full force, and she ate heartily without holding back.
“Can a mere giant footprint scare me?
If a wild man comes, I’ll treat him to some fish!” she declared with bold bravado.
She casually picked up two vibrant green strands of Chinese chives with her chopsticks and stuffed them into her mouth.
They were sweet, possessing a rustic, wild flavor, but they were a bit too old and tough to chew.
Once she crafted a batch of weapons and equipment and finished setting up her defensive fortifications, she would go harvest some fresh ones.
With that thought, she downed another bowl of the milky white fish soup, letting out a satisfying burp in the process.