Lu Xuan raised an eyebrow. “Is it that I don’t want to share? What can I do if I can’t enable sharing? Just wait a bit longer; I can’t finish all this honey in a short time anyway. You’ll get to taste it when sharing is enabled.”
Viewers: …I understand the logic, but with delicious food right in front of us, who can hold back?!
Many of them grew more and more ravenous, unable to resist opening the Star Network store to order other available sweets, including but not limited to synthetic candies, synthetic fruit juices, and so on.
But how could the taste of these things ever compare to natural food?
Especially since Lu Xuan, after securing the honey, suddenly felt inspired and quickly caught a few wild chickens.
After plucking and cleaning them, he stuffed mushrooms and seasonings he had found in the mountains into the chickens’ bellies, coated them inside and out with a generous amount of honey, and finally wrapped them in the large leaves he had specifically sought out, burying them beneath the fire pit.
Half an hour later, he retrieved the chickens from under the fire and unwrapped the leaves; an overpowering, appetizing aroma instantly wafted into the air.
Although the viewers couldn’t smell a thing, seeing the glossy, honey-glazed chicken with its enticing appearance made them unable to stop drooling like crazy!
This chicken must be super delicious!
Want to eat! Want chicken! I’m going crazy wanting it, ahhhhh!!!
But they couldn’t even catch a whiff of the aroma! How tragic!
Because they had been slow-cooked for a long time, the meat pulled away easily from the bones with a gentle tug.
Lu Xuan broke off a chicken leg and took a bite; the meat was fresh and tender, filled with juices, and practically melted in his mouth. The seasoning was spot-on, and the sweet, fragrant honey had seeped completely into the meat, making it impossible to stop—he never got tired of it!
He polished off one chicken in a few bites, then dug the other two out of the fire. Disregarding the screams in the chat, he ate the seven or eight jin of chicken clean, a rare expression of satisfaction appearing on his usually calm face.
Viewers: You’re the one having a good time! We’re practically crying from craving!
Just a short while ago, they had ordered quite a few synthetic candies, but as Lu Xuan ate the chicken, even more people couldn’t help but dig out their nutrient solutions to “accompany the meal” while watching the mukbang.
But the moment they thought about the fact that Lu Xuan was eating fragrant honey-glazed chicken while they were eating bland, tasteless nutrient solution, the viewers simply broke down.
A human tragedy!!!
It wasn’t that Lu Xuan didn’t see the viewers’ howling, but what could he do even if he saw it? It wasn’t as if he was deliberately keeping sharing disabled.
Having harvested dozens of jin of honey and enjoyed a delicious meal, Lu Xuan was in high spirits. After thoroughly extinguishing the fire, he refreshed his energy and began his afternoon search.
Good luck seemed to have returned to him. Just one hour into his search, Lu Xuan found two more ginseng roots in succession—one about two or three hundred years old, and the other around a hundred years old.
Before dusk, he even found several Polygonum multiflorum (He Shou Wu) plants.
This plant grew abundantly in the south; while not non-existent in the north, it was relatively rare.
As one of the “four great fairy herbs” alongside ginseng, lingzhi, and cordyceps, while it couldn’t truly grant immortality, its effects in delaying aging and turning grey hair black were highly prized by the wealthy and elderly.
Just like lingzhi, He Shou Wu didn’t get better the older it was; the medicinal efficacy was best at around five years.
The herbs on the periphery of the mountain range had long been picked clean by herb merchants, but finding He Shou Wu of sufficient age deep in the mountains really wasn’t difficult.
After dark, Lu Xuan found a spot to serve as his shelter for the night.
The schedule for the next two days basically followed the same routine: finding medicinal herbs as the primary goal, with hunting and locating other supplies as secondary tasks.
Besides common medicinal herbs, he discovered quite a few mushrooms, wild vegetables, and wild fruits. The supplies in his spatial ring were visibly increasing.
As for whether he encountered danger during the search? For others, it might have counted as dangerous, but the mutant blood-sucking vines could easily wipe out a wolf pack; what animal in these mountains could pose a threat to Lu Xuan?
A Wood-type ability user could also distinguish whether plants were poisonous, so the possibility of accidental poisoning was gone as well.
For others, going deep into the mountains was a life-or-death gamble, where whether they found anything—and how much—was entirely up to luck. But for Lu Xuan, this trip was purely to restock.
Anything he could find was easily secured, and he swept through the area in his path.
The viewers had been excited at the beginning, but by the end, they were numb to it.
At the same time, Lu Xuan hadn’t forgotten the other purpose of his mountain trip—searching for a suitable shelter.
The mountains didn’t just consist of dense forests; going deeper, he encountered every type of terrain—stone forests and canyons, precipices and sheer walls, deep-mountain waterfalls, and valley plains. Herds of herbivorous animals could be seen everywhere, and jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards were in no short supply.
A shelter needed to satisfy conditions like being flat and suitable for living, having rich surrounding resources, not having too many fierce beasts, and having an abundant water source.
There were several places in the areas above that met one or two of these conditions, but satisfying all of them was a bit troublesome.
However, on the fourth day, he successfully found a place suitable for a shelter and remodeled it. Now, both Lu Xuan and the viewers were satisfied, feeling that this deep-mountain excursion was finally complete.
The mountain range was too vast. In just a few days, let alone visiting other peaks, he had barely made a full loop around the mountain beneath his feet. In reality, there were still many places in the mountains worth exploring in detail. If he were to explore everything, a conservative estimate would be over half a month.
Lu Xuan couldn’t waste his precious time here.
The primary purpose of this trip was to hoard goods, not to conquer the Yunlu Mountain Range. Now that he had found the supplies he needed and the livestream stats were rising as expected, Lu Xuan set off on his return journey early on the fifth morning as planned.
Yunlu Village, Lu Family House.
Men, women, and children were gathered in the courtyard, all with furrowed brows, their faces full of worry and anxiety.
“It’s already the fifth day, why hasn’t he returned yet? Nothing actually happened to him, right?” asked Zhang Wende, Zhang Chengming’s father, looking worried.
No sooner had he spoken than Madam Zhang Yang poked him with her elbow. “What do you mean ‘something happened’? He’ll definitely be fine!” Lu Qing and her husband were still here—couldn’t he be more careful with his words!
Sure enough, Lu Qing, whose complexion was already poor, turned even paler.
Village Chief Li Tie glanced at her and sighed: “You should have told me before he went up the mountain. Even if not, you could have called a few more people to go with Ah Xuan.”
Lu Qing’s face was filled with regret.
She shouldn’t have let him have his way just because he had been successful in his hunting before.
If something happened to him, how would she answer to their late parents!
Thinking of Lu Xuan encountering danger in a place where she couldn’t see him, and knowing she couldn’t do anything about it, Lu Qing couldn’t help but tear up.
Lei Yan hugged Lu Qing’s shoulders, offering silent comfort.
The villagers gathered outside the courtyard were also discussing it in low voices.
“It’s been so long without him coming back; this isn’t a good sign.”
“What fierce beasts aren’t there in the deep mountains? Is that a place an ordinary person can just go to? Sigh.“
“Hunting isn’t that easy. Remember that fellow from the neighboring village who went into the mountains out of greed for the hunters’ gains, only to run into a grizzly bear and lose his life? Lu Xuan…”
“My brother won’t have any accidents!” Lu Chen, sitting with Zhang Chengming’s sons Zhang Dafu and Zhang Xiaofu, angrily interrupted the villagers, his fierce expression looking as if he were about to pounce and bite them.
The gossiping villagers looked sheepish.
Li Tie, in the courtyard, was about to warn them not to talk nonsense when he saw his son and Wu Cheng approaching from a distance.
“Ah Jing! In-laws!” Li Tie’s eyes lit up. “How is it? Did you find him?”
Lu Qing stood up excitedly, looking expectantly at the group walking into the courtyard.
Li Jing shook his head regretfully. “We didn’t find anything.”
The hunter Wu Cheng said: “We walked into the mountains for over an hour, basically covering all the areas I usually hunt, and even went a bit deeper. We didn’t find any sign of Lu Xuan. Maybe we missed him, or maybe Lu Xuan went even deeper.”
Deep in the mountains, there were plenty of jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards. Even he didn’t have the confidence to escape unscathed; naturally, he couldn’t take the villagers in to take that risk.
“But you don’t need to be too worried.” Wu Cheng looked at the ashen-faced Lu Qing and Lei Yan. “That kid Lu Xuan has real ability; he can take down wild boars easily. Even if he really runs into a fierce beast, he should have no problem running if he can’t beat it.”
The other villagers hadn’t noticed when they were trading boar meat earlier, but he had carefully observed the wounds on the boars.
The large pig had no visible external wounds, but its spine was broken in several places. Looking at the marks on its back, it appeared to have died from a massive impact that shattered the bones.
The way the two half-grown boars died was even more shocking: their heads had been completely pierced through, their brains splattered. This wasn’t something an average person could do.
Wu Cheng was a hunter who had been hunting for over twenty years and had never suffered a serious injury; he was quite experienced. His words carried much more weight than others, and Lu Qing felt slightly relieved.
Just at this moment, a villager came running over, shouting excitedly: “He’s back! Lu Xuan is back—!”
“What!?” The people present were startled.
“Ah Xuan!” Lu Qing, who had just sat back down, stood up excitedly again.
Lu Chen was the first to dash out, taking a giant step ahead of everyone.
The others snapped to and hurriedly followed.
On the dirt road not far from the Lu house.
Lu Qing threw herself onto Lu Xuan, pummeling him while crying: “You actually knew to come back! Do you know how worried sick I was?! If something happened to you, how would Chen and I survive! I’m telling you, you are never allowed to go into the mountains again!”
Lu Xuan, who had been pummeled without warning, felt a dull pain in his chest and was speechless.
Should I say, as expected of a butcher’s daughter? Lu Qing looked thin and frail, but her strength was astonishing.
If not for his extraordinary physique as an ability user, wouldn’t those two punches have caused him internal injuries?
Before Lu Xuan could speak, someone hugged his thigh tightly. Looking down, he found Lu Chen clutching his leg with all his might, his face pale as he pitifully shed golden tears.
Soon, Li Jing, Zhang Chengming, and other acquaintances arrived one after another, all saying: “Lu Xuan! You finally came back!”
“You had us worried to death these past few days!”
“Going into the mountains for several days without even a word—your guts are too big.”
As they spoke, they looked him up and down. Seeing no obvious injuries on his body and noting his rosy complexion, they finally felt completely at ease.
Wu Cheng, following behind, noticed with sharp eyes that the stains on Lu Xuan’s clothes looked like dried blood, but the fabric wasn’t torn. It seemed it wasn’t his own blood.
At this moment, Village Chief Li Tie also came running over, breathless.