Potatoes
Bai Lou woke up very early the next day. There weren’t many entertainment facilities, so everyone went to bed early. Bai Lou couldn’t sleep, so he got up and started cooking.
He hadn’t collected many eggs, only seven in total. Bai Lou didn’t want to eat them all at once, so he didn’t cook any eggs that morning.
He washed the wild vegetables he’d gathered the day before. Bai Lou picked a small piece and tasted it. The taste was fresh with a slight bitterness, just like ordinary leafy greens, but much fresher than those on Blue Star, probably due to the growing environment and the faint spiritual energy.
These slightly bitter vegetables were easy to prepare, a quick blanching was enough.
Lang Zhan was also used to waking up early, only Lang Tu, being young and needing more sleep, was still asleep.
As usual, the two washed a large piece of dragon beast meat, skewered it, and prepared it into skewers. Lang Zhan had a huge appetite, and they didn’t have many cooking tools and ingredients, so grilling was the simplest method.
Bai Lou cut a small portion of the meat into small pieces, put it in a pot of cold water, boiled it to remove the scum, then discarded the scum. He cleaned the meat and the pot, and added water again.
This time, he added drinking water sealed in a bamboo tube. Bai Lou added some spiritual spring water, which could heal wounds, increase vitality, and improve physical constitution. For a beastman like Lang Zhan who possessed spiritual power, it should also have some other benefits.
The ginger couldn’t be taken out yet. He added green vegetables and lemon juice to the dragon beast meat soup.
After the soup was cooked, he sprinkled in some salt and chopped green onions. Bai Lou tasted it, it was alright. He didn’t know if it was the effect of the spiritual spring water or if the dragon beast meat itself had a relatively weaker gamey smell.
The green onions and salt effectively suppressed that slight odor. The soup was fragrant and delicious, the meat was tender, and the bitterness in the vegetables had disappeared, perfectly balancing the greasiness of the meat and making the soup more refreshing.
Lang Zhan and Lang Tu clearly enjoyed it too. The two of them and the wolf drank the whole pot of soup clean. Before the sun became too strong, Bai Lou decided to continue his quest for vegetables up the mountain.
Lang Zhan carried Lang Tu to the main house. The little wolf cub kept licking his lips, as if the savory aroma of meat broth still lingered there.
Bai Lou was going up the mountain to find vegetables, but Lang Zhan noticed that the plants he recognized were different from those he knew in the tribe. So, instead of taking the usual route, they took a different one.
Bai Lou surveyed his surroundings. He didn’t rely on his own identification skills, but he felt he should familiarize himself with the environment and paths. After all, Lang Zhan couldn’t always accompany him here, once Lang Zhan recovered, he would likely go hunting.
Bai Lou wasn’t particularly sad about losing them. In fact, it was better that Lang Zhan left, he could store everything in his spatial storage, and retrieving things from there would be much easier.
He had already decided that the rock salt would be considered scavenged and brought back quickly, so he wouldn’t have to force Lang Zhan to eat it every time they needed salt.
He could carry it down the mountain, the tribe members would believe him even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t suspect he had a system. The people of primitive tribes probably didn’t even have the concept of a system.
Thanks to the reliability of the shop’s detector and the abundant resources of the Beastmen Plane, today’s harvest was quite good.
Bai Lou planted the tomatoes he had dug up in the ground, then dragged Lang Zhan back up the mountain with great enthusiasm. They had found a patch of potatoes today, and the tomatoes, exposed to the elements, tasted better. When Bai Lou found them, only some unripe green fruits remained.
Some ripe tomato remnants were visible on the ground, eaten by some animal, though it was unknown.
Bai Lou and Lang Zhan simply packed up most of the tomato vines and took them with them. It would be impossible to harvest fruit from them on the mountain, they’d have to grow them themselves.
They left a small patch there, letting them develop slowly and grow back later.
What surprised Bai Lou most were the potatoes. Since potatoes grow underground, most of them survived.
Each potato vine was laden with potatoes of various sizes. Lang Zhan and Bai Lou only managed to move about a tenth of them in one trip.
After another trip, Bai Lou was exhausted, his tongue lolling out.
This amount of physical exertion was nothing to Lang Zhan, but he felt a pang of sympathy seeing Bai Lou like this.
“You stay home. I’ll go get some people to help carry them. We were going to share some with the tribe anyway so it’s only right that they help out.”
Bai Lou nodded eagerly. He really didn’t want to walk anymore, it was unbearably hot.
Lang Zhan returned shortly after, this time with two beastmen who were home.
The potatoes filled half the warehouse, and many more were piled up in the yard. Lang Zhan cut off about a fifth of the potatoes, which he and two beastmen packed into a leather bundle to be taken to the priest.
The two beastmen, while picking potatoes, kept glancing at Bai Lou sitting nearby, their eyes filled with curiosity and amazement.
The tribe was small, with only about three hundred people, and little entertainment so any news spread quickly throughout the tribe.
Especially when a new member joined, everyone needed to know. So they all knew that a cat- beastman lived with the tribe leader, but they hadn’t expected this cat-beastman to be so handsome.
One of the beastmen with a scar on his face was blushing, looking rather pleased. He was one of the weaker beastmen in the tribe, and with the scar on his face, it was difficult for him to find a female companion.
Therefore, his goal was to find a male companion, and when he heard that the tribe leader had brought back a cat-beastman, he roughly understood the tribe leader’s intentions.
Compared to the wolf tribe, the cat-beastmen were far too weak. If it were for the sake of a strong tribe, the chieftain wouldn’t accept male cat-beastmen. Male beastmen from such a weak race were only taken in for companionship.
Originally, he had thought of finding someone similar to himself, so that both could hunt and live a much better life. But now, looking at Bai Lou, he felt that finding someone beautiful seemed better, just looking at him would make him happy.
As he looked, the scarred beastman was startled and instinctively assumed a defensive stance.
Looking around, he realized that Lang Zhan was staring at him coldly. The scarred beastman paused as if he had thought of something, and stammered, “Lead…Leader, you…like females, right?”
Beastmen, after all, have half-beast genes. Their instinct is to find a superior mate and produce excellent offspring. Therefore, it’s rare for a powerful beastman to choose a male companion over a female.
Even though the scarred beastman saw Bai Lou living there and being allowed to sit idly watching them work without doing any work, he didn’t think anything of it.
But just now… the scarred beastman resisted the urge to touch the back of his neck, at that moment, every hair on his body stood on end. His tribe leader was terrifying!
“I don’t like it,” Lang Zhan coldly tossed out, giving him a warning look. Only when he turned to look at Bai Lou did the chill in his body lessen slightly.
“Bai Lou, do you know how to eat this? We’ve never eaten this kind of fruit that grows in the ground before.”
Although the warning wasn’t directed at Bai Lou, his animalistic instincts made him sense danger.
The wariness in Bai Lou’s eyes only dissipated after Lang Zhan spoke to him. Lang Zhan’s voice was cold and deep, initially sounding icy and sharp, making Bai Lou somewhat afraid of him.
After spending just two days together, Bai Lou noticed that Lang Zhan’s tone was gentler when he spoke to him. Although a bit taciturn, Lang Zhan never refused his requests or contradicted his ideas.
Bai Lou felt a sense of being pampered, like he had returned to Earth.