Lu Shiyu lugged the giant spider carcass over and placed it in the center of the camp.
Shao Xingyang looked at the spider, then at Lu Shiyu, and swallowed hard. “Can this thing really be eaten?”
Lu Shiyu hesitated for two seconds. “It should be… edible.”
Shao Xingyang: “…”
He was even more afraid now.
Under the skeptical gazes of the group, Lu Shiyu pulled a kitchen knife from her bag. She hacked the spider into several sections at the joints, revealing the snow-white, tender meat inside. When she went to pick up the spider earlier, she hadn’t forgotten to bring along the section of the scorpion tail as well, which she now also severed at the joints.
“Wait, you want the tail too? Isn’t it poisonous?” Shao Xingyang asked, pointing at the segment of the tail.
“Well, the venom gland should be inside the stinger itself. We just need to remove the part with the stinger; the other parts are edible.”
Although he wasn’t sure if what Lu Shiyu said was true or false, Shao Xingyang didn’t raise any more questions.
“It’s getting late. I’ll start the fire.”
Tang Zeyu used the firewood they had gathered earlier to build a simple campfire, surrounding it with stones until it looked like a crude stove. Then, with a flick of his palm, a dancing flame appeared in his hand.
Lu Shiyu, who was busy processing the spider, caught a glimpse of the ball of fire in Tang Zeyu’s hand, and her attention was instantly drawn to it.
“Captain Tang, is your ability fire?”
“Yes.”
Tang Zeyu placed the flame onto the dry wood, and the logs ignited instantly. Lu Shiyu’s eyes sparkled.
“What a convenient ability. That way, you don’t even need to start a fire manually when cooking in the wild.”
Chen Yunliang picked up the discarded stinger to examine it. Yan Hong leaned in beside him, her expression complicated as she looked at the spider limbs being prepped on the ground.
“Are we really going to eat this?”
Chen Yunliang gave an affirmative grunt as he wrapped the stinger in a piece of cloth and placed it in a small pouch. “If we don’t end up poisoned this time, I suspect we’ll be eating things like this for the rest of the trip.”
“Ugh, for a moment I can’t tell if it’s more miserable to eat dry crackers or to eat this stuff.”
Lu Shiyu pulled a large iron pot from her bag—it was quite a heavy responsibility for her backpack to carry such a large pot. She set the pot on the stone stove, poured in a small amount of fresh water, and placed the spider meat in while the water was still cold. She added a few spoonfuls of cooking wine and ginger slices before finally covering the pot to wait.
While waiting for the spider to cook, Lu Shiyu produced a collection of jars and bottles from somewhere and began mixing a dipping sauce.
Yan Hong picked up a bottle of mature vinegar and shook it; the liquid inside was still full. She wondered how Lu Shiyu had managed to bring so many glass bottles without breaking them.
“I almost forgot to ask—does anyone have any dietary restrictions? For example, anyone who doesn’t eat green onions, ginger, or garlic, or anyone who can’t handle spicy food?”
After mixing a batch of sauce, Lu Shiyu asked the others about their tastes.
“None of us are picky eaters. Just make it however you like,” Tang Zeyu answered.
As people who needed to go out on missions, how could they afford to be picky? Those who were picky would simply starve to death. Many times, having anything to eat at all was a blessing.
Lu Shiyu waited for a while until she felt the time was right. She lifted the lid, and steam instantly surged upward. The small amount of water in the pot had almost entirely evaporated. Lu Shiyu reached in and fished out the freshly cooked spider, placing the pieces on the inverted pot lid.
“Finished!”
Everyone was given a portion of the spider legs. Shao Xingyang looked left and right, asking curiously, “Why are there only legs? What about the other parts?”
“Oh, those,” Lu Shiyu said, picking up a section of a spider leg. “There isn’t much meat in the spider’s torso, and the internal organs didn’t look edible, so I threw them away.”
Yan Hong recalled the spider’s appearance and couldn’t help but complain, “It’s better that you threw them away. That spider had so many eyes; it looked disgusting. Boiling it in a pot would have been a total appetite-killer.”
Although dinner was ready, no one dared to take the first bite. Everyone was stealing glances at one another to see if someone else had started.
Only Tang Zeyu picked up a spider leg and began extracting the meat. After being cooked, the spider leg shell had become very brittle; with just a bit of force, the shell could be snapped open to reveal the meat inside. Tang Zeyu scraped the meat from the shell and took a bite. The other members of the squad waited tensely for his reaction. Lu Shiyu was the most nervous of all, curious about what kind of evaluation and feedback Tang Zeyu would give.
“Mmm, it’s good.”
Tang Zeyu swallowed the food before continuing, “It’s a bit like crab meat, but it’s chewier and firmer.”
“Good? For real?”
Looking at the spider leg in her hand, Yan Hong couldn’t help but keep visualizing the spider’s face, making it hard to eat. In contrast, Shao Xingyang beside her was eager to try. Hearing Tang Zeyu say it was good, he impatiently snapped open a shell, took out the meat, dipped it in the sauce, and popped the entire strip into his mouth.
“Mmph! It really is good!”
Shao Xingyang’s mouth was stuffed with spider meat, making his speech muffled. Yan Hong and Chen Yunliang had been hesitating, but their stomachs chose that moment to rumble betrayingly. Yan Hong closed her eyes and, as if having made a grand resolution, bit into the leg meat.
Lu Shiyu had also peeled a strip of meat. She first took a bite without the sauce; the flavor was the fresh sweetness of meat. Because no heavy seasonings were used, the original flavor of the ingredient was preserved, and it tasted quite good even without the dip. Then she tried it with the sauce. The salty and spicy dipping sauce made the spider leg meat even more delicious; the sweetness and springy texture of the meat combined perfectly with the savory aroma of the sauce.
“Surprisingly, the taste is quite decent.”
As he peeled, Chen Yunliang asked Lu Shiyu, “Chef Lu, did you have experience making gourmet food from mutated creatures before?”
“No, this is my first time coming into physical contact with a mutated organism.”
This was indeed Lu Shiyu’s first attempt at cooking with a mutated creature, and the result was unexpectedly good.
“Your first time?” Yan Hong looked up and asked, “Then how did you know which parts were edible and which weren’t? And how did you know the venom gland was at the tip of the tail?”
“Wait a moment.”
Lu Shiyu ran over to her backpack to rummage through it, returning a moment later with something in her hand.
“I saw it in a book.”
Lu Shiyu flipped the book open to a specific page and pointed at the content. “The book has an introduction to this kind of spider. Although it didn’t mention whether it was edible, I figured that if the meat isn’t poisonous, then it should be fine to eat.”
The group crowded around to look at the book in Lu Shiyu’s hand, which described various pieces of information about the spider.
“Short Scorpion-Tailed High-Legged Spider. The post-abdomen has five segments of scorpion tail, ending in a curved hook-stinger. The venom gland is located within the curved stinger… It even has diagrams. How detailed.”
Yan Hong scanned the contents of the book rapidly. “Impressive. Although I’ve seen this spider before, this is the first time I’ve clearly seen its internal structure.”
Chen Yunliang turned the book over. When he saw the cover, he froze for a moment.
“So it’s this book,” Chen Yunliang said, adjusting his glasses. “I was quite interested in this book before, but the price tag was too high, so I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.”
Lu Shiyu looked at Tang Zeyu, who was silently eating a spider leg. Actually, she had seen this book before too, but it was so expensive that she couldn’t justify the purchase either. She hadn’t expected someone would buy it and give it to her.
While the others were curiously looking at the book, Lu Shiyu silently left them and moved toward Tang Zeyu. The wood they had put in earlier had mostly burned down. Tang Zeyu was eating a spider leg while tossing new firewood into the pit.
“Wait a second.”
Lu Shiyu stopped Tang Zeyu from throwing in the wood. She took a branch and pushed aside the ash at the bottom to form a small pit, then tossed the segments of the spider’s scorpion tail into the pit and buried them with ash.
“There.”
Tang Zeyu silently continued tossing wood into the fire, showing no intention of asking about Lu Shiyu’s behavior.
As night fell, it was time to sleep shortly after dinner. The members of the Sky Eagle Squad all skillfully produced their sleeping bags to prepare for rest.
Chen Yunliang said, “We just came out today, so we shouldn’t run into much danger. I’ll take the first watch of the night.”
Tang Zeyu nodded. “Then I’ll take the second half.”
Watching the others crawl into their sleeping bags, Lu Shiyu finally remembered that she had forgotten to buy a sleeping bag before leaving.
“Here, this is yours.”
Tang Zeyu held out a brand-new sleeping bag to Lu Shiyu, seemingly having anticipated that she would forget this detail.
“Thank you. Deduct the cost of the sleeping bag from my commission.”
“No need. This is part of the basic equipment provided to team members.”
Shao Xingyang was wrapped in his sleeping bag like a silkworm cocoon, wriggling over to Yan Hong’s side.
“Hey, Yan-zi, when did our team start having these kinds of benefits? Last time my socks had holes and I asked the captain for a pair, he told me to go buy them myself.”
Yan Hong rolled her eyes in disgust. “Get away from me. I’m afraid stupidity might be contagious.”
Perhaps it was the result of long-term training for high-efficiency rest, but Yan Hong, Shao Xingyang, and Tang Zeyu all fell asleep as soon as they lay down, leaving only the night watchman Chen Yunliang and Lu Shiyu still awake.
Chen Yunliang took the scorpion tail stinger he had collected earlier from his bag. He used tweezers to pull out the muscle inside to prevent it from rotting and smelling. Once he was sure all the meat had been cleared out and only the venom gland remained, he set down the tweezers. He looked up to see Lu Shiyu, half-emerged from her sleeping bag, writing something by the light of the fire.
“Not asleep yet?” Chen Yunliang asked.
Lu Shiyu stopped writing, looking a bit embarrassed. “Mhm. I’m writing in my diary.”
“A diary?”
“It’s my first time leaving the base. I’m still a bit excited and wanted to record it.”
Chen Yunliang nodded upon hearing this. “That’s normal. Everyone who leaves the base for the first time finds it very novel.”
Having said that, he let out a helpless smile. “However, that novelty will soon be diluted by the fear of the unknown. The world outside the base is not safe at all; it’s full of various dangerous and disgusting mutated creatures. Miss Lu, you’d better prepare yourself mentally as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, but I won’t be afraid.”
Lu Shiyu closed her diary and put it in her backpack, shrinking back into her sleeping bag to sleep.
Chen Yunliang looked at Lu Shiyu’s back, the firelight reflecting in his eyes.
Actually, what he was more worried about was that Lu Shiyu, as a completely inexperienced novice, would drag the Sky Eagle Squad down at a critical moment. The world today was not like it was ten years ago, and going out was not a camping trip. Once there was a burden in the team, the consequence could be the annihilation of the entire squad. As the team doctor, he had to ensure the safety of the squad members.
After a moment, Chen Yunliang shook his head. Forget it. Since Lu Shiyu was brought in by the captain, he had no reason to drive her away before she did anything stupid. He only hoped she could truly and honestly fulfill her duties as a chef.
The crackling of the burning wood in the campfire became the last remaining sound of the night. Chen Yunliang lowered his head to check his medical kit. From an angle where he couldn’t see, it was only then that Tang Zeyu truly closed his eyes and fell asleep.