Lu Shiyu snapped and twisted off the rabbit’s head and four feet. After scalding it in boiling water, she peeled the skin away in one smooth motion. Once the internal organs were thoroughly removed, the mutated rabbit was fully processed, transformed into fresh, tender meat.
She cut the rabbit meat into uniform chunks and soaked them in a bowl of fresh water mixed with salt for ten minutes. Afterward, she massaged and washed the meat by hand to clear away any residual blood. She then placed the rabbit meat into a pot of cold water along with two slices of ginger and two spoonfuls of cooking wine to prevent the meat from having a gamey odor.
As the water began to boil, Lu Shiyu crouched by the pot and skimmed off the foam. The parboiling process took only five minutes; she then scooped the meat out and set it aside, discarding the waste water.
After wiping the iron pot dry, she poured in cooking oil. Once the oil was hot, she added garlic and ginger. With a bit of reluctance, Lu Shiyu pulled out several cloth pouches and grabbed some Sichuan peppercorns, bay leaves, and dried chilies to toss into the pot. Spices were not cheap at the base, and Lu Shiyu usually couldn’t bear to use much of them.
Once the aromatics were fragrant, she poured the rabbit meat into the pot to stir-fry. Finally, she added some light and dark soy sauce, salt, and white sugar. Considering their environment, she was slightly conservative with the seasoning; eating food that was too salty would make them thirsty.
Using chopsticks, Lu Shiyu picked up a piece. The flavor seemed fine; now, it just needed water for simmering.
“It would be great if we had some wine,” Lu Shiyu said, smacking her lips.
“Wine?” Yan Hong thought Lu Shiyu wanted to drink wine as a side to the rabbit meat. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a bottle of beer, handing it to her. “Here, I packed a few bottles before we left.”
“You actually have some? Thanks!”
Lu Shiyu took the beer and happily poured the entire bottle into the pot. Before Yan Hong could even finish her sentence, only an empty bottle remained.
A single beer was still a bit too little, so Lu Shiyu added some water until it felt right. She then placed the lid on the pot and waited for the sauce to reduce.
The group sat around the pot, smelling the aroma as they waited for the meal to be ready. This time, Lu Shiyu had used an extra amount of spices, and the scent was tantalizingly delicious.
“Is it done yet? I’m starving,” Shao Xingyang said, his eyes practically glowing with greed. He wished the rabbit meat would jump into his mouth the very next second.
Lu Shiyu lifted a corner of the lid and, feeling it was ready, opened it fully.
White steam instantly billowed out of the pot. As the vapor cleared, the golden-brown delicacy was presented before everyone.
the thick sauce inside the pot was still bubbling, and the rabbit meat, coated in an amber glaze, shimmered and trembled. Lu Shiyu used the spatula to stir the meat, ensuring it was evenly distributed as the fragrance intensified. Shao Xingyang felt as though he were being enveloped by the scent of the braised rabbit.
“It’s about ready,” Lu Shiyu said, leaving the spatula in the pot. “Let’s eat.”
Everyone was already impatient. Even the relatively steady Chen Yunliang couldn’t help himself; as soon as Lu Shiyu spoke, they immediately moved their chopsticks.
The stewed, tender rabbit meat was easily torn apart between their teeth. It was neither dry nor tough. The salty and spicy flavors dominated, followed by a slight sweetness, as if every fiber of the meat was saturated with the deliciousness of the sauce. After swallowing, a lingering taste remained in the mouth, and the thick sauce made them want to reach for another piece.
“So delicious!” Shao Xingyang reached out with his chopsticks for another piece before he had even swallowed the first. His speech was muffled. “This tastes better than that big restaurant back at the base!”
“Way better than that crappy restaurant,” Yan Hong sniffed from the spiciness and continued to complain. “The food at that place is mediocre, but they sure have the nerve to charge so much! I really don’t know how a shop like that stays in business.”
Chen Yunliang picked up a piece of leg meat and said, “Is that so? I actually didn’t think that place was very expensive.”
“You’re the ‘young master’ with a wealthy family; of course you think it’s cheap,” Yan Hong grumbled.
Chen Yunliang smiled helplessly. “What does my family’s wealth have to do with me? I was kicked out of the house long ago.”
Sensing a bit of gossip, Lu Shiyu decisively joined the conversation. “Kicked out? Why?”
Shao Xingyang was the first to answer: “It’s because he didn’t want to live the good life and insisted on signing up for the exploration team to be an explorer.”
“My family felt this job was too high-risk. They said if I insisted on signing up, they would sever ties with me.”
Lu Shiyu said, “That was probably just said in anger. They were likely just worried about you.”
However, Chen Yunliang shook his head. “No, they really meant it. They felt that if they let someone like me—who seeks a dead end—inherit the family estate, it would go bankrupt very quickly.”
Lu Shiyu didn’t know how to respond for a moment. It wasn’t her place to judge another family’s business.
“It would be perfect if we had some flatbread,” Tang Zeyu suddenly spoke up.
“Flatbread?”
“Yeah,” Tang Zeyu said. “Have you ever had ‘Iron Pot Stew’? Besides the main dish in the center, the sides of the pot are covered in flatbread. Once they soak up the sauce, the taste is incredible.”
Lu Shiyu remembered her parents taking her to eat that once when she was a child, though the memory was distant.
“I’ve had it!” Shao Xingyang replied enthusiastically. “It’s extremely, extremely, extremely delicious! I love eating stewed pork ribs and stewed chicken. I’ve never actually had stewed rabbit before.”
Yan Hong licked the sauce from the corner of her mouth. “It’s a pity our conditions don’t allow it; otherwise, I’d really love to eat some.”
Chen Yunliang shrugged and said, “Nothing we can do about it now. We’ll just have to wait until we get back to the base.”
The five of them sat around the pot, laughing and chatting about random things while eating the hot, braised rabbit. The atmosphere was so good it felt like they were out on a camping trip rather than a mission. The steaming food warmed not just their stomachs, but their hearts as well.
Relying on this pot of braised rabbit, everyone slept exceptionally soundly that night. They felt a warmth radiating through their bodies, cozy and comfortable.
The next morning.
Lu Shiyu packed the half-pot of leftover rabbit meat into a small stainless steel thermal container with a lid. The others each took a few pieces of meat to eat as they walked. Although the meat was cold, none of them were picky, and the cold meat tasted just as good.
Seeing them enjoy everything so much, Lu Shiyu couldn’t help but wonder if their enjoyment of her food was because it was truly delicious or simply because they would eat anything.
As they progressed, the surrounding trees clearly became denser. What started as a sparse wood had now become a desolate mountain forest—though it was indeed desolate and uninhabited.
After walking for so long, Lu Shiyu began to get used to the high-intensity weighted hiking every day. When Tang Zeyu offered to carry her backpack for a while, she refused.
“Actually, it’s not that heavy; I can carry it myself,” Lu Shiyu said. “Captain Tang, thank you for helping me carry it the first few days. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to walk at all.”
“Don’t be so polite. You being able to walk faster also increases the team’s speed.”
“Also, um,” Tang Zeyu rubbed his neck somewhat shyly and said, “Actually, you can just call me by my name.”
“Huh?”
Lu Shiyu suddenly realized that she called everyone else by their names, and everyone else had started calling her by her name as well. Only with Tang Zeyu did she still use “Captain Tang,” which made them seem distant, even though he had been helping her all along.
“I’m sorry, I just thought calling you that sounded more formal.”
After all, they were in an employment relationship; Tang Zeyu was essentially her boss right now.
“We don’t need to be that formal,” Tang Zeyu said. “We’re teammates now, right?”
“Yeah.”
Not far away, Shao Xingyang, gnawing on a bone he had finished long ago, watched the two chatting and said to Yan Hong beside him, “Hey, what do you think those two are whispering about over there?”
“Want to know? Go over and listen then.”
“I’m not doing that,” Shao Xingyang took the bone out of his mouth. “What if the Captain gets mad because I caught him?”
As the group walked, a fork in the road suddenly appeared before them.
There was a path to the left and a path to the right. The group stopped at the junction, waiting for Tang Zeyu to choose a direction.
Tang Zeyu took out the map. As expected, he couldn’t get much information from it. Tang Zeyu drew a “Y” at their current location and then put the map away.
Tang Zeyu looked at both sides. The path on the left was overgrown with weeds and was narrow and steep. The right side was relatively flat with fewer branches.
“The path on this side looks man-made. Let’s go this way.”
The group proceeded toward the road on the right. Even a path that people had walked before was still difficult to navigate. Not only were there various strangely shaped mutated plants around them, but they also had to be careful of small mutated creatures that might lunge out of the wild grass at any time.
Whatever one fears most is what happens. Tang Zeyu raised a hand to signal everyone to stop. He squinted at the area ahead. In the thick grass, several stalks of wild grass were moving on their own despite the lack of wind, making a faint rustling sound. Something was approaching them.
Tang Zeyu drew his long blade. With a single swing, he could cut through a patch of weeds as he led the way to investigate.
The thing seemed to realize Tang Zeyu had discovered it and stopped moving.
Until Tang Zeyu’s blade cut right in front of it, the thing did not flee. This, instead, made Tang Zeyu increasingly nervous. But when he pushed aside that patch of grass, all he saw was a long, thin vine.
What is this?
Wait!
Tang Zeyu instantly realized he had been tricked. The others waiting behind him were still focused on his reaction, failing to notice a massive entity rising from the weeds behind them.
The first person to sense the danger was Yan Hong. Her sixth sense was the strongest in the Flying Eagle squad and had never been wrong. So, the moment she felt it, she shouted without hesitation:
“Run to the sides, quick!”
As she shouted, she grabbed Lu Shiyu and ran to one side. Lu Shiyu didn’t even have time to react; when she looked back, she saw a thick vine slam into the ground.
“What is that?”
Lu Shiyu looked up in a daze. Only after her gaze moved upward did she see the full form of the thing that had attacked them.
It was actually a giant flower!
The stem grew along the tree trunks like a vine, clinging to the trees, while the body of the flower was hidden within the canopy. That was why they hadn’t noticed it when they walked by, thinking it was just an ordinary vine and never considering it might be a flower.
The flower seemed to treat them as prey. The blossom, looking much like a Rafflesia, peeked out from the canopy. Countless vines were twitching, waiting to capture them and turn their food into nutrients to nourish the flower.
“Damn it, it’s a plant with autonomous predatory consciousness,” Yan Hong said, swinging her blade to sever a vine lunging toward them. “You have a death wish, daring to treat us as prey.”
Shao Xingyang held twin blades and easily dealt with the vines. However, more vines immediately began crawling from all directions. The severed vines didn’t die instantly; they just lost a section. The sky-covering vines seemed endless. When the number of vines appearing exceeded the number they could cut, the group inevitably found themselves surrounded.
Lu Shiyu felt a slight itch on her foot. The next instant, she felt that leg lose its strength. Looking down, she saw that a tiny vine had quietly wrapped itself around her ankle without being noticed!