Jiang Zhi put on the work gloves that came with their real wood-burning stove and pulled out a stalk of mutated calamus.
After mutating, the calamus rhizomes were several times larger than before. When she snapped one open, it was full of juice.
Jiang Zhi gave it a sniff. There was no odd smell.
“Beep. High toxin level. Not recommended for consumption.”
“Tsk.”
Jiang Zhi tossed the rhizome aside.
A string of beeping detection sounds came from beside her.
In a flash, Jiang Shu had tested all the calamus leaves nearby.
Every one was high-toxin.
After testing for a while, Jiang Shu grew impatient. “The only annoying thing about this detector is that you have to test it part by part. Isn’t there one that can just scan the whole thing in one go?”
Jiang Zhi pulled up a calamus stalk as she answered, “There is. The base has an advanced detector made specially for Evolvers. It just costs 2,000 points each.”
Jiang Shu was suspicious. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t you read the mutated-creature catalog? There are base-invented devices listed in the back, along with the exact prices.”
Jiang Shu: “…That advertising method is pretty slick.”
After a pause, he added, “Sooner or later I’m going to buy two of them. Use one and toss the other!”
The siblings chatted while they tested.
Before they knew it, they had walked nearly a hundred meters along the bank.
Just when Jiang Zhi had given up hope, an electronic voice suddenly sounded behind her. “Beep. Moderate toxin level. Limited consumption recommended.”
The two of them froze in unison.
Jiang Zhi whipped around to look.
“We got one!?”
Jiang Shu looked at the calamus rhizome in his hands, about the size of a basketball, and swallowed. They had been here for half an hour and had nearly lost hope, only to score one out of nowhere.
He couldn’t help testing it again.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Limited consumption recommended.”
Jiang Shu’s face broke into a grin, and he turned it over and over in his hands. “No mistake about it. This really is edible.”
“I wonder how much starch Mom will be able to get out of it.”
If they turned the calamus starch into noodles or dumplings, then whether boiled or roasted, it would taste good, at the very least better than wild-vegetable mush.
He was a grown man, and he was honestly sick to death of porridge and mush. No matter how much he ate, his stomach couldn’t hold out for long before the panicky hunger set in again.
Jiang Zhi laughed too. “Mom’s starch noodles are delicious. Too bad we don’t have chili or oil.”
Either way, today counted as a good start.
Pleased, Jiang Shu pulled out an Oxford-cloth bag from his pocket, cut off the high-toxin parts, and stuffed the rhizome inside.
It was only eight in the morning.
They had to find a place to rest before the sun was directly overhead, or they’d be scorched to a crisp.
Jiang Zhi checked the time on the detector. There were still more than three hours until noon.
The hit rate here was just too low, so Jiang Zhi decided to give up.
Just as she was about to say something to her brother, her sharp eyes caught two fist-sized river snails on the submerged calamus rhizomes up ahead.
Her eyes lit up, and she drew her machete, flicking the snails off in a flash.
This machete was made in Germany. Its quality and sharpness went without saying, she’d used it for several years and it was still nearly good as new.
Seeing this, Jiang Shu came running over too.
The moment he saw what was in Jiang Zhi’s hands, his eyes went wide, and his breathing turned heavier.
There was meat inside those snails.
“Ah Zhi, hurry, test it!”
With the experience from the tusked rabbit, this time Jiang Zhi didn’t spare the snail shells either.
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
It was just as the saying went: the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.
Jiang Shu let out an “ugh” and said listlessly, “Forget it. If they can’t be eaten, then they can’t. There’s only this little bit of meat anyway—”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Limited consumption recommended.”
Jiang Shu choked his words right back. “And, and… Ah Zhi!! Did I just hear that wrong!?”
This time Jiang Zhi finally smiled. “Your ears aren’t broken.”
She pulled the dagger from behind her waist, drove it into the snail meat poking out, and with a deft flick pried it loose, dropping it into a prepared sealed bag.
Jiang Shu impatiently weighed it in his hand. It had to be at least half a pound.
Before the great catastrophe, Jiang Shu’s favorite dish had been spicy stir-fried conch.
You’d slice the conch meat thin, heat oil in the wok, fry Sichuan peppercorns until fragrant and scoop them out, then sizzle in dried chilies, scallion segments, and ginger slices. Add doubanjiang and stir-fry, and right before plating, throw in pointed chilies and cilantro, the aroma was incredible.
Jiang Shu sucked back a string of drool.
“Too bad there’s no chili.”
The whole Jiang family loved spicy food. It was only over these years since the catastrophe that they’d been forced to quit it cold.
Jiang Zhi said, “The mutated-creature catalog says there’s mutated chili near this valley. We can go take a look later.”
After eating flavorless porridge and mush for so long, her mouth had practically gone numb from the lack of taste.
If their old settlement hadn’t happened to have a big supermarket nearby, where they’d raked everything edible into their own hands, there was no telling how they’d have survived these three years.
Jiang Shu was amazed. “How does this catalog have everything?”
Jiang Zhi: “You’re the one who didn’t read it carefully.”
Jiang Shu had never liked reading since he was little, and it was no different now. He urged Jiang Zhi to test the other snail along with it.
The second snail was clearly much smaller than the first.
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
Jiang Shu deflated like a punctured ball.
“No wonder everyone in the base is sallow and skin-and-bones. With a hit rate like this, how could anyone ever eat their fill?”
As he grumbled, he couldn’t help leaning in and quietly asking Jiang Zhi, “Ah Zhi, use that ability of yours and take a look, see if there’s anything good nearby.”
Jiang Zhi pried out the high-toxin snail meat without changing her expression. “No good stuff. Just red and green markers.”
Green only represented creatures with tenacious life force. Plants like wild grass wouldn’t show up at all.
Jiang Shu looked a little disappointed. “True. If food were really that easy to find, our whole family wouldn’t have needed to settle in the base.”
As he spoke, he craned his neck toward that calamus stalk. “River snails usually crawl up in whole clusters, don’t they? How come there were only two?”
To be fair, Jiang Shu’s looking really did turn up something good.
Ten centimeters below the water on that calamus stalk, there grew dense clusters of red river-snail eggs.
“Ah Zhi, can this stuff be eaten?”
No one had ever heard of people eating river-snail eggs before the catastrophe.
But after mutating, each river-snail egg was the size of a glass marble. A few strings together were actually more impressive than the snail meat itself.
The two of them carefully scraped the snail eggs off the calamus.
The membrane of the mutated snail eggs was much tougher. Jiang Shu poked one, it was springy.
Jiang Zhi tested it directly. “Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
…
She tested two strings in a row, and not a single one was edible.
The siblings’ faces grew darker and darker.
Finally—
“Beep. Low toxin level. Edible.”
Jiang Shu had already lost all confidence from the discouragement, so when he suddenly heard that, he thought he’d misheard.
He retested that snail egg again and got the same result.
In just this short morning, testing food had been like playing a scratch lottery. A low-toxin one suddenly turning up felt like hitting the jackpot.
Jiang Shu couldn’t help leaping up.
“Hell yeah! We finally got one!!!”
Jiang Zhi: …
This foolish brother of hers, was he really so afraid people wouldn’t hear?
Seeing the speechless look on Jiang Zhi’s face, Jiang Shu hurriedly covered his mouth, but his excitement didn’t fade in the slightest. He couldn’t resist stroking that low-toxin snail egg, then tested all the rest in one go.
Fortunately, their luck was good this time.
Of the two palm-sized strings of snail eggs, aside from that one low-toxin egg, all the others were edible moderate-toxin ones.
The mutated snail eggs looked crystal-clear, and whether by feel or texture, they were just like jelly.
“Ah Zhi, let’s eat this string tonight, yeah?”
Even though he had no idea how to cook this stuff, with Mom around, Jiang Shu never gave a thought to whether it would taste good.
However bad it tasted, it’d still beat porridge mush.
“Let’s talk about it once we get back.” Jiang Zhi packed the snail eggs into a sealed bag and put them together with the earlier calamus rhizome.
With this haul, the two of them had a bit more confidence.
Jiang Shu said, “Ah Zhi, where do we go next? We can’t exactly get in the water, can we?”
After the great catastrophe, rivers were actually far more dangerous than the land. Even the base’s Evolvers didn’t dare enter the water lightly.
Because there was no way to predict which direction the creatures in the water might mutate.
Jiang Zhi smiled. “Brother, do you know why I chose Collection Zone 3?”
“Why?”
Jiang Zhi pointed at the river not far off.
Jiang Shu stared blankly for a moment, then quickly caught on. “You really do want to get in the water?”
Jiang Zhi didn’t answer him, only saying, “There are no fewer resources in the river than on the bank. Shrimp, crab, clams, frogs, wild ducks…”
With each one Jiang Zhi listed, Jiang Shu swallowed. “Plenty of variety, we’re bound to get something edible.”
Jiang Zhi wasn’t going to admit she was craving meat too.
But compared to hunting mutated beasts, catching fish was obviously a lot safer.
Jiang Shu gritted his teeth. “Fine, let’s take the risk this once. One way or another, we’re bringing some meat home today.”
And he started taking off his clothes to get in the water.
Jiang Zhi’s face went dark.
“Who said we were getting in the water?”
“Huh? If we don’t get in the water, how do we catch fish?” By now Jiang Shu had been thoroughly confused by his own sister.
Jiang Zhi sighed. “Big brother, the reason humans are different from animals is that we know how to use tools.”
As she spoke, she took a net bag out of her pack.
She had made this simple fishing net the night before, using the netting from a camping hammock.
Jiang Shu’s eyes lit right up.
“Not bad, Ah Zhi, you came really prepared!”
He took the net from Jiang Zhi’s hands. “I’ll use it! I guarantee I’ll net us a few big fish!”
Jiang Shu had spent a stretch of his childhood in a village. Back then he and his two older cousins were never home, and they got really good at catching fish and snatching chickens.
When catching fish by a river, you generally looked in the thick water-grass.
By rights, that was where fish hid and foraged. Aside from that, the boundary between deep and shallow water was another spot where fish often swam.
Jiang Shu searched for a while and finally settled on a hollow pool connected to the river’s edge.
“Ah Zhi, use the bone staff to thrash the water upstream and drive them this way!”
Jiang Zhi answered and walked off about ten meters.
Jiang Shu cast the net into the water while signaling “ready” to Jiang Zhi.
When Jiang Zhi splashed the bone staff in the water a few times, sure enough, it startled quite a few fish and shrimp.
Among them, a mutated river shrimp the size of a big lobster leapt out of the water, shooting off a jet of water.
As the disturbance in the water crashed into the net, Jiang Shu, quick of eye and hand, yanked the rope taut, then swiftly hauled it up, using the water’s resistance to drive the fish and shrimp into the net.
Seeing he’d caught something, Jiang Shu put his back into hauling the net and stepped backward.
He’d barely retreated one step when a tremendous force dragged him lurching forward.
“Crap!”
In the distance, Jiang Zhi’s face changed. Seeing that Jiang Shu was about to be pulled into the river, she rushed over in a flash, wrapped her arms around his waist, and hauled back.
Straining, Jiang Zhi gritted out, “Brother, I’ll count to two, we pull back together!”
By now Jiang Shu was completely unable to speak, his whole face flushed red with the effort.
He was terrified that if he let the breath he was holding slip, he’d be dragged over to the other side like in a tug-of-war.
He clenched his teeth and nodded.
“One, two!!”
“One, two!!”
The two of them put everything they had into it, and after several pulls, they finally hauled the net up.
The siblings collapsed onto the bank, gasping for breath.
Jiang Shu didn’t even take time to catch his breath before crawling over to look at what was in the net.