The fish and shrimp trapped in the net were still thrashing wildly. The biggest one, a dark, snake-like thing, suddenly sprang high, its tail slapping the ground with loud “thwack thwack” sounds.
Beside it, the gray river shrimp’s claws went “click click,” easily snipping a small fish beneath it clean in two, and even cutting a hole in the net.
Seeing that the net was about to be wrecked, Jiang Shu quickly grabbed a washbasin-sized rock and hurled it over.
He used every ounce of his strength.
With a “squelch,” the river shrimp finally went still.
The siblings exchanged a glance and waited in place for a moment. Seeing no movement, Jiang Shu cautiously walked over.
He poked with the bone staff. The few fish in the net only writhed half-dead before going limp.
Both of them let out a big breath of relief.
Their tensed bodies relaxed.
Jiang Shu looked at the pile of spoils and grinned. “And here I thought it’d be hard. That’s it?”
He reached out to pull the net loose.
Jiang Zhi felt something was off and quickly warned, “Brother, watch out for that hellbender.”
The words had barely left her mouth when the hellbender, thick as an adult’s thigh, suddenly let out a piercing shriek.
“Screeeee!!!!!”
The siblings were instantly struck dizzy and reeling. Jiang Zhi was all right, she snapped out of it the next second, but Jiang Shu, who was closer, toppled straight over, stiff as a board.
Jiang Zhi’s face changed dramatically. She drew her machete and slashed.
She didn’t expect the hellbender to be even craftier than she’d imagined. It twisted its body and dodged, then sprayed a layer of liquid from its skin. Its body, once a meter long, shrank to half a meter, halving in size too. Then it slipped its body sideways and squeezed out through the mesh.
The machete slashed empty. The hellbender slid back into the river from the bank in a flash. The whole smooth sequence of movements made Jiang Zhi can’t help wondering whether the hellbender could actually understand what they were saying.
By then Jiang Shu had come around too.
He shook his head. “Crap, what’s the deal with that fish? My head went totally blank just now, my body wouldn’t listen to me at all.”
Jiang Zhi pursed her lips and walked over. “Brother, are you okay?”
One look at Jiang Zhi told Jiang Shu what she was thinking. Afraid she’d blame herself too much, he quickly said, “Pfft, what could happen? I just got careless for a second. Next time I run into that hellbender, your big brother’s going to bring the staff down and crack its head open.”
Jiang Shu wasn’t bluffing either. He knew he was just an ordinary person, not as sturdy as his sister, so he wouldn’t deliberately hide any discomfort.
He moved his arms and legs and found nothing uncomfortable. Grinning, he said, “Relax, I’m as strong as an ox right now! My head’s not dizzy, my body’s fine, absolutely no problem!”
As he spoke, he even flexed his biceps to show her.
Jiang Shu wouldn’t admit it, but Jiang Zhi knew exactly how close that had been just now.
If nothing else, if that hellbender had had a follow-up move, Jiang Shu would surely have borne the brunt.
They’d been too careless, thinking that with a cheat ability they could dodge every danger.
Even though the terrain radar hadn’t marked the hellbender as a red dot, a creature with weak aggression didn’t mean it couldn’t pose a threat to them.
If that hellbender had dragged her brother into the river while he was stunned…
The more Jiang Zhi thought about it, the more she blamed herself. She opened her mouth, but Jiang Shu beat her to it. “Stop! Don’t go saying anything mushy. This was purely the two of us being careless. And it’s my fault for being too hasty, if I’d just smashed these few fish dead from a distance first, we wouldn’t have had all this trouble.”
Hearing this, Jiang Zhi said nothing more, but privately reminded herself to be more careful out here.
What the two of them didn’t know was that this river was the notorious Perilous River.
No small number of people had met their end in it over the years, and gradually, hardly anyone came near it anymore.
You could only say that newborn calves don’t fear tigers [1] “newborn calves don’t fear tigers”, the young and inexperienced charge boldly into danger precisely because they don’t yet know enough to be afraid jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2742496_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2742496_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. In the whole base, probably only these two greenhorns dared push their way to the riverbank.
With the lesson from the hellbender, Jiang Shu hauled over another rock and smashed it several times onto the stone pinning the big river shrimp, only stopping once he heard the “crack” of the shell breaking.
Jiang Zhi didn’t sit idle either. From a meter away, she stunned the few small fish in the net one by one before approaching.
The siblings counted up their spoils.
They’d netted four fish in all. One escaped, leaving three. Two grass carp the size of an arm and a palm-sized crucian carp.
Plus one river shrimp and two palm-sized river clams.
It wasn’t a small haul.
Jiang Shu eagerly grabbed the two river clams, pried the shells open, and tested.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
The moment that sound came out, Jiang Shu was grinning ear to ear. “An auspicious start, both of these are edible.”
It was only an ounce or two of meat, but who’d complain about too little meat these days?
Jiang Zhi didn’t spare the shells either, and unexpectedly they tested as moderate-toxin too.
“Ah Zhi, what do you want the shells for? Even if they’re moderate-toxin, you can’t eat them.”
They’d just take up space for nothing.
Jiang Zhi ignored him. “You don’t get it.”
She’d grind this stuff into powder when they got back, and sprinkle a bit into the porridge, that’d make it nice and savory too.
If he didn’t get it, then he didn’t. Jiang Shu didn’t dwell on it and grabbed the remaining fish.
But the moment his hand touched the two grass carp, he noticed something off. The scales covering the fish were thick and hard. “These grass carp won’t have hard flesh too, will they?”
He couldn’t help reaching into the fish’s mouth for a feel, and only relaxed once he felt the soft texture inside.
“Phew, good.”
But he’d spoken too soon.
The two grass carp were strangely identical: apart from that thick outer layer of scales, which was moderate-toxin, everything else was high-toxin, even the eyes were no exception.
Jiang Shu was annoyed. “…Are you messing with me?!”
Furious, he was about to throw the fish back into the river when Jiang Zhi stopped him in time.
“Wait, brother, let’s scrape the scales off.”
Jiang Shu frowned. “Ah Zhi, these scales are so thick, you’ll crack a tooth eating them.”
Jiang Zhi smiled. “Do you remember that crunchy snack we ate when we went back to Grandpa and Grandma’s the year we were sixteen?”
Jiang Shu blanked, then said, “How could I not? That stuff was delicious, too bad you ended up eating all of it later.”
“That snack was made by Grandma frying fish scales.”
Jiang Shu’s eyes lit up, but he quickly turned disdainful again. “That won’t work either. We don’t even have oil at home now, what are we supposed to fry them in?”
Jiang Zhi was unruffled, her hands never pausing as she scraped scales. “You don’t have to use oil. Roasting them works too.”
Hearing his sister say they were edible, Jiang Shu stopped dragging his feet and pitched in alongside her.
At a time like this, when anything edible would do, would he really still turn up his nose at how little meat an ant had?
It had to be said, after mutating, the grass carp’s scales were twice as thick as before. The outer layer was incredibly hard, but the inside was full of bounce.
When the small knife stabbed in, it actually bounced back, not even leaving a mark.
Jiang Shu joked, “Is this what they call dumping all your skill points into defense?”
Jiang Zhi curled her lip. “That’s all relative. Unless there’s no creature in this world stronger than it, what’s meant to die still dies, like right now, for instance.”
At most it just died a little slower than the others.
Jiang Shu: …Good point. He actually couldn’t think of anything to argue back with.
The siblings worked at it for a while and finally got all the scales scraped off.
Jiang Zhi had already tested the remaining crucian carp, it was high-toxin from head to tail, inedible.
As for the river shrimp Jiang Shu had smashed, when they moved the rock off it, it fired off another jet of water, but luckily both of them were on guard, and in the end Jiang Shu stomped it dead.
This river shrimp looked even bigger than the lobsters of old. Surprisingly, aside from the increase in size, its shape and so on were no different from the river shrimp of before.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
Jiang Shu tested several parts in a row, all moderate-toxin.
At this, the siblings finally cheered up.
It wasn’t much, but adding up the bits and pieces, today’s haul was enough to feed their family of four for two meals.
Jiang Zhi threw the two high-toxin fish back into the river.
The instant the dead fish hit the water, the calm surface exploded.
The fish, shrimp, and crabs in the river surged in from all directions as if on signal, churning the surface into a spray of water.
Watching this, Jiang Shu couldn’t help saying, “Too bad this net got snipped open by that shrimp. Otherwise, with all this meat, we could’ve made another scoop.”
Jiang Zhi felt a little regret too. “Next time.”
She gathered the net up and found that, aside from the spot the river shrimp had cut, everything else was perfectly intact.
She was quite sure how strong those few fish had been when they thrashed. She didn’t expect it to survive even that.
Jiang Shu: “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Jiang Zhi put it back in her pack. “Just thinking this thing’s pretty durable.”
At that, Jiang Shu said smugly, “You all used to nag me for buying things recklessly. See how good it is now?”
When Jiang Shu was getting his camping gear back then, he’d specifically picked the pricey brand-name stuff.
He’d gotten an earful from Ye Qingyun over it.
Looking at it now, you get what you pay for, the expensive stuff really was good quality.
Jiang Zhi was about to say something when a flash of gold flickered across the terrain radar in her mind.
Jiang Zhi couldn’t help holding her breath.
But when she looked carefully again for the gold creature’s exact position, she got no response at all.
Seeing the look on her face, Jiang Shu quickly asked, “What’s wrong, Ah Zhi?”
Jiang Zhi’s gaze turned toward the depths of the river. “There’s a good thing.”
References[+]