Chapter 270 – Recipe
Tu Ran’s gaze swept across their faces one by one. “Got it? Whoever returns to the First World must make every effort to spread the word and make sure people there are prepared.”
“We definitely will,” the three nodded firmly, their eyes resolute.
“Alright, let’s keep moving,” Tu Ran said, turning around to continue down the path.
The four walked until nightfall without encountering any more aliens.
Tu Ran looked around the surroundings and, after confirming it was safe, decided to rest here.
“Up the tree,” Tu Ran slung her laser gun over her shoulder and prepared to climb a tree.
“Huh?” Li Rui was the first to express her surprise. “Climb a tree? We can’t climb.”
Song Bai nodded in agreement, as she was just a college student without much physical strength.
Xiang Sheng raised her hand. “I can jump up there.” With her current jumping ability, getting up onto a branch wouldn’t be an issue.
“What about me and Xiao Bai?” Li Rui pouted. “You’re not going to abandon us, are you, Shengsheng?”
“How about I try jumping up while carrying you?” Xiang Sheng suggested.
“It’s fine to sleep on the ground; no need to make it so complicated,” Tu Ran said. “If anything happens, I’ll hear it and come down quickly.”
“That makes sense,” Xiang Sheng said, putting her arms around her two friends. “I’ll stay down here with you, and Tu Ran can keep an eye out from above.”
“Alright,” Song Bai nodded.
Tu Ran climbed onto a tree branch, took out a pillow, and, noticing the wind in the forest tonight and the cool temperature, thought of the three below. She then grabbed two large leaves and tossed them down.
“For the wind,” Tu Ran’s voice called down from the tree.
The three of them held the leaves, not quite sure whether to laugh or cry.
Li Rui sighed, “To think that I, a daughter of the prestigious Li family, would be reduced to using leaves for warmth.” She huddled in the center, only her head peeking out, silently shedding a tear in the cold wind.
“Just sleep,” Xiang Sheng said, a bit weary. “Being alive is already a blessing.”
“Exactly,” Song Bai agreed, scooting closer to Li Rui, and the three of them huddled together.
Up on the tree branch, Tu Ran thought, ‘Next time, I should stash a blanket in my storage space.’
The night passed peacefully.
At dawn, the four resumed their journey as usual.
Their sustenance was still nutrient solutions.
Li Rui was beginning to find it hard to drink anymore.
She glanced up at the bright red fruit hanging from the tree above. It looked deliciously sweet, and she couldn’t help but swallow as she looked over at Tu Ran, who was walking ahead. “Tu Ran, can we eat that fruit?”
Tu Ran followed her pointed finger.
It was a type of fruit that, if eaten, would keep hunger at bay for an entire day.
It was so unpalatable that even Pangpang avoided it.
Seeing Tu Ran’s suddenly odd expression, Li Rui hesitated, “Is it poisonous?”
Tu Ran shook her head and honestly replied, “No, it’s not poisonous and quite filling—one fruit will keep you full all day, though it’s not exactly tasty.”
Relieved that it wasn’t poisonous, Li Rui was now determined to try it, just to see how bad it could be. She turned to Xiang Sheng with a pleading look, hands clasped, “Pretty please, Shengsheng?”
With a sigh, Xiang Sheng jumped up, grabbed a fruit, twisted it a few times until it came off, and handed it to Li Rui. Then she jumped again to pick two more, saving one for Tu Ran as well.
Tu Ran took the fruit, thanked her, and bit into it immediately.
Seeing Tu Ran eat it so directly gave Li Rui the courage to take a big bite and chew a couple of times.
“Ugh… ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!” Li Rui’s face scrunched up as she spat out the fruit pulp she had bitten into. Her face turned pale, and even after a few gulps of nutrient solution to rinse her mouth, she still felt the bitter taste lingering.
“Is it really that bad?” Song Bai, curious, took a tiny bite of her own fruit. It tasted like an unripe persimmon, but without the crispness—just a dense, pasty texture, like raw flour that clung to the walls of her mouth, impossible to swallow or spit out.
Seeing both of them reacting like this, Xiang Sheng quickly decided against eating the fruit and stuck to her nutrient solution instead, thinking, ‘nutrient solution tastes just fine.’
…
By afternoon, the group encountered an alien head-on.
It looked like a rabbit, with snow-white fur and long ears—one standing up, the other flopping down. Its eyes were slightly cross-eyed, giving it a dim-witted look. It was about human-sized, bouncing along toward them.
When it saw them, it froze in place.
The four of them also stopped in their tracks.
They locked eyes with the rabbit, and after three seconds, the rabbit let out a piercing scream.
“Aaahhhhhhhh—”
The scream was like an invisible blade, threatening to shatter everyone’s eardrums.
Li Rui quickly covered her ears, her head throbbing from the noise. “Damn, I had no idea rabbits could scream like this!”
Tu Ran, wearing a helmet and not needing to cover her ears, was at a loss for words at Li Rui’s comment.
The rabbit’s scream went on without any sign of stopping.
It really was dumb; it just stood there screaming, not even attempting to run.
Without a word, Tu Ran took the dagger from Li Rui’s hand and casually flung it, hitting the rabbit squarely in the forehead.
The screaming stopped.
The rabbit fell backward, lying motionless on the ground.
“Finally, some peace and quiet,” Li Rui muttered, rubbing her ears that had survived the ordeal. She walked over to the oversized fluffy rabbit, looking down at it.
It actually looked kind of cute.
“Tu Ran, should we extract its inner core?” she asked.
“It doesn’t have one. Not every alien has an inner core; maybe only one or two out of a hundred do.”
“Oh.” Li Rui sighed in disappointment, bending down to pull her dagger from the rabbit’s head. Seeing the red blood on the blade, she had a sudden thought. “Tu Ran, do you think we could eat its meat? A rabbit this big would make an amazing spicy rabbit head.”
Tu Ran was at a loss for words.
“…I’ve never tried, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be following the Classic of Mountains and Seas as a guide to food? It must be edible. We should give it a shot; who knows, maybe rabbit meat has special properties.”
Tu Ran was still in shock over the idea of spicy rabbit head when Li Rui brought up the recipe idea again, leaving her speechless.
“We don’t have any seasonings. Even if it’s edible, it’ll taste really gamey,” Xiang Sheng pointed out.
“That’s true,” Li Rui conceded, disappointed. “Then maybe we’ll skip it.”
After a pause, Tu Ran said, “I actually have some.”
…
In the end, the four of them managed to eat some rabbit meat. Altogether, they barely finished one hind leg before feeling full.
Looking at the remaining rabbit meat, Li Rui sighed wistfully, “Goodbye, my beloved bunny.”
The group set off again, hoping to cover more ground before dark.
Tu Ran focused intensely, trying to sense Pangpang’s location, but frustratingly, she could only feel the direction and not the distance.
They had been trekking through this seemingly endless forest for three days.
Along the way, they’d found five alien inner cores.
Four were low-grade, one was mid-grade.
All the superpowers were relatively useless, like changing hair color at will, controlling hair growth speed, having night vision, and so on.
