novelPicnic and Unexpected Change
| ← Ch.307 | Ch.309 → |
Lin Luoran feels a hard stuff when she cleans the roots of the bamboo. And then, the Heart of Druid around her neck hidden in her cloths starts to buzz.
She realizes it's an unknown object thinner than her little finger. It is covered with black mud. She rubs it a few times but can't tell what it is, so she puts it away. Because of this little accident, Lin Luoran gives up exploring nearby as soon as she finishes digging the bamboo. She flies down the cliff of the waterfall.
Two teenagers are talking beside the gurgling water while wisps of smoke rise near the tent. Huang Weijian catches two crabs from the pond. Although he appears to be calm, his excitement cannot be hidden.
The water in the pot has been boiled. When Lin Luoran comes back, Lin Luodong throws up his hands, saying there is nothing to eat but crabs.
She rubs the boy's head with a smile. Lin Luodong is only 1. 6 meters tall. But maybe two years later, he will be much taller than Lin Luoran. At that time, she won't even be able to touch his head.
Huang Weijian tells her that there are also some shrimps in the pond. Seeing him taking out the pen to make a spell, Lin Luoran thinks it's too notable before dark. So she finds a silk-thread for him to fish.
When Lin Luodong is cleaning crabs, Goldie, which is as big as an eagle, flies back and throws two dark gray preys smaller than rabbits before her.
"Goldie, serious? You want us to eat rats?"
They are two fat rats that have been killed by Goldie. Lin Luodong picks them up with puzzling looks. In fact, rats are never an option of food for him.
Lin Luoran teases him: "They are bamboo rats only feed on bamboo, so they taste very good. Goldie caught them for us, but you don't even express your gratitude. Goldie, only two are not enough. Go to catch some more."
Goldie yells happily and then flows to the dense forests again.
Lin Luoran looks at the bamboo rats. They remind her of the old days when she was a receptionist after she had dropped out of college. She always worked during the day, and the boss would take her to work dinners at night. One day, they went to a fancy restaurant. A dish of roast bamboo rats smelled extremely good. But Lin Luoran was like decoration for the dinner, and she has the task of toasting. When she got the time for the dish, there was nothing left but a skeleton. Bamboo rats are human-raised animals whose meat costs dozens of yuan a kilo. At that time, Lin Luoran couldn't afford it.
Life is always nice to those who work hard. Today, they even have the chance of tasting wild bamboo rats. Lin Luoran peels off their skin and cuts down the claws. And then she cleans the giblets and seasons them. Wrapped in bamboo rind and mud from the pool, it is buried under a simple handmade oven. That's the way of cooking Beggar's Chicken. It will also work to make delicious bamboo rats.
On the other side, as Lin Luoran orders, Luodong has already slashed several bamboo tubes which are as thick as babies' arms.
"Sister, what are these bamboo tubes for?" Lin Luodong gives them to his sister and asks curiously.
Lin Luoran pierces a small hole at the end of a bamboo tube and cleans the inside. She takes some rice from the space and fills the tube with rice. After adding some water, she seals the hole and puts the bamboo tube over the fire.
Lin Luodong's eyes glow: "Are you making bamboo rice?" He has tasted bamboo rice before. Lots of unique restaurants in Rong City serve this dish. But he is still expecting the special original bamboo rice.
Lin Luoran is not totally a versatile person. She knew how to make bamboo rice from TV when she was young. It's a CTV documentary. The protagonist was a local minority girl from Yunnan Province. In the documentary, she went up the mountain to chop some wood with only a handful of rice for lunch. At noon, she lit the fire and made bamboo rice in this way. When the rice was cooked, and the bamboo tube was cut in two with a hatchet, Lin Luoran seemed to smell the delicious rice aroma from TV. She remembers all of it to this day.
After she makes a few tubes of bamboo rice, the water in the pot almost dries up. Huang Weijian's shrimp fishing goes well. He has caught a few shrimps. Lin Luodong runs to help. He washes crabs and shrimps, and then throws them in the pot. Putting some salt and ginger in it, he covers it and leaves.
Cyan little fox is the funniest one. It is unhappy about Goldie making a contribution by catching more bamboo rats. So it imitates how Huang Weijian catches crabs. It is funny enough for a fox to try its best to move a stone. Cyan little fox catches a big crab. It nips fox's claws. Cyan little fox's face is wrinkled because of the sharp pain.
Lin Luoran is going to help it but Goldie is quicker than her. Its sharp beak pecks the crab's back. The crab shell is fragile so it releases cyan little fox. The little fox is embarrassed by Goldie's help. It offers the big crab to Luodong and lets him cook it with other things together.
The tricky fox begins to be touched by the innocent Goldie. Lin Luoran, their owner, is back to clean other bamboo rats and buries them together.
The fire is blazing up nicely. They can smell the aroma wafting from the pot. River shrimps and crabs can't be overcooked. So Lin Luoran asks the two teenagers to wash their hands and eat shrimps and crabs first.
The most interesting part of cooking in the wild is to be spontaneous. The three of them just use bamboo sticks as chopsticks to pick up things in the pot.
Shrimps and crabs are so red when they are cooked. Salt and ginger are the only seasoning they use, which can keep the original flavors while removing the fishy smells. It's the purest taste of seafood. Goldie pecks a piece of crab shell and eats the meat with pleasure. Cyan little fox is always so clever. It uses a small cobblestone to break the crab shell. It picks all crab meat with a bamboo branch and doesn't waste even a little.
When they finish the meal, the fire is about to go out.
Lin Luoran takes out the roasted "black mud". The mud wrapped around bamboo rats has cracked. With a gentle tap, the mud layer all falls down. A delicious scent drifts around. Removing the rind of the bamboo, the golden rat meat is exposed, which makes their mouths water.
Cyan little fox is stunned. It is not a picky eater any more. Now it likes all delicious food with Reiki or not. It is mouthwatering, seeing Lin Luoran peeling off the bamboo rat.
Lin Luoran gives it a bamboo rat. Cyan little fox thinks for a while and hands the head, with the least meat, to Goldie.
Not only Goldie, but all of them also stun. And then they all laugh. A leopard cannot change its spots. The little fox has never been so generous to give others its food, though it's still only a little meat. That's really funny.
Lin Luoran hands another roasted bamboo rat to Goldie. And then she asks the two teenagers to peel off other rats. As for herself, she opens a few bamboo tubes. The bamboo tube is full of white rice. It's really good rice with a layer of oily color on the surface. It tastes neither too hard nor too soft.
The three of them eat bamboo rice with rat meat. They have eaten shrimps and crabs before. Now they are so full and don't even want to move.
The sun is about to be swallowed by the horizon. Lin Luoran cleans up the fire and gives the remaining bamboo rats to Goldie. It is the heroic hunter.
Lin Luodong says that he will go for a walk in the forest with Huang Weijian for better digestion. Thinking about her hasn't checked the thing she found before, Lin Luoran nods:
"Take Goldie with you so you won't get lost. Remember, safety is the most important thing. Please come back early."
There is nothing more exciting for teenagers than an evening adventure in such a deep old forest. Even Huang Weijian is a little excited. They set off with Goldie quickly.
Lin Luoran takes out the little thing she found in the root of the spirit bamboo. It is covered with black mud so she cleans it in the pool.
Water washes away the mud. It gradually reveals its original color. That's a metal stick which is a little thinner than the little finger, and is about five centimeters long. There are two carved characters that Lin Luoran doesn't know. She also doesn't know this kind of metal. Does this small metal stick turn ordinary bamboo into the spiritual bamboo?
Or maybe it is just a coincidence? But how about the reaction of the Heart of Druid? Since it's out of the Tower of Babel, it even loses its basic "listening" ability. Lin Luoran has studied it for a month but there is not even a clue.
She takes off the Heart of Druid which is a crystal as big as a goose egg and with a thin slit in the middle. It is said that the Heart of Druid was divided into two halves by the elf clan of the Fae World. When it comes close to the metal stick, it starts to buzz again.
Lin Luoran looks at the silver chain and the hole that the silver chain goes through. It's exactly the same size as the small metal stick. Lin Luoran unties the silver chain and puts the cleaned metal sticks in the hole—exactly! They are really one!
She doesn't know who brought this thing to the Tower of Babel, the Fae World, or the Sea of Bamboo in the south of Chuan province. Lin Luoran doesn't expect to match them together in her own hands.
It's so unreal.
She looks at the Heart of Druid, embedded with the small metal stick. There is nothing different. When she is about to put it away, cyan little fox jumps into her arms. Lin Luoran doesn't expect that so the Heart of Druid falls into the puddle.
"You little fox." Lin Luoran pinches its face and is going to pick it up from the puddle. At this moment, the Heart of Druid bursts into a strong light.
A beam of strong light points to the direction of the waterfall. There is a translucent screen above the turbulent current.
Many pictures spin at a very fast speed, just like testing Lin Luoran's eyesight.
Cyan little fox opens its eyes and is at a loss, while Lin Luoran is dazzled. There are lashing pictures, a silver matte ship, a circuit board covered with lines, dark and cold... mecha?
Is Heart of Druid just a projection machine?
Lin Linran flies into the air and clicks the flashing picture of the spaceship with her hands. The ship is huge and full of muzzles. Lin Luoran touches one place and then it's enlarged. No matter which picture, the same two characters are engraved on various objects, as it is on the metal stick.
"Yulee..."
Lin Luoran suddenly comes up with this word in her head, which totally scares her. She is about to look at the next picture, but she heard something. It's like Lin Luodong's voice.
Lin Luo quickly takes the Heart of Druid out of the water and runs to the deep forest.
| ← Ch. 307 | Ch. 309 → |