Chapter 81: It Was So Bitter!
Translator: Law Editor: Hitesh_
Looking at the lemon-sized, black colored snake gallbladder, Lin Qiao opened her mouth wide, prepared to swallow it. When she put it into her mouth without any hesitation, it was torn by her canine teeth immediately.
Puff!
The bile flushed into her mouth, and then she froze.
‘d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n!’
“Roar!”
She gave a weird howl, then covered her mouth with her claws. Her entire face was twisted. After that, she sprung up and rushed toward the lakeside.
“Roar?” Being startled by Lin Qiao’s roar, Junjun hurriedly ran out of the small s.p.a.ce to see what was going on. She saw Lin Qiao lying by the lakeside with her whole face soaking in the water, but she didn’t know what had happened!
After soaking her face in the water and taking a few large gulps, Lin Qiao raised her head, holding a mouthful of water as she struggled up from the ground with a painful look. Then, she squatted by the lake to wash her hands.
The snake’s bile was so awfully bitter. She now felt that the bitter taste had occupied her whole tongue. It was so, so bitter! She had once tasted goldthread roots, but even that wasn’t as bitter as the bile!
She turned her head to spit the water held in her mouth, then finished was.h.i.+ng her hands and scooped some more water for herself to drink. After that, she finally felt a little better; but only a little, because the bitter taste in her mouth hadn’t faded yet!
She knitted her brows, gazed at the lake with a slightly twisted face. Suddenly, she had an idea.
As the lake water had magical effects, she wondered what would happen if she soaked the rest of the snake in the lake. Would the lake water be able to keep the snake meat fresh?
With this idea, she turned and ran back to the snake body, then swung her claws toward its skeleton tail.
Crack!
The skeleton half of the snake was disconnected from the upper body.
After that, Lin Qiao spread the snake’s skin which she had peeled off earlier on the ground, then cut the snake meat into pieces. As the snakeskin had been removed, her claws now became very handy. She cut off the snake’s bones and meat quite easily, then divided them into small pieces to pile on the snakeskin.
Fortunately, in order to water the strawberry plants, she had brought many buckets into her s.p.a.ce from the outside earlier. Now, she could put the snake meat in these buckets, then pour in the lake water to soak them. Instead of soaking the entire snake in the lake, she now only had to leave the snake meat in the buckets for a while to find out if the water could keep it fresh. Otherwise, if the snake went bad in the lake, the whole lake would stink, wouldn’t it?
She finished cutting with a bitter face, then went to wash her hands. After that, she didn’t go to get buckets herself; she took out a piece of paper and wrote a note, then walked to Junjun, who was standing at a distance to see what was happening. She gave the note to the latter, then dragged the skeleton half of the snake and its head, and disappeared.
‘Help me putting the snake meat into the buckets, then soak it with lake water.’
After coming out, Lin Qiao threw the snake bones and head to the gra.s.s aside, then touched her stomach. There was still a giant hole in her belly, and a half of her stomach was still missing. However, she had just swallowed half of a giant snake. Where did all that snake meat go?
‘This is unscientific!’ She thought.
But then, she realized that her becoming a zombie was already very unscientific! Was there anything more unscientific than that? So, she told herself that she should just get used to all that happened to her.
However, the problem was that even though she had eaten a ton of snake meat, she was still hungry! She suddenly felt that she was more like a constantly craving hungry ghost than a zombie!
While thinking about her current body condition, Lin Qiao entered that farm from another location.
She felt that the crops in this farm weren’t all inedible as the others believed. Even though all the crops here were infected by the virus, Lin Qiao believed that if she transplanted them into her s.p.a.ce and watered them with the lake water every day, the virus might be erased gradually.
She believed so because the strawberry plants in her s.p.a.ce were fairly healthy by now, and were almost free from the virus already. That awful smell was gone as well.
Lin Qiao wanted to find some edible vegetables from the farm, not only because of the little boy in her s.p.a.ce or Wu Yueling, who lived there before, but also because of her family. She believed that if foods had become scarce in the whole world, her family in the South might need some food to survive as well.
She was thinking that if she could find some vegetables which hadn’t mutated so severely in the farm and collect some seeds, she might be able to grow them in her s.p.a.ce.
She couldn’t tell for sure if the vegetables like cabbages would survive after being dug out and transplanted in her s.p.a.ce. That whole process would be a little troublesome, but she had to try, and could do it very quickly. As for beans and melons, their seeds would be easy to collect.
With these thoughts, Lin Qiao began digging vegetables in the farm. She directly dug out some well-grown vegetables and threw them into her s.p.a.ce along with the soil. She didn’t know if those vegetables could survive or not, but as she had successfully transplanted strawberry plants in this way, these vegetables might survive as well!
In fact, she knew nothing about gardening or agriculture at all! Right now, she was just making every possible effort.
She also found a lot of potatoes. The mutant potato plants looked a little weird, but Lin Qiao discovered that the potatoes which were buried underground were only slightly mutated.
Apart from that, she had also found something in common among the mutant plants in the post-apocalyptic world—The more a plant changed in appearance, the less amount of virus it turned out to contain. Some plants obviously had mutated and carried the virus, but in fact, they were mostly edible.
She felt that those plants might have developed these changes for self-preservation.
Lin Qiao was in quite a haste to head to her hometown, but at that moment, she still stopped in the farm for those possibly edible vegetables. She did that because one day, what she did here might help her family. But of course, that was only if her family members were still alive.
In consideration of time, she only spent about half a day in the farm. She picked some lightly infected vegetables, including a pile of giant pumpkins and some potatoes, even including a few uninfected plants. Apart from those, she also collected some old, half-dried beans for seeds.
After that, she entered her s.p.a.ce, found a clearing, and began digging. She didn’t have a hoe or any other tools, so she could only dig with her claws.
Junjun put her son on the bed which was placed on the gra.s.s and used to belong to Wu Yueling, then went to help Lin Qiao.
After Lin Qiao finished digging holes, Junjun planted the vegetables in the holes along with the soil from the outside, then earthed it up. After that, she carried some water from the lake to water the vegetables. They worked for quite a while. Only until the little boy sat up on the bed and called his mom did they stop.
“Mom! I’m hungry!” The little boy widely opened his black and bright eyes, saying while looking at Junjun, who had washed her hands and was walking toward him.
After eating the strawberries, the little boy’s eyes weren’t as dull as before. However, his face still looked sallow.
Junjun was still worrying about her son’s physical condition, but it was already way better than before when she hadn’t met Lin Qiao. Back then, she couldn’t find any food or water for her son, and had been worried sick. So, at least the situation was turning out to be better.