Chapter 41

Lu Shiyu walked into the camp with a basin full of fish-like creatures and began to process them.

Lu Shiyu first cut off its entire head. The book said that this type of fish's head is filled with all sorts of messy organs, leaving almost no edible parts, so he simply removed it all. Lu Shiyu felt the neatly packed, tiny scales, and finally reached for the cut in the fish's head. He made a small notch at the edge of the cross-section, and used his fingers to pry it apart, separating the skin and flesh. Then, he grabbed the part of the skin that had been lifted and tore it hard towards the tail. With a sizzling sound, a piece of fish skin was torn off, and then he moved on to the rest of the fish.

The fish skin and scales were torn off together, revealing tender pink meat inside, while the scales were perfectly removed.

The head contained most of the internal organs, while only one intestine remained in the torso. Lu Shiyu looked at the half-processed ingredients and wondered what to do next.

Although it is edible, there must be some undigested food residue in the intestines. If left alone, it is hard to say how it will taste.

Lu Shiyu pinched the torso with one hand and the fish tail with the other hand. He rotated the fish tail a circle and pulled it hard, and a complete intestine was pulled out together with it.

“It actually works.”

After all, it is not really a fish. Although this creature can swim in the water, it has no bones, so the deboning step is omitted.

After processing the other fish in the same way, it seemed that only one third of the fish in the basin that was originally full was left.

Put the meat in a bowl and marinate it with salt, cooking wine and light soy sauce for a while. Because the meat is too big, it may not be tasty if it is not marinated in advance. Lu Shiyu does not plan to cut it into small pieces and prepares to put the whole piece into the pot.

On the way, Yu walked to the river, washed a slightly flat large stone with water, took another basin, put flour, salt and alkali into the basin and mixed them, then added clean water in small amounts several times. After adding some, he stirred it in circles with his hands until the flour became a rough dough.

Take the dough out of the basin, place it on a clean stone, and start kneading it with your palms. After it is slightly smooth, you can start rolling the dough into long strips, then fold it, divide the kneaded dough into three sections, fold the two sections on both sides to the middle, and then continue to roll and fold it.

After kneading for about three minutes, put the dough back into the bowl, cover it with a lid and let it rise for 30 minutes.

After the dough has rested, keep kneading it in one direction to release the air, then straighten it into a long strip. Grab both ends of the dough with your hands, use your wrists to exert force, and keep shaking and pulling it slightly to make the dough longer. Then overlap and pinch the two ends of the dough together, and continue to grab both ends and pull it to make it longer. After ten minutes of pulling, the dough has been formed and can be pulled at will without breaking.

Sprinkle a handful of flour on the stone again, remove the two ends of the dough, and roll the remaining middle part into even long strips to ensure uniform thickness. Then pinch the two ends together, pinch the middle part with the other hand, and pull it to both sides with both hands at the same time. After stretching, repeat the previous action again. The dough gradually turns into countless noodles, increasing in number and becoming thinner and thinner. Finally, remove the two ends, and the remaining part is the finished product of hand-pulled noodles.

Pour the leftover shrimp oil from yesterday into the pot, add some cooking wine and heat it, crack a few duck eggs in, fry until they are half-cooked, then pour water into the pot, then add the freshly pulled noodles and fish, add a bowl of starch water, cover and simmer until the sauce is slightly reduced, finally add a few wild vegetables, add appropriate amount of salt, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and chili, and finally cook for one minute to mix the seasonings before serving.

"It's time to eat." Lu Shiyu said.

Yan Hong looked at the bubbling noodles in the pot with a serious expression, as if she was dealing with a very serious crisis.

"Wow! It doesn't look ugly at all!" Shaoxing Yang drooled as he looked at the sticky noodles in the pot.

After removing the skin, head and tail, only the tender meat of the trunk is left. At this glance, it is really hard to associate the meat in the pot with the strange fish in the water.

Shaoxing Yang picked up a piece of tender meat with chopsticks and waved it in front of Yan Hong: "Look, doesn't it look delicious~"

Yan Hong made a click of the tongue and waved her hand to knock Shao Xingyang's chopsticks away. The meat on the chopsticks slipped off. Shao Xingyang subconsciously used his hands to catch it, but both of his hands were burned red. The fish meat was like a hot potato at this moment, hot in the physical sense.

Lu Shiyu helped Tang Zeyu serve a bowl of noodles, put a piece of fish in the bowl, and sandwiched small pieces of fried eggs between the noodles. The sticky noodles were still emitting heat, which made people very greedy just by looking at it.

Tang Zeyu stirred up a large lump of noodles with chopsticks. The heat emitted from the bowl was finally completely released, and the white warm gas instantly rushed out of the blurred vision. Tang Zeyu blew on the noodles, and then took a big bite. The first feeling when he put it in his mouth was that the soup was firmly adsorbed on the noodles. The salty and fresh sauce had a hint of sweetness. The noodles gradually absorbed the soup during the stewing process, and the flavors were completely blended together. The outer layer was soaked in the sauce and was shiny, while the inside still retained a chewy texture. If you taste it carefully, you can also feel the wheat aroma from the noodles.

The fried and mashed eggs are interspersed among the noodles, adding a richer taste to the whole bowl of noodles.

The flesh of the creature that looks like a fish but is not a fish is soft, sticky and chewy. Because it does not undergo daily high-intensity exercise like fish, its taste is more like a mixture of meat paste and flour and cooked in water. The fish meat itself does not have any taste other than freshness and sweetness, but it has been fully flavored after being marinated in sauce and wrapped in soup.

Tang Zeyu ate mouthful after mouthful, not even caring that the noodles were fresh out of the pot and were still hot, and quickly devoured the whole bowl of noodles.

The others also buried their heads in eating noodles, but Yan Hong remained in that posture, looking at the gradually dwindling pot of noodles with hostility.

When Lu Shiyu saw Yan Hong's slightly rolling throat, he suddenly felt a little funny. She was obviously very greedy, but she refused to eat because of her stubbornness. She was just like a stubborn child in elementary school.

"Yan Hong, you really don't want to eat?"

"I don't want to eat it!" Yan Hong almost couldn't stop her saliva from flowing out, but she swallowed it back in time.

"Ah, what should I do then?" Lu Shiyu said with a distressed look on his face. "I made too much noodles today. It will be a waste if you don't eat it."

"I don't have much flour with me. It would be a shame to waste it like this." Lu Shiyu looked at Yan Hong and said, "Can't you help me with some?"

"It won't be wasted, I can still eat it..." Shaoxing Yang was stepped on by Chen Yunliang before he could finish his words.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see it." Chen Yunliang said without any emotion.

Shaoxing Yang: "..."

Yan Hong swallowed and said, "Then, I'll only help you eat a little, just to avoid wasting food!"

"Hmm," Lu Shiyu poured a bowl of noodles that was almost overflowing and gave it to Yan Hong: "Eat it."

Yanhong, who finally found the bottom of the stairs, immediately took the bowl and started slurping the noodles. The sauce was rich and the noodles were chewy. Who could resist it?

Yanhong had eaten half of it when Lu Shiyu picked up a piece of fish.

"Yanhong," Lu Shiyu stuffed the fish into Yanhong's mouth the moment Yanhong looked up: "Help me see if this tastes good."

"I can help too...ah!"

Chen Yunliang accidentally stepped on Shaoxing Yang's foot again.

"I'm so, so sorry," Chen Yunliang repeated, "I didn't see it."

Shaoxing Yang was furious: "Did you do this on purpose?"

Chen Yunliang pointed to his own eyes without glasses and said, "Without my glasses I'm just as good as blind. Please be more tolerant."

Shaoxing Yang didn't want to continue blaming him, so he continued to eat his noodles angrily.

Don’t do anything that will let your teammates down!

Several people worked together to finish the whole pot of noodles, leaving only a little soup at the bottom of the pot.

"Although this thing looks a little strange, it tastes amazing," Shaoxing Yang said, licking his lips as he finished eating. "I don't know how this stupid fish, which doesn't even put up a fight when caught, can survive in the wild."

"This isn't a fish," Lu Shiyu corrected him. "Although this creature looks like a fish, it's not closely related to fish. It's actually an amphibian. This is just its juvenile stage. It won't look like this when it grows up."

"What does that look like?"

Lu Shiyu looked up at the sky, pointed upwards and said, "It looks like this."

Shao Xingyang subconsciously looked up, and a shadow seemed to appear out of nowhere and fell on his face from above, scaring him so much that he fell backwards to the ground.

"What is this!"

Shaoxing Yang was filled with fear and anger, and he pulled off the unknown object that suddenly appeared above his head.

"This is its adult form."

Yan Hong and Chen Yunliang came over curiously, and the three of them looked at the so-called adult with distorted expressions like constipation on their faces.

The creature looked like a quadrilateral, very flat and large, like a quadrilateral piece of cloth, or a kite with a broken string, because its limbs stretched to the four corners like the skeleton of a kite, and only a small piece in the middle was its body.

The areas between its limbs are also very thin, like paper, consisting of just a layer of tough skin full of blood vessels, and its eyes are on its main body, probably in the center. The most uncomfortable thing is that its constantly rotating eyeballs actually have very pretty long eyelashes!

"I admit that its adult form is more disgusting than its juvenile form." Yan Hong said truthfully.

Lu Shiyu took out a book and explained: "This creature lives in water when it is young. As it grows, it develops limbs, which grow outward from its head, and its tail gradually disappears."

"Once they grow limbs, they can live on land. This creature likes to eat moss that grows in places where sunlight doesn't reach." Lu Shiyu looked up at the cliff beside him, "Like here."

Everyone looked up with her, and they all got goosebumps.

Because the skin of this creature is the same green as moss, and is covered with bumps of various sizes, it looks no different from the moss on the stone wall from a distance. Only by careful observation can you see some kind of deformed creature clinging to the stone wall.

"Their abdomens are specially structured so they can cling to rock walls. Their mouths are also on their abdomens, making it easier to eat. Uh, they also use this mouth for excretion."

Tang Zeyu looked up and down. There was water, stone walls, and moss. It was indeed very suitable for this kind of creature to live and reproduce. No wonder there were so many of them.

Lu Shiyu became more and more interested as he spoke: "Although this creature is aggressive, its attack power is not high, but..."

Yan Hong's eyelids twitched: "So, you have always known that these things have been hanging over our heads, right?"