Now, let alone Haru refusing food, even if the food contained several pounds of arsenic, Haru, who was already starving, would eat it without hesitation.

Haru, who had eaten a little more, had a satisfied expression on his face.

This is probably the most they've eaten in the past few days, even though this amount of food is less than a quarter of their normal intake.

After eating his fill, Haru didn't rest much. He gathered his people and continued to work diligently.

With the addition of Haru's army, all the stones that could be cleared out on our side have been cleaned up.

In addition, with their spare time, the tribespeople and Haru began to widen the ditch to one meter.

This request wasn't made by me; it was decided after discussions between the two tribal leaders.

We suddenly have four or five hundred more mouths to feed, so we need an astronomical amount of water every day just for drinking.

Now we can divide the Haru tribe into two teams, with the members of the two tribes on our side forming one team, and continue to expand this future public water area.

Because those boulders needed to be processed, it took me an entire afternoon to prepare the nitroglycerin.

After evacuating my people and Haru, I lit an extended fuse several meters long. With several violent explosions, those once-mighty boulders were instantly reduced to rubble by the power of the nitroglycerin.

Haru's army and the tribesmen quickly cleared away all the rubble. With that, the more than ten-kilometer-long circular irrigation canal was finally completed.

The river water flowed smoothly into the entire circular canal, and soon the silt settled down, and the water became clear.

Our people were very happy; the first step was finally complete. Haru, though puzzled, saw that the other side was pleased to have built an irrigation ditch and assumed it was just for easier access to water.

With the first problem solved, the next step is to address everyone's food needs.

Although some potatoes and cassava have already been planted on this land, it is impossible for them to grow enough food in just a few days.

With so many mouths needing food, we can't just wait for plants to slowly grow the food.

Fortunately, we are close to a large river, and we have a significant advantage in numbers. As long as we do more extended fishing and let the lines out a bit longer, the fish in the water won't be affected by the seaweed, and they can serve as our long-term food source.

The fishhooks have naturally been replaced with steel ones. After numerous experiments, the optimal carburizing ratio has been determined. The resulting fishhooks are not only sturdy and durable, but also sharper than the previous ones.

Considering the presence of other predators in the water, the hook was tied to a thinner leader line. This way, even if the hook was pulled away, the main line wouldn't break.

To deal with larger predators, we used thick rope as the main line and a large amount of spider silk to make a thumb-thick leader. A single fishhook weighs a full pound.

The inner row of hooks is for fishing, while the outer row is for catching those blind predators who want to gain without effort.

However, we are still very poor and don't even have the means to fish for those aquatic predators. This problem can only be solved by ourselves using homemade fishing rods.

Fish bait is still easy to find today; there were plenty of earthworms when the irrigation ditches were being dug.

I had my people peel the bark off a tree and make a bark box. They put some soil inside and collected all the earthworms in the box.

These earthworms came in handy. We put them on our hooks, found a random spot, and cast our lines. Before long, we caught dozens of fish of all sizes.

The largest fish weighed over ten pounds, while the smallest was still over a pound. This made Haru, who was continuing to dig by the ditch, so envious that he kept swallowing his saliva.

They knew that fish were edible, but they didn't know how to catch them in such a large river.

Previously, Haru could only catch fish to eat in shallow waters like streams by relying on their numbers. So, seeing fishing for the first time was still quite novel for Haru.

However, we don't plan to eat these fish; there are bigger prey waiting for us in the water.

These fish can be used as bait to lure them onto the hook.

While we were fishing, everyone kept their eyes glued to the surface of the water, carefully observing any movement.

The main purpose is to prevent floating rotten logs from getting closer to us. Those logs are very likely not logs at all, but rather the monstrous crocodiles that dominate this water.

We dared not stay on the surface of the water for too long. Although this area was a shallow beach less than half a meter deep, the bottom of the water was clearly visible.

But considering that the lake monster I encountered back in my hometown also has branches in this river, the advantage of this shallow water is not so obvious.

I witnessed it with my own eyes; those lake monsters could use their tongues to flick land animals into the water. If you're not careful, these creatures can be even more dangerous than those deinosuchus.

With that in mind, we weren't in a hurry to use timed fishing. There are so many monsters in the water, and they're huge. Wouldn't catching a few be much better than fishing?

With that in mind, we put a live fish directly on the hook we used to fish for the giant monster in the water.

Using live prey to catch the giant fish in the water is the ideal method; our live fish are not directly hooked onto that giant fishhook.

Instead, the fish's fins are tied tightly with a double knot using a thin rope, and then the thin rope is tied to the spider silk line at the end of the hook.

This way, the baitfish can stay fresh for a long time, and since the fish are constantly swimming, the rope will also go to farther and deeper places with the fish.

This fishing method is irresistibly attractive to other predators in the water, and the fish's swimming posture will look unnatural due to the weight of the hook.

These subtle differences may seem insignificant to humans, but to predators who have long dealt with these foods in the water, these fish are signs of injury.

Injured fish are usually not very agile, so they naturally become targets for predators in the water.

We tied the other end of the thick rope to the trunk of a banyan tree that could be embraced by two people. I'm sure that if anything dares to eat these fish, it won't escape our hundreds of hungry mouths today.

Watching the several-pound fish swim further and further away, we were filled with anticipation and excitement. The joy of fishing lies in the fact that you never know what you'll catch next.

At that moment, we were staring intently at the taut rope when suddenly an unusual tremor came from it.

The rope had clearly been pulled violently by something; the noise was definitely not something a fish weighing a few pounds could make.