Chapter 11
The three of them looked at the ball of soil in Lu Shiyu's hand. No matter from which angle they looked at it, it was just ordinary soil.
"Is this the treasure you were talking about? It's just a ball of dirt, where's the treasure?" Shaoxing Yang said in confusion, pointing at the ball of dirt.
"You'll know soon after you cut it open."
Lu Shiyu returned to the camp with the soil ball. When Yan Hong saw them coming back, she asked if they had found the thing.
"I found it. Here it is."
Yan Hong looked at the ball of soil in Lu Shiyu's hand with the same puzzled expression as Shao Xingyang.
Lu Shiyu carefully held the soil ball and walked to the backpack. He took out a slightly larger bowl and a spoon from the bag, swept away the soil on the surface of the soil ball as much as possible, then placed the bowl flat on the ground, repeatedly aligned it, and cut the soil ball with a short knife.
A little crystal clear liquid slowly dripped out from it. As the road was cut deeper, more of this transparent liquid flowed out.
"This is..." Chen Yunliang pushed his glasses and already had a guess in his mind.
"Tang Zeyu, please help me get it."
Lu Shiyu handed half of the soil ball to Tang Zeyu, and the internal structure of the soil ball was finally clearly presented to everyone.
There are countless water-drop-like balls inside the soil ball, which are tightly stuck together one after another, just like a pomegranate with no gaps at all. However, the protective membrane of these balls is very fragile. Lu Shiyu just needs to dig lightly with a spoon and a large number of balls will break. The liquid inside will then flow out and finally flow into the bowl below.
Lu Shiyu used a spoon to dig out all the round balls inside the soil ball, and finally only a small part along the soil shell was left. Lu Shiyu was worried that if he continued digging, he would dig through it and cause the soil ball to break, so he gave up the idea of scraping the liquid stuck on the soil shell into the bowl.
But these liquids cannot be wasted. Lu Shiyu poured half a bowl of warm water into it, and half of the soil ball instantly turned into a soil bowl. Lu Shiyu stirred the water with a spoon to allow the water to dissolve as much of the liquid as possible. When it was almost done, Lu Shiyu handed the half bowl of water to Yan Hong and others who were watching on the side.
"Come, try it and see how it tastes."
"Taste?" Yan Hong looked at the earthen bowl in her hand uncertainly. The liquid inside seemed to be no different from ordinary water, and it smelled normal too. Yan Hong took a sip, and the warm sweetness flowed into her throat. The sweetness was mixed with an imperceptible floral scent, and the sweet taste rippled on the tip of her tongue, as if even the exhaled breath became clearer.
"It's sweet, like honey water."
Yan Hong described the taste in detail, but couldn't help wondering, "But why is the honeycomb inside the soil ball? Don't bees use beeswax to build their nests? Would soil make it stronger?"
Lu Shiyu took the other half of the soil ball from Tang Zeyu's hand and continued to dig the honey inside, while not forgetting to answer Yan Hong's questions.
"No, this isn't honey. It's ant honey."
"Ant honey." Yan Hong instantly understood what this was and was a little stumped as she said, "So, these are obtained from ants."
"Yes," Lu Shiyu said, turning the spoon in a circle and collecting the last bit of ant honey perfectly. "I've seen this kind of ants in a book before. They feed on nectar and make honey just like bees. The finished product is collected together and sealed with a hard earth shell for their granary, eventually forming a soil ball like this as their food reserve."
"Anyone who could write a book like this must be a bit psychotic," Yan Hong complained. "Who would dig up an ant nest to see if there's anything there?"
Lu Shiyu did not put the dug ant honey directly into the jar, but took out a small sieve from the bag to sift it, filtering out the film and debris that accidentally fell, leaving only pure ant honey.
After Lu Shiyu finished filling the ant honey, he held it up and admired the fruits of his labor. Ant honey is different from honey. It is not white or amber, but transparent. There are also a few small bubbles in the bottle of ant honey, which looks like honey.
"Do we need to soak the rest in water as well?" Tang Zeyu asked, holding half of the soil shell.
"I won't soak this in water. I have other uses for it."
Lu Shiyu took the soil shell, put a spoonful of flour and a spoonful of warm water into it, and stirred it to form a shapeless dough.
"What is she going to do?" Shaoxing Yang was curious about what Lu Shiyu wanted to do while drinking honey water.
Lu Shiyu scraped the dough off and put it into another glass bottle. The glass bottle was first disinfected with hot water and then wiped with a paper towel to keep it clean and free of water and oil.
Lu Shiyu put the dough into the glass bottle and put it away directly, leaving those who were looking forward to the follow-up disappointed. Fortunately, there was still some ant honey water left in the bowl.
After solving the sudden ant crisis, everyone finally rested and went to sleep. They had to travel every day and were always pressed for time. Rest time seemed particularly precious and short. They would open their eyes and it would be the next day in the blink of an eye.
After last night's farce, the group obviously did not get enough rest. They were panting heavily after getting up in the morning. They had no way to make up for the lack of sleep and had to continue to rush towards their destination.
Before they had walked far, Yan Hong suddenly felt as if there was some sound, but it was not clear. Yan Hong stopped to look for the source of the sound. When the other people saw Yan Hong suddenly stop, they asked what happened.
"Didn't you hear any noise?"
"Sound?" Tang Zeyu also began to search around to see if there were any strange sounds, but he heard nothing.
"What sound is there? Maybe you didn't sleep well last night." Shao Xingyang didn't hear any sound either.
"It really was there, why did it disappear again?" Yan Hong frowned, very sure that she had heard it.
"Woo woo~"
"Listen! It really is there!"
Everyone heard this sound, but the sound kept echoing in the woods, and for a moment it was impossible to tell where the sound came from.
"Everyone, take up your weapons." After Tang Zeyu gave the order, several members of the Flying Eagle Squad immediately showed their weapons.
Lu Shiyu looked left and right, and finally took out the dagger that Yan Hong gave her last time, and held the dagger in her hand like the others.
Several people moved forward with weapons in hand. From time to time, they heard strange sounds. It was not known what creature made the calls, but it also sounded like someone sobbing softly. The sound echoed in the secluded woods, like a scene from a horror movie.
"What the hell is that screaming? It sounds like a ghost crying." Shaoxing Yang looked around but didn't find anything suspicious.
"Don't worry, it can't be haunted." Chen Yunliang said half-jokingly.
"Who knows? Maybe ghosts really will appear after biological deformation."
"Hey, stop talking nonsense. Biological deformation isn't some strange thing. Where does the ghost come from?"
A few people tried to ease the atmosphere by chatting, but as they walked further away, the sound became clearer.
At the beginning, the few people were able to make jokes to divert attention, but later the shouting became louder and more frequent, and the conversation between the few people gradually became quieter.
Finally, a few people saw a few black spots in the distance. When they got a little closer, they could see that it was actually a large group of snake-tail chickens.
Shaoxing roughly counted the number and said in surprise, "There are so many?"
"Maybe it's a social animal, although I don't know if pheasants live in groups," said Chen Yunliang.
"Do we need to take a detour? It seems like there are too many of them." Yan Hong suggested.
Shao Xingyang scratched his head and said, "Not really. They're just a bunch of chickens. Just go over there."
Several people's eyes were focused on Shao Xingyang, who had not yet realized what he had said wrong.
"What's wrong?"
Next second
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
Shaoxing Yang was kicked out from behind the tree trunk by an unknown force and was completely exposed in front of the snake-tailed chickens. The snake-tailed chickens, which were originally pecking at the ants on the ground seriously, all looked at him.
"Um...hi..."
“Wuwuwu——!”
The snaketail chickens rioted instantly after seeing the invader, making strange and deafening calls and flapping their wings to fly towards Shaoxing Yang.
Shaoxing Yang was instantly surrounded by a group of snake-tail chickens. He was almost buried by them and ran away, crawling and rolling, leading away the snake-tail chickens that had gathered there.
"Wow, their fighting power is pretty good," Chen Yunliang said, pushing up his glasses with a smile. "Although their single attack isn't particularly powerful, this number is enough to give us a headache."
Lu Shiyu asked Tang Zeyu with some concern: "Is he okay? It's not a good idea to let him lead the chickens away like this."
"It's okay, he's used to bad luck."
The plan of several people was very simple and crude. Shaoxingyang would lead the group of snake-tail chickens away, and then several people would go straight through and catch up after Shaoxingyang got rid of the snake-tail chickens, so that more people would avoid taking detours, except Shaoxingyang.
Just as they were about to take advantage of the absence of the snake-tailed chickens to cross the area, Yan Hong suddenly pulled a few people back, looking a little serious.
"What's wrong?"
"No," Yan Hong repeatedly searched with her ears: "No, around here..."
The sound of flapping feathers came from above.
"There are also snaketail chickens nearby!"
As they were talking, several snake-tail chickens fell from the sky and surrounded them.
Unlike the previous snaketail chickens on the ground, the feathers of these snaketail chickens look gray and thicker, but they are all the same in their vigilance against foreign invaders.
Lu Shiyu looked up and found that there was a bird's nest with a diameter of more than half a meter on some tree branches. Lu Shiyu speculated that these snake-tailed chickens might have flown down from there. He didn't expect that the snake-tailed chickens would build their nests on trees.
"Woo woo woo~"
Yan Hong realized that the call of the snaketail chicken in front of her was closer to what she had heard before.
"These snaketail chickens are probably female, and their voices are very penetrating. We must deal with them as soon as possible, otherwise it will be disastrous when they call the males back."
Yan Hong finished her words quickly, and she and Tang Zeyu flew out like arrows, wanting to get rid of these females as quickly as possible. Chen Yunliang was responsible for protecting Lu Shiyu, who had no fighting ability, and preventing the snake-tailed chickens from attacking from behind.
The serpentine has a certain ability to fly, otherwise it would be impossible to build nests in trees. Therefore, the attack range of these serpentines is much larger, and they may even attack from the air. In addition, the serpentine also has extremely sharp claws, which can be used as tools to allow them to hold firmly on branches, and can also be used as weapons to attack enemies.
These "weapons" that are easy to use in daily life are no match for the Eagle Squad. Both of their knives are extremely sharp, and they can smoothly cut off the head of the snake-tail chicken with just one stroke. However, this overly fast killing made Lu Shiyuzhi anxious.
"Wait! We can't kill them all, or this flock of snake tail chickens might just disappear!"
"It's already this late and you still care about this!" Yan Hong said this, and her actions agreed with Tang Zeyu. She should use the back of the knife to knock out the snake-tail chicken, because the snake-tail chicken would fly around and sometimes she would miss even after one hit.
Although this significantly reduced efficiency, it ensured that the females of the snake-tail chicken were not wiped out at once.
Lu Shiyu had just breathed a sigh of relief and didn't notice the snake-tailed chicken attacking him from behind. Just as its sharp claws were about to grab Lu Shiyu's back, a short arrow flew through the air and hit the snake-tailed chicken's head.
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