Chapter 13
Tang Zeyu took a bite of the wing root. The crispy skin made a crackling sound, and the aroma of wood roasting and the taste of seasoning exploded on the tip of the tongue, with a subtle sweetness from honey.
Shaoxing Yang couldn't wait any longer, grabbing the chicken leg and devouring it. He devoured the crispy outer shell, the juices gushing out as they broke through the glassy shell, a blend of sweetness and saltiness filling his mouth. The heat locked in the moisture of the snaketail chicken, leaving the meat tender and succulent from the first bite. The rich, rich fat added to the deliciousness, the fat forced out by the heat, hidden beneath the slightly charred skin, ready to flow out at the first bite.
The crispy skin, as thin as a cicada's wing, is the essence of the whole roasted snake tail chicken. It is a technical job to ensure that the meat inside is fully cooked while preventing the outer skin from being burnt. Obviously, Lu Shiyu did it very perfectly. The skin has an oily sheen and is covered with tiny cross cracks, showing how crispy it is. It will break with just a light bite.
The method of roasting the outside and boiling the inside really makes this snake tail chicken more delicious than ordinary roasted chicken. Yan Hong just bit off a piece of meat, and the abundant juice made her shudder. Then she subconsciously swallowed the hot juice in her mouth.
Chen Yunliang wasn't as eager to eat as Yan Hong and Shao Xingyang. He stacked a piece of crispy skin and a piece of meat together, stuffed a half-cooked egg in between, and simply prepared them. He ate them both. The first thing he felt was the crispy skin on top, followed by the juices from the tender meat below, which flowed down his throat. Finally, the egg in the middle perfectly balanced the sweetness of the crispy skin and the savory flavor of the tender meat, creating a gentle blend of the two flavors. The smooth egg liquid exuded a unique egg aroma, making the roasted snaketail chicken more complex but not conflicting.
Several people waited until the snake tail chicken was roasted until they were almost fainted from hunger. When they were finally able to eat it, everyone ate it ravenously, looking like they were starving.
After a while, the whole snake tail chicken was eaten up, and Shaoxing Yang burped with satisfaction.
"It's so delicious," Shaoxing Yang said as he half-lay on the ground, leaning against his backpack and savoring the delicious taste of the roasted snaketail chicken. "This is the first time I've eaten such delicious roasted chicken. What will I do if I can't eat it again in the future?"
Lu Shiyu jokingly said, “Then mark this location on the map, and come here and catch one when you want to eat one in the future.”
"Really?" Shaoxing Yang sat up.
"Next time I'll ask you to lure away the snake-tailed chicken."
"Forget it." Shaoxing Yang lay back down.
Lu Shiyu was joking, of course. After all, this place was quite a distance from the base. How could they possibly travel so far and dangerously just to eat roasted snaketail chicken? But Tang Zeyu said nothing as he pulled out a map, found their approximate location, and drew a small image of a chicken drumstick on it to mark the spot.
After everyone finished eating, Lu Shiyu did not throw away the chicken bones left over from peeling the meat, but put them carefully in a box. Tang Zeyu, who was memorizing the map, saw her actions and asked her why she put the chicken bones in a box.
"You can save the bones for making soup tomorrow," Lu Shiyu shook the box in his hand and said, "I've invented this myself before. The taste of making soup with roasted chicken bones is almost the same as chicken broth."
Tang Zeyu suddenly thought of something and asked Lu Shiyu: "Oh, so that's what you said before. What's it?"
"Ah?" Lu Shiyu recalled what he had said before in the snake-tail chicken's territory, and suddenly became excited.
"I think I know why the ants crawled onto Shaoxing Yang!"
Shaoxing Yang, who was originally arguing with Yan Hong, subconsciously turned his head to look over when he heard about him.
"Ants? It must be those flowers," Chen Yunliang said, wiping his eyes with a cloth. "At that time, Shao Xingyang was the only one splashed with the liquid from the flowers, so he was the only one who encountered the ant night attack."
"That's right," Lu Shiyu nodded, and then said, "But that's only part of it."
"Part?" Everyone's interest was instantly aroused by Lu Shiyu.
"While the flowers are still buds, they begin to secrete a liquid, which we can consider nectar for now. As they prepare to bloom, the nectar becomes thick and almost fluid, hanging around the center of the flower. This attracts ants that feed on nectar and they begin to carry the nectar around the center of the flower. These ants also serve as a food source for the serpentines, as they gather where there are many ants. Therefore, the nectar attracts the ants, and the ants attract the serpentines."
Lu Shiyu added the last part: "And the food of those flowers is none other than the snaketail chicken!"
Shaoxing Yang was confused by the long string of logic, but Tang Zeyu reacted quickly.
"So the flowers, the ants, and the brittlebone chickens form a food chain cycle."
"That's right!" Lu Shiyu snapped his fingers and said, "There is also a stable food chain among the deformed creatures."
Chen Yunliang had heard about this before. After listening to Lu Shiyu's words, he nodded and said, "I have indeed heard from other exploration teams that the current deformed creatures have a new ecosystem and food chain just like the ordinary creatures in the past."
"Currently?" Lu Shiyu keenly caught the key words.
"It's normal for you to be unfamiliar with the situation since this is your first time away from the base," Yan Hong said, leaning on her backpack. "When the biological aberration disaster first started, things weren't as stable as they are now."
"At the beginning of the disaster, all sorts of creatures appeared that defied scientific explanation. A large portion of them appeared as if they were randomly generated. You couldn't imagine a snake with a dog's head, could you? But there were far more outrageous things than that. All sorts of bizarre and terrifying creatures appeared all over the world. They were also highly aggressive, going berserk on sight. Whether in the city or the countryside, any animal or plant life was affected."
Yan Hong changed into a more comfortable position, resting one leg on Shao Xingyang's leg. "Later, the government sent in the army to deal with it, but those creatures came from nowhere, and they kept coming. They were dangerous and numerous, and we couldn't use lethal weapons in the city. So, in the beginning, we could only take the beatings from the deformed creatures."
"And then?"
Lu Shiyu only remembered seeing a lot of scary-looking things on TV that year. He thought it was a cartoon at the time and was completely unaware of the coming disaster. Later, his parents arranged him to join the team entering the base and he never saw his parents again.
"Later, the government organized an evacuation, gathering everyone together to make room for the army to deal with the mutated creatures," Yan Hong said, as if she had thought of something, her tone tinged with helplessness. "But the mutated creatures weren't just on the surface, they were also underground. Some of them broke into the gathering area from below, causing massive casualties. The death toll from that miscalculation was even greater than the total of all the previous ones combined. It's impossible to put a specific number on the casualties; the ground was littered with broken limbs and debris."
Several people fell silent at the same time, and Yan Hong continued to talk about what happened that year.
"Some people at the time felt that if the government hadn't required concentration, so many people wouldn't have died at the same time. Ultimately, under immense pressure, the government made the final and most difficult plan: to build a survival base for human survivors."
"At that time, we mobilized all available resources. On the one hand, we had to resist the overwhelming wave of aberrant creatures, and on the other hand, we had to race against time to build a wall high enough to keep all the aberrant creatures out," Tang Zeyu continued, following Yan Hong's words. "In the end, at an extremely tragic cost, the cost of nearly annihilating the army, we bought enough time to build the base. After that, we had to screen those who would enter."
"Everyone arranges the front and back positions of the team according to the standards given by the base." Even the usually unruly Shao Xingyang became serious for once. "Let the children in first, followed by the young and middle-aged, then the middle-aged technicians, and finally the ordinary middle-aged and elderly people."
This is also the reason why there are almost no elderly people in the base. Most of the elderly people at the end of the line died for various reasons before entering and did not wait until their turn in the queue.
"Why doesn't anyone in the base know about this? And how did you find out?"
Tang Zeyu said, "Because we are the most special group in the base, all the members of the exploration team know this, but we can't reveal a single word to the ordinary people in the base who don't know the full picture. In their eyes, it's just a simple disaster after the people hide in the shelter to live. But if these details spread in the base, it will most likely cause panic and chaos, and the balance that has been so hard to maintain will be broken."
"Lu Shiyu, you have to help us keep this secret," Shao Xingyang said to Lu Shiyu with a smile, "If other people knew that we had told you this, we might be shot."
Lu Shiyu nodded woodenly.
"The base has remained tightly closed since that reception, and it wasn't until several years later that the first exploration team was sent out to gather intelligence. They were completely wiped out, but subsequent teams discovered records of mutated creatures among their belongings. Since then, new exploration teams have been formed and sacrificed. Their mission is to explore the world outside the base and provide intelligence to those within its walls. Those first few years were extremely dangerous; if only one out of ten people could make it back alive, they were considered lucky. Later, as the exploration teams gradually matured, the outside world began to become less dangerous."
"What about those deformed creatures that actively attack people?"
Yan Hong sneered: "Remember the dog-headed snake? It died for no reason, inexplicably."
"Those severely irrational, deformed creatures don't need humans to attack or kill each other. Left alone, they'll die on their own. Therefore, the safe environment outside the base isn't created by humans themselves. Instead, most of the monsters have died, leaving only relatively normal ones. For example, the snake-tailed chicken didn't die like the dog-headed snake, but instead successfully reproduced."
"Since the biggest danger is disappearing, has anyone inside the base ever thought about leaving the base?" Lu Shiyu asked.
"Of course I did, that's why I kept filming the exploration team going out, drawing maps, recording creatures, and studying characteristics. These all rely on the exploration team to complete," Shao Xingyang said with some complacency. "But those have nothing to do with us. Our team doesn't do such basic tasks. If we have to do something, we do the biggest one!"
Even though Shaoxing Yang spoke very arrogantly, the others did not refute him. The tasks they carried out were indeed difficult but not easy.
"Are you so powerful? Then why are you being crawled by ants and chased by snake-tailed chickens?" Lu Shiyu asked curiously.
Shao Xingyang instantly got furious: "Don't mention these things anymore!"
"oh."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
