Chapter 97
"A two-headed fire-breathing dragon? What is that?"
Lu Shiyu touched the bandage wrapped around his neck, which had been wrapped tightly. He turned around and asked Tang Zeyu. Tang Zeyu's eyes were vague, and he stammered, "It's just a monster from a special effects movie."
"Monster?" Lu Shiyu tried to recall the few special effects films he had seen and asked, "Are they some kind of little monsters from another planet that want to destroy the Earth?"
"Yeah, about the same."
Lu Shiyu found it a little funny: "You actually saw that, are you afraid of that Charizard?"
Tang Zeyu: "When I was little, my favorite character was killed by a two-headed fire-breathing dragon. I was very sad for a long time."
Lu Shiyu wanted to laugh, but then he thought, if the character he liked as a child was inexplicably forced to go offline, it would probably be very sad.
However, no matter how you look at it, the fact that Tang Zeyu saw a two-headed fire-breathing dragon in his hallucination is a bit darkly humorous.
After successfully escaping from the sea of flowers, the few people continued along their original route. The thrilling encounter in the sea of flowers wasted a lot of time, and they did not stop to rest on the rest of the journey. As dusk approached, they happened to walk to the foot of a mountain and prepared to rest there.
Yanhong took the initiative to pull Lu Shiyu to look for food around. The two of them walked around and found several strange-looking trees.
The trunks of these trees looked like the lines of a spiral upper body, the branches were also very twisted, and the leaves looked like something the two had never seen before. They were actually in the shape of a "human", as if the roots of two slender leaves were fused together.
If you look closely, you can find that there are fist-sized fruits growing under these "human" shaped leaves.
"Hey, what do you think of that one?"
Yanhong pointed to the fruits hidden under the leaves and seemed very interested.
Lu Shiyu said, "These fruits are all green. They are probably not ripe yet."
Yan Hong waved her hand and said, "Who cares? Just pick a few and see for yourself."
After saying that, he jumped up the tree like a nimble monkey.
The spiral tree was very easy to climb, with traction points everywhere. Yan Hong climbed to the top of the tree very easily, reached out to pick a fruit, and threw it to Lu Shiyu below.
"OK!"
Lu Shiyu stretched out his hands forward and kept looking up, afraid that he would miss the fruit. When the fruit was dropped, Lu Shiyu immediately locked onto the target and caught the fruit steadily.
"Got it!"
Lu Shiyu looked down at the fruit in his hand. It felt like an enlarged version of bayberry. There were many granular structures on the surface, and it felt like a bunch of water babies arranged closely together.
Lu Shiyu cut a piece with a knife. There was no core inside, only flesh. However, the appearance of the flesh looked a little strange. Lu Shiyu poked it and found it was a little springy, very similar to ham sausage.
I tried taking another bite. It was neither sour nor sweet. The outer skin felt like broccoli, while the inner flesh had no taste, but it tasted a bit like meat.
Overall, it doesn't have any strange smell and doesn't seem to be poisonous, so it should be edible.
"How about it?"
Yan Hong on the tree saw Lu Shiyu below and took a bite of the fruit without saying anything for a long time, then she opened her mouth and asked.
Lu Shiyu looked up at Yan Hong and said, "They're edible. Let's pick some more to take back."
"Okay!"
At this time, Lu Shiyu didn't realize what would happen next. He put the fruit in his hand aside and prepared to catch the fruit thrown by Yan Hong.
At the beginning, Yu was able to catch it steadily, put the fruit aside, and then go on to catch the next one.
But Yan Hong picked the fruits faster and faster, from picking one at a time, to picking two and three in a row, and later, two hands were almost not enough. She held the fruit in one hand and hurriedly picked it up with the other hand, without even having time to walk aside and put down the fruit.
"wait……"
Before Lu Shiyu could finish his words, he was hit hard on the head by a fruit. Yan Hong, who heard the noise from above, stopped.
"What's wrong...I*Lu Shiyu, are you okay?"
Lu Shiyu felt dizzy from the blow to his head, but he still pretended to be calm and said, "No...it's okay..."
Yanhong hurried down from the tree, not caring about the fruits scattered on the ground, and was eager to check Lu Shiyu's head.
"Be good, don't let me make you into a fool," Yan Hong turned Lu Shiyu's hair to check if there were any wounds. "Having Shao Xingyang as a fool in the team is enough."
"I'm really fine," Lu Shiyu tilted his head and let Yan Hong examine him. "The fruit is soft, so it only hurts a little when it hit me."
"I should have asked Shaoxing Yang to come pick it up earlier." Yan Hong was relieved after confirming that there were no injuries. "It's good that you're okay. See if there are enough fruits. If there are, don't pick them."
Lu Shiyu glanced at the ground and saw that there were quite a few of them, enough for them to eat.
"That's enough, let's go back."
By the time the two returned, the three had already prepared everything.
Seeing the two men coming back with a bunch of things, Shaoxingyang pounced on them like a dog seeing its owner come home.
"You're finally back!" Shaoxing Yang walked around the two of them a few times, but when he saw what they were holding in their hands, he looked puzzled.
"What is this? Fruit?"
Lu Shiyu looked down at the fruit. Could this be considered fruit? Not sure.
"I don't know, but it grows on the tree. You can try it first."
As he spoke, Lu Shiyu cut the fruit he had cut before into several small pieces and handed them to Shao Xingyang. Shao Xingyang took it and ran away as if he had obtained something rare, and gave a piece each to Tang Zeyu and Chen Yunliang.
"What is this?" Chen Yunliang looked at the piece of fruit pulp in his hand, and seemed unable to tell which category it belonged to.
Tang Zeyu didn't care too much and ate it directly. The outer granules were a little crispy, a bit like popping beads, but the taste was just that of ordinary vegetables. Overall, it was quite refreshing. The flesh part surprised Tang Zeyu. From the appearance, he thought it was similar to the flesh of watermelon, but when he put it in his mouth, he found that it had a soft and elastic texture, but not tough.
I feel like it would be good even eaten raw, maybe it could be made into a cold dish.
"Hmm, the taste is okay, but I've never eaten anything this strange before," Shaoxing Yang said, his cheeks puffed up as he chewed and analyzed, "It tastes a bit like a meat roll, but it's not meat. Hmm, it's a bit weird."
Chen Yunliang saw that Shaoxing Yang had no reaction after eating it, so he ate it with peace of mind.
Lu Shiyu put all the fruits in a large basin and washed them one by one, but he soon found that they could not be cleaned directly.
Because of the granular structure of the outer layer, it is easy for dirt and even small insects to hide inside. Simply passing it through water will not effectively clean it.
Lu Shiyu decided to change his strategy. He added salt and starch to a basin of water, stirred it to blend with the water, and then just let it sit for a few minutes. The dust and insects originally hidden in the fruit would be forced out.
Then rinse twice more until the water is no longer turbid.
When I was on the road, I cut the fruit in half, and then cut it horizontally and vertically into rectangular pieces for easy eating.
Because the outer skin of the fruit has a slightly bitter taste, it needs to be blanched in water. After blanching, you can set it aside to drain and prepare to put it in the pot.
Heat oil in a pan, pour in the blanched fruit pieces, add a little salt, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken essence, and minced garlic and stir-fry until all the fruit pieces are coated with the flavor of the seasonings and then serve.
The whole process takes less than ten minutes, which is convenient and fast.
Lu Shiyu put the fried fruit pieces on plates, filling up three plates. It looked like a large green piece, and the red color of the flesh did not make it look so plain, and it looked quite appetizing.
Lu Shiyu was also curious about what the fruit would taste like when fried, so he picked up a piece of the fruit and put it in his mouth.
The skin of the fruit has a sweet, grassy flavor, and you can feel a slight "snapping" sound when you bite it. It becomes a little soft because it has been blanched in water, and the taste is light and mild.
The flesh part is completely different from the skin part. When being blanched, the flesh part begins to turn red, and by the time it is served, it is red and white, like a sausage mixed with crispy bones.
The flesh perfectly absorbs the saltiness of the seasoning, and with its soft and chewy texture, when you first eat it, you would think it is meat rather than the fruit of some plant.
Apart from the salty taste, the flesh also has a subtle sweetness that balances the salty taste. The white tissue inside the flesh looks a bit like cartilage, but is actually an immature seed. It tastes crispy and makes the taste more layered.
The skin and the flesh are combined very harmoniously. When you eat it piece by piece, you have the illusion of eating a combination of meat and vegetables. Chen Yunliang feels that it is a bit like the molecular cuisine in Michelin restaurants, except that molecular cuisine is entirely processed by humans, while what they eat now is purely natural.
If distorted creatures are considered natural...
The stir-fried meat pieces served with rice were quickly eaten up by several people.
Even Lu Shiyu himself did not expect that this fruit would receive such a good response.
Shaoxing Yang threw the last piece of fruit in the bowl into his mouth, then leaned leisurely against the stone wall and yawned.
"Today was truly terrifying. Those flowers actually rely on creating illusions to parasitize us. Luckily, we woke up in time, otherwise we would have become distorted creatures covered in flowers."
Chen Yunliang: "I originally thought the flowers and animals had a symbiotic relationship, but I didn't expect they were just using the animals as food reserves."
Yan Hong sighed, "It's really the opposite of Tiangang. It's not animals eating plants, but plants eating animals. Tsk tsk, but this situation is not uncommon nowadays."
After all, after the distortion disaster, even plants can have strong mobility and high intelligence, and the relationship between animals and plants is no longer a fixed predator and prey. Animals can exist in captivity with plants, and everything is possible.
"Speaking of symbiosis, the big fish and lotus in the pond we encountered a few days ago actually have a symbiotic relationship."
Chen Yunliang suddenly thought of this and said it out loud.
The shell of that kind of lotus pod is very hard, and it is very difficult for it to germinate without external intervention. It just so happens that the big fish in the pond need to avoid being preyed upon by small fish when they are still fry, so they hide between the lotus flowers and lotus leaves. Some of the big fish will jump onto the lotus flowers to eat the lotus seeds. After eating the lotus seeds, the big fish will be stuck in the holes and cannot get out.
However, the big fish will not die because the hollow stem of the lotus pod will transport water to the top and supply it to the big fish, ensuring its survival.
After a period of time, the outer shells of the lotus seeds eaten by the big fish are digested, leaving only the small black seeds inside, which are excreted along with the feces. The digested seeds can germinate more easily, and the survival rate is greatly improved.
At this time, the lotus head has wilted and its entire head has drooped, so the big fish can successfully escape.
The lotus pods allow the seeds to germinate better, and the big fish also get food, which is a win-win situation.
"Perhaps it's because the deformed lotus has a different structure from the original normal lotus, so it needs the help of fish to help the seeds germinate."
Shaoxing Yang nodded, not knowing whether he understood or not.
"But why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?"
Shaoxing Yang was about to say something when Yan Hong and Lu Shiyu covered his mouth.
"He likes to study any deformed creatures he encounters. Just listen for your amusement."
Shao Xingyang didn't take it to heart and soon started talking about other things, which made both of them feel relieved.
After chatting for a while, everyone returned to their sleeping bags. A night passed and it was a new day.
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