Liu Geyang agreed to help Qingshan catch twenty golden-headed centipedes, and took Niu Zaizhao to a dense forest. He lowered his head and searched among the rocks and grass, occasionally using his hatchet to dig a few times. Niu Zaizhao frowned at him and couldn't help asking him:
"Liu Geyang, the golden beetle is perched on a branch, why are you always looking into the grass?"
Liu Geyang turned over a stone as big as a watermelon. The insects under the stone saw the light and immediately fled in all directions. Among the insects was a centipede as long as a foot, with densely packed segmented legs, a golden head and a black back. It had a pair of sickle-shaped poisonous jaws that opened and closed, and it twisted its body and fled into the grass.
Liu Geyang's eyes lit up, and with lightning speed, he stretched out two fingers, pinched the back of its head half an inch, and lifted it up. The centipede's vitals were pinched, and it desperately twisted its body to wrap around Liu Geyang's hand, its venomous jaws opening and closing, but it couldn't turn its head to bite, and its twenty-one pairs of leg segments trembled in vain.
"Niu Er, quickly get me a box—"
Niu Zaizhao deftly took out a lunch-box-sized reptile breeding box from his bag, opened the lid, and waited for Liu Geyang to throw the golden-headed centipede into the box. Niu Zaizhao then immediately closed the lid. His movements were swift and smooth, and the two of them cooperated very well.
Liu Geyang patted the dirt off his hands, carefully took the breeding box, and carefully inspected the insect body until he was sure that the golden-headed centipede was intact, then he put the breeding box into his bag.
"What are you catching centipedes for?"
"Didn't I tell you my sister is a Chinese medicine practitioner? She was treating someone and needed golden-headed centipedes as a medicine inducer, so she asked me to catch a few and send them over. You see, my sister finally talked back to me, how could I not agree, hehehehe!"
Niu Zaizhao's face was full of black lines, thinking to himself, you are catching bugs for Chen Qingshan, how come it's like you won the lottery!
"Then, then you won't catch the colorful-armed golden beetle anymore?"
Liu Geyang bared his teeth and smirked, saying, "Hey, those things are rare to begin with, so how can they be that easy to catch? We go up the mountain every day, and so far we've only caught two pairs of scarab beetles. It's normal not to catch any, but catching one would be a surprise! So, Niu Er, can you help me catch the golden-headed centipedes first, and while we're at it, we can look for the colorful-armed scarab beetles while we're at it?"
Niu Zaizhao looked at Liu Geyang's expectant eyes, sighed, and nodded in agreement.
"Niu Er, you are really my lucky star. What would I do without you..."
Liu Geyang muttered as he paced through the woods. Niu Zaizhao looked at him from behind, his eyes tender enough to shed tears. The two of them caught as they went, and soon they had gathered twenty, each one shiny and in excellent condition.
They were already quite far from the Fengyu Slope meeting point. They checked the time and saw they still had forty minutes to meet up, so they turned and headed back. Just then, there was a rustling sound in the surrounding woods. Niu Zaizhao, a girl after all, was a little scared. She grabbed Liu Geyang's arm, pointed at the swaying bushes, and said in a low voice:
"W-what?"
Liu Geyang was also a little brave. He held the hatchet in front of Niu Zaizhao and shouted to give himself courage:
“Hey! Come out! I can see you!”
Liu Geyang was just trying to win, but who would have thought that a person would actually appear. He was wearing a gray jumpsuit, holding a samurai sword, and looking at them expressionlessly.
"Huh!" Liu Geyang breathed a sigh of relief and lowered the hatchet in his hand.
"It's you! I thought it was a wild boar—!"
It was unclear whether the man in gray could not understand Chinese or simply did not want to pay attention to Liu Geyang. He stood there, staring at the two of them.
Niu Zaizhao saw that the man in gray was the Japanese who had pulled leeches that day, and he felt a little scared. He pulled Liu Geyang's clothes and said:
"Liu Geyang, he might not understand Chinese, let's go!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
