Chapter 182: Super Super...
The goal of Bai Yi's team in leaving was to look at the situations of the remaining evolved humans in New Zealand. Unfortunately, even after walking for more than a week, they hadn’t managed to find any other evolved humans in the lush forests of the Devil Isles. Actually, it wasn't even just evolved humans, they couldn’t find any traces of human activity at all, just as if... everybody had died.
“We didn’t find even a single human!” Woolf said, bored, when they stopped for a while.
Bai Yi nodded. “En, we didn’t see even a single one.”
The evolved humans on the southern island of the Devil Isles had basically all gathered in New Christchurch back when it was established. With the tide of monsters that had attacked, the number of people who had managed to escape wasn’t many—probably less than 10,000. After more than a year, the number of people that still survived was probably even fewer, and that was why they weren’t able to find any other evolved humans.
“Let’s eat something first, then we’ll head to the City of Graves!” Bai Yi said.
None of them had any objections. Though New Christchurch had already turned into the City of Graves, it was still a place where they had worked hard before. They weren't going just to reminiscence about the past, but also because there might be signs of other evolved humans nearby. However, those were just their guesses; they still needed to make the trip to confirm them. Still, the most important thing now was filling their stomachs.
Bai Yi and Betsy were both chefs, so they definitely would not let down everyone’s stomachs. The mission of looking for ingredients was left to those few fellows who had nothing else to do. Actually, the matter of what foods they could manage to bring back each day was something that they all looked forward to with great expectations. Very quickly, Woolf returned carrying a vine of fruits. This plant looked like a fox’s tail, with many hard thorns at the end, and at the center were two lumpy, reddish-black fruits that were each as big as a soccer ball.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know what it is either, I’m just asking if it’s edible.” Woolf looked at Nancy.
Nancy was the Medicinal Maker, and she had managed to learn her field very comprehensively during her time in New Christchurch. Things like testing the medicinal properties of ingredients definitely fell to her. Everybody had decided by now that unless Nancy confirmed that something was edible, they wouldn’t dare to put most things into their mouths; otherwise, if they died, they really only had themselves to blame.
“I’ll open it up and see first!” Nancy said, holding her dissection knife. However, just when Nancy pressed the dissection knife against the surface of this fruit, she suddenly creased her eyebrows.
Bai Yi saw this and took the other fruit as well, trying to cut into it forcefully. So hard! Underneath that layer of soft hair on its surface, the fruit skin was practically as hard as a piece of steel. Bai Yi channeled his special energy into the blade, and slowly used force again, slicing into the fruit. ‘Puchi!’, this soccer ball sized fruit was finally sliced in half by Bai Yi, revealing the black flesh inside. Looking at it, this thing really didn’t seem like it was edible, but whether it was edible or not couldn’t be judged from just the color.
Nancy immediately began testing to see if this thing was poisonous and if they could eat it.
Very quickly, she nodded her head. “Edible, no poison!”
It was enough that it wasn’t poisonous; at least they wouldn’t die after eating it. As for how to make it tasty, that was Bai Yi and Betsy’s job. Bai Yi stretched out his finger, dabbed a bit of the fruit juice on it, and licked it.
Taste test!
Unfamiliar things had to be tested for poison first, and afterward Bai Yi and Betsy would taste the thing before discussing a way of cooking it. Unfamiliar ingredients couldn’t be randomly prepared just as they pleased the moment they acquired them.
Bai Yi licked his finger and his eyebrows immediately creased. He didn’t know how to describe this flavor. The juice had a metallic, rusty, and astringent taste, and it was still unbearably dense. Even if there was no poison in it, they couldn’t bear to eat this. Betsy saw Bai Yi’s face and tried the fruit as well, creasing her eyebrows similarly afterward. The stronger the taste of the ingredient itself, the harder it was to prepare it. For example, in the human world, things with a fishy smell needed other seasonings to cover it up.
“It tastes really weird?” The rest of them seemed quite happy seeing the expressions on their faces.
“An astringent and rusty taste, you guys try it too. If there’s no need to, let’s not eat this,” Bai Yi said.
Everyone tried tasting it after hearing Bai Yi’s words, and practically all of them had the same reaction as he and Betsy had towards this fruit. However, Woolf licked his lips after giving it a taste and dug out a small piece of fruit to throw inside his mouth. They saw Woolf’s actions and guessed that probably...!
“I need this!” Woolf said.
This kind of fruit was found by Woolf himself, and sure enough it was the type of food that Woolf needed.
After entering the Metamorphose Stage, the type of food they were inclined to eat changed very severely. It wasn’t that they couldn’t eat normal food, it was just that all of them had a feeling after entering the Metamorphose Stage that this kind of normal food wouldn’t help to nurture the changes in their bodies. However, they weren’t sure what elements they needed to absorb either. They only had a vague sense of it, and would just eat whatever was to their taste.
With things such as this fruit, the components inside it were completely useless to most people, and even though it was not poisonous, it was also not suitable to their tastes. However, for Woolf, this fruit might have contained some components that were necessary to him. When these kinds of components was absorbed into his body, his body would automatically make the adjustments and gradually change.
This was the true meaning behind the Metamorphose Stage!
“Understood. You want to eat it directly, or do you want us to cook it?” Bai Yi asked.
Woolf creased his eyebrows and said, “I think you can cook it a bit, this taste is really too disgusting. I’m scared that I will vomit if I eat it raw.” Although every lifeform that entered LV2 could sense what kind of food it needed, sometimes these ingredients really were too disgusting.
Bai Yi nodded. “We’ll try our best to make it more palatable to you.”
On Woolf’s side, he had captured prey and brought more than ten strange fruits back, but on the other side, Pupu and Romain hadn’t returned yet. Just when they started to worry about whether something had happened to them, Sharpei suddenly stood up and looked uneasily in the direction that Pupu had left in. All of them looked upon Sharpei’s actions and couldn’t help but be on guard as well. What was it exactly that could make even Sharpei so cautious like this?
Seeing that Sharpei was not only being cautious, but slowly retreating backwards now, Bai Yi immediately placed his hand on his sword hilt.
What is it!?
Just when everyone was guessing in their heads, suddenly the wind direction changed, and their location switched from being upwind to downwind. In an instant, all of their faces changed, and Sharpei was even swaying now.
Too damn smelly!
From that direction, the wind carried a strange smell that was absolutely indescribable. The moment they smelled it, all of them almost couldn’t help but want to vomit up everything in their stomachs. Sharpei’s nose was the most sensitive, so apparently, even though they had been upwind just now, he had still smelled this odor and couldn’t help but retreat.
At this time, everyone discovered the two swaying and staggering figures walking toward them, Pupu and Romain!
Seeing the piss-yellow liquid stains on their bodies and catching the stench drifting off from them, all of them knew where that smell came from. They could tell that Pupu and Romain themselves were about to pass out from that smell, but they still held on and made their way back.
Woolf pinched his nose and shouted loudly at them, “Don’t come over, you two idiots! Don’t come over, did you hear me?!”
Sharpei didn’t want to lose out either and stubbornly stood on his four legs, barking loudly at Pupu and Romain. The pose of Sharpei’s was incomparably vicious, even more vicious than when facing his blood enemy. However, Sharpei only maintained that pose for a few seconds before Pupu accelerated forward without fear of death, rushing toward them. Sharpei immediately lost his nerve and ran in the opposite direction with his tail between his legs. This was the first time that Sharpei had ever run away from Pupu.
Everyone saw this and couldn’t hold their laughter in; but they couldn’t truly laugh either, not with this smell still around them.
“Pupu discovered a plant that had some fruits on it, and insisted that I go and pluck them. But I only plucked one before I couldn’t take it anymore.” Romain pinched his nose and threw over a fruit that looked like a pineapple.
With such a short distance between them, Bai Yi subconsciously stretched out his hand to grab it. However, the moment he held it in his hands he immediately regretted this. He really almost passed out in that instant. This fruit had a dark yellow fluid covering its surface, just like what gathered at the bottom of a latrine pit, and the smell it gave off could only surpass what it looked like, and wasn’t inferior in any way. Most importantly, the moment Bai Yi touched it, this fluid immediately splattered, and Bai Yi’s face changed instantaneously.
Stinking up people within 3,000 miles around you!
Everyone around Bai Yi immediately vanished. Bai Yi himself couldn’t help but want to roll his eyes badly, but he still carefully put this thing on a log beside him. Pupu’s intuition didn’t need to be proven anymore, and since Pupu found this thing, it definitely had an extraordinary effect. It was just that... it was really too damn smelly.
Pupu immediately whined and said some simple human words, “Pupu, eat!” Recently, they had discovered that after entering LV2, Pupu and Sharpei’s vocal cords had slight changes as well, and they had slowly started to speak human words.
“Eat?!” Bai Yi looked at Pupu.
“Pupu, suitable for LV2,” Pupu said this sentence with a strange voice.
Since Pupu had already said so, all of them looked at the fruit covered in the viscous liquid. Suitable for LV2 Metamorphose Stage, but he didn’t say who it was suitable for. Did that mean it was suitable for all LV2 Metamorphose Stage lifeforms? If this wasn’t the case, then Pupu probably wouldn’t have brought this thing back either. However, oh my god, did they really have to eat this? All of them couldn’t help but roll their eyes while smelling this stench that could almost suffocate them to death.
Bai Yi looked toward everyone, and in the blink of an eye all of those who were caught in his gaze had a fright and disappeared instantly, fearing they'd be chosen by him as the first unlucky fellow to try this fruit. Bai Yi saw their actions and really wanted to scold somebody, they really could all run fast.
“You bunch of assholes, go and find a place to wash up!” Bai Yi shouted at them.
“The smelliest one is you,” Woolf muttered softly. Wasn’t that true? Just now Bai Yi had displayed his quick reflexes and was the first one to hold this fruit in his hands.
“Hmph!” Bai Yi put on a front and grunted coldly, and immediately turned around to head to the river close by. The rest of them laughed loudly and followed behind him; some of that liquid splattered on them too when they stood beside him just now.