Chapter 152: Chapter 151: Vulture Egg
They ran for their lives. Back at the camp, they looked up at the dense, dark shadows in the sky and were still terrified.
They had encountered the Vultures before. They were fast and incredibly ferocious; sometimes, even guns were useless against them.
A single peck could pierce a skull, and they had a particular fondness for eating brains.
The memory of those scenes filled everyone with terror.
There was still a pile of unprocessed entrails and snake meat on the ground, which would attract the Vultures sooner or later.
The tents offered no real protection, and they wondered if Jiang Si would let them hide on the Icebreaker.
If they were of no use and, on the contrary, needed help time and again, they figured Jiang Si’s group wouldn’t want them to stay.
Zhang Aihua made a swift decision. "Bury all the sea snake remains right here," he told everyone. "Grab your bags. We’re hiding in that cave up ahead."
That cave up ahead was where Jiang Si had previously discovered the mother moose.
If they could find a way to block the cave entrance, the Vultures shouldn’t be able to get in.
Everyone raced against the clock. After moving all their belongings into the cave, they hauled large logs to block the entrance, leaving an opening just big enough for one person to pass through.
But the cave was freezing, so they had to constantly burn wood for warmth.
Before long, the entire cave was filled with choking smoke.
It was extremely uncomfortable.
But to survive, they had no choice but to bear it, taking turns going to the entrance for fresh air.
Jiang Si was a little surprised that Zhang Aihua hadn’t asked them for help. Suddenly, she understood how he had become the leader of the southern shelter in her past life.
He was hard on himself and could rally people around him at a moment’s notice, making everyone listen to him and maintaining his position as the group’s leader.
The Vultures, having come across such a rare free lunch, scrambled to start eating.
But these were Red Flower Sea Snakes, and they were all poisonous.
The Vultures ate the Red Flower Sea Snakes, and soon after, the poison took effect. They died on the ice. The Vultures that arrived later began to eat their corpses—cannibalizing their own kind. After three straight days of this, they were all wiped out.
Jiang Si’s group had been worried, wondering if they should move the Icebreaker and find a new location.
Unexpectedly, before they could even decide, the problem had solved itself.
Jiang Linhai said worriedly, "Now that these Vultures are dead, will they attract some other monsters?"
If another wave of creatures came and the poison was too diluted to kill them, their peaceful life would be completely shattered.
Jiang Si said, "What’s coming will come. We’ll deal with it then. But for now, Vulture feathers are the highest quality waterproof and insulating material. Let’s get a move on and start plucking! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
Her words got everyone excited.
Shen Baoying laughed. "If we pluck them all, it’ll probably be enough to make ten years’ worth of down coats for the monkey troop."
Jiang Si smiled. "You can never have too much, only too little. We should hoard good things when we find them!"
If her dimensional space wasn’t already full, she would definitely be hoarding many, many more Vulture feathers.
In her past life, she had nearly died, surviving only by the skin of her teeth after finding a dead Vulture.
She recalled the feeling of crawling under that Vulture’s wing; she would never, in two lifetimes, forget that feeling of Warmth.
Shen Baoying asked, "Should we go tell that other group that all the Vultures are dead?"
Jiang Si thought for a moment. "They’ll figure it out and come out on their own. They can’t hide in that cave forever."
The Vulture’s down was the best. Jiang Si’s group, each with a large burlap sack, filled up an entire truck in no time.
The monkey troop had also come to help. They were nimble, leaping and scrambling around, and they worked even faster than the humans.
To prevent them from sneaking bites of the Vulture meat, Qin Shen had given them a stern warning with his aura, and Jiang Si had also fed them until they were full.
Suddenly, the Monkey King started jumping up and down, letting out excited cries.
Jiang Si stood up and looked toward the Monkey King.
She saw him pull a round, still-warm Vulture Egg from a Vulture’s rear end.
Jiang Si was stunned. ’That egg is huge.’
It was almost a meter tall.
Jiang Linhai circled it and laughed. "This one egg could feed us for more than a month."
Jiang Si recalled how people in her past life had tamed flying Exotic Beasts, and a bold idea suddenly popped into her head.
’What if we raised some Vultures from a young age to be our mounts?’
’One hundred kilometers for ten kilograms of meat.’
’That sounds... awesome!’
Helicopters can’t fly if they encounter blizzards or other severe weather.
Vultures are the champions of the sky. They can completely ignore harsh weather, soar freely, and carry them along for the ride.
Jiang Si suppressed her excitement and quietly asked Qin Shen, "Do you think it’s feasible for us to raise Vultures?"
Qin Shen’s gaze paused. He seemed to be lost in a distant memory before replying to her with certainty, "We can. I’m confident I can tame them."
Jiang Si’s eyes lit up. She couldn’t help but stand on her tiptoes and give him a kiss. "You’re my greatest treasure! So, should we move the egg back and incubate it?"
Qin Shen smiled, his face full of adoration. "Alright."
Jiang Si told everyone her idea. To her surprise, no one was shocked. Instead, they looked even more excited than she was.
They were already raising a troop of monkeys; what couldn’t they raise?
Flying in the sky, soaring freely like in *How to Train Your Dragon*—that would be so cool.
Jiang Linhai even said, "Let’s keep looking! Maybe we can find a few more eggs!"
"Okay!"
Everyone stopped gathering down and started staring at the Vultures’ rears.
Suddenly, Niu Niu found something.
She said excitedly, "There’s one here! There’s one!"
Everyone ran over and saw that the egg had already rolled out. It was frozen solid, and they had no idea if it could still be hatched.
Jiang Si said, "If it can’t be hatched, we’ll feed it to the monkeys. Let’s take it back for now."
"Okay."
Everyone kept searching, and one by one, they found another eight Vulture Eggs.
They carefully loaded them onto the transport vehicle and took them back to the ship.
Everyone started to wonder how to set up an incubation room for these eight Vulture Eggs.
The incubators for chicks and ducklings were completely useless for this.
Jiang Si suddenly thought of the sauna on the ship. A flash of inspiration struck her. "The sauna’s temperature can be adjusted. Isn’t that just a giant incubator?"
Everyone’s eyes instantly lit up. "That’s right! That could work!"
As long as the temperature was right, incubation should be possible.
But then another problem arose: there were no records of hatching Vulture Eggs.
Especially not mutated, giant ones.
Jiang Si said, "Let’s start with one and slowly adjust the temperature. If we can successfully hatch it, then we can incubate the other Vulture Eggs."
Everyone agreed to this method. They went back and brought back another two truckloads of down. Only then did Zhang Aihua notice that there wasn’t a single Vulture in the sky.
It had been two or three days. How could he not have seen a single Vulture?
His intuition told him something might have happened. He cautiously led his people to investigate, only to find all the Vultures dead on the ice, while Jiang Si’s group was busy stuffing the Vultures’ down into burlap sacks.
