Chapter 34: Chapter 34: Wild Chicken
"Our Jiaojiao’s luck is just incredible. Maybe we’ll actually run into a pheasant today!"
"Not only is she lucky, she’s strong too. What other little girl could take down a snake that big?"
Yun Jiao’s smile grew even wider as she was showered with all sorts of praise.
"Let’s put the firewood here for now. C’mon, c’mon, let’s go pick some guavas."
Yun Xiao Liu said, "I remember there’s a wild bayberry tree up ahead. Let’s go look for it."
Yun Xiaowu pouted. "No way. Those bayberries are so sour, you’re the only one who can stomach them. When Jiaojiao was two, you picked one for her to eat, and she drooled all over the front of her shirt."
Yun Jiao remembered it too, but she was the type who wanted to put everything in her mouth and taste it.
After all, there were no fruit trees in the sea, so she was most curious about edible plants, fruits, and the like.
But that bayberry had been so sour it made her little face pucker up completely, and she couldn’t stop the drool from pouring down.
Just thinking about it now made her mouth water.
Of course, Sixth Brother, the one who fed her the bayberry, had also been beaten until he was crying and howling.
Yun Xiao Liu was unwilling to give up. "We can take them back and stew them with sugar."
In the end, they went and picked some bayberries to bring back anyway.
The wild bayberries were tiny and sour. Just smelling them was enough to make your mouth flood with saliva.
Yun Jiao, who never learned her lesson when it came to food, found a bayberry that looked very red and popped it into her mouth.
She shivered instantly, her pretty little face puckering up from the sourness.
"Why did you eat it again?"
Yun Xiaowu quickly fished the bayberry out of her mouth.
It took Yun Jiao a while to recover before she mumbled, "That one looked really red."
’It looked tastier than the other ones.’
Her brothers were speechless. ’What a little glutton.’
"Let’s go, let’s go, hurry up and go. If we stay here any longer, I won’t be able to control my drooling just from the smell."
Finally, they arrived at the guava tree.
Yun Xiaowu rolled up his sleeves and climbed the tree. "This is our secret spot. Good thing no one else has found it."
This area was already quite remote. The guava tree grew deep in the jungle, surrounded by thorny brambles. It was a mystery how Yun Xiaowu and the others had managed to get through to it.
"Jiaojiao, this is for you."
Yun Xiaowu picked two and climbed down, handing the larger one to Yun Jiao.
The guava looked like a small melon and felt slightly soft. Yun Xiaowu broke it open with his bare hands, revealing the beautifully colored flesh inside.
The flesh was red. The fruit had a wonderful texture and a light, sweet flavor, making it one of the locals’ favorite fruits.
The only downside was the sheer number of seeds inside; you had to constantly spit them out while eating.
"Yummy."
Yun Jiao liked eating them too. Sometimes, if she wasn’t careful about spitting out the seeds, she would swallow them all.
"If you like it, we’ll pick more."
Seeing her brothers climb the tree with such agility, Yun Jiao wanted to try as well.
But she was spotted and stopped before she could even start climbing.
"Jiaojiao, you stay down there. Don’t come up."
Yun Jiao reluctantly agreed with an "oh."
Noticing another type of edible wild vegetable nearby, she decided to go pick that instead.
She first emptied her basket’s contents into the one Brother Nine had placed on the ground. The morel mushrooms couldn’t handle being jostled.
As she was searching, she pushed aside a patch of grass and suddenly found herself staring, wide-eyed, at a pheasant crouching within.
Yun Jiao: !!!
Her body moved faster than her brain. She took the basket in her hand, still full of wild vegetables, and slammed it down on top of the bird.
"CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK..."
The trapped pheasant immediately shrieked and began to flap wildly.
Then, Yun Jiao could only watch helplessly as several more pheasants burst out from the nearby grass and flew off. Among them was one with brilliantly colored feathers.
That one was a rooster; the others were all drab, gray hens with short tails.
"Holy shit! So many pheasants!"
"AHHHH... What did we just miss!"
"They’re all gone. We can’t catch them now."
Pheasants can fly, and they run damn fast.
Even though Yun Xiaowu and the others had scrambled down from the tree as fast as they could when they heard the commotion, they still couldn’t catch a single one.
They were instantly so filled with regret that they slapped their thighs in frustration.
Watching so many pheasants slip right through their fingers... what was the difference between that and losing a huge sum of money?
"Wait, I still hear a pheasant clucking."
Following the sound, they soon found Yun Jiao on the ground, her little butt stuck up in the air.
Yun Jiao’s hair was a mess, and her fair, tender face was a little dirty, but her eyes were exceptionally bright and full of life.
"Brothers, a pheasant!"
She was afraid the pheasant trapped under the basket would escape, so she was lying with her whole body on top of it, though she didn’t dare press down too hard.
Yun Xiaowu and the others’ eyes lit up the moment they heard that.
"Me, me! I’ll get it."
The brothers pushed and tripped each other, all vying to be the first to reach Yun Jiao and grab the pheasant with their own hands.
They used all their little tricks on their own brothers.
Yun Xiaoqi, who had been tripped and sent face-planting into the ground, slammed his fist on the dirt in anger. "Fifth Brother, you’ve gone too far!"
Yun Xiaowu paid him no mind; he had even shoved his own full-blooded brother aside.
In the end, it was Yun Xiaowu who caught the pheasant.
He laughed heartily amidst the pheasant’s frantic squawks.
"This is a real case of ’ask and you shall receive’! We’ve got our Dragon and Phoenix Soup sorted. And this pheasant is pretty fat, too."
Of course, a wild pheasant would never be as plump as a domesticated chicken, especially a hen. It was only a little bigger than a pigeon.
"It’s a shame all those other pheasants got away."
"Oh no, there are pheasant eggs! They’re broken."
When Yun Jiao lifted the basket, she saw that there had been pheasant eggs underneath, but they were likely crushed when the bird was struggling inside.
Yun Xiaowu’s eyes lit up. "With so many pheasants just now, there might be more eggs around here. Everyone, search!"
And sure enough, their search was fruitful.
Yun Xiao Liu beamed. "I found a nest over here! Five pheasant eggs inside."
"I found some over here too! Three!"
Yun Jiao found a nest as well, with seven eggs in it.
There were no more after that. Any other nests they found were empty.
Fifteen pheasant eggs in total. Everyone was all smiles.
"Let’s go, let’s go. Time to head home."
They never expected to be so lucky and find so many good things on a single trip into the mountains.
Carrying firewood, wild vegetables, a snake, and a pheasant, they descended the mountain in high spirits.
The pheasant was still alive, clucking nonstop the whole way.
"Xiao Wu, you guys went into the mountains? And you caught a pheasant?"
Yun Xiaowu nodded. "We actually ran into a whole flock, but unfortunately, the others all flew away. We only managed to catch this one."
"You’re so lucky, catching a pheasant while just out gathering firewood."
The people they met were envious but not jealous. It was just one pheasant, after all.
Although supplies were scarce these days, people living by the sea could still eat meat regularly.
Everyone liked pheasant, of course. After all, when you eat a lot of seafood, you develop a craving for other kinds of meat.
But a single pheasant had so little meat on it. For a family as large as theirs, it would only be enough for everyone to get a bit of the broth.
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