Chapter 104: Breaking Off The Tail To Escape
Gray finally slowly walked back into the sea with reluctance, looking back three steps at a time, and soaked in again.
But whether it would sneak over again later to follow, she didn’t know.
Su Ran entered the woods with the entrenching pickaxe in hand.
She was alone, and actually didn’t dare to go too far into the woods.
She still remembered that there were fierce beasts inside this forest.
It was just that these fierce beasts didn’t appear much on the beastmen’s territory.
Recently, with the rising temperature, the birds and animals in the forest had gradually increased.
When Su Ran had just arrived in this forest, she hadn’t seen a single bird for nearly ten days.
At that time, Su Ran even thought that there were no birds in this world.
Now it seemed that the weather back then was too cold, and these birds had migrated to other places, only returning from afar now that the temperature had risen rapidly.
Su Ran slowly walked in the woods with the entrenching pickaxe, carefully looking at the various plants growing underfoot and around her as she walked.
The most abundant growth in the forest here now was still that kind of very tough shrub.
Plants like those bearing vinegar fruit and finger onion, these wild fruits, all grew very short.
At most, they were no taller than a person’s knee.
Su Ran casually picked a few vinegar fruits growing wrapped around a shrub, put them into the animal hide bag tied around her waist, and continued slowly walking deeper into the woods.
Today she was going to the woods behind the reef group.
Although she and Gray had passed by this woods before, they hadn’t carefully observed the situation inside the woods.
Su Ran didn’t dare to go to the deeper parts of the woods, but she could walk along the edge of the woods.
There was the scent of beastmen frequently appearing around here, so there was no need to worry too much about encountering other fierce beasts.
As soon as she walked from the beach into the woods, the air temperature around her immediately dropped by at least three or four degrees.
The sultriness receded, and Su Ran couldn’t help exhaling, feeling that the thin sweat that had just come out on her body was dried by the breeze in the woods in just a few seconds.
The trees here hadn’t changed much, still the tall trees with heart-shaped leaves.
The shrubs growing under the trees were very tall, requiring her to go around every few steps to bypass these shrubberies.
Su Ran used the entrenching pickaxe to push aside a shrub branch extending to the side that was blocking her view, and was just about to walk forward when she suddenly stopped.
Three or four meters in front of her on the ground, there was a small animal with black-brown fur squatting right then.
Su Ran instinctively lightened her breathing.
This was the first time she had seen other four-legged animals on this main road besides the four-eared ox, red-skinned pig, white-headed sheep, and dwarf deer that she usually ate.
Oh, and there was that elephant-pig beast she saw when she first arrived in this world.
The four-legged beast in front of her looked about the size of a small farm dog.
Its whole body was black-brown, and its head looked a bit like a rabbit, but also a bit like a mouse.
The two small ears on its head were quite like a mouse’s, but it had two fluffy big tails behind it.
At this moment, this little two-tailed beast was squatting under a tree like a rabbit, quickly digging at something with its claws.
While digging, it would stuff the dug-up things into its mouth.
The things it stuffed into its mouth, so they were edible?!
Su Ran was delighted!
She only hesitated briefly in her mind before giving up the idea of catching this two-tailed beast.
Now, for her, the edible things in the ground were more attractive.
And this little two-tailed beast clearly had no attack power, and even if it did, Su Ran had the entrenching pickaxe in hand and wasn’t afraid of its small size.
So she directly pushed aside the shrub branches in front and walked toward that two-tailed beast.
And the instant she made a sound, she saw the two-tailed beast that had been rapidly digging the soil suddenly fluff up its fur!
Especially the two long big tails behind it; after the fur fluffed up, they were even bigger than its body.
Those two tails erected high, directly blocking its body from view!
And just as Su Ran was surprised by its instant change, one of the tails behind it suddenly straightened and “snap!” fell onto the fallen leaves on the ground!
By the time Su Ran shifted her gaze from that tail, the animal was already gone!
Su Ran: ……
Tail shedding for survival?
She stood in place for two seconds, and after confirming she really couldn’t see the animal’s shadow, she slowly walked to the tree under which it had been digging.
She first picked up the tail on the ground and looked at it.
This tail, after fluffing up, looked a bit like a squirrel tail, just much bigger than a squirrel’s tail.
The fur of the tail felt a bit dry to the touch, looked quite messy, but was very thick, making the bone and flesh in the middle feel like just a very thin strip.
So this was a tail for confusing enemies and escaping at critical moments.
Therefore, it didn’t need to grow too pretty, nor did it need too much nutrition to make the fur smooth?
Su Ran looked at the tail and felt it was really useless. So she threw the tail aside first and hurriedly went to check what the two-tailed beast had been digging under the tree.
The pit the two-tailed beast had dug was still there. Su Ran walked over, and before getting close, she already saw many small white beans scattered on the soil at the edge of the pit.
She quickly sped up her steps, then squatted at the edge of the pit and picked up those small white beans into her hand.
The small white beans had some moisture; pinching one with her nails would make white pulp flow out.
Su Ran pinched one bean in half and found that the inside of the bean was also white flesh.
She put half a bean to her mouth and licked the cut cross-section.
The juice of the bean was slightly sweet, but had a bit of the starchy texture.
Su Ran quickly wiped another bean clean and put it in her mouth to chew directly.
Indeed, after chewing the bean, it was slightly sweet, slightly dry, a bit like eating raw sweet potato; this bean contained starch.
But the taste of this bean was very unique.
After chewing for a while, there was an indescribable plant fragrance in her mouth that Su Ran had never tasted in any other food before.
Perhaps it could be used as a staple food?
Su Ran ate another white bean and suddenly felt that eating this bean raw was also like eating raw corn.
And like corn kernels, this bean also had a layer of transparent thin membrane on the outside.
Thinking of this, Su Ran hurriedly picked up the few beans from the soil.
After picking them up, she began to observe the plant that grew the white beans.
In the soil pit, there was a white bean grass that had been half dug up. Su Ran pulled it out by the roots, and there were still more than a dozen small white beans hanging on the grass roots.
Su Ran brought the white bean grass close and looked carefully, only then realizing that she saw this kind of grass almost every day.
Because this kind of grass was almost everywhere in the forest.
Not just here by the seaside, but in the woods where the beastmen lived, it was also growing all over the ground.
And possibly because the season had arrived, now this grass was growing so vigorously that it even covered the round-leaf grass and mint grass that grew wildly in spring.
It was just that Su Ran had never thought these grasses would also grow fruit, so she had never observed them carefully.
