Chapter 126: The Four-eared Ox Isn’t Good Here, Hui Vomits
“Pa!”
Su Ran withdrew her raised bow arm, a hint of a smile appearing in her eyes.
She walked over to the tree more than ten meters away, pulling out the arrow stuck in the tree trunk.
Recently, she had been practicing archery every day.
Not only practicing archery accuracy, but also the arm strength for raising the bow and drawing the bowstring.
After more than two weeks, she could clearly feel that when drawing the bowstring tight, her arm no longer trembled from the effort!
Su Ran looked down at the arrow in her hand, the one she had just pulled from the tree.
Now the initial seashell arrowhead had been replaced by Su Ran with a sharpened four-eared ox bone.
Because although scallop shells are sharp, they are still prone to breaking upon collision with hard objects.
Compared to seashells, bones are much harder and thicker, so Su Ran no longer had to remake arrowheads all the time.
These past few days, she had occasionally gone hunting with Gray.
Although she couldn’t say the harvests were plentiful, every time they went out, she always managed to catch some prey, which made Su Ran feel a little proud from the bottom of her heart.
Besides hunting, Su Ran hadn’t forgotten to continue searching for new food and transplanting plant seedlings.
She had thoroughly plowed the entire vegetable patch behind the house with a hoe and bone shovel.
Then, after clearing out all the branches, weeds, and crushed stones turned up from the soil, she used the hoe to divide the vegetable patch into more than a dozen rectangular grids of the same size.
Each side of the grids was marked by piled-up soil.
Then she transplanted the previously moved plants, except for the fruit trees, grouping the others by type, with the same plants all planted in one grid.
Now her vegetable patch was fully planted with one plot of housheng vegetable, half a plot of chili fruit, half a plot of vinegar fruit, and a large half plot of finger onion.
There was also one plot planted with short shrub-like wild fruits such as youyou fruit and red meat fruit.
Su Ran still didn’t know if these wild fruits and wild vegetables were perennial plants.
Or if they would sprout new leaves and bear fruit again the next spring after dropping leaves in winter.
But she still transplanted some of these shrubs back, even those past their fruiting season that she could find.
Planning to plant them in the ground like this for now, and see after winter passes, next spring, whether these plants would sprout again.
If they wouldn’t sprout, she would have to start collecting large quantities of seeds from these plants.
And during this time, besides the previously discovered plants, there were two bigger surprises for Su Ran.
That was, she discovered another new vegetable and a seasoning for cooking.
This cooking seasoning was almost identical to star anise on Earth, with no difference in taste, except this star anise grew a bit large.
Because each fruit was the size of half of Su Ran’s palm.
Every time she cooked, Su Ran basically only needed to break off one leaf.
This star anise grew on a tree that wasn’t very big, on the mountain by the seaside.
It was discovered one day when Su Ran suddenly felt like going back to check on the cave where she had stayed when she first arrived in this world.
After discovering that tree, seeing it was only as tall as one person and not as thick as a mineral water bottle, Su Ran immediately dug it up roots and all.
On the day she dug it back, Gray drank delicious beef soup.
Besides star anise, Su Ran also found a patch of wild vegetable in the forest near the river beach that tasted very much like Chinese cabbage, and she named it wild cabbage.
This wild cabbage grew tall, the tallest reaching about thigh height, the shorter ones about knee height.
The leaves of the wild cabbage were long and narrow, like ancient swords, tender green in color. The leaves grew out from the central stem, clustering around it upward.
When it grew to over half a meter tall, it would bloom small white flowers.
The flowers were very pretty, and Su Ran noticed that some small birds would deliberately come to eat them.
She brought some flowering wild cabbage home and threw it to the red birds at home. She found that the red birds would first eat off those small white flowers, then eat the wild cabbage leaves, but leave the stems.
After tasting it, Su Ran found that the wild cabbage leaves tasted just like cabbage, only thinner, so less crisp than real Chinese cabbage.
The wild cabbage flowers had a faintly sweet taste, with a fresh floral scent.
If she had to say they were edible, Su Ran thought these small white flowers could be dried and used as tea.
As for the stems that even the red birds didn’t eat, Su Ran just licked a bit of the juice from the surface after breaking one.
Then she frowned from the bitterness.
This was too bitter!
Even bitter melon wasn’t this bitter!
No wonder small animals didn’t eat it!
This wild cabbage wasn’t abundant in the woods and grew very scattered.
That was why Su Ran hadn’t noticed it after living here so long.
Su Ran spent three or four days and only found fewer than thirty of these wild cabbages in the woods, which she planted in her ground.
And among these thirty wild cabbages, nearly half were already flowering.
After flowering, wild cabbage would grow a tender yellow small round fruit from under the flower base.
Su Ran guessed that was probably the wild cabbage seed.
So she didn’t touch those already flowering wild cabbages, planning to collect the seeds after they matured and plant them next year.
Otherwise, the wild cabbage in the woods was really too few.
After transplanting that patch of wild cabbage, Su Ran found no more new wild cabbage patches!
Besides transplanting wild vegetables, Su Ran’s farming dream had also been slightly realized.
Now her bird’s nest—no!
Now it could be called a chicken coop.
Inside there were already sixteen wild chickens and nine red birds.
All these wild chickens and red birds had their wings clipped by Su Ran.
Su Ran also raised the fence outside the chicken coop a bit higher, because two of the previously caught red birds had stepped on the roof of the small nests inside and flown out to escape!
Although Gray eventually caught them back, after being caught, they were directly roasted and eaten by Su Ran!
And right next to the chicken coop, Su Ran had built a larger fence.
Now inside the fence there was only one large four-eared ox and one small four-eared ox.
Both oxen were kept in the fence, and in the center of the fence, Su Ran had set up a wooden stake, tying both oxen to it to prevent them from knocking down the fence and escaping.
Su Ran caught these two oxen for milking.
That small four-eared ox was the baby just born to the large one.
At this time, the large ox was still nursing, and Su Ran could get a full large basin of fresh milk almost every day.
And the milking work was naturally handed over to Gray.
Because compared to the harmless Su Ran, four-eared oxen had a natural fear of beastmen.
Only when Gray, as a beastman, approached would it obediently allow itself to be “harvested.”
If Su Ran approached, it would be hard to guarantee seeing tomorrow’s sun.
And when Gray first milked under Su Ran’s teaching, because he always couldn’t find the knack for milking—
Actually because Su Ran herself didn’t know, once actually doing it, exactly how much force to use.
In the end, after half a day’s effort to squeeze out just a small half basin of milk, Gray looked disgusted and said to Su Ran:
“Four-eared ox here, not good, not good, uncomfortable, Gray ugh…”
Su Ran: ……
