Chapter 14: Kelp
After the werewolf finally released Su Ran satisfactorily, Xiao Ju was no longer in their bird’s nest.
Good grief! Did she take the chance to run away?
Su Ran was covered in black lines.
The werewolf, whose fur had been smoothed, quickly forgot the recent displeasure.
It pulled Su Ran to the pile of things thrown at the nest entrance, and a strong sea fishy smell drifted to her nose with the wind blowing into the bird’s nest. Su Ran was stunned for a moment, then quickly squatted down to look.
Purple-black leaf flesh like petals two palms wide, with a black and hard stem in the middle—this was actually a pile of purple kelp!
Although it looked somewhat different from kelp on Earth, this smell was definitely kelp!
At this time, an equation immediately appeared in Su Ran’s mind:
Kelp = seawater = salt!
Is there a sea here?
Su Ran almost jumped up in excitement!
If there was a sea here, then she almost wouldn’t have to worry about her food at all!
The werewolf who had been standing beside her seemed to notice her happy emotion and called out “Ao wu ao wu” twice in her ear.
Only then did Su Ran remember that she still didn’t know why the werewolf had brought this back.
No matter how she looked at it, kelp didn’t seem like something the werewolf would eat.
By now, the werewolf had bent down to pick up the kelp under its feet and handed it to her, while its other hand reached out, holding a torn small packaging bag inside.
It was the packaging bag from the beef jerky she had given it that morning.
So it was because it ate the salty-tasting beef jerky that it thought to find something salty-tasting like kelp?
Was it because the beef jerky she gave it was salty, so it thought she liked salty things, or because it also found salty things tasty, that it specially went to find kelp?
“Ao wu~”
Seeing that Su Ran had no reaction to the kelp handed to her, the werewolf called out impatiently.
Su Ran came back to her senses and stopped thinking about those behaviors of the werewolf that she still couldn’t understand now.
No matter what the reason was that the werewolf went to find kelp, the result was something she wanted and was very important to her, which already made her very surprised and grateful.
Soon, Su Ran came back to the place where they had eaten breakfast in the morning with the werewolf.
Beside the ashes left from the morning campfire, a white-headed sheep that had been skinned and placed on the sweet leaf vein tree was waiting to be processed.
The werewolf seemed very fond of the meat quality of the white-headed sheep, because in the few meals after Su Ran arrived here, it had hunted back only this kind of animal.
The current time was a little after four in the afternoon, nearly five, six or seven hours after they finished breakfast, and it was time for their bellies to be hungry.
Far away on the river beach upstream, other beastmen could occasionally be seen coming to the riverside to clean their prey.
As soon as they arrived at the destination, before Su Ran could prepare, the werewolf had already gone to collect firewood by itself.
Looking at the werewolf’s eager back, Su Ran once again felt curiosity about the intelligence of the beastmen.
Whether it was the imitation of her behavior by the werewolf during their interactions over these two days, or the orange cat’s ability to read expressions when learning language from her, all showed that these beastmen’s intelligence was not low.
She just didn’t know how the natural world in this world had developed, or how the beastmen had evolved.
These thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant, and Su Ran shook her head, no longer continuing to think about it.
She couldn’t find answers to these questions, and even if she could, they probably wouldn’t be of much use to her.
Rather than thinking about these intangible things, it was better to quickly find ways to improve her quality of life.
Like the one right in front of her now: find the location of the sea, then make some salt.
The werewolf quickly returned with the needed firewood.
However, its method was much simpler and more brutal than Su Ran’s—
It had carried back a section of deadwood from somewhere.
The main trunk of the deadwood was very thick, so Su Ran had to break off the surrounding thin branches and chop them into small pieces, then pile them into the previous stone circle.
While working, she thought that tomorrow she should bring down the entrenching tool or the multi-tool axe; both tools could help her complete some work.
While Su Ran was busy, the werewolf, who had always intentionally imitated her actions, quickly learned to process the firewood on the side.
So Su Ran simply handed this task over to it and first lit the piled-up firewood.
After the fire rose, she began to process the ingredients.
The internal organs of the white-headed sheep had already been thrown away somewhere by the werewolf; she recalled the white-headed sheep eaten in the morning and seemed not to have seen the werewolf eat those internal organs, so they were probably thrown away too.
It seemed the werewolf didn’t like the taste of internal organs.
However, raw internal organs definitely wouldn’t taste good either; Su Ran thought that tomorrow she might tell the werewolf that internal organs could be cooked and eaten, and not to throw them away anymore.
She had never been so nervous about the edible amount of food as now.
The body of the white-headed sheep was still skewered and set over the campfire like in the morning, but this time because it was a whole sheep, it took her a lot of effort to skewer it with the wooden stick.
In the end, it was only with the werewolf’s help that the simple grill was successfully set up.
After setting up the sheep body, Su Ran still used the tactical knife to make a few cuts on the white-headed sheep’s body, then coated it with juice from the sweet leaf vein tree.
She decided tomorrow to have the werewolf take her to find some youyou fruit; using youyou fruit juice to coat the mutton would definitely be much more convenient than the sweet leaf vein tree juice.
After processing the mutton, Su Ran turned her gaze to the kelp placed on the side.
There was quite a lot of kelp.
These kelp needed to be boiled in water first to remove the fishy smell and guts before eating, but her stainless steel mug could only boil the amount of one piece of kelp at a time.
She turned her head to look at the river water not far away, bent down to take all the kelp over, put half of them into the water, and found a stone to press on top to prevent the kelp from being washed away.
Then she washed the other half in the water and picked them up to head back.
But at this moment, she was stopped by the werewolf that had followed.
The werewolf’s broad palm grabbed her arm, while its other finger pointed at the kelp she had put in the river and it called out “ao wu ao wu.”
“Those are to be eaten tomorrow oh~”
Although she knew the werewolf couldn’t understand her words, Su Ran still patiently explained to it.
“Ao wu~”
The werewolf called out clearly, with some dissatisfaction in its voice. Su Ran felt she could even imagine the werewolf’s tone: “How can you throw away the food I worked hard to find!”
So she had to pull the werewolf to the river to see, bent down and pressed harder on the stone pressing the kelp, then turned to look at the werewolf: “See, it won’t be washed away oh~”
“Ao wu……”
