Chapter 94: Blue Worm
Days passed quickly while Su Ran was preparing to build the house and teaching Hui to write.
Processing this wood—from calculating the amount of wood needed at the start, to handling the remaining branches on the withered trees, and then modifying the dimensions of the wood—took Su Ran more than two weeks in total.
The roof of the house that Su Ran wanted to build was an entire sloped plane that was high in the front and low in the back.
The front eaves were high, then sloped downward toward the back, and the back eaves were sloped about thirty centimeters lower than the front eaves.
This way, it would facilitate the flow of water flow on rainy days, and it would also be convenient for clearing snow when it snowed.
The house was twelve meters long in total, with three rooms. Su Ran calculated four large beams per room, so twelve pieces of wood would be enough.
After calculating the number of beams, Su Ran went with Hui to find some more withered trees.
The tree trunks that Su Ran selected were all small trees with a diameter of around thirty centimeters.
The withered tree trunks that Hui and the others had found before, which were basically half a meter or even one meter in diameter, were actually not suitable for her needs for house beams.
However, although these trees were not suitable for making house beams, they were very suitable for making the roof, but processing them later would be another major project.
Besides the roof beams, this wood also had to be used to make doors and windows.
But making doors and windows was much simpler.
Su Ran quickly measured the sizes. The doors and windows she wanted to make were all single large wooden boards. The windows were even similar to the ancient kind that needed to be propped up with a piece of wood.
But the drawback was that once the window board was put down, the room would be pitch black.
Especially in winter when windows couldn’t be opened, and it was cold and they didn’t go out, she would probably have to spend the entire winter in pitch black.
Su Ran thought that after the house was built, she would try to scrape the animal hide thin to see if it could have some translucency.
If that really didn’t work, she would have to resign herself to enjoying the darkness.
While busy processing this wood, Su Ran did not forget to pay attention to changes in other things in life.
In these days, she took three days to go to the seaside with Hui.
The types of seafood appearing in the beach and reef crevices at the seaside had increased.
Besides some shellfish seafood, Su Ran even picked up jellyfish and sea cucumbers.
In the past on Earth, Su Ran had rarely gone to the seaside, but she didn’t expect to experience the fun of catching seafood here.
But what surprised her the most was that on the reefs at the seaside, she discovered a kind of marine creature she had never seen before.
This creature was entirely blue all over, with various sizes—the large ones could grow to half a meter, the small ones were palm-length, and at first glance, they looked a bit like oversized bugs.
Its appearance actually looked similar to a sea cucumber, but it had two long antennae on top of its head, making it look a bit like a shell-less snail.
Perhaps because it was the active season for these animals, they suddenly appeared in massive numbers at the seaside.
They were all clinging to the reefs at the seaside, patch after patch, covering the entire reef group in a vibrant azure blue.
When she first saw these creatures, Su Ran was startled.
It was really their soft-bodied form and vibrant colors that gave her physiological fear.
But after learning from Hui’s mouth later that this thing was edible, that bit of fear “whoosh!” disappeared from her heart!
Su Ran named this animal blue worm.
Because of its color.
Also, their lazy appearance—during daytime with sunlight, they could lie on the reefs all day without moving, so it could also be called lazy bug casually…
Fresh blue worms tasted similar to jellyfish when eaten—crisp and very refreshing, but with more seafood freshness and aftertaste than jellyfish.
The beastmen seemed to like both jellyfish and blue worm seafood.
But because jellyfish were hard to pick, blue worms became the snack they liked to pick back.
Su Ran thought the reason the beastmen liked these two kinds of seafood was probably because the weather had been getting hotter recently, and these two seafoods were ice-cold and very good for relieving summer heat.
However, what surprised her about the blue worm was not that it was edible.
But something else on it.
Before eating blue worms, the internal organs inside needed to be removed.
These internal organs didn’t smell strange, but if accidentally eaten, they would taste somewhat bitter.
And it was these dug out and discarded internal organs that, when Su Ran and Hui came to the seaside a second time, Su Ran discovered a puddle of unidentified blue liquid at the place where the internal organs had been discarded last time.
And inside this liquid, there were many small shellfish and even a few crabs not much bigger than a thumb wrapped up.
At first, Su Ran didn’t know what this was.
She poked into this blob of blue stuff with a branch, then discovered that this blob of liquid seemed very sticky. After it hung on the branch, it was like glue, pulling out long threads the moment the branch was lifted.
So those small crabs and small seafood were actually stuck inside?
And just as Su Ran was doubtful, Hui gave her the answer.
“This is, inside the blue worm.”
“Inside the blue worm?”
Su Ran was doubtful for a moment, then reacted: “You mean the blue worm’s internal organs?”
“Mm!”
Hui nodded, then thought for a bit, suddenly got up and flew toward a distant reef.
Not long after, it flew back holding a few blue worms in its hands.
After landing in front of Su Ran, it handed the blue worms in its hands to Su Ran, then took one itself and used its sharp nails to cut open the blue worm from the middle of its back.
After cutting it open, it dug out the internal organs from the blue worm’s body.
The internal organs inside the blue worm’s body were also blue, a shade deeper than the blue worm’s exterior.
Su Ran felt this color was very close to Klein blue.
If not thinking of it as a blob of internal organs, it was actually quite pretty.
Hui tore a large piece of tree bark from the branches for making fire, put the blue worm’s internal organs on the tree bark, then hung the tree bark over the flames and slowly baked it.
Seeing this, Su Ran already vaguely guessed the result.
Sure enough, not long after, the blue worm internal organs on the leaves began to bubble slowly under the high-temperature scorching.
Then very magically, just like ice cream melting in summer, that blob of deep blue internal organs rapidly melted into a puddle of water within a few minutes…
No!
Actually, the word glue was more suitable for it!
“Sun,”
Hui handed the glue-like liquid on the tree bark to Su Ran to see, then pointed at the big sun overhead and said to Su Ran:
“Sun hot, blue worm’s internal organs will, uh… turn into water.”
Listening to Hui’s words, Su Ran nodded. But she still felt it was very strange.
Blue worms themselves shouldn’t be afraid of heat, otherwise they wouldn’t cluster on the reefs for people to pick.
But living blue worms weren’t afraid of heat, yet the dug out internal organs would melt when heated—this was similar to jellyfish.
Su Ran held a branch and casually poked twice at the blue worm internal organ gel on the piece of tree bark that Hui had placed on the ground.
She lifted the branch with the internal organ gel stuck to it, and the highly sticky internal organ gel pulled out a white thread due to adhesion.
Su Ran subconsciously rotated the branch, winding this white thread to the top of the branch.
And while winding, she suddenly paused her action.
She widened her eyes looking at this blob of blue internal organ gel in front of her. After a few seconds, the delighted expression on her face grew bigger and bigger.
This was glue!
This kind of glue, she could use it for building the house too, right?
