Chapter 70 - Chili Pepper (2/2)
Oh, right. Xiong Ye was still shedding, and he could also make a blanket…
Taking advantage of the fact that Xiong Ye wasn’t there, Zhou Ji used his spiritual powers to play around with the bear fur.
He didn’t know how to make a blanket and could only use his spiritual powers to weave the fur together… In the end, he didn’t manage to make a soft blanket and ended up with a hard, rough floor mat instead.
A mat was fine too… Zhou Ji finished half of it, set it aside, yawned, and went to sleep.
Zhou Ji was sleeping very soundly, but the people in the tribe were continuously, persistently busy.
There was so much meat that simply bringing it all back took up a lot of time!
Fortunately, all the meat had been brought back by the time the sky grew dark. Seeing that there was so much meat, Xiong He even declared on the spot that everyone could eat as much as they liked today.
Xiong Ye finally ate until his belly was rounded, completely satisfied.
After that, he went to find Xiong He and requested to be excused from tomorrow’s manual work.
“No problem.” Xiong He said, “Tomorrow’s work involves smoking meat. It’s fine if you don’t come!”
“Thank you, chief!” Xiong Ye said.
“Xiong Ye, what do you plan to do tomorrow?” The priest, who had circles all over his face, asked him.
“I saw a bird today. Tomorrow, I want to catch it and give it to Zhou Ji to eat!” A lot of animals had run over today, and he had seen the terror bird amongst them as well as some other animals that Zhou Ji was willing to eat.
He couldn’t just let Zhou Ji constantly have no meat to eat!
“That’s something you should do. You definitely have to hunt well… Right, teach me that multiplication table again.” The priest demanded.
Xiong Ye: “……” Xiong Ye had recently begun to understand the priest’s mood when faced with the people of the tribe who didn’t manage to learn anything no matter how he taught them.
He now felt quite close to collapse too––probably due to his age, the priest was particularly slow when it came to learning things. He couldn’t memorize this multiplication table no matter what!
However, even if he was about to collapse, Xiong Ye still needed to teach if the priest wanted to learn.
Xiong Ye slowly began to teach it to him again.
The priest once again tried very seriously to learn it.
That night, the well-fed Xiong Ye ran out in the middle of the night to cultivate as usual, but the person who always appeared so suddenly to teach him actually didn’t show up.
He inexplicably felt a little lost and didn’t know what was going on.
Actually… Zhou Ji was just lazy. Additionally, he didn’t want his mate to run out like this every day.
Although he had started cultivating and could sleep less, he still needed to sleep. At least, Zhou Ji wanted to sleep.
What was Xiong Ye trying to accomplish by running around outside every day? He should turn into his animal form and cuddle him to sleep…
The fur on the big bear’s belly was very soft. Lying inside his embrace was really very comfortable!
Xiong Ye didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t met that powerful person that night. The next day, Xiong Ye happily went out hunting as usual.
His target today was the terror bird from yesterday. He still remembered this bird’s scent… He started searching for it everywhere.
At this time, Zhou Ji had also gone outside of the tribe to take a look and see if he could find anything edible.
Although he had already canvassed the area around the tribe several times in the past, it had been during spring when most plants were still young seedlings. He simply hadn’t known what they would look like after they matured and had naturally missed out on a lot.
Now that the weather was hot, there were more plants, and he could go out and take another look.
Zhou Ji hadn’t held much hope for finding anything new when he went out this time, but unexpectedly he actually found a variety of plant that grew something like chili peppers!
This kind of plant wasn’t very big and produced small green fruits about the size of a fingernail. He had originally thought that it was a fruit, but after studying it, he discovered that it could be used like chili pepper.
This small green fruit would also turn red when it ripened.
The fruit was very juicy and had a medium level of spiciness. It could be directly used like chili sauce after being picked and crushed.
Zhou Ji couldn’t help but be somewhat excited.
He could eat spicy food even when he was in the modern era, but he wasn’t obsessed with it; he also liked lighter, milder fare. After all, there had been an abundance of all types of food back then, and many spices were available.
There had been all sorts of condiments and seasonings. Some vegetables were delicious even when they were simply boiled and then dipped in sauce!
However, there was nothing but salt in this place, and that salt also contained impurities.
Even if the vegetable had originally been very delicious, the resulting taste was rather average when it was only seasoned with salt.
It was because of this that he always felt that Xiong Ye and the others were very impressive for being able to eat that hodgepodge of mixed vegetables every day without any change in expression.
In any case, he didn’t want to eat a single bite of that kind of thing.
As for fish and the like… He was also a bit sick and tired of eating fish soup every single day!
But it was different now that he had chili peppers… He could make many fish dishes with chili peppers!
Roasted meat with a bit of chili was also very delicious!
Zhou Ji produced a big pile of chili peppers to bring back. He planned to make something delicious for himself and Xiong Ye to eat that night.
Additionally, now that he had chili, he should be able to find some other spices… He had already found an herb similar to rosemary that could be added to the roasted meat, but he still needed things like onion, ginger, garlic, and so on…
While Zhou Ji was busy picking chili peppers, Xiong Ye was clinging to a terror bird’s back so he could break its neck. After accomplishing that, he then picked up the terror bird and headed back to the tribe.
On the way back, he heaved a heartfelt sigh as he looked at the bare trees in the area.
Those two Barosaurus were really capable of eating! It had only been a day, but they had already cleared out so many trees!
Xiong Ye felt that it would be best if they could find a way to kill off one of the Barosaurus and eat it… Otherwise, all the trees around their tribe would end up being eaten by these two big fellows!
Xiong Ye carried the terror bird toward the tribe and first went to the river to remove its skin and clean it.
If it had been before, he would have saved the bird skin and such for the children of the tribe. However, the tribe wasn’t short on meat these past few days, and the meat would go bad easily if it was left for a long time… Xiong Ye finally chose to extravagantly throw the bird skin into the river instead.
He had been unable to catch any fish in the river a few days ago, but now, many fish immediately ran out to nibble at the discarded bird skin. They even scrambled to compete for it, eating very happily.
Xiong Ye immediately felt less regretful when he saw this scene––this skin hadn’t been wasted. It was being used to raise fish!
He would come over to catch fish in a few days!
The tribe was filled with the scent of smoked meat when Xiong Ye returned to the tribe.
The priest had made some very strong salt water, placing strips of dinosaur meat inside to soak for a while before having people take it out and smoke it…
Last time, they had used mud to make a small hut that was specifically used for smoking. Because of this, the speed at which they smoked meat this time was quite fast!
Xiong Ye rather missed the smoked meat and pickled vegetable barley flatbread.
“Xiong Ye, why did you still go out hunting?” Someone asked him curiously.
“This is for Zhou Ji to eat!” Xiong Ye replied.
“So that’s why!” That person nodded. Zhou Ji was different from them and actually didn’t like eating dinosaur meat…
Fine, the meat that Zhou Ji ate did indeed taste better…
Xiong Ye climbed up into their cave and found that Zhou Ji wasn’t there. However, there was a wooden barrel nearby full of bright red, fingernail-sized fruit.
This fruit looked really cute and had to be very delicious!
Xiong Ye picked one up and stuffed it into his mouth…