Chapter 112: Extra Story #5
“Pu—ni!”
Because Blue Puni was so small with very short arms and couldn’t extend its tentacles almost infinitely like Glup-Glup, it had to build up strength for quite a while when moving stones. Its round blue face would even flush red before it could lift a stone and deliver it to Glup-Glup.
For Blue Puni, this was clearly strenuous physical labor.
But if Glup-Glup and Kakaba said, “Go rest for a bit, Chu Jiu prepared some sweet water and grilled fish for us,” Blue Puni would shake its head vigorously: “No! I have to supervise you the whole time!”
So Glup-Glup and Kakaba could only let the little guy slowly move stones.
According to Glup-Glup’s plan, after the walls were built, ropes were needed to secure the [shark skin] and [tree trunks used as roof beams].
Glup-Glup picked up the large bundle of dark black leather ropes that had been piled on the ground and shook them.
Looking at the swaying leather ropes, Blue Puni “puni”ed, and its little body immediately trembled non-stop.
Kakaba: “Dang-dang-dang? Blue Puni, what’s wrong?”
Blue Puni subconsciously jumped behind Kakaba: “That rope, why does it look so much like the tentacles of a big squid?”
Kakaba: “Dang-dang-dang! Because that rope was made by Chu Jiu using squid tentacles!”
Blue Puni: !
Kakaba: “Don’t worry, Chu Jiu has already dealt with those sharp thorns on the tentacles, they won’t cut your hands!”
Among the squid’s ten tentacles, the two longest ones are called “tentacular arms.” Unlike the other eight tentacles with suckers, these two arms used for catching prey are covered in sharp thorns.
Blue Puni still remembered how easily this kind of big squid could smash rocks to pieces with its tentacular arms, and how nimbly it could roll itself up and put itself into that mouth full of sharp teeth…
It trembled a few more times.
Kakaba was even more worried now: “Dang-dang-dang?”
But Blue Puni didn’t want others to see that it was scared by a piece of squid tentacle, especially one with the thorns removed.
So it quickly changed the subject: “So squid tentacles can actually be turned into ropes!”
Kakaba nodded vigorously: “Dang-dang-dang! Chu Jiu thought of that!”
“Chu Jiu also said that in the place where he used to live, some people would use snake skin to make ropes, and the effect was very good!”
“Oh right, when we were exploring other places before, Chu Jiu also used snake skin to make bowstrings! That bow even made chicken sounds!”
“Unfortunately, that bow was a ‘real object,’ and Chu Jiu said it couldn’t come here, so it’s all left in Bean Village…”
Kakaba was a bit regretful.
Blue Puni, however, widened its eyes: “Snake, snake skin?…”
Could those terrifying creatures that wriggled and hissed through the forests also be turned into props by Chu Jiu?
A tiny bit of light couldn’t help but flash in Blue Puni’s eyes: “Chu Jiu is so amazing…”
Kakaba nodded vigorously again: “Mmm! So amazing!”
*
At this time, Chu Jiu, whom Blue Puni called “so amazing,” was squatting on the top of the hill, planning to make a “lean-to” for Rawr Rawr Rabbit.
The top of the hill where Rawr Rawr Rabbit was located had nothing to provide shade except for a few protruding rocks.
Chu Jiu had noticed yesterday that when the sun was at its strongest in the afternoon, Rawr Rawr Rabbit’s spirit power consumption clearly accelerated, and the status of the background icon changed from “happy” to “a bit tired, but still very happy.”
That’s why Chu Jiu had announced an early end to work, letting everyone go play while the sun was still high in the sky.
Today, Chu Jiu had gathered the materials to make the lean-to and decided to do it himself to improve the little rabbit’s working environment.
The materials he chose were [squid skin] and [tree trunks].
Since this was a lean-to specifically for the little rabbit, it wouldn’t require many materials. Just enough to build a place where Rawr Rawr Rabbit could cool off inside would suffice.
Chu Jiu first found two sections of coconut tree stump, split each stump in half, and then whittled the tops of all four wooden stakes into suitable shapes.
He then found two branches that were too thin and weak to be used in the house that Glup-Glup and the others were building, and embedded the two branches horizontally into the tops of the stakes.
In this way, he had a very simple structure with four supporting posts and two crossbeams in front of him.
Next, he unfolded and flattened the squid skin, punched holes in it to tie ropes through, spread it flat over the crossbeams, tied the squid skin with [ropes made from modified squid tentacles], and then pressed a few pieces of coral stone on top to prevent it from curling up.
Alright, the simple [Rawr Rawr Rabbit’s exclusive little lean-to] was built just like that!
This lean-to was of course too small for humans; they would have to curl up their hands and feet to barely squeeze inside.
But for Rawr Rawr Rabbit, it was very spacious, enough for it to take a comfortable nap inside.
Rawr Rawr Rabbit, who had been focused on breeding, saw this shady spot, cheered twice, shook its ears, and ran in to lie down. Its white fur pressed against the reef as it exclaimed, “Hoo-hoo-hoo, it’s so much cooler now, hoo-hoo-hoo…”
Chu Jiu patted the little rabbit’s head, said “You’ve worked hard,” and then placed some clear water and squid meat inside the lean-to before going down from the top of the hill.
*
There was still some time before Glup-Glup and the others finished building the small house.
Chu Jiu decided not to disturb them and went to look for other “seafood” near the beach himself.
The sun was already very strong at this time.
Chu Jiu, who had been using a scarf for sun protection, simply took out another shirt and, learning from the desert nomads, wrapped the entire shirt around his head, only leaving his eyes exposed.
After Chu Jiu was dressed, he made a menacing gesture at Little Can beside him: “How is it? Scary? Do I look like a masked bandit?”
Little Can shook its head vigorously: “Not scary, not scary, very cute.”
Chu Jiu smiled, patted Little Can’s head, and thought that probably only it and that black big cat would find him “cute” dressed like this.
Thinking of this, Chu Jiu couldn’t help but recall the black big cat’s nonsensical “I have many shirts at my place” when it carried him wearing only a shirt.
…Eh?
Chu Jiu, who hadn’t understood the meaning at all back then, suddenly thought of something.
Perhaps the sunlight was too scorching; Chu Jiu’s face felt a bit hot.
He quickly shook his head, telling himself not to overthink. He must be mistaken. Lu Qingyan wouldn’t have such thoughts.
He should focus on beachcombing now!
Masked bandit Chu Jiu walked onto the beach and began to look down, searching for anything edible or useful.
Little Can ran around not far away, sometimes lifting a piece of reef, sometimes splashing in the waves.
Soon, Chu Jiu found a kind of seaweed on the shore.
This seaweed was entirely purplish-red and slightly transparent, growing in clumps attached to the rocks by the shore. If you broke it down into individual strands, you would find that its shape was a bit like coral made of grass.
This thing… could it be edible?
The system popped up a prompt in time:
[Agar-agar: A kind of seaweed. Also called grass coral. Edible.]
What a concise prompt!
As long as it’s edible.
Chu Jiu put the agar-agar into his backpack, thinking that Kakaba would have fresh vegetables again.
At this moment, Little Can, who was splashing in the waves ahead, “meowed” twice and dug a “giant caterpillar” out of the water with its paw.
This thing was longer than a human arm, a big black clump lying on the rocks. To be honest, it looked a bit disgusting.
Chu Jiu stared at the “caterpillar” for a few seconds, and a system prompt floated before his eyes:
[Some kind of sea cucumber: Edible. Delicious. Nutritious.]
So it was a sea cucumber!
Chu Jiu no longer found the “caterpillar” disgusting now and quickly cut it open, took out the meat, and completed the collection.
Besides agar-agar and sea cucumber, Chu Jiu also pried open a large pile of oysters from the rock crevices, picked up a large handful of scallops, a dozen sea snails, and? (scooped up) a large piece of driftwood that had been washed ashore by the seawater.
Little Can, on the other hand, had overturned dozens of large crabs and even lined them all up neatly, waiting for Chu Jiu to take them.
In short, this beachcombing trip was very fruitful.
After the person and the cat had scoured this small beach, news came from Glup-Glup: “Gulu-gulu! Our house is finished!”
*
This house was about three meters wide and four meters long, with the highest point of the roof about two meters from the ground.
The top of the house was stretched taut with [shark skin] and [squid skin], while the walls were built piece by piece with rocks and coral stones.
Chu Jiu stood inside the small house, marveling, “Fantastic! It’s even brighter than I thought!”
You know, these simple temporary houses are usually dark and very oppressive, making you feel suffocated after staying inside for a while.
But this house in front of him was not only spacious but also bright—
Glup-Glup cleverly used the gaps in the coral stones to leave windows on the walls that provided enough light.
Glup-Glup said that it used its [Architect’s Insights], referring to the ventilation holes in the little squirrels’ underground city, to make these.
Chu Jiu sincerely praised it, then touched Glup-Glup’s little leaf and patted Kakaba’s little head: “You’re amazing! The system didn’t even give out facility blueprints, and you still did such a great job!”
Glup-Glup squinted its eyes and shook its little tentacles: “Gulu-gulu!”
Kakaba held its furry little face: “Dang-dang-dang!”
Chu Jiu then looked at Blue Puni, who was squatting aside, seeming to expect praise but also a little embarrassed and wanting to hide itself: “Blue Puni also cooperated very well!”
Glup-Glup and Kakaba immediately testified: “Yes! Blue Puni helped a lot!”
It helped move a whole ten stones and tie one rope!
Chu Jiu squatted on the ground and looked at Blue Puni: “This time we have a roof! Even if the sun is very strong in the morning, we don’t have to worry about being dried into Puni jerky!”
Blue Puni’s face flushed red at first, then it put on a stern expression again:
“This, this, this house has nothing to do with me.”
“I, I was just supervising!”
“You built your house, you sleep in it yourselves. I, I will have somewhere else to sleep!”
Chu Jiu blinked: “Aren’t you the supervisor?”
Blue Puni: “Mmm!”
Chu Jiu: “Supervisor—shouldn’t you continue to supervise and see how good the quality of this house is?”
“If you don’t even live inside, how will you know if the house we built with ‘local materials’ is sturdy or not?”
Blue Puni: “…Uh?”
It, it seems to make a little sense?
Chu Jiu smiled.
He casually placed a pure white scallop shell: “How about this? I’ll make a little bed for you tonight?”
Blue Puni widened its eyes: What a beautiful shell! It must be very comfortable to lie in!
Chu Jiu said again, “Then it’s settled—the opposing supervisor, Blue Puni, will inspect how effective our house is!”
Blue Puni: “Pu, Puni!”
After Glup-Glup and Kakaba’s house was finished, Rawr Rawr Rabbit also jumped down from the top of the hill:
“Hoo-hoo-hoo, the seeds have been successfully cultivated!”
“Tomorrow we can plant the entire reef with tumbleweed!”
Chu Jiu held out both hands, giving thumbs up: “Fantastic! Let’s eat grilled sea cucumber tonight!”
Blue Puni was stunned again: “Huh? Plant tumbleweed on the reef? How do you plant that?”
After Chu Jiu briefly explained the general steps of cultivation, Blue Puni’s eyes lit up:
“So interesting! We’ve never planted anything on the island before!”
“Can Blue Puni plant tumbleweed together?”
After saying that, the little guy quickly added a “patch”: “I, I’m not trying to help you!”
“I’m supervising you to see if you, uh, um, plant any foreign seeds on this planet!”
“This kind of behavior is also absolutely forbidden! Once discovered, you will be expelled from Tara!”
Chu Jiu held back a smile: “Okay, welcome supervisor Blue Puni to supervise our cultivation throughout the entire process.”
Blue Puni proudly nodded its head: “Let me tell you, didn’t you say that planting needs ‘watering’? I, Blue Puni, am best at spraying water! I’ll definitely give you a surprise!”
I have the “Puni Puni Water Spraying Super Technique”! It will definitely make the outsiders sing praises of us Puni!
In a flash, it was dinner time again.
Before cooking, Chu Jiu turned the driftwood he had picked up into a tabletop and found a few flat stones to serve as table legs. He placed the wooden tabletop on the stones, and instantly there was a “table that barely looked like one.”
With a table, he arranged a few wooden stumps around it: weren’t these just stools?
Alright, now everyone could eat around the table instead of squatting on the ground holding bowls and slurping.
After making these somewhat abstract furniture, Chu Jiu started a fire to cook.
Tonight’s dinner was naturally mainly the seafood he had picked up in the afternoon.
Crabs were steamed in a pot, and oysters were simply boiled in clear water.
Sea cucumber meat and squid meat were cut into small pieces, skewered on wooden sticks, and grilled over the fire, offering a different flavor compared to yesterday’s sashimi.
There were also vegetables, of course: agar-agar mixed with shredded kelp. The purplish-red and dark green colors were quite striking. It was a pity there were no seasonings, otherwise this side dish would have been even more appetizing.
While Chu Jiu was cutting and boiling, he pondered in his mind:
Although there was plenty of seafood, eating seafood all the time wasn’t actually conducive to physical recovery…
You know, the saying in earlier years that “famine victims were so poor they could only eat Chinese mitten crabs” wasn’t a joke.
From a nutritional perspective, although seafood is rich in protein, its overall calorie content is not high, and the body also needs to consume calories to digest protein.
As the saying goes, “eating seafood doesn’t fill you up.”
To truly fill up the spirit beast babies, other meats had to be introduced…
Chu Jiu thought of the seabirds he had glimpsed during the day.
Some of those birds seemed quite plump?
Alright, tomorrow he would have Little Can hunt birds!
*
Before long, Chu Jiu placed the babies’ bowls, soup pot, steamer, and so on one by one on the wooden table, then loudly called out to the spirit beasts playing in the water in the distance: “Dinner time!…”
“Wash your hands and eat…”
The spirit beasts cheered and rushed over.
Blue Puni, who had also been soaking in the seawater blowing bubbles, didn’t immediately follow after hearing Chu Jiu’s call.
On the contrary, it hesitated a few times and quietly drifted towards the rocks in the distance by itself.
Tonight… it would still catch a small fish to eat by itself.
Although it wasn’t very tasty.
Although it was cold and lonely.
Blue Puni thought dejectedly.
Unexpectedly, before it even drifted to the rocks, it heard the sound of splashing water behind it.
Looking back:
It was Chu Jiu. His Little Can was perched on his shoulder, and Kakaba was following beside him.
Blue Puni widened its eyes: “You, what are you doing?”
Chu Jiu directly picked up Blue Puni: “I said wash your hands and eat, why are you still running away? Be careful you get washed away and can’t find your way back later.”
Blue Puni trembled in shock: “W-what? Eat?”
“I can’t eat with you! You, you are the ones being supervised, I am the supervisor, we can’t eat together!”
Chu Jiu said, “‘Supervisors can’t eat with outsiders’—is that your rule?”
Blue Puni: “Puni!”
Chu Jiu: “Then we also have a rule, a rule that’s been around for thousands—no, tens of thousands, even millions of years.”
Blue Puni: “Ah?”
Chu Jiu: “‘Those who work shall eat.’ You’ve done so much work today, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t eat.”
Blue Puni: “But… but…”
Chu Jiu put on a fierce “masked bandit” expression: “If we violate this rule, we will be punished!”
The punishment of conscience.
Blue Puni: “Oh, is that so…?”
Blue Puni’s little arms helplessly scratched its round little head, and it secretly glanced at the gentlest little capybara, Kakaba—Kakaba was constantly smiling at it, gesturing “come eat, come eat, eating together is so much fun.”
Blue Puni gritted its teeth: “Since you have such an ancient rule… and violating it will cause you to be punished… then, then I will, um, respect your rule.”
Chu Jiu: “Mmm, thank you for your hard work, supervisor Blue Puni.”
*
Night fell, and the stars twinkled.
Chu Jiu hugged Little Can and crawled into the sleeping bag.
The spirit beast babies, full and content, had also gone to sleep in their respective nests.
Blue Puni lay on its little seashell, blinking at the dark roof.
Today… I ate with the outsiders.
So delicious.
So lively.
It’s been so long since it was this lively.
I’m even sleeping in the outsiders’ house now.
Did I… did I do something a supervisor shouldn’t do?
But, I feel like these outsiders aren’t bad people…
They haven’t harmed Tara.
But Green Puni said that outsiders are very good at disguising themselves.
The more Blue Puni thought, the more confused and sleepy it became.
Finally, its eyes could barely stay open.
“When I go to Green Puni’s island, I need to discuss it properly with Green Puni and see if Chu Jiu and the others are really bad people…”
Before falling completely asleep, Blue Puni murmured this in its heart.
Morning.
This was the third day since Chu Jiu and the others arrived on the deserted island.
The most important thing today was to go “plant grass.”
Although some coconut tree trunks still remained on the island, and driftwood could occasionally be found on the beach, considering that they would need to lash together a small boat to leave the deserted island next, these pieces of wood could no longer be used as firewood.
Calculating this way, the island’s fuel wouldn’t be enough, and they had to rely on Rawr Rawr Rabbit’s skill to quickly grow “tumbleweed.”
Rawr Rawr Rabbit, having finished breakfast, hopped all the way to the top of the hill.
It took out the cultivated seeds and activated its skill—
Sowing!
The sowing was finished in less than two minutes.
Anyway, there was no use for loosening soil or fertilizing on this reef; they just needed to scatter the seeds into the cracks in the rocks.
Next was watering.
Although Rawr Rawr Rabbit had tried its best to make the seeds not require “soil” and consume less “water” when cultivating them, no matter how much they were cultivated, the “required water” couldn’t be completely eliminated.
Fortunately, Chu Jiu had calculated that the fresh water in his backpack, even if he set aside a portion to water the plants, would still be enough for 10 to 15 days.
By then, they would have already left this deserted island and arrived at the next island full of greenery.
Chu Jiu took out a portion of fresh water for Rawr Rawr Rabbit and poured a cup for Blue Puni, who claimed to be “especially good at spraying water.”
Blue Puni looked at the small cup and shook its head: “Is there a bigger container? Preferably one that can fit me.”
Chu Jiu simply poured the clear water into a coconut shell and handed it to Blue Puni.
Blue Puni excitedly jumped in and “puni puni”ed as it drank the water.
Chu Jiu and the spirit beast babies beside him all had big question marks above their heads.
What exactly was this Blue Puni doing?
They saw Blue Puni getting fatter and fatter as it drank, finally turning into a Puni the size of the coconut shell!
Chu Jiu couldn’t help but worry, “Can you still get out? Will you get stuck?”
Blue Puni: “N-no need to worry! I-I’m fine!”
The next second, Blue Puni, like a blue jelly that had been stretched out of shape, softly moved out of the coconut shell, then “pachi pachi”ed to the edge of a rock crevice, closed its eyes, and entered meditation.
When the meditation ended, Blue Puni puffed out its chest and aimed at the rock, “pu!”
Activating its “Puni Puni Water Spraying Super Technique”!
Several water columns shot out towards the rising sun!
As gorgeous as a fountain!
Not only was the visual effect gorgeous, but the actual effect was also good—
All the rock crevices were soaked, and clear water flowed down the crevices onto the seeds.
It completely met Rawr Rawr Rabbit’s requirements.
Only…
Where did Blue Puni go?!
Chu Jiu quickly ran over in surprise and searched the spot again, finally scooping out a flat piece of blue Puni from the rock crevice!
Chu Jiu: ?!
On this flattened piece of Puni skin was a simple drawing of a big smiling face: “Pupu pu! How was it? I sprayed water pretty well, right! Were you surprised by my special technique?”
Chu Jiu: …
Yes, he was thoroughly surprised.
Because no matter how he looked at it, it looked like it had sprayed out all its internal organs!
