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Chapter 39: A God’s Marriage (10)
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: GaeaTiamat
After the demonstration, Yun Chi also followed the sea otter’s example, shrunk his body into a ball, hid it in the thick snow, then stretched like a fur bug.
Sa’gya suddenly realized that this was the process of hunting with pups, wasn’t it? Only, the object of the hunt was a little bit wrongâŠ
Anyway, the pup was learning very well, and his approaching movements were very precise!
Yun Chi moved nearby and found that the winter grouse had laid so many eggs that they covered the soil at the roots of the pine tree. Instead of choosing the spot Sa’gya had touched before, he switched directions and took an egg in his palm.
Good, that went well.
The egg fell into his coat pocket, and Yun Chi silently reached out again and touched a second one. Although he didnât understand why Sa’gya, as a god, had to use such a roundabout way to pull out the eggs, Yun Chi knew that when facing something unknown, it was better to follow the way of the previous people and not to act rashly and arrogantly when he didnât yet know the situation.
Besides, there were quite a lot of eggs in this area. Why didn’t other predators come to get a piece of the pie?
While he was thinking, Yun Chi had already gotten a third one without a sound. He was about to move to a different position when the pine forest in front of him rustled.
His hand froze in the middle, and Sa’gya poked his head out behind him.
The pine needles crashed against each other and the snow fell from the needles. The crunching of the ground, the scraping of feathers, the whistling of breath – the sound of movement, it seemed to be something of great size.
Yun Chi slowly plucked away the soft fallen snow overhead, but only saw two strong chicken⊠Chicken legs stood steel-like in front of the heel, with chicken skin lines, and had an iron plastic cold glow.
Yun Chi, “?”
All of a sudden, the winter grouse was furious. It jumped like thunder, and let out a deafening crashing scream, “Cluck–!”
Yun Chi, “OMG!”
Seeing the sharp beak of the winter grouse about to chisel Yun Chi’s head, Sa’gya sprang up. His fangs glinted coldly, his shyness and gentleness gone. Before he could reach the grouse, the huge killing intent and majesty of the gods scared the winter grouse. Its eyelids rolled over and it fainted, falling to the ground with a loud bang, shaking the four fields of snow and mist.
Yun Chi was stunned. He sat up to look more and finally understood why no animals dared to pull out the eggs. The name of the winter grouse might be chicken, but the chicken’s beak was like a curved hook, the iron claws were curled, and the body was as big as a sheep. This was not a chicken, it was a dinosaur!
A steady stream of movement was still coming from the distant pine forest . Could this chicken be part of a flock?
Yun Chi leapt up from the ground and jumped onto Sa’gya’s back, “Run, run, run!”
Sa’gya was about to kill the chicken that had been about to hit the young one’s head, but Yun Chi urged him so anxiously that he hesitated for a moment. He thought about it, but still took his own young one and went away.
Even though he was still in the form of a beast, if the former God of the Sea ran to bully a group of chickens, it didnât sound like it was quite rightâŠ
The egg thief, who carried the other one on his back, twisted and turned and ran away, only to hear the sound of the chickens yelling in the woods in anguish and pathos. Yun Chi finally understood why Sa’gya had to pull out the eggs secretly. The chickens were louder than 500 ducks combined and could really kill a person.
“Ugh.” Yun Chi looked at the eight eggs in his hand and sighed.
“Ugh.” Sa’gya looked at the eggs in Yun Chi’s hand and sighed too.
Yun Chi poured the eggs into his coat pocket and was in a quandary. “What else is there to eat on the island besides sea urchins?”
Sa’gya thought about it and said confidently, “Shells. There are still shells at the bottom of the sea, I just need to dive a little longer.”
Yun Chi’s eyes lit up and he decided, “Shells it is! Whether it’s scallops or oysters and clams, let’s eat from the sea. What’s there!”
They returned to the strange house. Yun Chi saved the eggs, retrieved some golden fishing nets from the jar, and ran after Sa’gya to the beach.
With Yun Chi in tow, the white sea otter swam to a slightly more distant spot, found a reef clustered with ice floes, and placed the teenager on it.
“You stay right here. You can’t go anywhere,” Sa’gya admonished worriedly. “If something happens, just shout my name. I’ll hear you.”
Yun Chi handed him a fishing net. “Yes, I understand.”
After the instruction, Sa’gya again swam around uneasily for a few rounds, then dove down into the sea. He found that not far from that spot there was a monster with the blood of sea fish who was looking that way. It looked very stupid, so he grabbed it and beat it up. Fish tears were beaten out, only then did he let it go.
After he shocked the surroundings and was ready to do all the preparations, Sa’gya then grabbed the fishing net and swam all the way to the sea bed, more than ten meters. When they saw his arrival, the school of fish retreated and hid in gaps in the rocks. In the shade of the seaweed, shrimp and crabs were scared into the sand, small and large sea animals scattered, and the sea was suddenly silent as the dead, as if heâd mistakenly gone into a cemetery where life was cut off.
Sa’gya didn’t care about that. He tugged the floating fishing nets, then specifically picked the large shellfish for digging. The small ones kept growing, not the small ones; the thin and flat ones, not the deflated ones; the ones that didn’t taste very good during the spawning period, not the ones that didn’t taste very good at allâŠ
After he picked and chose and gathered a large pile, Sa’gya floated up in a hurry. Although the pup never called his name, he was still worried.
Yun Chi waited for a while and listened to the underwater sounds. After a few moments, Sa’gya’s head broke through the ice floe and the sea, as he carried half a net of shellfish, and greeted Yun Chi happily.
“Lots of them!” Yun Chi helped tug the net strenuously onto the reef, pulled out a piece, and looked at it carefully. “OystersâŠIsn’t that an oyster?”
The rough triangular shell, the concentric scales in the shape of waves, the pattern of yellow-white and dark greenâŠWasnât that an oyster or something that was given the alias of an oyster? Although compared to the oysters on Earth, the oysters here were larger, the shells were thicker, and the edges had many sharp bone spikes, so they looked like some kind of torture device.
“Anyway, it’s all food. Call it what you want.” Sa’gya rubbed his head. “It is also edible, it just tastes like seawater.”
“Wait, I’ll cook it for you!” Yun Chi excitedly rolled up his sleeves, jumped towards Sa’gya’s back, and the two of them returned to their journey with the wind blowing.
“How do you usually eat it? Just pry it open and eat it?” When they got home, Yun Chi had Sa’gya carefully control the water to prevent it from dripping onto the polished wooden floor, and finally dragged the huge bag of oysters into the kitchen.
Sa’gya replied honestly, “I break them up and eat them. A long time ago, I often saw some people near the sea using them as a precious side dish, and the juicier individuals were the best. Only when they ate them, they usually added a lot of sour juice to the mix, because they could not stand the saltiness of seawater.”
Sour juice, wasnât that the same as dripping lemon juice? It seemed like that kind of acid-alkaline balance approach to eating was really common in the past and presentâŠ
Yun Chi made a face to express his discomfort with that kind of eating method.
“There’s no need to drip acid juice,” he said. “That’s not the way to handle oysters.”
He took out a few rounded pine branches, and peeled off the bark so they were beige in color. He poured half the snow water into a saucepan, set the branches in a grid so they were not next to the water, and next to it he placed an empty clay pot. Then he picked out a large oyster and handed it to Sa’gya to open.
Sa’gya took it and without much effort, parted the two shells that seemed to be cast together and tightly closed. Bone spines lay broken on the ground, and the shells made a crisp, crunchy sound. Yun Chi hurriedly reached out to take them.
Oysters were the most praised shellfish. In addition to the tender meat, was its fresh juice. Many people ate oysters, perhaps influenced by literature or movies, but they couldnât let go of the clear soup that accompanied the oyster when it was just pried open, and thought that it was the essence of the oyster. The lemon juice could be squeezed out at any time to temper the salty taste of that “clear soup.”
Although Yun Chi’s family had some assets, he always thought that this way of eating was the authentic way. However, after a few tastes of that salty water, he was a bit reluctant to eat fresh oysters, preferring the garlic grill style instead. It wasn’t until he once followed an expedition along the coast, and met an old fisherman who cooked a freshly caught oyster for them that Yun Chi learned the proper handling technique.
Bringing over the empty clay pot, Yun Chi pressed a spoon against the oyster meat and immediately emptied the shell of its liquid without mercy, so it was strained cleanly and without leaving a drop. After he shook it a few times to make sure nothing came out, he quickly flattened the oyster shell and removed the spoon.
“Look.” Yun Chi addressed Sa’gya.
As if by magic, within seconds the oyster flesh rebounded and the new, clear juice slowly regrouped from beneath the dried shell, richly saturating the interior.
The big sea otter cupped his hairy cheeks and stared at the scene in amazement until Yun Chi retook the spoon, scooped up the second drop of soup and brought it to his mouth. “Taste?”
It was exactly the same process as yesterday’s feeding. The sea otter’s face heated up as he opened his mouth and tasted the sweet, refreshing juice in the spoon. He thought that the waves would be intoxicated by it when it dripped into the sea.
“…So tasty,” he whispered.
“It tastes good, doesn’t it?” Yun Chi smiled contentedly. “So there’s no need to squeeze any sour fruit at all. That blend is all seawater.”
He picked up the boning knife and swirled off the tender oyster meat in its entirety, leaving the skirt untouched, and handed it to Sa’gya. “Chew it a few times, don’t swallow it quickly. That would be a waste. Chew it carefully, the taste is the best!”
Sa’gya took it in his mouth and chewed it solemnly as he instructed. He looked at Yun Chi. Was it because of the person in front of him, or was the meat in his mouth really so delicious that he could chew it with an increasingly fresh and sweet taste?
Yun Chi was unaware of the godâs mental activities, as he hummed a song that Sa’gya had never heard before and directed the sea otter to help pry open the oyster shells one by one. He treated them in the same way as before, and then plopped them onto the rack of the soup pot and closed the lid. When the snow water boiled with a gurgling sound, Yun Chi counted five minutes. Once the lid was removed, a large cloud of steam poured out, and the oyster meat was brightly clumped in the shells, and he couldn’t wait to reach down and squeeze one. He immediately scalded his hand and squeezed his earlobe.
“So hot! So hot!” He huffed and puffed. Sa’gya wasnât afraid of heat, but the sea otter’s palms werenât as nimble as his fingers, and he couldnât get down in the pot for Yun Chi, so he just controlled the flow of air and quickly blew and cooled the soup pot.
He waited for the food to drop to a temperature that the skin could bear, then Yun Chi hurriedly grabbed them. One by one, they finished sharing the oysters and continued steaming the next batch. He and Sa’gya held the oyster shells and saw that the steamed oyster meat was almost half the size of an adult’s fist. When they bit into it, the roots of their tongues were flooded with sweet soup, and the texture was even more smooth and tender. It was so delicious that they were overwhelmed with joy, and before they knew it, there were happy smiles on their faces.
Yun Chi leaned against Sa’gyaâs warm fur and found himself holding the shells like a natural wine glass. Dizzily, he thought about when he was a child, and he had read about the oyster seller, Uncle Yu Le, who did not know the world and its people, but was only interested in the way the customers ate oysters: with a little sucking, he sucked the meat and juice into his mouth – how convenient!
But now, even if he wanted to eat that way, the objective conditions would not allow him to eat such a big oyster.
Yun Chi giggled, gathered around the soup pot with Sa’gya and ate two-thirds of the salvaged oysters, that left Sa’gya with a third of the oysters. They decided to hang them in the sea with a net, and then use them as a snack when their stomachs were empty.
“It’s so degenerate day by day-” Yun Chi didn’t bother to clean up the mess in the kitchen. Sa’gya would sort it out anyway, plus heâd just eaten so much that his stomach was round and he didn’t want to move, so he collapsed on Sa’gya’s belly and buried his cheek in the thick fluffy fur.
Sa’gya licked his palms and was tidying his fur, when he heard those words. He froze for a moment, “Degenerate? Where?”
“Eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating, isn’t that degenerate?” Yun Chi didn’t look up, but continued to sink into Sa’gya’s belly, and trailed off in a long, jarring voice.
The sea god cackled. He didnât know how to evaluate his remarks. No followers, no temple, no territory or power to add color to their own face – for any god, this life would be considered the most poor and humiliating. How could it be called “degenerate?”
Rather than degenerate, you are too good at feeding, pup.
The sea otter sighed, groomed himself to a new shine, and then gently rubbed Yun Chi’s body, so that the boy could not resist snoring, as he sank into the soft fur and fell asleep.
My mother used to grab her earlobe between her fingers if something was hot, and say “hot, hot, hot!!!”đ
So enjoying this story.
Thank you both for the chapter.