Ancient Eden - Chapter 120
Chapter 120
(37.5)
Near noon, after eating a few fruits, she sat down and made some repairs to the net she had made yesterday, smoothing the knots at the closure as much as she could and widening it. She then set the net once again in yesterday’s stream, waiting for fat fish to throw themselves into it.
This kind of net, made of fresh vines, would probably wear off after a few times, but for now it was the best choice until a more suitable material could be found. At most, she could just weave another one if this one broke.
When she went into the water to set the net, she remembered Li Mang’s surprise and admirative expression last night, when Li Mang asked her how she had caught the fish and she showed him her net, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud in her heart once again.
After carefully fixing the net with stones, Mu Qing took the stone axe and coconut shells and went to the thistles field behind the cliff.
Xiao Hei followed her for a while, but when it realized that she was walking towards that field of thorny thistles, it probably still had a lingering fear of yesterday’s experience, for it started running around her several times to try to stop her, but Xiao Hei couldn’t resist being clingy, and in the end, it still followed her. It was just that when she was cutting off the thistles and dugging up the soil to get salt crystals, Xiao Hei stood far away to watch her, making low rumbling sounds.
After collecting several shells of salt crystals that were mixed with all kinds of impurities, Mu Qing returned to the cave satisfied.
For almost a day, she did two things over and over again, boiling the salt and collecting fish in the net. By mid-afternoon, except for a few coconut shells that she had to leave empty to collect water, all the other shells were full of salt. This day, she also collected five times the fish in the net, and when she counted them, there were eighty of them, of all kinds. The most numerous was a kind with a grayish-black back and a silver-white belly, and the largest weighed several pounds.
She could not put up a struggle with this one, so she could only put it in the bushes and wait for it to die before she could scrap its scales, cut open its belly and rub salt on it, and then, like she did with the other fish, hang it up to dry with a grass stem through the mouth. While she was killing the fish, she was thinking, one day, when Li Mang was free, she would ask him to dig a small pond to raise fish, so that not only would it be more convenient to catch fish to eat, but she could also eat fresh fish at any time.
As the sun was sinking in the west, Mu Qing gradually lost interest in her work. After putting back her clothes, which she had to wash and dry because they were dirtied during the boiling of the salt, she took Xiao Hei to the trench, waiting for Li Mang to come back.
Li Mang didn’t let her worry for long, as he appeared at the corner of the entrance of the canyon before the last rays of dusk closed in.
Mu Qing called out his name excitedly and waved her hand at him. As if he hadn’t just left this morning, but instead had finally returned home after a longtime absence.
He had a good harvest today, he caught two animals that looked similar to goats but were much bigger, like deers, as well as a long string of wild chickens and birds tied along a branch, and a big bag of fruits, and all kinds of wild vegetables and mushrooms that he had picked on his way back, which he knew she liked.
As she took the bag of fruits to help him, when she stretched out her hand, Li Mang saw several wounds on her hand. Those occurred when she was killing fish, she was cut by the sharp edges of the stone slab, her fingers were also white and wrinkled after soaking in the water all day long.
He looked a little distressed as he held her hand.
Mu Qing withdrew her hand as if it was nothing, and went back to the cave with him with a full smile on her face.
Translator : Laura
Other novels : His One Love & After Being Kidnapped by the Crown Prince & Unaware that My Legitimate Sister is My Husband
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