Chapter 506: Camping Hotpot
A little after Zhen Liu knocked Zhen Li the fuck out, back at the riverbed…
‘Huh…that’s weird…,’ Nepherage thought to herself once she had returned to camp, ‘I thought Frosttusk told me milord needed me to-‘
*Click.*
‘Oh there he is.’
Just as Nepherage was about go and look for Zhen Liu, the latter proceeded to pop out of a tree through a doorway to the Library of Nowhere. Accompanying him were Jin Fang and Rianna, as well as two zakos carrying an unconcious Zhen Li.
Once this retinue left the door, it automatically closed up, returning to being a mundane tree once more.
“Milord.”
“Huh? Oh, hey Nepherage. Did you finish helping out in thawing the caravan?”
“Huh? No, you summoned me to-”
“Milord…”
“Hey maestro! Why’s that main branch guy being dragged by the zakos?”
Before Nepherage could finish her thought, Frosttusk and Hurricroak came in and interrupted it.
In fact, they also changed the subject entirely.
“Oh him? Yeah, I managed to…persuade him to be a spy for us. But I kinda had to make a questionable deal of sorts to do so…”
“Questionable how?,” Nepherage asked.
“Questionable in the sense I’m going to need one of you guys to possess his ass later.”
“Ah…okay…”
While the kaijin weren’t exactly enthusiastic about possibly helping one of their lord’s enemies, they still had to at least try and put in effort.
“But we’ll worry about that later,” Zhen Liu reassured them, “for now, I need someone to help hide this guy somewhere and the rest to go thaw out the fleet. Aight?”
“Yes, milord.”
“Aight.”
With this order given, Frosttusk proceeded to join up with Zhen Liu and his entourage as they went to go and stash Zhen Li somewhere.
As for Nepherage and Hurricroak, they went to go and thaw out the fleet…mostly.
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[Hey, Hurricroak?]
[Yeah?]
[Sorry for yelling at you earlier. Just…didn’t know the situation.]
[It’s…fine…well not really. Then again, I don’t like sharing some things about myself…]
[…]
[…]
[Talk about this later to never?]
[Agreed.]
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“Well…looks like we’re going to have to add another day to our itinerary.”
“Yeah…at least we managed to salvage our supplies and then some though.”
“True…you sure otter meat is edible?”
“I mean…probably? I ate beaver once and that was pretty tasty. Then again, it was just the tail…”
Despite the best efforts of both the Zhen Clan and the Skyscales Company, with assistance from the Fourth Young branch master’s puppets(kaijin) and the Geyser Hippo, the caravan had no choice but to camp out for the evening, delaying their arrival to the Blossoming Scales Kingdom by a full day.
The caravan had managed to thaw out all of the rafts and cargo from the makeshift river glaciers by the end of the day, but that was the issue.
It had taken them the entire day to thaw everything out in such a way to prevent as much damage as possible.
Luckily, none of the people or animals got frozen over, otherwise there would’ve been even longer delays in regards to funeral arrangements and burials…or impromptu butchering.
It was suggested by some members of the caravan that they continue sailing throughout the night, sleeping and eating while floating on the river, but that idea was strongly rejected by the caravan leaders.
The leader of the Skyscales Company was worried about the possibility of bandits being opportunistic assholes and attacking the weakened caravan in the dead of night.
He had heard rumors of a particularly nasty bandit group that was led by a fierce Aether Lord and he didn’t want to risk it, despite being accompanied by an Aether Lord themselves.
The aforementioned Aether Lord on the other hand, also known as the Zhen Clan side branch patriarch, was more worried about the appearance of nocturnal aether beasts.
It may have been years since Zhen Shi had to deal with the local wildlife of Roaring Tide, but he had dealt with enough packs of Starlight Wolves back home to know that night travel was a pain in the ass to deal with, especially when the risk of drowning came into effect.
As such, the carvan made the decision to call it a night and make camp.
Evidently though…not a lot of people we’re going to be sleeping this night…
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‘Huh…for something that had almost ripped out my throat only a few hours ago, Ravager otters are surprisingly easy to dismantle. Then again, it could be because these damn things are currently popsicles,’ Zhen Liu inwardly commented as he went about the somewhat brutal task of chopping up a dead frozen Ravager Otter for dinner.
Surprisingly, the combined ice attack from his grandfather, father and uncles didn’t outright kill all of the Ravager Otters.
A few the buggers were actually so tenacious that they managed to thaw themselves out and escape back into the wild…not before brutally injuring some people in the process.
Luckily this only happened twice before they wisened up and threw the frozen otters into cages so that they could be dealt with latter.
It was on this same chain of logic that the Thunderscale Dragon Otter was tossed into one of the stronger cages that the Zhen Clan brought with them.
They didn’t know if it was still alive or not, they just didn’t want to risk it.
Regardless of these frozen, living Ravager Otters though, a good chunk of them were still outright killed by the flash freezing process and were littering the place.
A few of the otter corpses were either tossed back into the river for the carrion eaters or buried off to the side to serve as fertilizer.
However, some of the more…culinary experimental types, saw the frozen otters and thought to themselves a simple question.
“Are these things edible?”
As such, several members of the caravan proceeded to procure one of the frozen Ravager Otters and prepare them for dinner.
Some people attempted to roast them, a few of the more engineering minded folks tried to make curry or “beggar’s otter”, but a majority of the people trying to eat the otters opted to just turn the damn things into stew/hotpot.
Evidently, this is what Zhen Liu, Jin Fang and Rianna opted to do, after procuring some rice and vegetables to go along with it. The kaijin didn’t join them on this particular gourmet venture since they didn’t really need to eat, but Zhen Liu made sure to give them some otter meat before letting them go have some free time back at the library.
“Are you sure these…pumpkin…things, are edible?,” Rianna asked as held an orange gourd in her hands, “the sweetness I’m smelling off it reminds me too much of the acid spitting plants back in Insect Hell.”
“…the more I learn about your past, the more I grow concerned about your nutritional health,” Jin Fang commented, “it’ll be fine. Just make sure to scoop out the seeds before you chop it.”
“Hey girls! I got the otter meat all chopped up. Is the pot ready?”
“Lemme check…yeah!”
“Sweet.”
With otter meat in hand and a whole bunch of freshly sliced veggies, the trio proceeded to mix it all together into a singular giant pot of stock made from dried seaweed.
As the ingredients boiled together, a somewhat spicy aroma started to tickle their noses.
“Huh…did we add chili peppers to the pot?”
“I don’t think so…”
“Yeesh…is it just me…or is it getting suddenly a lot…warmer…”
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Meanwhile, back at the Library of Nowhere…
“Ugh…I’m beat…,” Razorstella complained, “how the hell are you guys not tired after taking over people’s body?”
“To be fair, Razor, you did do an entire choreographed dance number,” Nepherage pointed out.
“I mean sure, but I didn’t expect to have to use Snake Uncle’s stamina for it.”
“Fair enough.”
The kaijin entered into the main lobby of the library, greeted by the sight of Logos and Pathos as they were teaching Jasper and Janice a lesson in regards to art styles.
Today’s lesson appeared to pertain to pottery.
“Finished!”
*SMASH!*
And kintsugi.
Despite them being in the middle of class though, it didn’t stop Logos and Pathos from greeting the kaijin.
“Honestly, needed more bugs,” Hurricroak answered, “but we did get a neat souvenir from there.”
=Oh?=
Frosttusk proceeded to present a box made of ice he was holding to the two library spirits.
From what the two could see, it appeared to be a pile of meat.
“Ravager…otter…meat…,” Frosttusk answered, “trophies…technically…”
“Pbbbt!,” Hurricroak blew her tongue. “The trophy was technically that big dragon otter, but we couldn’t keep the head because of ‘compensation’…now that I think about it, we haven’t collected a trophy in a while…”
“Regardless,” Nepherage interjected to move the topic along, “our lord suggested that since we can’t join them physically for dinner, that we at least join them in spirit by eating this Ravager Otter meat with them. Do you two know how to prepare this stuff?”
As soon as Nepherage asked that question, Logos and Pathos looked at each other as if she asked if cyanide was edible.
“What’s with the look?”
=Real fast…did our lord boil or roast the Ravager Otter meat?=
“Boil…he was making hotpot…why?,” Spring Brawler asked, sensing something was definitely wrong.
And as if the universe was answering him, a loud bang went off somewhere in the library.
“What the fuck was that?”
<=That would be the sound of the Lust remnant that we extracted from our lord banging against its prison in response to excessive stimuli.=>
“Oh…”
In that moment, they realized that their lord was in trouble, albeit, not one they had to necessarily interfere with…
