Chapter 36: Food and Water
Everyone went to sleep outside their home and only Ning was wide awake looking at everything in black and white. ‘Feels like I’m watching an old movie,’ he thought.
He looked at Hyesi, who too had started to sleep outside after getting stronger, sleeping with a smile on his face. ‘He must’ve really liked the fish,’ Ning thought as he looked at the young boy.
He looked at the other villagers, and they were mostly asleep with smiles as well. ‘Can I really do anything to help?’ he wondered. In his mind, the only method was to directly kill what they called the Demon and be done with it. Fishes would return and they would get some more food.
But that wasn’t a choice for right now. No one in the village had enough strength to fight the demon and it would take Ning forever to get enough energy to be strong or make Hyesi strong enough to fight the demon.
‘Hmm… why don’t they eat coconut?’ he wondered. He looked around and remembered they were all asleep. ‘Ah, I guess I will ask Hyesi tomorrow.’ Ning went to sleep as well.
Early in the morning, the system woke up Ning just as Hyesi and the rest started to wake up. Ning looked at the horizon and realized that the sun was still a bit away from rising.
‘Let’s see, since I collected 2.5 million energy after sunrise yesterday and increasing my cap to 5 million, I still haven’t capped out for the day. So, If I were to collect right now, I would be capped and would have to wait for 24 more hours, right? Hmm… I guess my best choice is to not collect right now so that I can do it in a few hours,’ he thought.
Everyone started cultivating the Sun God’s Morning Cleansing technique. Sun came up and washed them over with its yang. Hyesi frowned as he didn’t feel his god doing anything for him today. ‘Is something wrong with Inikaka?’ he thought.
Ning on the other hand was jolly, waiting for a few more minutes to collect 4 million energy at once. ‘Wait, I can collect 5 million if I wait for some more minutes, right?’
Hyesi started to walk out of the village to go to the jungle when suddenly, he heard, “Wait Hyesi, go back inside your house for a few more minutes.”
Hyesi immediately stopped when he heard his god. “Is something wrong, Inikaka? You didn’t help me today either,” he asked.
“I was too busy thinking of something and forgot to help you. Go back to your house and I will do it again,” Ning said.
Hyesi made no objections and went back to his stone house. His mother looked at him weirdly for returning inside his house but made no comment about it.
After a few minutes, Ning collected 5 million energy from the Yin that was in Hyesi’s body and inside the house itself. “Alright, we can go now.”
“Did that help me this time, Inikaka?” Hyesi asked. Ning had said yesterday that it didn’t help him, but he had still decided to help him once more.
“It doesn’t matter if it helped you right now or not, in the long term, it will help you,” Ning said something that was sort of true, but mostly a lie.
Hyesi still accepted it and walked to the jungle. His task today was to collect different dried leaves and use them to cover Inikaka’s home that he was making.
Ning looked at the different coconut shells and decided to ask the question. “Hyesi, Why don’t you guys eat coconut?” he asked.
“What’s a coconut, Inikaka?” Hyesi asked.
“These things inside these shells, don’t you eat those,” he asked.
“Ah, you mean Jebiento, yes we drink their water,” Hyesi said.
‘Jebiento? Is there some sort of language problem here?’ he wondered. ‘Hey system, what’s the price for the next Klavis language?’ he asked.
‘Alright, buy it.’
‘Ok, this should work now.’
“Say that once again,” he asked.
“Oh, I said we drink the coconut’s water,” Hyesi replied.
“Does that mean you’ve never eaten the flesh of a ripe coconut?” he asked.
“Ripe coconut? I don’t know about that, Inikaka. We just take the green ones and break them for water. After all, we can’t live without water,” Hyesi said.
“Yeah, but why coconut? Why don’t you drink the other water, and leave coconut for food?” Ning asked.
“Other water?” Hyesi fell into thought and said, ” Aside from the occasional rain, there is no other water, Inikaka.”
“What about the ocean water?” he asked.
“Those are salty, Inikaka. It just makes use more thirsty. We just use it to get salt to preserve fish for winter.”
“Just salt? Oh, you guys don’t know how to get drinkable water from saltwater, do you?” Ning realized. ‘But can I even teach them how? There are no materials here.’ He thought.
‘Maybe I will have to use the system or something,’ he thought. He tried to remember how exactly he could help them get drinking water from seawater on such a deserted island without suddenly introducing plastic or metallic materials.
‘That is going to be troublesome,’ he thought. ‘Let’s just focus on the food aspect for now. Since they have a temporary source of water, it should be fine,’ he thought.
After collecting the different dried leaves, Hyesi walked to Ning’s house and started laying it around the stone house to camouflage it as much as possible. It would also work as protection from the elements.
“Dried leaves won’t last that long though, will it?” Ning asked.
“Yeah, it would be good if we could get those giant leaves from the other island. Those would be perfect to cover your house Inikaka,” Hyesi said.
“Huh?” Ning was suddenly shocked at what he had just heard. “Another island?” he asked.
“Yes, Inikaka. The island that’s just a little over there,” Hyesi said as he pointed towards a direction.
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