Fu Miaoxue nodded repeatedly. “Great, let’s take it back and eat it~”

She asked again: “Is there anything else we can eat? I’m so hungry!”

Du Lai glanced at the sky and said: “Let’s stop here for today. We still need time to set up the tent.”

“Okay~ Back to set up the tent!” Fu Miaoxue agreed readily.

The two of them carried an armload of clams and bamboo tubes back. The sky gradually darkened, the wind howled, and the jungle felt gloomy. They walked in single file, silent, moving forward. In the distance, the light of the fire was reassuring — like a guiding beacon pointing toward home.

Though they both knew that place couldn’t really be called a home. It was nothing but a bare stone cave.

……

Back at the large boulder, the campfire was still burning. Du Lai turned the cage upside down and placed it over the fire. With the bottom of the birdcage inverted, it formed a slightly concave metal disc.

With no usable utensils and no seasoning, he tossed the heap of clams — rinsed only in seawater — onto the disc to roast. Before long, a sizzling sound could be heard.

Unable to endure the heat, the clams opened one by one.

Fu Miaoxue crouched by the campfire, mouth watering with craving. She was so hungry — the few fruits they had eaten had done nothing to fill her stomach. Yet she still regarded this cooking method with skepticism.

“No oil, no salt — just dry roasting like this?” she asked.

Du Lai poked at the clams with a stick. “I’d love to use oil and salt too. It’d be even better with some green onion, ginger, and garlic — a splash of vinegar, some chili oil…”

“Stop, stop…” Fu Miaoxue clutched her stomach and said miserably, “The more you say, the hungrier I get.”

Du Lai handed her the bamboo tube with the octopus inside. “Eat this first to tide you over.”

He pulled out the grass plug from the opening. Inside, a palm-sized little octopus was visible, pressed tightly against the inner wall of the tube, refusing to come out.

Fu Miaoxue peered in with curiosity. “Don’t we need to kill it first?”

“Kill it and it won’t be fresh anymore. This is how octopus is always eaten.” Du Lai said in a perfectly ordinary tone. “It’s the same as eating oysters — oysters are eaten raw too.”

Fu Miaoxue thought about it and supposed that was true.

She was bold by nature. She reached right in and yanked the octopus out of the tube. The octopus immediately wrapped around her hand, struggling and writhing without stop.

She stood there for a moment, unsure where to bite.

“Maybe… cut it with the knife first?” Fu Miaoxue frowned.

Du Lai said: “No need to cut it — eating it whole is fine. We only have one knife, and I’ll need it later to cut the clam meat out of the shells. Using it back and forth between raw and cooked food will cross-contaminate the flavors.”

Though she didn’t quite understand why cross-contaminating flavors was a problem, Fu Miaoxue felt there was some logic to it. And the octopus was squirming all over the place — without a cutting board, cutting it wouldn’t be easy anyway.

So…

She’d just bite into it directly.

She was truly too hungry. She brought the octopus to her mouth, thought of the sweet, tender freshness of an oyster, closed her eyes, and bit down——

The first sensation upon contact was: no taste.

Neither fishy nor savory — nothing at all. It was like chewing a rubber band with absolutely no flavor.

She was just about to take a second bite when the tentacles suddenly plastered themselves all over her face!

Fu Miaoxue: “!!!”

She instinctively reached up to pull them off. The little suction cups on the tentacles clung fast to her skin — immovable.

Fu Miaoxue panicked. She yanked harder, only for the sensation to be like her skin being torn — painful!

“Ahhhh!” Scared out of her wits, she screamed, forced through the pain and pulled off two tentacles — then reached to grab the others. But those two tentacles immediately re-attached themselves to other parts of her face!

Tears burst from Fu Miaoxue’s eyes!

“Du Lai ahhhh!!!”