Snake Food

"Damn it!"

Just as Liu Zhi happily picked all kinds of dried fruits, a torrential downpour suddenly struck.

Unprepared, Liu Zhi was drenched to the bone. He had no idea where the rain had washed away the fruits he had gathered.

Worst of all, the storm came with thunder and lightning, engulfing the entire Golden City. With Dark Clouds covering the sky, he could not see what was happening around him at all.

With lightning flashing everywhere, Liu Zhi could not even shelter beneath a tree. Who knew when the next bolt might strike one nearby?

Left with no choice, Liu Zhi could only sprint through the rain. He abandoned every fruit he had picked on the ground without a second thought.

When he reached the foot of the pyramid, Liu Zhi did not rush upward. Instead, he found a rock and sheltered there from the rain.

Only then did he notice just how heavy the rain was. The river outside the city had actually begun to rise, its water flowing backward into the city through the northern district.

"What is this supposed to be? Either it stays damp every day without raining, or it pours this hard."

While Liu Zhi complained, the Corpse Soul Naga swam freely through the rain. Her amphibious nature allowed her to move about freely in the water, and the downpour had little effect on her.

Following behind Liu Zhi, she had already brought back all the fruits he had thrown away.

After swimming over to Liu Zhi's side, she loosened her grip and dropped all the fruits in front of him.

"Since it's raining and we can't go out to look for anything anyway, we might as well deal with these fruits first and head out afterward."

As he spoke, Liu Zhi found a relatively dry patch of ground and placed the fruits the Corpse Soul Naga had brought back onto a rock. Then he picked up another stone and smashed down hard.

After cracking open all the fruits, Liu Zhi took out the edible seeds inside.

The seeds were as thick as fingers and extremely hard. Squeezing one felt like squeezing a walnut.

Liu Zhi piled the seeds onto a stone slab and propped the slab up.

Just as Liu Zhi was about to start a fire beneath the slab to roast the seeds, the rain suddenly stopped.

Liu Zhi turned to look at the nearby trees and saw something strange. The instant the rain stopped, many of the trees around him rapidly blossomed and bore fruit.

It happened as if the footage had been fast-forwarded.

For some reason, once the fruits had grown, they automatically fell into the water and drifted with the current toward the river.

In the blink of an eye, all the edible fruit that had just grown on the trees had vanished, leaving only bare leaves seemingly mocking Liu Zhi for being one step too slow.

Liu Zhi froze for only a moment before chasing after the fruits as if he had gone mad.

The Corpse Soul Naga followed with her weapon in hand, watching Liu Zhi chase the fruits all the way to the entrance and exit of the valley.

At the riverbank, Liu Zhi saw the fruits bobbing up and down in the water. He desperately wanted to jump in and salvage them all.

But every time he considered jumping in, a strange feeling warned him not to enter the water. If he did, he would die.

He stood on the bank for a long time. Seeing that the fruits were about to drift out of the valley, Liu Zhi finally gathered his courage and raised the Death Long Staff as he moved toward the river.

At that moment, a huge snake head suddenly emerged from beneath the water and sucked in all the fruit floating in the river before diving back down and disappearing.

This happened five times before all the fruit in the river had been eaten.

Only then did Liu Zhi finally understand why Golden City was so strange. These snakes actually ate fruit. With bodies that huge, how much would they have to eat to get full? Why could they not leave a little for him to try?

Even now, as the new master of Golden City, he was still living on grass.

At that moment, the Corpse Soul Naga swam over to Liu Zhi's side and stared into the river as though thinking about something.

"No wonder there aren't any fish in this river. If this happens every day, even if there were fish in the beginning, they would have been eaten clean. But these fruit trees grow so quickly, so there must be something hidden here. I need to investigate it. Corpse Soul Naga, help me later. Our next research focus will be the northern district."

The Corpse Soul Naga nodded, indicating that she understood.

Only then did Liu Zhi remember the dried fruits he had picked earlier.

"Before that, I should make something edible first. Otherwise, without food, I won't be able to do any research."

As he spoke, Liu Zhi left the riverbank. After he had gone some distance, another giant snake extended its head from beneath the river and watched the direction he had left in from afar.

Back beneath the pyramid, Liu Zhi processed the seeds while making plans in his mind.

"The giant snakes have returned, so the valley will become a closed environment again. Leaving this place will only become more difficult. If I'm going to stay here for a hundred and fifty days, I need to prepare necessary daily supplies: a campfire, pots, bowls, and the like. I also need somewhere to live and sleep. Otherwise, if another downpour comes, that really will be fatal.

"I also need to stock up on food. If what just happened with the fruit growing is a regular occurrence, then I can prepare during heavy rain and intercept some of the fruit."

While planning, Liu Zhi began to act. There was plenty of useless gold inside the pyramid, so Liu Zhi found a spot, stacked the gold together, and hammered it hard into sheets. In the end, he made a small golden pot and several small bowls.

He ran to the riverbank to test them and found that the pot was fairly decent. At the very least, it did not leak.

Afterward, he simply filled half the pot with water and carried it back to the place where he had first taken shelter. He propped the Golden Pot up with stones and tossed in the seeds from earlier.

Starting a fire was relatively easy for Liu Zhi, but finding fuel was not. Most of the wood outside was wet and would not burn at all.

Liu Zhi finally managed to find some dry moss to start the fire. Once it was going, he placed the wood he had gathered outside beside the fire, tossing each piece into the flames after it had dried out, achieving a sustainable cycle of use.

The fire was not very large at first, but metal conducted heat well. Before long, the water in the Golden Pot came to a boil.

Liu Zhi used two branches to poke at the seeds in the water and found that they were still quite hard. So he simply ignored them and let the water continue boiling.

Meanwhile, he used the remaining gold to make other daily necessities.

By the time Liu Zhi had made several bowls, basins, and spoons, he discovered that two-thirds of the water in the Golden Pot had boiled away. The remaining water contained dissolved seeds, and the liquid in the pot looked black and murky, like swamp sludge.