whonovel Chapter 125: Red Flower Makes Heaven
Chapter 125: Red Flower Makes Heaven
The dust cloud inside the Scavenger’s Bowl was so thick Xin Yi could barely see her own hands.
"Dig, dig, dig! For the Boss! For the cooked meat!" Gou Sheng chanted, his spotted tail wagging furiously as his clawed hands moved like literal excavators.
Beside him, Er Gou and Da Sha, along with the rest of the hyena pack, were throwing dirt over their shoulders with superhuman speed.
Within thirty minutes, the impossible stone wall of the crater had been transformed into a perfectly sloped, highly functional dirt ramp.
"Boss! Ramp is done!" Gou Sheng panted, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as he looked at her with big, expectant yellow eyes.
"You guys are amazing," Xin Yi groaned, using her glowing Bone of Discipline like a walking cane as she slowly trudged up the dirt ramp. Her legs felt like jelly, and her ribs ached from the fall, but she made it.
She stepped over the rim of the crater and collapsed onto the dry, flat grass of the Badlands, letting out a massive, exhausted sigh.
Fifteen hyena beastmen scrambled up the ramp right behind her, immediately sitting in a perfect, obedient circle around her. They all stared at her. Thirty yellow eyes, completely unblinking.
Rumble.
A collective stomach growl echoed across the plains.
"Boss," Er Gou whimpered, scratching his crooked ear. "We digged. Where is the magic meat?"
"Alright, alright," Xin Yi sighed, pushing herself up into a sitting position. A promise was a promise, and honestly, she was starving too. "Let’s go look for food. What usually lives around here?"
"Warthogs! Big, fat warthogs!" Da Sha cheered, pointing a dirt-caked finger toward a cluster of thorny bushes in the distance.
Xin Yi didn’t even have to do anything. She simply pointed her glowing bone at the bushes and said, "Fetch."
In less than five minutes, Gou Sheng proudly dragged a massive, incredibly plump warthog back to her feet.
"Food!" Gou Sheng cheered.
"Okay, step one complete," Xin Yi muttered, dusting off her tunic. She looked down at the raw meat. "Now, to make a stew. I need a pot. System!"
Silence.
"System, open the inventory!" Xin Yi demanded. "Give me a cooking pot. A big one. The biggest iron cauldron you have."
[Ding!]
[(๑•﹏•) Error: Host does not currently possess a ’Cooking Cauldron’ in her inventory!]
[System Notice: To acquire advanced cookware, Host must gather iron ore, smelt it in a furnace, and forge—]
"I am going to stop you right there," Xin Yi interrupted. She glared at the empty air in front of her. "I was just thrown into a death pit. I was almost eaten. Those petty alphas are probably destroying the entire savanna looking for me. I am tired, I am dirty, and I want to feed my hyenas."
[Host must follow the Civilization Tech Tree! No skipping steps! ( ꈍᴗꈍ)]
Xin Yi’s eye twitched. "System. Generate the pot. Now."
[System cannot simply break the rules of reality to—]
"If you do not give me a pot this exact second," Xin Yi threatened. "I am going to walk back to the Lions, tell Jin Xuan I want to be his mate, and I will spend the rest of my life sleeping in the dirt and eating raw antelope. I will never build another house. I will completely abandon the main quest."
A long, tense silence stretched inside her mind.
[Ding!]
[(╥﹏╥) Host is resorting to emotional blackmail! System feels bullied!]
[Item Generated: One Massive Iron Stew Pot. (Please do not report System to the Goddess!)]
Thud.
A gigantic, heavy black iron pot materialized out of thin air, dropping squarely onto the dirt in front of them.
The hyenas all gasped, jumping back in absolute shock.
"Magic!" Da Sha whispered, his eyes wide as saucers. "Boss made the black rock appear from the sky!"
"That’s right, Da Sha. Boss is very magical," Xin Yi said smugly, crossing her arms. "Now, go gather some dry wood and brush. We need to make a fire."
While the hyenas eagerly scurried around gathering sticks, Xin Yi used the hunting knife from her inventory to clean and chop the warthog meat, throwing it into the massive pot along with the wild savanna mint she had gathered hours ago. She added water from her canteen.
When the pile of wood was ready under the pot, Xin Yi struck her flint and steel.
Fwoosh.
A bright, crackling orange flame sparked to life, licking the bottom of the iron pot.
The hyenas completely lost their minds.
"The hot red flower!" Gou Sheng gasped, instantly dropping to his hands and knees to stare at the fire.
"It dances!" Er Gou cheered, waving his hands at the flames.
Da Sha, who possessed absolutely zero survival instincts, leaned his face completely forward and snapped his jaws, trying to literally bite the fire.
"Ouch! Awoo!" Da Sha yelped, jumping backward and frantically rubbing his singed nose. "The red flower bites back!"
"Stop playing with it!" Xin Yi scolded, lightly swatting Da Sha on the back of the head. "It’s fire! It’s hot! Just sit down and wait!"
The pack immediately sat down, their tails wagging as the water in the pot began to boil.
Slowly, the rich scent of cooking meat and wild mint began to fill the air. It was a completely foreign smell to the badlands, it didn’t smell like blood or rotting carcasses. It smelled warm.
A waterfall of drool was dripping from the hyenas jaws, sizzling against the dirt.
"Boss," Gou Sheng whimpered, his yellow eyes locked onto the bubbling pot. "Is the magic meat ready? I am going to die of good smells."
"Alright, it’s ready," Xin Yi smiled, using a large wooden spoon to scoop out the meat. Since they didn’t have bowls, she simply placed massive, steaming chunks of the cooked warthog onto flat, clean stones in front of them.
"Careful, it’s hot," Xin Yi warned.
The hyenas didn’t care.
Gou Sheng grabbed the steaming meat with both hands and took a massive, ravenous bite.
He froze.
His eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. He slowly stopped chewing. A single, fat tear rolled down his scruffy, dirt-caked cheek.
Er Gou and Da Sha took a bite, and immediately let out high-pitched whines of shock.
"What is this?!" Gou Sheng cried out, chewing frantically. "It is so soft! It is so warm! The red flower made it taste like heaven!"
"It doesn’t taste like dirt!" Da Sha cheered, stuffing an entire chunk into his mouth.
The pack descended into joyful chaos, eating the cooked stew as if it were ambrosia from the gods themselves. They were crying, wagging their tails, and licking the stones completely clean.
Gou Sheng wiped his mouth, looking up at Xin Yi with devotion.
"Oh, Boss," the hyena whispered, completely mind-blown. "This is delicious!"