Chapter 16

“Bai Yi, those students cannot be relied on,” said Woolf, stopping beside Bai Yi.

“I know!”

Bai Yi sat on the floor breathing slowly. Ever since he ate the snake gall, the dizziness in his head had receded by quite a bit. Apparently, Martin’s words could be trusted, but the poison needed time to be removed completely. However, with the poison receding, the injuries on his body became more pronounced and the pain became hard to bear. Ever since yesterday afternoon, Bai Yi had suffered from numerous injuries, just that they weren’t that obvious. Now, after risking his life again, all the injuries and pain came crashing down at once.

Abrasions, bruises and internal bleeding!

However, apparently the activated cells could enhance the physiological functions of the body. Bai Yi could still survive even with injuries as serious as these.

“I know that a lot of them aren’t dependable, but for now it’s best that we group together. Let’s follow our initial plan and acquire the drug to regain human form. Though from now on… we can be a bit more selfish. How laughable; initially I just wanted to ram into the strange bird with the car to buy some time for the rest, but in the end I almost lost my life.” Bai Yi said, grabbing Woolf’s right hand and slowly standing up.

“I’m just reminding you. It’s good as long as you know, in case we end up throwing our lives away.”

“En, got it.” Bai Yi nodded.

“What do we do with this guy?” Woolf asked.

“Food! Haven’t you realised that our stomachs are almost empty now? This big fellow just happened to deliver itself to us. Come, help me to find two branches to be a splint, my left arm fractured from the impact just now.” Bai Yi said to Woolf. Woolf couldn’t help but tap on Bai Yi’s left arm lightly, causing Bai Yi to twitch from the pain.

“This fellow, I still thought that you weren’t in pain.”

“Rubbish! I’m in so much pain I wish I could die right now!” Bai Yi scolded.

At this moment, sounds of cars driving could be heard coming from the tunnel, a small car soon came rushing out and braked sharply. Hong Qi Hua was astonished upon seeing this scene. She tried thinking of many ways to kill the giant bird, but they just did not have that capability right now. The solution she thought of was to make use of external forces and immediately thought of the tunnel. She didn’t expect that when she came back here she would find the Seven-Tailed Snake Vulture already dead.

“Hey, we can’t kill that monster, so don’t throw away our lives, did you hear me?!” Tang Ping shook the seat in a frenzy.

At the start, when Hong Qi Hua was driving, both him and Dai Yu Yao were quite at ease, but when she decided to turn back it frightened the two of them to death. Did Hong Qi Hua go crazy? She really planned on trying to kill that monster! They did not even have guns with them; going up against the giant bird was the same as throwing away their lives. Of course, even normal firearms may not have been able to kill the Seven-Tailed Snake Vulture.

“It’s already dead!” Hong Qi Hua said and opened the door, walking downwards.

“Dead?” Tang Ping looked in Hong Qi Hua’s direction and found that at an angle towards the front was a heavy truck pressed against the mountain wall. Between the truck and the mountain wall… wasn’t that thing the strange bird? Tang Ping was in shock and opened his mouth wide, completely unable to believe that that frightening guy died just like that.

“I’m sorry Uncle Bai, I just thought of a way but didn’t expect that you would have already killed this strange bird.”

“No, it’s nothing much, my luck is just good. Since you are here, come give me a hand to prepare this bird, this is a good quality ingredient.” Bai Yi didn’t blame Hong Qi Hua. If they were to swap places, he wouldn’t have taken the risk either if he did not have a safe way to kill the bird.

“I don’t know how to handle food,” Hong Qi Hua said seriously.

“It’s a small matter, I’ll teach you. My left arm is broken now, so it’s inconvenient for me to do such things,” Bai Yi reassured. Suddenly, Bai Yi creased his eyebrows and walked to the snake that Woolf had removed the snake gall from. He discovered a shade of green rapidly spreading upwards from the head of the snake.

“Woolf, quick, bring the chopper here and chop off the snake at this area!” Bai Yi said anxiously.

Woolf now had an almost blind trust in Bai Yi; after hearing his words he unhesitatingly did what Bai Yi told him to do. Right after chopping off that part of the snake, the green colouration spread all over the chopped off part in less than 10 seconds. Just by looking at it, you could tell that the meat was already inedible.

“What happened?” Only now did Woolf have the chance to ask what happened.

“The poison spread; I think you accidentally ruptured the snake’s venom sac when you were searching for the snake gall. If we were a bit slower, not just this snake but the entire body would have become inedible.” Bai Yi looked carefully at the chopped off snake head and explained.

“Qi Hua, come and try cutting the snake,” Bai Yi said to Hong Qi Hua, realising afterwards that she didn’t have a knife in her hands.

“Woolf, take out the kitchen knives that I prepared.” Bai Yi instructed.

“Why are you always telling me to do things…” Woolf complained, but still went to get the kitchen knives. Along the way, Bai Yi had passed a shopping mall and specially went inside to find a set of cooking tools. Kitchen knives were indispensable tools for any chef.

“I’m injured and Qi Hua is a beautiful girl.”

“Yes yes yes, I got it.” Woolf pulled out a small case from the car. After opening it, a row of more than 10 knives of different shapes and sizes could be seen.

“Use this. This is a Willow Leaf Knife, suitable for precise dismantling of meat,” Bai Yi said to Hong Qi Hua.

Hong Qi Hua blankly held the Willow Leaf Knife in her hands and stared at it. In Hong Qi Hua’s eyes, kitchen knives were just kitchen knives, how were there so many different types? However, in the area of culinary skills, Hong Qi Hua was just a novice and completely incomparable to Bai Yi. Since he already said so, she could only follow.

“The way you hold the knife is wrong!” Bai Yi said again when Hong Qi Hua lifted the knife. Hong Qi Hua could only cry inside, there were even requirements for holding the knife?

“I have never handled an ingredient like this before, but from the spread of the poison, the position of the venom sac is different from normal venomous snakes. If we were to make a mistake in the preparation, the poison would spread very quickly. With no way to counteract the poison now, the entire ingredient would become unusable after the poison spread.” Bai Yi explained.

“At this spot, cut down 2cm deep and then make an incision vertically while maintaining the depth.” Bai Yi pointed at a place and did a demonstration.

Hong Qi Hua wasn’t even nervous when speeding with the car but she started to feel nervous now. Woolf, Momo, Sharpei and even Tang Ping and Dai Yu Yao who just got out the car, held their breath as they looked at her, afraid of disturbing her focus. When Bai Yi saw how the rest acted, he couldn’t help but laugh; did he subconsciously put such great pressure on everybody?

“No need to be this nervous, this is a snake head that has already been tainted by poison, letting you practice on it is just to train your ability to control the knife precisely and also to determine the position of the venom sac. Only after that would you prepare the other 6 snakes, so even if you make a mistake, it’s fine.” Bai Yi explained.

After Bai Yi gave his explanation, Hong Qi Hua could finally calm down and made the cut following his instructions.

Maybe because she was relaxed or maybe because she didn’t have to be worried, Hong Qi Hua’s hands were exceptionally steady. Her only flaw was not being very accurate when it came to the depth of the knife and control of her strength. However, that wasn’t something a first-timer could grasp. If there really was such a person, then ‘genius’ wouldn’t be enough to describe him; ‘monster’ would be a better word.

Following Bai Yi’s instructions, Hong Qi Hua dissected the snake and the muscle grain she produced was orderly and clear. Other than the faint green coloration, Hong Qi Hua couldn’t believe that this was the ingredient that she prepared.

“Long shaped poison gland, longest point is 141cm below the teeth of the snake, judging from the size of the snake’s mouth,” Bai Yi said, meticulously looking at the muscle grain pattern of the dissected meat. At this time, Hong Qi Hua was like a student following behind Bai Yi, listening seriously to his every word.

“After this is the true ingredient preparation. Cut down from here and make a horizontal slice.” Bai Yi said.

“Horizontal slice?”

“Yes, horizontal slice, directly cutting away the poison gland and discarding the brain portion. Why, did you really want to remove the poison gland?” Bai Yi smiled and told Hong Qi Hua. “If you want to practice, you can use the snake head that you removed, but now you can’t. I can’t let you use edible ingredients to practice.”

“Ok, I know.” Hong Qi Hua nodded.

Bai Yi wasn’t wrong, now wasn’t the time for her to practice. She also knew that when she was trying to dissect the poisoned snake head, she made dozens of mistakes while cutting. That was the nature of the poison gland; any mistake and the poison would be completely released, leaving nothing left to eat.

“Remember to change the knife.” Bai Yi reminded.

“En!” Hong Qi Hua nodded, the Willow Leaf Knife had already been used to dissect the poisoned snake head, of course it couldn’t be used to prepare the remaining six snakes that were still in good condition.

As Hong Qi Hua was carefully preparing the ingredients, the rest of the group also drove back one after the other. Honestly speaking, they were all very curious as to how Bai Yi and Woolf managed to settle that Seven-Tailed Snake Vulture.

Upon seeing the marks left on the mountain wall by the heavy truck, all of them suddenly got it. So it was like this; he used the heavy truck to ram into the giant bird in the tunnel? After realising that, they took it lightly as if it was a simple solution, but even if they knew of this method, would they dare to actually carry it out?

Only Martin was astonished when he saw Hong Qi Hua preparing the ingredients seriously and Bai Yi explaining in detail beside her.

“Hey hey Bai Yi, what are you planning on doing? Are you going to eat this fellow?” Martin questioned.

“Of course, now we don’t have much food left, what do we eat if not this fellow? Unless…there’s some chemicals in its body?” Bai Yi immediately thought of a problem; this guy escaped from the laboratory, could it be that it contained poisonous compounds within it?

“There are some hormonal compounds in it, but they aren’t poisonous as they’re just for the sake of accelerating growth. There’s nothing much inside it that will have an influence on us, I just didn’t expect that you would think of eating this big guy.” Martin shrugged.

“So it’s edible?”

“It’s edible!”

“Then that’s fine.” Bai Yi nodded. After Hong Qi Hua heard the conversation between Bai Yi and Martin she also continued to prepare the Seven-Tailed Snake Vulture.