Lin Xiaohe’s head was buzzing. This is what the Titan Whisper Whale meant by “just hatched, most tender meat” crayfish?!
If these are newborn babies, then how huge must a fully grown crayfish be?!
Grandma Lin stood there holding a cleaver, staring at the gigantic crayfish, completely at a loss.
Xiaohe had said she wanted to eat some seafood. So Grandma Lin had specifically splurged, gone on the StarNet, and looked up videos on how to cook seafood.
She bought the right knife, got the right pot, but the crayfish in front of her looked nothing like the seafood in those videos!
“Xiaohe, do we absolutely have to eat these crayfish?”
Grandma Lin sighed heavily. She dared to eat crayfish and knew how to cook them, but she had no idea how to kill something this enormous.
Satellite 3 was a restricted military zone, and bringing in weapons or mechs was strictly forbidden.
Lin Xiaohe’s pink Beetle mech had been stored away at the Central Military Academy the whole time.
They couldn’t exactly rely on hoes and kitchen knives to kill these crayfish, could they?
Lin Xiaohe scratched her head. This was a miscalculation. She had never, ever imagined that crayfish would one day rise up and become such formidable giants.
“Let me think.”
Xinbao and Doudou, sensing some excitement, reluctantly pulled their roots out of the natural soil and scurried over to watch the show.
Lin Xiaohe shifted her gaze to Fanfan.
Fanfan scrambled backward at top speed. [Can’t eat anymore, I really can’t eat anymore!]
The meat from last time was still sloshing around in her stomach. She seriously couldn’t eat another bite.
“Xiao Hong?”
Xiao Hong hesitated. [If I make a move, won’t the crayfish just get blasted to smithereens?]
The commotion would be so huge it would definitely attract the patrol officers.
“Doudou?”
Doudou to the rescue—one Doudou was worth two of anyone else.
Under Lin Xiaohe’s command, Doudou aimed at the crayfish’s head and started pounding it relentlessly—whack, whack, whack.
The crayfish were incredibly tough. It took Doudou a full ten minutes just to beat one to death.
As time ticked slowly by, Pili let out a yawn. It looked like there would be no spicy crayfish tonight.
Lin Xiaohe said, “You all go rest first. Doudou and I can handle it from here.”
Under her insistence, everyone else was shooed back to their rooms to sleep.
At night, Satellite 3 was quiet and comfortable.
Through the transparent dome, the planet Tigre hung high in the sky like a giant disk.
If you looked through a telescope, you could even see starships departing from the spaceport.
Lin Xiaohe leaned against Doudou, quietly watching Doudou beat up crayfish.
There was zero finesse involved—just purely mechanical, repetitive motion. It made both Lin Xiaohe and Doudou yawn repeatedly, their eyelids fighting to stay open.
Doudou’s leaves gradually drooped, leaving only one cannon barrel that kept spitting out green bullets—pop, pop, pop.
The small cage, which had been guarded so tightly until now, slipped onto Lin Xiaohe’s lap.
Lin Xiaohe placed her right hand over the cage’s lid and slowly closed her eyes.
Her mental energy relaxed and unfurled with ease. She seemed to feel a gentle breeze, warm sunlight, and her whole being felt as if it had returned to the womb, gently cradled by amniotic fluid.
It was a sense of safety and comfort that came from the very depths of her genes, a feeling that made her never want to wake up.
Suddenly, a sharp sting shot through her palm.
Lin Xiaohe jolted awake and looked down. The lid of the small cage had been quietly nudged open a crack, and a pair of tiny black eyes, even smaller than sesame seeds, were staring at her through the gap.
There was also a small trace of blood on the cage’s edge.
Lin Xiaohe’s pupils constricted; for a split second, she was stunned.
How could there be a living creature inside the cage?!
After thinking it over carefully, Lin Xiaohe cautiously opened the lid.
Inside, the dandelion and the two baby ginseng fruits were completely gone. In their place was a black beetle as thick as a thumb.
Its antennae probed around, and a faint, tiny hissing sound came from its mouth.
You have got to be kidding me!!!
This is absolutely insane.
Didn’t the Federation say that the Black Beetle was a creature made up by Nuwa?!
Who can explain what is going on with this black beetle right in front of me?
Sensing Lin Xiaohe’s shock, Doudou said drowsily, [Xiaohe, Xiao Hei is probably just hungry. Can you find him something to eat?]
Huh?!
Lin Xiaohe considered Xinbao and the others as individual beings, so she respected their privacy greatly. Outside of combat, she never used telepathy with them.
And yet, such deep trust had been rewarded with this completely unknowing betrayal!
“Doudou.” Lin Xiaohe tilted her head up at a forty-five-degree angle, sorrow flowing against the current like a river. “You are a plant. How could you raise a bug? It will eat you.”
Doudou retorted, [Xiao Hei is not a bug. It grew out of a ginseng fruit.]
So what if Xiao Hei ate the dandelion and the other ginseng fruit? It’s definitely not a bug!
Fanfan eats meat all the time, so what’s wrong with Xiao Hei just liking to eat a few plants?
Lin Xiaohe watched Doudou protect Xiao Hei as if shielding her own cub, and she felt like she was about to fall apart.
“My little Doudou, even if you’d only gone to kindergarten, you wouldn’t mistake a bug for a plant! There was an insect egg inside the ginseng fruit!”
[I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!] Doudou, afraid Lin Xiaohe would hurt Xiao Hei, clamped the small cage’s lid down tightly.
At this moment, Lin Xiaohe’s emotions were incredibly tangled.
The little black bug seemed to sense that Lin Xiaohe didn’t like it, so it meekly shrank back inside the small cage, resting its two tiny antennae on the cage’s edge and looking timidly at Lin Xiaohe’s reaction.
Lin Xiaohe and Doudou were locked in a standoff for a long time.
Doudou stiffly changed the subject. “The crayfish are all beaten to death. Aren’t you going to make spicy crayfish now?”
Lin Xiaohe stared at the small cage until she was nearly in tears, then rubbed her hair in frustration. “Don’t you dare let it out! This is a farm!”
[Okay, Xiaohe, you’re the best person ever. Love you, sending you a heart!] Doudou was overjoyed.
The black beetle’s tiny antennae bobbed up and down, as if expressing its thanks.
Lin Xiaohe sighed and shifted her gaze to the transport cabin. The crayfish’s heads had nearly all been smashed in, their blue blood splattered everywhere.
Once they stopped oozing blood, Lin Xiaohe jumped in, stepped on a crayfish’s back, grabbed the middle segment of its tail, twisted it to the right, and yanked. A vein as thick as a forearm was pulled out, glistening with a dark, oily sheen.
After working through the entire night, Lin Xiaohe finally finished processing all the crayfish.
“Xiaohe, what can we do?” Everyone who had woken up was eager to help, rolling up their sleeves.
Lin Xiaohe hadn’t expected the crayfish to be this huge, so she had found a vendor at the last minute to 3D print ten custom sets of cookware.
Each giant pot was three meters in diameter and could cook five or six crayfish at a time.
The ten massive pots were arranged in two rows. Inside each pot sat two large blocks of white blubber oil.
As soon as the high heat hit, the blubber oil rapidly melted, releasing its grease and a rich, tantalizing aroma.
Lin Xiaohe, Pili, Lao Hei, and the others each grabbed a crayfish and tossed them into the pots—swish, swish, swish.
Sizzle!
Lin Xiaohe had the others take large spatulas and continuously stir and flip the crayfish, while she herself went to another pot to prepare the seasoning.
Whether spicy crayfish tasted good or not depended entirely on the seasoning.
Lin Xiaohe couldn’t find green onions or garlic, but she had seasonings with similar flavor profiles.
She started with oil, then added the onion-garlic flavored seasoning. Once the fragrance was released, she threw in a whole basin of chili peppers.
In an instant, the aroma of chili permeated the entire farm, spilling out along the transparent corridors!
Finally, she added the flash-fried crayfish and stir-fried everything together…
When the finished dish came out, everyone was drooling with anticipation.
Yet Lin Xiaohe hesitated between eating and not eating.
Aside from the crayfish and the chili peppers, which were completely natural, everything else in this dish was pure food tech and synthetic additives.
She wanted to eat it, but she didn’t quite dare.
