'What the hell? This counts as a First Blood achievement? Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about the term "First Blood"?'
Li Xiang's heart was bleeding. 'My Gossipy Dragon! What a huge loss!'
This chicken wasn't a Tier One Exotic Beast yet, of course. But according to his theory, it would have mutated after the Apocalypse and become one.
Don't be fooled by its low Level. A Tier One Exotic Beast could easily kill several ordinary adult men. It was a formidable fighting force!
This was a chicken they had raised themselves. It was exceptionally talented, able to live for another ten years and eventually mutate. Its intelligence and loyalty would have been guaranteed, which meant he had just lost the equivalent of an elite warrior.
Besides, legend has it that chickens and birds are descendants of dinosaurs. They were forced by their environment to devolve into a form better adapted to Nature. Since this one was a Tier One Exotic Beast, the Gossipy Dragon, it must have activated the bloodline of its distant dinosaur ancestors.
Its value was self-evident. How could the loss not be immense?
His grandmother said, "Here, let me do it. I'll show you how it's done, and you can learn."
"No, no, no, I can handle it!" Li Xiang naturally refused. The chicken was dead and couldn't be brought back. He could only suppress his grief and regret as he deftly continued to process the bird.
Boiling the water, plucking the feathers, gutting it, breaking it down, and chopping it into small pieces—his grandmother was astonished by the whole sequence.
"My Xiang'Er is so amazing. He's never killed a chicken before, but he's such a natural on his first try." His grandmother suddenly felt the urge to share, wanting to go tell the neighbors all about it.
Unfortunately, not many families were left in Li Family Village. A few households used to live near Li Xiang's home, but now their houses were all empty. Just to drop in on a neighbor, one would have to walk several hundred meters.
This was the reality for rural areas nowadays, especially in remote, mountainous regions like theirs.
Li Family Village originally had forty to fifty households. When Li Xiang was a child, the village had been quite lively. But as times changed, at least twenty families had bought homes in the county town over the years. Some had even bought places in the provincial capital and rarely came back.
As for the remaining twenty-odd households, the young people had mostly gone to work in other cities. They rarely returned, even once a year, leaving behind mostly the elderly and children.
The village originally had families with three different surnames, but now only two remained, and they lived scattered about. It was nothing like the "new countryside" developments in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Region, which were all planned to be neat and uniform.
After Li Xiang finished with the chicken, he went outside and stared at the others. 'I wonder if any of them are...'
'Damn, I won't dare to casually eat chicken anymore.'
In truth, his family only ever slaughtered a chicken for holidays. But since Li Xiang had returned, his grandmother had killed one today specifically to welcome him home. It had been too late to do so yesterday.
'System, System, can you give me a heads-up next time, before I kill one?'
Li Xiang sent the thought to the system in his mind. He mused that if his family had any other potential Exotic Beasts—not just chickens, but maybe ducks, or their yellow dog—he had to raise them until the Apocalypse. When the time came, they would transform into loyal, elite guardians for their home.
System: "You can redeem the 'Mutant Creature Identification Function.' It will alert you to any Mutated Creatures or potential Mutated Creatures within a ten-meter radius. Cost: 100 Achievement Points."
'What else can I redeem with Achievement Points?' Li Xiang asked.
System: "They can be redeemed for High Level Cultivation Techniques, treasures, and more. Their uses are extensive."
Li Xiang nodded, quite satisfied.
"Grandma, I'm heading up the mountain to pick some mushrooms," Li Xiang said, grabbing a firewood chopper and a back-basket. He planned to explore the mountains for a bit. He had felt so cooped up in the big city, and these were pristine, untouched forests. There were several mountains behind their house, all of which technically belonged to his family. But with his parents having passed away early and his grandmother getting on in years, the forests had been left untended and had long since grown into a Primeval Forest.
It wasn't just the mountains. His family also owned several acres of land, all of which were now barren and overgrown with weeds. He had seen them from a distance on the roadside yesterday as he rode the three-wheeler home.
His grandmother only cultivated a small plot of land close to the house, along with a little vegetable garden in the front yard.
Most of the other families were in the same situation. You couldn't make money growing crops in the countryside; you might even lose money if you weren't careful. The only exception was the large-scale, commercial farm model.
Li Xiang couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia. He recalled that when he was a child, villagers would argue over things like who had encroached on whose field or moved a boundary ridge. Now, ironically, nobody fought over it anymore. Vast tracts of fertile land lay uncultivated.
His family owned a bamboo-covered mountain, full of thick moso bamboo. If they harvested it, it could sell for a good amount of money, but no one came to buy it.
With the bamboo basket on his back and the chopper tucked into his waistband, Li Xiang headed up the mountain. Once there, he cut down a sturdy, flexible branch. It was the kind of branch you could shave into a stick and play with all day.
It was just that the chopper was a bit dull and nicked, so cutting took some effort.
'This blade needs sharpening.'
Li Xiang's home was located at the border of the Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces, and the mountains there were abundant with mushrooms. However, he wasn't in the habit of eating varieties like the Hand-rubbing Green. That type of mushroom was neurotoxic, and some could cause irreversible damage.
Granny Li Xiang was old; how could he possibly let her eat something like that?
So he only picked the ones he knew were absolutely safe.