Chapter 34 Part 1

Ao’ao’s heartfelt complaint instantly triggered a tidal wave of laughter in the Danmaku:

[Hahahahaha, what good thing has Ao’ao found again?]

[Cub Ao: I’m breaking my heart for this family! Shift!]

[Sorry, without Ao’ao’s shout, I’d almost forgotten Ao’ao isn’t their biological child. Aaah, why are Teacher Han and Nuonuo only a couple?! I so wish they were a real family of three!]

[Ao’ao: Sugary, smelly couple, stop all this billing and cooing! Hmph!]

[To be fair, I advise all you CP shippers not to get too carried away. With Teacher Han’s family background, how could he possibly accept someone with Ji Nuo’s conditions?]

[Damn… Why did you have to remind me they aren’t a family of three? So after this show ends, our precious Ao’ao baby will be sent back to that cold Orphanage, right? /facepalm crying.jpg]

[Damn, the person in front, don’t make up these imaginings! I’m too old to hear this stuff. I was laughing so happily just a second ago!]

Ji Nuo’s thoughts were still stuck on how Ao’ao and Han Cheng were just too similar. Hearing the little dumpling shout “crab,” his first reaction was a bit dumbstruck. “Crab…?”

Ji Nuo didn’t know much about terrestrial crabs. His intuition said crabs belonged in the water—rivers, lakes, oceans, or streams, but definitely not under a coconut tree.

His first thought: Had this child been so hungry he was hallucinating?

Ji Nuo and Han Cheng exchanged a glance and quickly walked toward the child.

Though it was only a few seconds of waiting, Lu Aotian was already losing his patience.

The two ugly creatures in front of him, one big and one small, looked at first glance like large, hairless spiders. On closer inspection, the shell texture was more like a crab’s. Lu Aotian was indeed so hungry his eyes were about to flash green. Never mind what they were, catch them first.

He truly didn’t want to do it himself. Unfortunately, his two minions only knew how to flirt and weren’t helpful in a pinch. The two prey before him weren’t stupid, they’d definitely run from humans.

Seeing he couldn’t rely on the two useless minions, Lu Aotian’s small hand gripped a wooden stick, striking with speed, precision, and ruthlessness. The stick caught the bizarre crab along a gap in its carapace, pinning it.

The other bizarre crab, clearly much smaller, was more agile. Just as it was about to scramble over the surrounding obstructing coconut leaves, Lu Aotian stomped a foot down on it. His leg shot out with extreme speed, but the force on the small bizarre crab was light, merely suppressing it.

The entire process took less than twenty seconds. Since the Follow Cameraman had been with Han Cheng and Ji Nuo the whole time, the brilliant scene of one cub apprehending two crabs was not captured.

When the three arrived together, what they saw was the narrow yet exceptionally upright back of little friend Lu Ao’ao.

Lu Aotian turned his head slightly, looking back at the newcomers. The stray hairs on his forehead were swept by the sea breeze, and his sharp, knife-like glare flew like wind. It was as if he had donned a bamboo hat and gripped a Heaven-Shattering Sword, returning once more to the martial world of flashing blades, galloping horses, and free-spirited vengeance.

A beauty like jade, a sword like a rainbow… Those distant memories were veiled by layers of heavy gauze, only briefly glimpsed when he used a similar stance. A complex emotion suddenly surged in Lu Aotian’s heart… It was probably… a deep loneliness that only the peak experts of the world could perceive…

However, this was all what Lu Aotian imagined in his own head. What Ji Nuo actually saw was an increasingly chubby little dumpling, stepping on a crab, staggering twice, his little butt sticking out repeatedly before he finally steadied himself.

After striking his cool pose, he casually glanced back at them out of the corner of his eye. In reality, his pupils were squeezed to the very corners. As he turned his head, his plump little cheeks squeezed into a shape like Crayon Shin-chan’s. The whole little dumpling was both sassy and adorable, extremely inviting to cuddle!

Seeing the kid’s posturing had already unfolded, Ji Nuo naturally played along, enthusiastically praising, “Wow, our precious Ao’ao baby has caught another amazing thing!”

“If I waited for you, they’d have run long ago!” Lu Aotian snorted disdainfully. He also offered a critique of Ji Nuo’s starry-eyed adoration: “Overacting.”

With that, he stepped aside. Ji Nuo and Han Cheng each pinned down one of the bizarre crabs. After seeing it clearly, Ji Nuo’s mouth twitched. “This thing looks… not very edible…”

Lu Aotian didn’t agree. “The first crab definitely didn’t look edible either. People just got used to it. I think these must be some kind of land crab.” The more he spoke, the puffier his little chest became.

Han Cheng nodded slightly. “This is a Coconut Crab. It’s edible.”

Ji Nuo: “You’ve eaten it too?”

Lu Aotian was noticeably more cautious this time. “Is it tasty?”

Han Cheng shook his head. “I haven’t eaten it. But I’ve heard the flavor of Coconut Crab is very unique. Opinions vary from person to person.”

Lu Aotian nodded, muttering under his breath, “Same as saying nothing.”

But clearly, he placed much higher expectations on this than the Coconut Snail. Lu Aotian truly did not want to fill his stomach with coconuts.

The two Coconut Crabs, one large and one small, were flipped over. On the underside of the smaller one, there was a distinct seta with eggs attached—a sure sign it was a female.

The male, held in hand, weighed a solid seven or eight jin. The female only felt a little over a jin at most. Ji Nuo and Lu Aotian negotiated, and the little dumpling very magnanimously agreed to release the female who had just finished a romance. He then turned and struck heavily against the male who had also just finished his romance.

Lu Aotian pulled his wooden stick up from the ground and poked the male crab’s carapace, stating pointedly, “Told you not to date, look what I caught you doing!”

The Danmaku was practically dying of laughter at the little dumpling’s lively expression, a mix of three parts sneer, three parts smugness, and four parts schadenfreude:

[Oh man, so precious Ao’ao is actually an outstanding representative of our Big F Group! Burn these smelly couples! Charge!]

[Ao’ao is really so jealous. Not arguing, but I also think Ji Nuo shouldn’t be with Han Cheng… He! Should! Marry! Me!]

[Am I the only one drooling all over the floor? My favorite Ao’ao feasting segment has arrived again!]

And so, the two adults and one child retreated from the coconut grove right after they’d entered.

Back at the Seawater Desalination Device, they first poured the distilled water from the large Giant Clam Shell into a plastic bottle.

They’d added plenty of flammable material, so the heat was high enough. The large plastic bottle was already half full of distilled water.

A fair amount of Crude Sea Salt had crystallized on the inner walls of the stainless steel pot, which Ji Nuo scraped into a coconut shell for temporary storage. Although this Crude Sea Salt couldn’t compare to the refined salt they usually ate, it was still edible in a deserted island survival scenario.

Based on the information Han Cheng provided, Ji Nuo learned that Coconut Crab doesn’t have a high meat yield, but the abdominal fat is exceptionally rich. And eating the fat alone doesn’t taste as good as pairing it with the crab meat in a shell-grilled style. So Ji Nuo planned to cook the Coconut Crab together with the Coconut Snail.

Besides these two main ingredients, they had also picked up quite a few sea snails, oysters, and shellfish along the rocky beach.

However, since they were all too small, these would only be fit for making a soup with the leftover snail meat after they’d purged themselves of sand.

Crab meat was easy to crack open and extract using just a stone. But the dense, firm snail meat was utterly impossible to slice thin by hand. They had no choice but to approach the production team first.

Bai Yong had naturally arranged a task similar to the one for exchanging the Seawater Desalination Device. But according to his originally designed pace, it should have only been available around dusk. Before then, the workload he’d assigned the guests was supposed to keep them more than busy.

Learning that Lu Ao’ao had caught two Coconut Crabs in one go—even though he voluntarily freed the female to reproduce—he still had a huge male crab left!

If the Deputy Director hadn’t held him back, Bai Yong would have been swigging his cooling balm straight from the bottle.

Now that the two adults and one child had proactively come to ask how to obtain the tool, in his heart, he was a million times unwilling to give it. But he also couldn’t break the rules he himself had set.

As a top-tier variety show Producer, as rogue as he was, as black-hearted as he was, the main reason he hadn’t been censured into oblivion by the fan armies of various flowers, grasses, and A-listers over the years was that his game designs always provided identical rules and conditions. He would never target and maliciously prank a specific artist for an effect. This was his last bottom line—not that he didn’t want to touch it, but he couldn’t afford to.

Giving Ao’ao’s family a tent was a reward for the two adults and one child being the champion group of the “Mountain Wilderness Journey.” Since he had allowed Ao’ao’s family to explore the task for exchanging the Seawater Desalination Device ahead of time while the other three groups were still busy building shelters, he now had no reason to refuse their request to explore the knife-exchange task in advance.

Bai Yong took a deep breath, looked up at the azure sky at a forty-five-degree angle, and a moment later, weakly said to the Deputy Director, “Go tell them: pick up ten kilograms of plastic waste to exchange for one hour of knife usage rights.”

The honest Deputy Director said, “Director Bai, you misremembered, right? Didn’t you say ten jin (five kilograms) before?”

Bai Yong glared at him. “Are you the director or am I?!”

He couldn’t change the rules, but he could still boogie within the limits his bottom line allowed.

Bai Yong glanced at the work meal that had just arrived nearby—light soups, coarse teas, simple meals. He truly couldn’t bear to let Ji Nuo’s family’s seafood feast come too easily!

When Ji Nuo heard this, his brow furrowed slightly. It wasn’t that he thought the production team’s task was unreasonable. After all, white pollution was everywhere now. A beautiful little island like this, practically a paradise on earth, truly shouldn’t have its beauty marred by this garbage.

The production team coming up with such a task was quite valuable. They wouldn’t have come here for nothing. But plastic waste meant scrap plastic, and ten kilograms was no small amount. Furthermore, it only exchanged for one hour…

Ji Nuo looked down at Lu Aotian’s hunger-caved little face and mentally calculated how long it would take to pick up ten kilograms of scrap plastic.

Ji Nuo thought for a moment and asked the honest and sincere Deputy Director, “Can I take a look at the knife?”

The Deputy Director nodded, and a staff member took a brand new chef’s knife from the toolbox. It was a common, well-known brand. Ji Nuo tested the sharp edge, nodded, and returned the knife.

“Ten kilograms, for one hour?” Ji Nuo looked at the Deputy Director. “Next time we use it, we’ll have to pick up trash again to exchange for it, correct?”

The Deputy Director nodded. “Right, that’s what it means.”

Ji Nuo continued, “What if the trash on the island isn’t enough to pick up? And if we can’t use one hour in one go, can we split it into two uses?”

Han Cheng immediately understood what Ji Nuo meant. The Deputy Director was far more “communicative” than Bai Yong.

While the other man was still tangled up in Ji Nuo’s rapid-fire questions, Han Cheng made a look of sudden realization. “Little Nuo, Director He means we can exchange proportionally. One hour costs ten kilograms of trash. Using 0.1 hours costs one kilogram of trash. That solves all the subsequent problems.”

Without waiting for the other to respond, Han Cheng lightly smiled and patted the Deputy Director on the shoulder. “As expected, the production team has thought of everything.”

The Deputy Director was just an ordinary wage earner, worlds apart from Bai Yong, who could do the butterfly stroke even in oil. Facing a super A-lister like Han Cheng, he was so nervous his brain short-circuited. The more he heard, the more reasonable it sounded.

Combined with Han Cheng’s calm, noble bearing, which belied his youth and resembled an Old Dramatist, his deep voice paired with a certain tone, and the Deputy Director, surnamed He, could only nod along. “Yes, yes, yes, oh, it’s all part of what we do…”

Ji Nuo smiled and nodded. “Okay, then we’ll borrow 0.1 hours. That’s more than enough!”

The Deputy Director’s eyes went wide. “Huh?”

Lu Aotian gave Ji Nuo an approving look. Good minion, possessing 0.1 parts of his, the majestic Long Aotian’s, style!

But when his gaze shifted to Han Cheng’s handsome face, so similar to his own, his round peach blossom eyes instantly narrowed into knife slits. Bah, a superficially handsome, black-hearted old scoundrel!