章 50: Hunting for Freshwater Prawns

After the delightful lunch, the little "happy family" went into the stream for a bath. Hana expertly stripped off her clothes, rinsed the sweat stained inner garments together with her yellow shirt and hanged them over a branch jutting out from a tree nearby. The location was perfect for drying clothes since it received direct afternoon sunlight. Hana wasn't worried since she already has a clean sweater on standby once she was done bathing. She didn't wash her jeans but just placed it nicely on a large rock, also directly being hit by sunlight not far from where she was bathing. Even if she couldn't wash it, she hoped the bacteria would be killed off from direct sunlight. It was just a tiny hope of an aunty who didn't want to be bare down there in the woods. 

A few days in the wilderness had taught Hana to use her garments wisely. Now, she would alternately use her yellow shirt and her sweater as clothes so that she could always have clean garments. Her only worry was for her jeans since she didn't have any spare. The jeans was already dark grayish blue in color with some patches of brown stain of dirt after 4 days of no washing, contrasting its original color. Usually Hana didn't wash her pants so frequent even when she was at home. But since she got here, the pants were exposed with dirt, sweat and grime all the time, it changed color so fast.

Hana could only shake her head in despair. There's no way she would go pant-less in this kind of environment. She was too scared of all the creepy crawlies. She'd rather wore dirty pants all the way until she found a good solution.

Hana shrugged off her momentary worry and dipped into the cooling stream beside her fox and her little black snake encircling her neck. She was quite confused why the bird acted so chummy and stayed on the top of her head even until now. She just hoped that it didn't poop on her hair. That was her biggest worry (of all the things in the world lol 😉). 

She scooped the crystal clear water and washed her face a few times before hesitatingly gargled some water and cleaned her teeth using her fingers. After that, she found a nice shady spot and lie down contentedly; only a little bit of her shoulders upwards was not immersed in the stream's crystal clear water.

The name of the stream was really apt; tiny frolicking fishes and the sparse underwater vegetation interlaced with a variety of boulders adorned the bottom of the lazily flowing stream like a beautifully decorated aquarium. As the sun shone on the surface of the stream, the transparent cyan color reflected the sun like jewels sparkling. If Hana could only forget about her current predicament, she could easily grade this location as a top premium vacation spot rivaling the Maldives.

[What are we going to do after this, Mommy?] Kuro inquired lazily while resting its head on his mistress shoulder. Half of his lower body was encircling Hana's neck. If someone was to see them together, it would easily spark another misunderstanding. It looked like the aunty was being choked to death by the snake.

"Ahh..I feel so lazy lahhh. You guys want to eat the bamboo shoots right?" Hana didn't open eyes, instead she answered lazily with a half inquiring tone. 

Both of them nodded vigorously. Hana didn't notice even the yellow bird was nodding its little head.

"Hmm..I need a few important ingredients. If you guys can find them for me, I'll make the dish by tonight." Hana shrugged noncommittally. "What you need is a few old coconuts, get me the brown ones. Some chilies, I prefer the small green chilies, a handful will be good. The big ones are not hot enough. Hmm..what else, some onion bulbs, and galangal tubers, two to three lemongrass. I think that covers it all. The prawns is already covered by Ara. We just need to wait for little Ara to send us those prawn."

While she listed out the ingredients and explaining the general characteristics aloud, she simultaneously projected the shape of the food ingredients in her mind and shared them with her pets. She thought it could help them if they could identify the ingredients easily.

Her two pets were speechless.

The number of ingredients were so many! Was it even possible for them to taste the illusive dish their mistress was going to make soon? Will the effort be worth it?

Looking at their comical expression, Hana chuckled amusingly. "No ingredients, no meal."

After that she placed her head nicely on a stone and soaked up peacefully. In her heart, she was laughing at her pets. They were really smitten with her cooking.

...

While the small family members were enjoying their afternoon dip in a leisurely manner, Ara the fish was busily moving everywhere to catch the prawns she promised for trade. The naive little fish thought she needed to come up with the numbers as soon as possible before she even had the face to return to the treasure trove. Since she had finished up at least three batches of fishes last night, she knew she should get at least eighteen prawns in return before she could eat up some more. However, the gullible fish had misinterpreted Hana's trade terms. Hana had explicitly said currently she only needed six prawns while the rest could be exchanged with more pearls.

Ara knew she could've just return to her clan at the north-eastern region of the Crystal-veined stream to fetch the little shiny balls from her secret stash to compensate Hana easily, but she was too afraid that her great grandfather would've caught her. Her great grandfather would've spank her so badly and forbid her to go out ever again. Furthermore, she still didn't find the rumored rare herb to compound the medicine for her great grandfather's breakthrough. As such, if she returned empty handed, she had already guessed her sad fate. Any reasons will be treated as excuses.

Ara used her spiritual sense and blanketed an area of five meters around her to detect all living organisms within the region. That was her limit as of now. After all, she's just at the beginner level in her cultivation, her forte had always been in compounding ingredients with medicinal properties. Her great grandfather would've covered hundreds of meters in circumference. That was how easy he could find her fleeing self if she couldn't swim out of his detection range in time.

Ara stilled herself and hid her presence. Once she detected a prawn the size of Hana's palm, she immediately spurted out a jet of strong currents from her mouth. The prawn was skillfully knocked unconscious before she swam forward and smacked the prawn using her tail into a big air-filled bubble. She stored all the prawns she caught inside the bubble. Surprisingly, the bubble didn't dissolve or burst as it stayed separated from the stream's water. Some conscious prawns were jabbing at the bubble, trying to escape, but to no avail. For a fish who had it easy all her life, the method to catch the promised prawns was repetitive, laborious and extremely boring. Once she had caught one prawn, the rest will flee and hid so well and she needed to change her hunting ground repeatedly to nab another one. 

After the eleventh prawn, Ara finally conceded.

From under the water, Ara could see the sky was getting dimmer. Ara decided to return to the treasure trove location now. If Hana was still around, she could show off how hard she had worked and maybe asked for some leeway. She still couldn't believe her rich self needed to owe someone else with these bits of pittance. Ara blushed bashfully at her inadequacy. Catching the prawns herself had been a challenge for her as well. All this while, everything was served to her on a silver platter as long as she wished for it. Such was the privilege of the genius descendant of the Crystal-veined stream Lord. It was her first time working so hard to catch low leveled spiritual organisms. Ara shook her pink head to the side in bitterness as she swam in the direction where the trio plus one bird were picnicking.

...

As the tired fish swam beside a few jutted tree roots dipped inside the slow moving stream, a large claw suddenly snapped on Ara's body from within the darkness!

Immediately, a white glow surfaced and produced several large reddish brown circular plates, as they automatically rearranged themselves to block the claw attack! Another claw attack hurriedly followed through to break the defense in a rush. If Hana was here, she would be shocked since she would recognize the 'premium grade porcelainware' she used at home so much as a tava.

Nonetheless, the circular plates didn't budge at all. They were surprisingly tough! Instead, they pushed outwards with synchronization and detonated after a few seconds. The shards produced from the explosion jetted towards the attacker in a flash and pierced its hard exoskeleton like a fork stabbing on tofu! However, astonishingly, none of the sharp debris touched even a single scale of Ara herself. Bluish gore leaked out from the attacker's dark reddish body, dyeing the stream with an ice bluish tinge. The whole action occurred as fast as when a spark flew from a fireplace; someone who was not paying attention would've missed it altogether.

At that moment, Ara finally realized she had been attacked by a large maroon colored crawfish! Its size was thrice the size of Ara herself. In fact, the crawfish's claws were as large as her! She would've been cut to two pieces on the spot if her lifeguard treasure given by her great grandpa didn't activate! Nonetheless, the crawfish was already on its last breath, dying a regrettable death. Who would've known that a tiny fish would've been so formidable?! It sensed the aura of a Spirit-ranked Lord-level beast on the little fish's body. The only Lord-level beast in this area was the Crystal-veined Stream Lord!

Its consciousness faded away together with its regret as Ara cursed her horrible luck. "Damn! My Lifeguard Scale!" The treasure was a one-time use item refined by her great grandfather personally for her safety. One of its functions was to automatically respond when the host faced a life threatening attack. Thankfully, during Kuro's attack prior to this, Ara had forcefully suppressed the Lifeguard Scale's activation. This was because it has an auxiliary function to notify its refiner, her great grandfather!

Looking at the dead crawfish, Ara decided to add it into her collection to make up the quota. Afterall, a crawfish has similar build as a freshwater prawn. It was even so large! Thinking on the bright side, this crawfish was what she really need right now. She remembered that a bigger prawn will net her a lower count.

A big bubble was generated from Ara's mouth as it encapsulated the crawfish's entire body. 

Ara sped up while towing two bubbles behind her, "I need to hurry! Great Grandpa is sure to come!" She sweated with fear at the thoughts. She really needed to go into hiding for a while after this.

...

Deep inside an underground water cave, an extremely large shadow suspended inside the crystal clear water suddenly trembled. Due to how deep the underground cave was, no sunlight was able to penetrate through. However, the cave was full of translucent crystals embedded on the walls and on the floor, dimly lighting their surroundings with a faint whitish glow. The large shadow coughed out a couple of bubbles laced with dark red blood. It forcefully opened its eyes as two glowing scarlet lanterns lit up the surrounding of the cave.

"This girl, Ara. What she has gotten into this time?!"

...