Chapter Forty-Eight: Barbecue Breakfast
Walking in the long sacred passage with Xiao Mi and Mulan, the protagonist suddenly thought of the idea from last night: since the classroom and the floor of the king conference room are cobblestones, which can be used for group chats, then the white cobblestone walls can also be used for communication. It's just that the cobblestone floor is a whole, and the cobblestone walls are small stones that are connected to each other.
The first time the protagonist arrives, he experiments and proves that he can indeed send messages to walls. Then the so-called divine channel to accept the will of God, it can be understood, this sacred channel is to play the role of signal transmission, and the most old king is the receiving terminal.
"What did I say when I first came here?" The protagonist thought to himself: "I don't know if the oldest king has heard it!" The protagonist was taken aback by the warning of the public security at the time, and he had forgotten what he had said at the beginning.
The passage is as long as ever, getting closer to the back vertically, but the walls are uneven with pebbles, which is not difficult to climb with the protagonist's current ant abilities. Later, Xiao Mi and Hua Mulan were more troublesome, one of them was holding a grass seed as big as the head of a soldier ant, and the other was holding a dried mushroom that was bigger than their own body, they were already a little top-heavy, and now they were stumbling and stumbling. There's no way, in order to satisfy the appetite of the protagonist, you can only sacrifice them as coolies!
Walk until you reach the end of the passage, and when you turn the corner, you can see the orange fire inside the entrance to the nest. The protagonist had already seen the fire yesterday, and Xiao Mi and Hua Mulan had followed Lao Wang a long time ago, and they didn't feel too much. The protagonist's hunger urges him to quickly lead them into the huge nest where the fire is.
At first, the protagonist was worried that the soldier ants and worker ants who were responsible for taking care of the fire would arrest him, the male ant who trespassed on the sacred passage, but the ants on the fire were still busy with their own things, and they didn't pay attention to the protagonist and his party at all.
Worker ants kept coming in through the entrance, clinging to dry twigs and grass roots, crawling up to the fire and handing the fuel to the bottom of the fire. Several large, sturdy soldier ants worked together to push the fuel right in the middle of the fire with their long, thin branches, and pulled aside some of the burned fuel debris. These thin branches will burn after a few more uses, and become part of the fuel, but the soldiers have many spare branches around them. Worker ants will pick and choose at the edge of the fire for less scorching debris and coke, and transport the waste away from the outlet to avoid accumulating too much ash.
The protagonist does not interfere with the normal functioning of the ants, and the ants who take care of the fire ignore them. The protagonist asks Xiao Mi and Mulan to wait on the side, and he walks to the fire with dried mushrooms first.
The ground near the fire was not paved with pebbles, but there was a circular dirt floor with a slight depression and a lot of ashes, and the fire was right in the middle of this circular land. As he gets closer to the fire, the protagonist feels a scorching air coming over the surface, small but large enough to scorch an ant that has recklessly crawled to a close distance.
The protagonist feels that he can't go any further, and the soft and hard hairs all over his body are showing signs of drying. But the temperature of the flame at this distance is not enough to complete the needs of the barbecue.
The protagonist puts the mushroom down first, turns around and crawls up to the soldiers who are using slender branches to stir the fire, and drags a long, thin branch that they have sparing.
He struggles to lift the branch with his two forelimbs, and the protagonist prefers to use his hands compared to the general ants who like to work with the large claws on their mouths, although there is only one finger-like hook on each segment, but relying on the flexible combination of the first two limbs or the front four limbs, it is enough to complete some movements that do not require such delicate manipulation.
The protagonist pushes the dried mushrooms closer to the bottom of the fire with a twig, which is neither too far for the purpose of grilling, but also not too close to ensure that the food can be hooked back with the twig. Generally speaking, the temperature at the bottom of the flame is low, and the barbecue will place the ingredients above the smoldering flame, but the protagonist does not have the physical conditions to take advantage of the space above the hot flame, so he can only settle for the next best.
In the same way, the protagonist pushes the grass seeds again, and then all that remains is to use the branches to try to turn the mushrooms and grass seeds over from time to time, so that the food is not baked and half burned.
Soon, the dried mushrooms began to turn yellow, and the residual moisture and oil inside the mushroom bubbled together, and a burnt and delicious smell gradually wafted over. The protagonist thinks that this is almost the case, so he first hooks the mushroom back with a twig and gently sweeps away the dust particles stuck to the surface.
Because the mushrooms are small, they are about the same size as a worker ant after roasting, and the heat dissipates quickly, so the protagonist quickly tears the mushrooms into three parts with Daao while they are hot, and eats their share with Xiao Mi and Hua Mulan.
"Comfortable!" The protagonist rubs his forelimbs with satisfaction, and although he doesn't add any seasoning, the aroma of the amino acids unique to the natural mushrooms after drying is released without reservation after baking, and the delicious feeling fills the mouth. The taste of warm food makes the protagonist who has never eaten hot food since the crossing extremely excited.
After eating the mushrooms, the grass seeds are almost roasted. The seeds are roasted without removing the outer skin so as not to scorch the seeds inside, and the skin is already charred and blackened, and the aroma of roasted corn and popcorn is almost unstoppable.
The protagonist hooks out the grass seeds again, and peels off the skin and throws it aside with a hot hand. The seeds inside had been roasted and swollen, and were larger than the heads of soldier ants. The protagonist orders Xiao Mi and Hua Mulan not to be polite, three ants and one ant bite at a time, and soon divide the sweet and soft roasted grass seeds.
The protagonist, who is satisfied after eating, takes Xiao Mi and Hua Mulan with him and decides to go home from the road where the worker ants who carry the ashes go out, so that he knows one more road and does not have to climb the sacred passage every day in the future. The protagonist always feels that if he walks through the sacred passage without permission, he will be found by the kings to have no good fruit to eat