Zhang Shuguang bent down to study the marks on the ground. Before long, Mang Jiu returned carrying a burning stick.

“What are you doing?” Zhang Shuguang pointed at the two horizontal lines on the ground and looked up at Mang Jiu.

Mang Jiu: “To leave a scent.” Holding the stick in his right hand, he asked, “Can you start a fire when you return to the tribe?”

Zhang Shuguang was jolted by those three words—“leave a scent”—reminding himself once more that the man before him wasn’t a simple human, but a shapeshifting beast-man. Leaving scents behind should be perfectly natural for him.

When asked, Zhang Shuguang nodded. “With a sturdy wooden stick, dry planks, and easily combustible dry grass or twigs, starting a fire is quite simple. Have you never considered learning how to make fire in your tribe?”

He pressed his palms together in a rubbing motion. “This is called friction fire.”

Mang Jiu stared at the flame at one end of the stick and said, “No one uses fire. We never learned. The sub-beast and the little ones all get their fire from the fire pits in the big cave.”

Zhang Shuguang’s mouth twitched, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

This life of eating raw meat and drinking blood—calling them primitive people wasn’t an exaggeration at all.

“Eating raw food is very bad for your health. Even beastmen can be affected by parasites. Why don’t you use fire? Besides, just because you can transform into beasts doesn’t mean you are beasts.”

Mang Jiu was at a loss for how to answer his question.

In his memory, it seemed all beastmen lived this way—none of them seemed to enjoy food cooked over fire.

“I’ve eaten roasted meat. It’s not good. Raw meat is tender and has no strange taste.”

His expression was grim, as if cooked meat were a deadly poison to him.

Zhang Shuguang recalled that piece of charred black meat and shuddered.

If it were him, he wouldn’t dare eat it either. Raw meat carried parasites, and eating meat burnt to a crisp? That wasn’t just carcinogenic—it might as well be poison.

His gaze toward Mang Jiu brimmed with sympathy.

“Do the sub-beasts in the tribe all eat that kind of charred meat? Do they scrape off the outer layer before eating?”

Mang Jiu shook his head. “Not sure. I don’t have any sub-beast, so I don’t know their eating habits. But the little ones living in the big cave mostly eat boiled meat. They rarely grill it. Every time I’ve seen grilled meat, it was black.” He was puzzled too—how could anyone grill meat that black?

Zhang Shuguang sighed. Fine, he understood now. This was a tribe of primitive beastmen who simply didn’t know the taste of good food.

Upon reaching the watering hole, Mang Jiu didn’t need Zhang Shuguang to say anything. He found a spot suitable for building a fire. He was clever and quite capable with his hands. Though it was his first time, starting a fire was no challenge for him.

Zhang Shuguang crouched by the water, washing the fish while scanning the area for a sharp stone—something at least capable of gutting the fish.

After scanning the area several times without finding anything suitable, he turned to call out to Mang Jiu, “Could you pull out one of those sharp spines from a shark’s back for me?”

Mang Jiu nodded, pulled out a spine, and handed it to him. “It’s very sharp. Be careful.”

Zhang Shuguang took it and thanked him. “Sharp is exactly what I need to slit the fish’s belly open. Could you go find some thick branches for me? About finger-thick, longer than the fish will be. I’ll need them for skewering the fish later. On my way here, I spotted some plants with huge leaves. If the leaves aren’t poisonous, could you also pick a few for me?”

He’d glanced at them on his way over. These large-leaved shrubs resembled Earth’s banana trees, only with broader, greener leaves. He couldn’t be certain if the leaves were poisonous or safe for wrapping food.

Mang Jiu went to gather branches and leaves. By the time he returned, dragging a large leaf, Zhang Shuguang had already gutted several fish, removing their innards and tossing them into the pond. This attracted numerous fish from the pond, scrambling to devour the offerings.

Hearing the commotion, he turned and said, “Wash those leaves clean. I’ll need them to wrap the fish later.”

Mang Jiu worked silently, too curious to speak. What on earth could this man possibly make after all that fuss?

Zhang Shuguang worked diligently, his mind wandering not just to his mother, but to her nagging.

“You’re a grown man with no girlfriend, living alone, and you can’t even cook? Just eating takeout every day—is that even living? What is life? It’s not just about making money—it’s about enjoying the feeling of living!”

Zhang Shuguang thought of his mother forcing him to slaughter chickens and fish, trying to cultivate his interest in cooking, and he felt like crying.

Damn, Mom, you were the real prophet! You knew your son would suffer one day.

If not for your stick-wielding discipline, I’d probably be eating grilled fish with scales right now.

His mind raced wildly, yet his hands moved swiftly and methodically. He quickly cleaned eight sea fish, each about a meter long, rinsing the blood from their cavities. He selected branches found by Mang Jiu, threaded four fish onto one, then stabbed it upside down into the ground beside the fire.

He then took the large leaves Mang Jiu had washed, gave them a tug to test their strength. They seemed sturdy enough to wrap the fish.

“What am I supposed to do?” Mang Jiu asked, watching him work as he sat nearby.

Zhang Shuguang turned to look at him, his eyes suddenly widening in shock.

Wearing nothing beneath his short animal-skin skirt, Mang Jiu had casually plopped down on the ground, offering an utterly unobstructed view! Amidst the dense black bush, a sleeping giant lay in wait.

“Hm?” Mang Jiu’s expressionless face showed a hint of confusion at Zhang Shuguang’s sudden startled look. He glanced down at himself, finding nothing amiss.

Zhang Shuguang cleared his throat, turned back, and placed the fish meat on a leaf. He murmured, “Get me some mud from over there. I need to wrap this up.” He used three leaves to wrap the fish meat, then set it aside.

Mang Jiu couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was doing—all this mud and leaves. And he’d even scraped all the fish meat off the bones! The white, tender flesh looked pretty tasty.

“How are we supposed to eat it wrapped in mud? Eat the mud too?”

Zhang Shuguang snorted, looking up with a smile. “You have such a heavy appetite, huh?”

Mang Jiu tilted his head slightly, confused by the meaning.

Zhang Shuguang was just teasing. His hands kept moving as he wrapped the mud Mang Jiu had fetched around the leaves, forming a thick layer into a mud ball. Then he directed Mang Jiu to dig a hole nearby with a stick, big enough to fit both fish packages.

He covered the pit with mud, then placed several burning sticks over it.

He washed his hands, then sharpened the stick against a stone. To his surprise, just a few strokes made it even sharper, transforming it into a handy fish bone knife.

He swung the bone knife a couple of times. At about twenty centimeters long, it felt quite comfortable in his hand.

Just then, a faint sound came from the water. Zhang Shuguang narrowed his eyes and saw a black fish swimming about.

This seemed to be a customer drawn by the fish entrails he’d tossed earlier. With that thought, his hand holding the bone knife swiftly darted into the water. With a flick of his wrist, the black fish was flung out of the water and landed with a splash on the ground.

Though smaller than the sea fish caught earlier by Mang Jiu, it was still substantial. Zhang Shuguang promptly gutted it, scaled it, then skewered it on a branch to roast upright.

He wanted to taste the difference between freshwater and saltwater fish here, to see which tasted better.

The aroma of grilled fish soon wafted through the air. Zhang Shuguang flipped the fish to prevent burning, then scored its skin with a bone knife to ensure even cooking.

Mang Jiu’s nostrils twitched as his eyes fixated on the sizzling fish.

Zhang Shuguang flipped the grilled fish a few times, then pulled the branches from the ground once the fish had turned a crispy golden brown.

He handed one to Mang Jiu. “Here, try it.”

Mang Jiu took it, blew on it, then opened his mouth to bite.

Zhang Shuguang himself had long been lured by the aroma of the grilled fish, his mouth watering with craving. But he disliked the heat and couldn’t bite into it like Mang Jiu. Holding the fish with one hand was tiring, so he simply moved back a bit, stabbed the cooked fish into the ground, and used a bone knife to scrape off the meat to eat.

The moment the first bite touched his tongue, Zhang Shuguang’s eyes lit up.

The flavor was incredibly fresh! The sea fish had its own natural saltiness, and after he’d cleaned it, the taste was just right. Even though the fish had been dead for a while, the flesh was still firm. When he bit into it, it had a tender yet springy texture that wasn’t mushy.

If he thought it was delicious, it was even more so for Mang Jiu, who usually ate almost nothing but raw food.

A bite of grilled fish entered Mang Jiu’s mouth. He didn’t even have time to savor the flavor before taking a second bite, then a third. The entire fish was devoured in no time, bones and all—he chewed them up and swallowed them whole.

Zhang Shuguang glanced at him and sighed helplessly, “Spit out the bones, will you? If you swallow them like I do, they could get stuck in your throat—that’s dangerous.”

Mang Jiu looked at his finished fish—its entire skeleton still attached to the head, which was impaled on a branch, creating a rather amusing sight.

A hint of amusement flickered in his eyes as he nodded and accepted the second grilled fish Zhang Shuguang offered.

Zhang Shuguang felt satisfied after eating one grilled fish. But looking at the already cooked freshwater fish, he hesitated. He cut off a piece of flesh to taste it. It had a faint earthy flavor and lacked saltiness. Even though the meat was decent, it didn’t compare to the taste of sea fish.

Seeing Zhang Shuguang stop eating, Mang Jiu reached out to take it. He took a bite, then paused.

“Not as tasty as sea fish, huh?” Zhang Shuguang dug a hole with his wooden stick, pulled out the two hardened mud balls inside, and as he tapped the mud blocks with the stick, he said to Mang Jiu, “When we have time, we should catch more sea fish to make salted dried fish. That should taste pretty good.”

Mang Jiu nodded. Even though he felt freshwater fish lacked the aroma of sea fish, he still polished off the fish in a few bites. His gaze then shifted to the two bundles of leaves in Zhang Shuguang’s hands.

When Zhang Shuguang unwrapped the leaves, a fresh, savory aroma mingled with the distinctive fragrance of the leaves wafted up. He couldn’t help but swallow hard. Turning to look at Mang Jiu, he saw the other man’s eyes had also widened at the scent, and he relaxed.

It’s less awkward when everyone’s craving together.