Chapter 305 - 202: How Could I Possibly Catch Nothing?

Chapter 305: Chapter 202: How Could I Possibly Catch Nothing?

"The main ingredient for takoyaki is flour batter, which we probably can’t make here. But we did dig up some potatoes earlier, so we can use those to make a substitute version."

"There’s another problem. We need oil to make takoyaki. The only two ways to get oil here are to extract it from fish or from coconut meat."

"Which way is easier?"

"The first one, probably," Lin Chen blurted out. "Extracting coconut oil is more trouble. It involves several steps like scraping the meat, mincing it, pressing it, and filtering it."

"Food made with coconut oil would be more fragrant and healthier, but..."

Before he could finish, Erica cut in, "Let’s just catch a fish, then. We’re not here for some healthy eating seminar. We’ll do it the easy way."

"By the way, does it have to be a specific type of fish?"

"Theoretically, no, but a bigger fish would be better."

Erica was about to look down for a fish when she saw the creature impaled on the wooden spear and remembered it hadn’t been dealt with yet. She immediately grabbed the large octopus by its "neck" and pulled it off the spear.

She gripped its large head with her right hand and squeezed a few times, forcing the excess ink out of its body, then dunked it in the seawater to rinse it clean.

The series of actions was effortlessly smooth, not at all like someone who had never caught an octopus before. Instead, she looked like a fisherman’s daughter who had grown up by the sea.

After rinsing it, she held the octopus up by its neck, examining it from all angles for a long moment before pointing at its drooping tentacles.

"Lin, is it considered dead like this?"

"No," Lin Chen said, searching his memory for information about octopuses. "An octopus has three hearts and nine brains. The main brain is in its head, and each tentacle has its own secondary brain."

"Even if you cut its entire head off, it would only lose most of its functions. It wouldn’t be dead. It could still move around using the memories stored in the secondary brains in its tentacles."

"Huh????"

Erica’s mouth fell open in astonishment at such a bizarre biological structure and trait, her eyes wide with disbelief.

"It can live without a head? Isn’t that like an Alien?"

"It’s not quite the same," Lin Chen said, waving his hand dismissively as he continued to explain. "The secondary brains of an octopus can only store memories; they can’t process complex information. This means that after the main brain is damaged, they can only operate based on the physiological instincts they’ve built up over time."

"Most importantly, an octopus without a head loses its ability to breathe. It can last for a week at most, but it will eventually die slowly from suffocation."

"It can live for a week after its head is cut off?? This thing must be an alien!!"

"...A lot of people actually think octopuses are an alien species. Their habits and characteristics are just too unusual. Plus, their intelligence is very high. They can even learn to use tools. If it weren’t for a specific reproductive mechanism that limits their lifespan, they might have actually evolved into sentient beings."

"What mechanism? Is it like insects and salmon, where they die after reproducing?"

"Exactly, you guessed it. The average lifespan of an octopus is only one to three years. Except for a few species that can live up to five, most don’t live long. Reproduction is the end of their lives."

Erica, who had been thinking of finishing the octopus off if it wasn’t dead, was now at a loss for what to do with the creature after hearing it could live even without a head.

"So what do we do? If I put it in the bamboo basket, will it crawl out on its own?"

Lin Chen glanced around his feet, then suddenly bent down, picked up a palm-sized rock, and handed it to her.

The moment the drooping tentacles touched the rock, they seemed to spring back to life, wrapping tightly around it. No matter how hard one pulled, they wouldn’t come off.

"That’s good. You can put it in now. Its main brain is damaged, so it shouldn’t be capable of complex behaviors like escaping. Just let it hold on to that."

"Oh, so that’s how it works."

Realization dawned on Erica. She casually tossed the rock-hugging octopus into the bamboo basket on her back and pointed to her face. "Is there still ink on me?"

"Yes," Lin Chen nodded.

"A lot?"

"Quite a lot."

"Oh well, I don’t care. It’s not like I can see it anyway."

After saying that, she actually lowered her head and started searching the water’s surface, completely unconcerned about her appearance.

Fortunately, the continuous rain kept the ink from drying on her face, so there was no immediate worry of it staining her skin.

They’d only just started, and she already had a huge catch. Add that to the stingray she caught on her own last night, and a stubborn refusal to be outdone welled up inside Lin Chen.

’Why is it that she lands a big one every time she tries, while I’ve just been picking up shells and digging for oysters on the beach for days? The only decent thing I caught was that tiger grouper yesterday.’

’Although a tiger grouper is worth far more than an octopus, it can’t necessarily compare to a stingray.’

’Depending on the species, those things can be worth anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands or millions.’

’No matter how valuable a tiger grouper is, it has a limit. Only rarer species like the leopard coral grouper or humpback grouper could be truly valuable.’

’I’m a transmigrator with a System, for crying out loud. Could my luck really be worse than this girl’s?’

’Then again, thinking about it carefully, ever since Alaska, my luck has actually been pretty good.’

’Whether it was choosing a location for the shelter, building it, or finding food, everything has been relatively smooth sailing.’

The bright light from his Hat Lamp swept back and forth across the sea’s surface. All he could see was murky water, the sand and silt churned up from the seabed by the constant pounding of the waves.