Chapter 310 - 204: A Special Cutting Technique (Part 2)

Chapter 310: Chapter 204: A Special Cutting Technique (Part 2)

During this process, every second felt like an eternity.

His forearms went from sore and tingly at the start to a dull, aching pain, then to sharp, cramping agony, and finally, they went completely numb, losing all feeling.

Just when he felt like he couldn’t hold on any longer.

In an instant.

The bamboo dust created by the friction suddenly turned gray.

His eyes lit up. Gritting his teeth, he rubbed a few more times in quick succession.

Each subsequent bit of bamboo dust was noticeably darker, until it finally turned black.

Once the black powder appeared, all the dust in the groove seemed to become "infected," turning completely black at a visible rate.

"Let me!"

Erica pressed his hands down, crouched, and carefully picked up the bamboo piece, gently blowing on the black dust in the groove.

As the top layer of dust blew away, a golden-red ember was revealed underneath.

She didn’t rush, but continued to blow.

Fueled by the abundance of oxygen, the ember spread quickly, giving off wisps of smoke.

Only when the smoke was thick enough did she turn the bamboo over, shaking the ember and the dust onto the bamboo shavings below.

A layer of bamboo dust had already collected beneath the notch, and it ignited the instant the ember fell onto it.

Erica carefully blew a few more times. The bright red ember expanded rapidly, and a flame suddenly leaped up.

"We did it!"

Lin Chen’s face lit up with joy. He reached for the firewood nearby, only to find his fingers were completely unresponsive. He couldn’t even make a fist.

[Successfully made fire by friction on the coast of Panama. Happiness +1]

’Only one point?’

’Then again, I’m completely worn out from making this fire, on top of the fatigue that’s been building up all day. Getting even one point of happiness is pretty good. It’s better than nothing, anyway.’

Erica was just adding kindling to the flame. When she saw that he couldn’t even grasp a piece of wood, that his fingers wouldn’t even touch, a wave of emotion washed over her for no particular reason.

It would take at least a day or two of rest to recover from this level of exhaustion. Right now, the two of them were practically a couple of cripples.

After the fire was going, Lin Chen struggled to get up to roast the fish, but his hands had no strength to push off the ground, and he nearly tumbled face-first onto the dirt.

Thankfully, Erica’s quick reflexes saved him. She caught him just in time, preventing Lin Chen from taking a nasty face-plant.

"You rest. I’ll handle it," she said. "But you’ll have to walk me through it. I have no idea how to deal with these fish."

Erica pulled a long, silver hairtail from the bamboo basket, holding it up high by the tip. It was about as long as her leg.

She had never seen a fish like this before. It was long and flat like a sword, its entire body shimmering with a silver light.

Yesterday’s stingray was bizarre, and today’s hairtail was bizarre. She was starting to wonder if she had some special quality that attracted weirdly-shaped fish.

"Let’s do it by the stream."

The two returned to the stream. They first rinsed the dirt off their bodies, and then Lin Chen began to instruct her on how to prepare the hairtail.

"First, cut off all the fins you can see, including that long one along the back."

"Then the tail. The end of a hairtail’s tail is long and thin with almost no meat, so just cut it off and toss it. Or you can use it as bait along with the guts."

"Next, cut off the top half of the head. Its teeth are dense and sharp and can easily cut your fingers. Right, just cut it from inside the mouth."

"Slice down from the chin; that’s where the abdominal cavity is. You can grab the gills and pull. You should be able to yank out the chin, gills, and guts all at once."

Erica’s movements were remarkably deft; she didn’t look like someone handling a hairtail for the first time.

Under Lin Chen’s guidance, she quickly pulled out a long, disgusting string of innards and tossed them into the stream.

"Ugh... why are its organs all mangled? So gross."

"I already told you. When a hairtail is rapidly brought up from the deep sea by external force, its organs rupture. It seems that waterspout was even more powerful than I imagined."

’It not only sucked up an entire school of hairtail from tens of meters underwater and lifted them into the sky, but it also flung them this far. A normal boat would probably have been torn to shreds if it got anywhere near that thing, wouldn’t it?’

He pointed to a dark line inside the hairtail’s cavity. "That’s the bloodline. Just scrape it out with the tip of your knife or your finger."

"Is hairtail bony?"

Erica asked curiously as she did as she was told.

"Not really. Besides the main spine, there’s just a row of small bones along the back. If you remove them, it’s pretty much all boneless meat. And if you’re grilling it, you can even use a special cutting technique to make those small bones a non-issue."

"I want to learn!!"

"You’re getting more and more shameless. You didn’t even try to be polite. Is that any way to ask for a favor?"

Erica blinked her big eyes and suddenly lowered her head.

"Well... what if I let you cop a feel?"

"Oh, shut up!"

"Hehe, I knew you weren’t the type to take advantage of your female fans."

"Please, I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a cook, a regular guy."

"Anyone who gets famous on a show is a celebrity. You could be considered a wilderness celebrity. If you win this time, you might even get to meet people like Bear Grylls."

"Not interested," Lin Chen frowned. "Stop wasting time. Hurry up and prep the fish. We have limited firewood, we can’t be wasting it."

’He was here to win the prize money, not to make a career out of wilderness survival. Shows like the ones Bear Grylls does were pure self-torture and didn’t align with his own foodie-focused path. He had no interest in suffering for the sake of it.’

After spending about ten minutes cleaning all the seafood, the two returned to the shelter, added some wood to the coals, and brought the fire back to life.

Erica took out a hairtail and looked at him, her face a mask of intellectual curiosity.

She said nothing, yet she said everything.

’He had to admit, Europeans really did have an edge over people from North America in the looks department. This girl was also mixed-race, blessed with a natural beauty filter. Her features, a fusion of two ancestries, were flawless even by his Asian standards.’

’This was her with no makeup and more than a week of no skincare. If she were to clean up, put on a face mask, get dolled up with some makeup... she could probably even star in a commercial for elves.’

Being stared at by such a beautiful face, he was helpless. He ran his finger down the back of the hairtail.

"Just follow this spine. Angle the blade downwards and slice into it. Try to make the cuts close together, don’t leave too much space between them."

"And if I cut it like this, the bones will disappear when it’s grilled?"

She had expected some advanced deboning technique, not just scoring the fish. Erica nodded, completely bewildered.

Though she was a bit skeptical, she obediently picked up her military knife and did as he said.

"Not disappear. You just won’t feel them."

Since he was going to teach her, he might as well do it properly.

Lin Chen explained patiently, "Hairtail have many small, dense bones along their back. Normally, in restaurants in Great Xia, they don’t remove them. They just cut the fish into sections, cook it, and the customers spit out the bones as they eat."

"In some high-end restaurants, you’ll find dishes where the entire hairtail is cooked whole. When it’s served, the waiter will use two spoons like tweezers to pull out all the bones from the back, leaving nothing but pure meat besides the central spine."

"But that’s for steaming methods. If you’re frying or grilling, this cutting technique severs the small back bones. The closer the cuts, the more the tiny bones are broken."

"High-heat frying or grilling makes these little bones brittle. When you eat it, they crunch along with the skin, like you’re eating potato chips. You won’t even realize they’re bones."

Erica was, after all, skilled at grilling fish. After hearing Lin Chen’s description, she pictured the scene in her mind, and her eyes lit up.

"So you can do that! I’ve learned something new. Does this method work for all bony fish?"

"In theory, yes. But it mainly depends on the length and size of the bones. It won’t work if the bones are too thick or large. In fact, it would just make every bite feel bony."