The Abyss World, the Kemono Girl Encyclopedia Project!

The time was unclear inside the cave, with only a rough estimate, so Wang Yan didn't take the little beast girls to keep watch over the year. After cleaning up, he went back to rest.

Wang Yan also welcomed his first New Year in Qiangyuan.

After waking up, Wang Yan led the group of little beast girls to remove the rocks blocking the cave entrance. When the first ray of sunlight shone on their faces, it was warm and gentle. They subconsciously shielded their eyes with their hands. A soft breeze came, and although it was still a bit cold, it was much gentler than the sharp, steel-like wind of winter.

Wang Yan stretched and took a deep breath of fresh air. Today, everyone could start preparing for their outdoor activities.

Actually, there's nothing urgent to do at the beginning of spring. According to the arrangements of previous years, the little beast girls should hurry up and gather and hunt at the beginning of spring in order to accumulate enough things as bargaining chips to exchange with the merchants who will come soon. It can be said to be the most urgent time of the year.

However, since Wang Yan is here, and there's already more food than we can eat, there's no need to rush. Just do it as usual.

After making some arrangements, only Baiguo, Xiaoji, and Alu remained at home. Baiguo was to look after Xiaodaomi, while Xiaoji continued weaving at her loom. Wang Yan planned to produce a certain amount of stock and then trade this cotton cloth with merchants. As for Alu? Well, she just ate and slept all day long; there was no need to expect her to do anything. Being a security guard wouldn't be bad.

With A-Liu here, there were actually some advantages. At least for a large area around their home, they no longer had to worry about being attacked by ferocious beasts. Wang Yan was also able to let the group split up and act with peace of mind.

Huayue and Zhizhi, along with two small mice, mainly carried out some gathering tasks. It was still early spring, and the snow had not completely melted yet, so their main task was to help Wang Yan find some medicinal herbs and, incidentally, raid bird nests. In short, they wanted to find something edible or valuable to take back.

Next came the hunting team consisting of Wang Yan and three others. Wang Yan and Zhuo Hua were in one team, while Yingluo and Youli were in another. The four of them went in two different directions, and their main task was to hunt some small animals that had just finished hibernating.

Wang Yan had already taken quite a few hibernating animals, so the spring hunt might be a bit difficult, but he could still catch some and not end up empty-handed.

As the little beast girls hunted more and more prey, even with a little female dragon at home, the meat piled up at home was gradually becoming overflowing. To be honest, Wang Yan urgently needed a way to deal with these thousands of kilograms of meat.

The number of smoke-filled sheds has now been expanded to four. Although they are located much further away from the residential area, if more are built, the dense smoke may exceed the cave's self-ventilation regulation limit, which could affect everyone's normal life.

The pickling method wasn't very effective either. Currently, all the salt in the house came from Wang Yan's system exchanges, which cost 1,000 points to buy seasoning packages. However, as the number of people in the family increased, these seasonings gradually became insufficient. Now, Wang Yan urgently needed to find a way to ensure a long-term supply of salt. He couldn't afford to keep relying on system exchanges.

Wang Yan followed Zhuo Hua. To be honest, Zhuo Hua's strength had always been a mystery to him. He had only seen Zhuo Hua make a move a few times, and each time she would point her jade finger and draw a wave of energy similar to sword energy, and the prey would stop moving without any follow-up attack. This made Wang Yan very curious about Zhuo Hua's strength.

They hadn't encountered any big catches today, and seeing that they wouldn't be able to grab anything good, Wang Yan decided to head home. But just as he was about to go home with Zhuo Hua, a muffled thud came from not far away, as if something had fallen from the sky. The two looked at each other, then nodded to each other, and decided to go and take a look.

The crash site wasn't far from the two of them. Upon reaching its destination, Wang Yan finally noticed what it was: scattered, broken wood chips. It looked like a wooden crate, apparently a cargo box that had fallen from the sky. Wang Yan immediately became interested and said:

"Huh? These things actually fall from the sky?"

Zhuohua shrugged and explained, "So that's what these things are. Actually, they're all normal. These are probably things that were accidentally thrown down by the upper levels. This time it's okay, it's probably just a merchant's cargo box that accidentally fell down. Most of the time, the things that are thrown down are just household garbage."

Wang Yan curled his lip and said disdainfully, "How rude."

Since he was already there, Wang Yan shrugged and prepared to see what kind of goods were in the cargo box. So he ran over with great interest, but the contents inside seemed to be just some dark, unremarkable stone bricks, probably some kind of building material, all of which had been smashed to pieces, which was quite disappointing.

Zhuohua stepped forward, picked up a piece of broken brick, examined it carefully for a while, recognized it, and explained to Wang Yan:

"This thing is called Heavy Black Rock. It's very heavy. These kinds of bricks are usually used as building materials for the upper levels of the city walls, but now they've all been smashed, so these bricks are useless."

With a sigh, Wang Yan shook his head helplessly. He had thought he might find something good, but instead it was just a pile of broken bricks. Not wanting to look any longer, he decided to take Zhuohua home for dinner. But in a fleeting moment, his gaze caught a glimpse of a bright yellow color.

At first, he didn't feel anything unusual, but after taking a few steps, he felt more and more uneasy. As if something was calling to him, Wang Yan suddenly turned around and reached into the pile of broken bricks to search for it. When he dug the yellow thing out of the broken bricks, his hands were trembling.

"This...this is!!"

When Zhuo Hua saw what Wang Yan had dug out, even he couldn't help but widen his eyes, cover his mouth with his hands, and look on in horror.

That was the most supreme existence in any world, the hard currency in all parts of the Abyss. They were gold ingots, each the size of a palm, heavy enough to give one a sense of peace. The surface was decorated with ancient and mysterious sun patterns, making the two of them feel as if they were dreaming.

Wang Yan swallowed hard, wiped his eyes, and after confirming that he hadn't misread it, immediately shouted to wake Zhuo Hua.

"Dig quickly!!"