The Legend of Fangren

Chapter 155 So many catfish buckets!

The Li Huo Palace is located in the southeastern boundary, situated in Li Huo Valley, and is part of Long Que Mountain.

Don't assume that the vegetation is sparse here just because this place is near the fire zone.

On the contrary, precisely because this place is the southeastern boundary, it possesses both the vitality of wood and the rising of fire, resulting in extremely lush vegetation.

The upper part of Longque Mountain is covered with bare rocks, but the gentler slopes below the mountain are lush and verdant.

Recently, as spring transitions into summer, there has been abundant rainfall. The rainwater seeps into the soil and rises with the heat of the earth, reaching the surface where it is absorbed by plants. The air is filled with the smell of soil, and the cement smell is quite pleasant.

After passing the mountainside, the mountain path became muddy, probably because it had just rained the night before.

Longque Mountain is very large. If you remove the steep, bare rock sections on the mountainside, the gentle slopes at the bottom stretch for ten miles, and the overall shape looks like a nail emerging from the earth.

Such places are naturally formed by the convergence of water, but they are not on the surface, but underground.

When rainwater falls into the soil, the surface moisture is consumed by fire and absorbed by wood. Only when it sinks to the depths can it gather into groundwater. The reason why the Li Huo Palace was able to establish itself in such a desolate Li Huo Valley is that its daily life and weapon forging are inseparable from groundwater.

Fang Shi shook his head at the servants' method of transporting water; they were still using the most primitive method of transporting water by horse-drawn carts pulling iron cans. It was clear that because the Xuan Realm had such a high natural ceiling, the people here were actually quite backward in terms of their basic living standards.

Fang Shi didn't want to deal with these things for the time being, since it wasn't something urgent that needed to be changed. So he was at ease using this cognitive bias to leave himself more leverage in the future.

His purpose in coming down the mountain was to find wells that could draw groundwater. Unlike the wells drilled by drilling machines in his previous life, these wells were dug out by hand by digging diagonally downwards into the mountainside. So, rather than being called wells, they were more like tunnels leading into the interior of the mountain. Standing outside the entrance, one could faintly hear the sound of rushing water inside.

Fang Shi plunged in and walked to the deepest part, where he came to the edge of a dark underground river. There was a clearing carved out by man on the riverbank, but he went deeper and found a corner that was not easy for anyone to see.

For many days, he had been separating the profound energy from the azure black gold, and his mind had never stopped thinking, always pondering how to be more efficient. And now, he actually came up with a method, and today he would just have to try it out on that pile of broken swords and spears.

According to Master Gang, there is a kind of big fish in the underground river in the southeast. The larger ones can be two or three meters long and can swallow a person whole. They eat everything.

It is said that a servant who was fetching water here once swallowed water in this way, so much so that people who fetched water later dared not stand on the shore, but instead used a stick to hang a bucket and pull the water up from a distance.

Fang Shi wasn't afraid of this. He dug out a tunnel one meter wide, and after digging five or six meters in, he expanded it into a space the size of a room. Following the old method he had used at the lakeside outside Qingyang City, he dug a waterway in the corner of the small room, leading into the underground river.

This time, he learned from his previous mistake and placed several stone blocks around him as obstacles.

When he catches the big fish, it will be so hard to clean itself up by the sharp corners and edges of these blocks.

He then lay down behind the stone block, tied two metal ingots to his body, and increased his weight to several tons before he could fling the float far away.

While waiting for the fish, he took out the discarded knives and spears and used his brute force to crush them into clumps and pieces.

He waited for a gentle pull on his wrist, then immediately pulled. The fish in the water was too light for him and was pulled up in a flash. The torchlight illuminated the fish's appearance clearly.

A round body, a large, round head, and a huge mouth that could easily swallow its prey when it grew large—that's right, this is the big fish that Master Gang was talking about—judging from its size and the time he had been waiting, it's at least a second-tier fish.

"Take this!" Seeing the giant fish open its mouth wide and lunge straight at him, about to swallow him whole before it even landed, he rolled away and kicked up the discarded weapons on the spot, performing a teleportation move that caused the giant fish to swallow all the discarded weapons.

Of course, the big fish wasn't stupid. Even flattened and rolled-up scraps of weapons still had many sharp points. As soon as something entered its mouth, it twisted its body, trying to spit it out. But it was pouncing forward in mid-air, and the thing rushed deep into its mouth. When it finally hit the ground with a thud, it crashed into the stone blocks, making a solid impact.

Right now.

Fang Shi took out a three-tiered iron bucket made of gray refined iron, quickly filled it with water, and then poured it over the large fish. The two-meter-long fish vanished into thin air, and when he looked down, it had become a small fish swimming in the bucket. "Amazing!"

Previously, Fang Shi had used buckets to hold small fish, so he didn't have a very direct understanding of the effects. But now, this fish, which was larger than a person, was shrunk to such a small size when it was put into the bucket. Just looking at the effect, it was even more powerful than some magical artifacts. No wonder it took three ingots of metal to make a small bucket. It was completely worth all the extra materials.

In this way, the fish bucket can be put into his backpack, and the scrap metal inside the fish's belly is no problem either. When it's time to sleep, he can put the fish into his spiritual space, and then—hehehehe.

Having achieved initial success, Fang Shi continued his efforts, spending the entire day there. It wasn't until nightfall that he returned to the Li Huo Palace, only to be caught red-handed by Luo He.

"Fangzi, where have you been? Why do you smell so strange?"

"Uh, I went to the mountains to see if I could dig up any spiritual items, but it just rained last night, so I got some mud on my clothes."

But actually, the strange smell on Fang Shi came from the mucus in the big fish's mouth. As the saying goes, if you walk by the river long enough, you're bound to get your shoes wet. He couldn't always dodge the big fish's attacks and shove his weapons into its mouth. Sometimes he had to exhaust the fish first and then forcefully pry open its mouth to stuff things in. But the big fish's mouth was full of strange mucus, and he got it on his hands. Even after taking a bath before coming back, he still had a strange smell.

However, the result was still good. The underground river's ecosystem was not rich; basically, only fish, which eat soil and garbage, could survive. Fang Shi fished all day and caught more than twenty fish of various sizes, including seven or eight large second-tier fish. He easily stuffed the knife and spear into the fish's bellies.

Besides that, the other fish that Fang Shi caught also gave him a pleasant surprise, but we'll talk about that when we get back inside.

"Okay, anyway, you've been holed up in your room these past few days, so you've been smelling weird anyway," Luo He muttered, pinching her nose.

Fang Shi was a little helpless. He didn't know if it was just his imagination, but he felt that He Bao was getting better and better at teasing him lately. Who did he learn that mouth from? His junior aunt?

It's possible that I've "offended" her quite a bit lately, and maybe that girl is constantly talking badly about me to Luohe.

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