novelraw Chapter 239
Chapter 239
Chapter 239: Can’t Get Enough, Simply Can’t Get Enough
Xia Li discovered that this dragon is simply a case of “let go and it’s gone.”
He originally thought that after being ‘domesticated’ on Earth for so long, she would at least restrain herself a little when going out.
As a result, her true nature was completely exposed upon returning to Azure Continent.
If that green-scaled mixed-scale dragon had run just a bit slower.
In the second before it touched Lucia.
Xia Li would have directly slashed out with his sword energy.
“Heehee…”
When the evil dragon returned, she was like a proud victor.
The big-tailed dragon directly revealed her big tail, sat down happily, and leaned against Xia Li. Xia Li glanced at her.
“…Don’t play like that next time.”
“I won’t, I won’t. I was just watching from the sidelines~ Heehee, that mercenary group probably won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
The evil dragon shook her head, swinging her short little legs.
After this outing, she was content and lay softly on Xia Li’s body.
Xia Li was helpless and wrapped his arms around the evil dragon’s small waist.
He didn’t dare to say much, let alone scold her, and as for hitting her… purely relying on physical strength, he really couldn’t beat Lucia in her current state.
It seemed that the only way left to deal with this dragon was to use ‘love’ to influence her.
To this day, this dragon still didn’t understand what ‘love’ was.
But she did learn to keep the words ‘like’ on her lips.
That wasn’t bad either.
◈◈◈
Twilight descended.
The carriage caravan stopped in an open wasteland.
The lead coachman walked from the front of the line to the end, leaning on his walking stick, knocking on the wooden boards, and ordering his men to get off the carriages and work.
This seemed to be a place where they often camped. The mercenaries skillfully set up large iron pots. The men were responsible for chopping wood and starting a fire on the spot, while the women carried potatoes and dry bread from the carriages. It seemed like they were preparing to cook.
Xia Li jumped off the carriage, stretched his body, and observed the surrounding environment.
They were currently located halfway up a mountain, on the edge of a cliff.
Looking down, there was a dark green ocean of forest. Looking up, there were even higher and more distant slopes.
It was as if some high-level magic had swept across the mountainside, piercing through the entire mountain range, leaving behind this unique scenery.
A characteristic of the other world.
Xia Li stood at the edge of the cliff and enjoyed the cool breeze for a while. Only then did the evil dragon, Lucia, slowly crawl down from the carriage.
She was wrapped in a plain white cloak, the collar covering her neck tightly.
Like most girls, Lucia shivered from the temperature difference between inside and outside the carriage.
She slowly walked over and sat down on a rock at Xia Li’s feet.
She craned her neck and glanced at the bottomless abyss below.
Tall trees stood in layers, the endless forest stretching as far as the eye could see, as if even the sky had been dyed the color of these green waves.
Looking at this scenery, Lucia’s expression was slightly stunned.
She didn’t expect that they could reach such a height just by riding a carriage.
Even though they were the smallest intelligent species, they could leave their footprints in every corner of this world.
“The humans in this world are also very smart… they actually use this method to cross the Osiris Forest.” Lucia sighed.
The Osiris Forest was the largest forest in the southern part of Azure Continent. It was home to a large number of monsters and was full of danger.
If it weren’t for the relatively safe carriage road that had been opened up using this mountain range, it would be impossible for ordinary people to travel between Taro City and the Royal Capital.
During her time on Earth, Lucia had learned a few things.
Transportation routes were economic routes. Only when the roads were opened up could the economy develop, and only then would backward and impoverished areas have the possibility of rising up.
That was why she said that the humans in this world were also very smart…
Of course, compared to the infrastructure maniacs on Earth, the humans in this world were still a bit conservative.
“Xia Li, take me for a walk!”
Lucia didn’t want to sit here and look at the scenery. She had slept all afternoon and was bored out of her mind.
Xia Li had no choice but to take her and walk back along the straight carriage road.
The length of the carriage caravan was longer than Xia Li had imagined. Counting along the road, there were probably a hundred carriages.
Except for the few lead carriages that charged the highest fees, every carriage behind them was packed with people, either carrying passengers or goods.
Lucia walked forward with big strides, her hands behind her back, like a young lady on a private visit in disguise.
This caravan, transporting thousands of people, was a miniature version of the human ecosystem.
Lucia could see all walks of life here.
And also, the huge gap between rich and poor.
Xia Li held his sword and followed closely behind Lucia, looking like a dignified knight guarding a noble lady.
The saying “desperate times call for desperate measures” was true.
The poorer the place, the harder it was to maintain order. These commoners sitting at the very end of the caravan, it was no exaggeration to say that they were risking their lives for money.
They had some kind of contract magic branded on them, hiding under the shade of the trees with their heads tilted. Their listless but greedy eyes fell on Lucia. Lucia’s noble and flawless style of dress was a bit too dazzling for them.
But Lucia didn’t care about these malicious gazes.
Even though she had long since noticed the hostility of these humans, she acted as if she didn’t care.
The reason was simple.
The absolute power of a dragon wouldn’t even bother to look at ants.
In the past, Lucia wouldn’t even spare a glance at these ants.
Now, after having been in contact with the friendly humans on Earth for a long time, her attitude towards the human race had changed a little.
So after returning to Azure Continent, she changed her arrogant attitude and became a little curious about the humans here.
“Mommy… how much grass does this little calf in the carriage need to eat?”
At the end of the caravan.
The little girl, wearing tattered hemp clothing, bent over with her mother, picking and choosing in the uncultivated woods. She cut a small handful of green grass from the bushes and threw it into the carriage with the calf inside.
“Tomorrow’s journey is downhill, and there’s no time to rest, so we need to prepare more.”
The old woman didn’t stop working as she spoke. She deftly bundled up a large pile of fresh grass.
“Mommy, I don’t want the little calf to eat too much…” The little girl said uneasily, clutching the hem of her clothes.
“Why not? If the little calf goes hungry, we’ll be punished.”
“Because we and the little calf live in the same carriage. If they eat too much, they’ll poop a lot, and the smell of cow dung is not pleasant.”
“Hehe, cows are considered good. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Last time we were locked up with black wolves. The master told us to catch rabbits at night. If we couldn’t catch rabbits, the black wolves would eat us the next day if they didn’t have meat.”
The man leaned against a tree to rest and glanced over here, his tone full of mockery.
The little girl glared at him and silently continued with her work.
She carefully gathered a few handfuls of green grass, wiped her little hands, and continued to ask the woman beside her innocently.
“Mommy, why do cows always pause for a moment when they’re eating grass…”
The little girl’s mother wasn’t very educated. Children of seven or eight years old were the most curious about the world and asked the most questions, so it was difficult for her to answer these questions.
The woman wiped her sweat and said with some difficulty, “…Why is that? Maybe they forget they’re eating grass halfway through?”
“I know this!”
Standing to the side, the evil dragon, who had been listening for a while, finally couldn’t help but step forward.
In every sense, she was the one who truly treated the rich and poor equally.
After all, Lucia looked down on everyone equally.
The little girl turned around curiously, her eyes full of admiration for the beautiful big sister in front of her.
“Because, Newton’s Law!” Lucia said loudly.
“…”
Xia Li, standing behind her, twitched the corner of his mouth.
He had actually wanted to hear some reasoning from the mouth of this little dragon veterinarian.
As a result, this dragon was purely here to entertain.
The evil dragon was so bad.
He felt so embarrassed.
“Cows are ruminants. They have four stomachs: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum… and the abomasum, which is the one used for hot pot!”
Lucia started to explain strange things to the little girl.
The little girl had never seen the world, so Lucia’s vivid descriptions made her eyes shine.
Although she didn’t understand anything, the beautiful big sister in front of her looked very impressive.
Xia Li stood quietly to the side, the expression on his face changing like the colorful lights in a KTV.
…As long as she was bored, this dragon could play with anyone.
After waiting for the sky to completely darken, Lucia patted the dust off her little hands and said goodbye to the little girl in the carriage at the end of the line.
Well, she had experienced the feeling of pulling grass and feeding cows.
◈◈◈
It was a pity that the cow was too afraid of Lucia. When Lucia approached, the calf screamed as if it had been put on a burning stake.
If possible, Lucia wanted to personally feed the cow grass.
But the cow wouldn’t eat.
So she took a handful of grass and tried to feed it to Xia Li.
Xia Li didn’t want to eat it either.
Not only did Xia Li not want to eat it, but he also wouldn’t let her eat it.
The hateful Brave bullied the dragon every day.
Back at the front of the line, dinner was almost ready.
The food in the pot was about what Lucia had guessed.
Mushroom stew with milk, paired with some dry bread and roasted potatoes, was tonight’s dinner.
Thinking that she would have to eat this dry stuff for the next seven days, Lucia felt despair.
“I think we can skip it.”
“I think so too.”
Both the human and the dragon had been spoiled by the delicious food on Earth.
They unanimously agreed to cook separately.
Judging from the barren seasoning and cooking methods of this other world, the food in the pot would only be more unpalatable.
Xia Li had Sichuan seasonings in his pocket and a little chef by his side.
Why eat dry bread with such favorable conditions?
After greeting the old man who was leading the team, Xia Li took Lucia and secretly slipped away.
The two came to the edge of the cliff, glanced at the caravan behind them, and then jumped down.
Their bodies plummeted rapidly, the cold wind whistling in their ears.
Xia Li opened his eyes again and saw the beautiful figure under the silver moon.
The giant dragon spread her wings. The scales under the moonlight shone with a bright luster, and the patterns on each scale were clearly visible, like a sparkling sea at night.
“Big sheep!”
Below them was the endless Osiris Forest, and beneath his feet was the dragon’s back of the silver dragon.
Lucia made a sharp turn in the air.
She tucked in her wings, dived, and then spread her wings again.
Her powerful giant dragon claws half-clenched in the air, grabbing the neck of some animal the moment she landed.
Xia Li heard a clean snap and looked down to see a large herbivore, several times the size of an ordinary sheep, lying on the ground.
The sheep was completely black, with a short tail and a pair of large sheep horns like those of a demon.
Judging from its appearance, it should be some kind of magical beast, and not a low-level one at that.
“Not poisonous, eat it however you like!”
Lucia landed on all fours, her dragon wings slowly retracting.
Xia Li grabbed the horns on the dragon’s head, not planning to get down.
Lucia had always said that he drove too fast and would make her carsick… Xia Li didn’t have any real feeling about it.
Now he knew what it felt like.
The frequent weightlessness and high-speed turns had a strong impact on his sense of balance.
This was much more exciting than riding a roller coaster.
So there really were people who got dragonsick…
“Next time… when you catch prey… put me on the ground first.”
Xia Li patted his chest to calm himself down.
Lucia ignored him, used her claws to tear open the magical sheep’s skin, and lowered her head to start tasting.
She took a bite.
Half of her dragon jaw stopped.
A look of surprise flashed in Lucia’s golden-red dragon eyes, and then she spat three times in a row, “Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!”
What was this disgusting thing!
No, this was the magical sheep she used to love to eat.
Although the meat was a bit tougher than ordinary sheep, the texture was just right for an adult dragon.
But now she couldn’t get used to it at all!
“Xia Li, it’s not tasty!”
“I’m tasty, it’s the raw meat that’s not tasty.”
Xia Li recovered a bit and jumped down from the dragon’s head.
The dragon’s head itself was three meters tall, plus the slightly raised angle now, Xia Li’s jump was seven or eight meters, about the height of a three-story building.
Lucia was afraid of breaking the little Brave, so she even raised her bloody claws to catch Xia Li.
After Xia Li landed, he drew his sword and started cutting.
He divided the meat into several pieces and picked up some dry branches.
Seeing this, Lucia tacitly breathed out a puff of air, igniting the branches.
Xia Li patiently skewered the large pieces of mutton and then roasted them over the fire.
The evil dragon, Lucia, helped him out behind him, lifting her large claws to process the rest of the meat — this scene of ‘a dragon cooking’ was simply too incongruous in Xia Li’s eyes.
It would be even more perfect if he could find a large enough apron for her to wear.
“Ah…”
“What’s wrong, little chef?”
Xia Li took out a packet of cumin powder from his bag and sprinkled it on the mutton.
Lucia turned around in place. Every step her massive body took caused the ground to tremble.
“It’s over, it’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“There’s no rice cooker!”
“…”
“Without a rice cooker, there’s no way to cook!”
Lucia was so anxious that she paced back and forth, her tone as if the sky was falling.
She had once said that the rice cooker was the greatest invention of humans on Earth!
She still held onto that statement.
Without a rice cooker, she, the little chef, had nowhere to use her culinary skills!
“Not only do we not have a rice cooker, we don’t even have rice.”
Xia Li said with a wry smile, “You’re a dragon, you’re more suited to eating meat. Why are you always thinking about rice…”
“Tonic! I want to eat rice!”
“We’ll have rice when we get back, just bear with it for now.”
Xia Li lifted the roasted mutton and fed it to the dragon.
The mutton skewer was quite substantial, with several pounds of meat on a single branch. It would probably sell for 200 yuan a skewer on Earth.
It was fortunate that the meat was roasted with dragon flame, otherwise Xia Li would have been smoked before the meat was cooked.
“Gulp…”
Lucia lowered her head and bit the meat that Xia Li fed her.
The amount that could fill a human in one bite was not even enough to fill the gap between her teeth in her current form.
Lucia ate a skewer and didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t even chew it with her dragon teeth.
It was like eating a pea in human form.
Tasteless.
“More.”
Lucia said, opening her mouth wide.
Xia Li grabbed two more skewers and fed them to the dragon.
The evil dragon lowered her head and ate again.
After seven or eight skewers, she finally tasted a bit of the roasted meat flavor.
“Delicious! Why don’t you be the little chef, Xia Li?”
“Be a chef, my ass…”
Xia Li wanted to hit the dragon.
But looking back at the bonfire.
Xia Li suddenly realized that he really couldn’t feed Lucia in this form.
He couldn’t roast it as fast as she got hungry.
“Turn into your human form before you eat!” Xia Li said fiercely.
Lucia snorted twice and lay down, curling her huge dragon claws.
With her hind legs and long tail tucked in, Lucia now looked exactly like Little Cotton’s standard posture in winter, tucking her paws under her body.
“Hmph, hmph, I like to eat like this. Feed me, Xia Li~”