ILSITM Chapter 63

When a shark’s body flips over, if it can’t flip back in time to avoid the panic brought on by the inverted visual world, its brain will secrete a large amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This secretion will make it dizzy and enter a state of rigid stillness.

After I flipped underwater, I still tightly clamped the shark’s body with my legs, using all my strength to prevent it from flipping back over.

I held my breath underwater for nearly two minutes before loosening my legs and swimming to the surface.

At this time, the shark was like it was asleep, lying motionless on its back on the surface of the sea.

With the cooperation and protection of several guerrillas and the ape-men, I quickly swam to a nearby log.

Several ape-men were sitting on this log. After I climbed onto the log, I stood up straight and waited for other sharks to attack me again.

After a while, sure enough, another shark swam towards my log. I repeated the same trick, turning its belly to the sky.

The remaining sharks didn’t learn from the experience, as if they wanted to avenge me regardless of life or death.

I “sat” on one shark after another as they came, until they were all lying dead on the sea.

Today, we harvested seven adult wild boars and two piglets, and unexpectedly gained five sharks.

When we returned fully loaded to the other side of the island, the female ape-men who had stayed at home immediately surrounded us, thronging around us and shouting, “Hu! Hu! Hu!”

“What are they saying?” The deputy team leader looked at me and the political commissar, completely bewildered.

“They probably see us as heroes, thinking we are gods, so I analyze that the ‘Hu’ they repeatedly say probably means ‘god’,” the political commissar’s explanation sounded plausible.

When we looked at these female ape-men, we found that their eyes were filled with awe and worship towards us, and we felt that the political commissar’s analysis made some sense.

We and the ape-men used a great deal of effort to drag the five sharks ashore.

Everyone was very busy. Some of the ape-men were responsible for breaking down the wild boar meat, but more ape-men were breaking down the sharks.

The blades in the hands of these ape-men were taken from the wreckage of a crashed plane. They collected the plane fragments left on the island and used stones to grind them into sharp blades.

The political commissar stood next to several ape-men who were using blades to break down a shark, personally demonstrating and guiding them on how to cut the fins and marinate the shark meat.

Shark meat has a strong ammonia smell. Eating fresh shark meat has a terrible taste, and shark meat contains toxins. Eating untreated shark meat can lead to poisoning.

The political commissar planned to marinate the shark meat and then smoke it with firewood to make dried fish. Marinating and smoking the shark meat could effectively remove the ammonia smell and toxins.

I planned to raise the two wild boar cubs that we had captured alive, so I asked the deputy team leader to lead two guerrillas outside the cave to build a pigpen out of wood.

It’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish.

I thought that a small wild boar cub was only enough for one person to eat, so it would be better to raise it. It wouldn’t be too late to eat it when it grew bigger.

Of course, when they grew bigger, they could breed more wild boars, so these ape-men wouldn’t have to risk their lives hunting every day.

While they were busy, I wasn’t idle either. With the other two guerrillas, I moved hundreds of stones of various sizes from the island and built a simple earthen kiln about two meters long, wide, and high next to the cave.

Then, the two guerrillas and I mixed mud.

After the mud was mixed, I plastered it inside and outside the earthen kiln.

I added a little dry soil to the remaining mud and placed it on a flat rock, then began to knead it.

I kneaded the mud as if I were kneading dough.

When I served in the Marine Corps, I often helped in the logistics squad kitchen.

In addition to helping the comrades in the logistics squad knead dough and make steamed buns, I sometimes helped them stir-fry dishes.

When kneading the mud, I used the end of my palm. This way, whether kneading dough or mud, it didn’t take much effort, and whether it was a dough or a mud ball, it was very even.

After the mud was kneaded, I rolled the mud into long strips, divided it into several portions of varying sizes, and then pinched it into the shapes of pots, bowls, and pans.

I placed these pots, bowls, and pans into the earthen kiln in batches to bake. Although the pottery that came out wasn’t exquisite, it was very practical.

In the evening, I used the twenty large pottery bowls that I had baked to stew ten large bowls of wild boar offal and ten large bowls of shark fin.

Shark fin is what we often call fish fin. Although it’s called fish fin, it’s actually the shark’s fin.

The fish fin I made was made from the pectoral fins, dorsal fins, pelvic fins, and caudal fins of the shark.

The stewed wild boar offal and shark fin were delicious, and everyone ate them until the bowls were empty.

With these pottery bowls, the bones that the ape-men had previously discarded now had a “use.”

The next day, I put the wild boar bones into the pottery bowls to make soup.

When I made the soup, I would add a few leaves from a tree that grew on this island, so the soup would be fragrant and fresh.

These ape-men were drinking bone soup for the first time. After drinking it, they all said “You,” which means “good.”

We ate grilled meat while drinking bone soup, it was simply too delicious!

These ape-men could use fire and no longer ate raw meat, but they didn’t know how to cook. They only simply grilled the meat.

I then taught these ape-men how to use pottery bowls to stew meat and make bone soup.

In the past few days, I baked a batch of pottery every day, and now every ape-man has their own bowl.

The political commissar discovered that there were several kinds of wild vegetables on the other side of the island that could be eaten, so he transplanted them to this side of the island for large-scale planting.

We also made simple dining tables and long benches out of wood.

When eating, the rice and dishes were placed on the table, and we and the ape-men all sat on the long benches, using wooden chopsticks or pottery spoons to eat.

The rice we ate wasn’t rice, but the seeds of a plant.

When we first arrived on the island, these ape-men would put them into “concave” shaped stone slabs to bake and eat. After I baked the pottery basins, I steamed these plant seeds to eat. This made the taste better and also facilitated digestion.

Every day, we had meat and vegetables on our table.

We also taught these ape-men to read and speak Chinese.

Four guerrillas also fell in love with the female ape-men on the island.

In textbooks, the ancient ape-men we see are all ugly, with short faces, prominent brow ridges, wide nasal bones, high and forward-protruding cheekbones, and large teeth.

However, the ape-men on this island no longer had any difference in appearance from modern humans. The body hair on their bodies had disappeared completely, and some of the female ape-men were not only not ugly, but also very beautiful.

The political commissar (Wen Rourou’s father) was already married and had children, and the deputy team leader (Wen Rourou’s father’s grandfather) and I also had someone we liked, otherwise the three of us would also have found a female ape-man as our wife on this island.

Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, we had lived with the ape-men on the island for half a year.