Stranded on a Deserted Island—They All Started Plotting Against Me - Chapter 48 - Chapter 48

Next to the fire was the net Zhang Liu had spent most of the night weaving.

The ram never expected to be caught by such an open-air trap.

Its hooves sank into the sand and stepped exactly into the mesh of the “vine fishing net.”

When it pulled its hoof out, the edge was already wrapped with the wooden fiber lines, and after a few steps, it immediately caused the stones tied on the net to knot and tangle, causing the front legs to trip over the back legs.

In less than two seconds, the whole goat had fallen on the sand and slid about two or three meters.

Though it was still more than ten meters away from Zhang Liu and the others.

“Roar!”

“Roar roar!”

“Roar roar roar!”

These weren’t the usual bleating sounds of goats.

Right now, in front of Zhang Liu, Anya, and Qin Ruoshang, the ram was wildly shaking its head and struggling fiercely, letting out a beast-like roar.

Without saying much, Zhang Liu raised his specially made wooden stick, and Anya picked up a stone again.

Even Qin Ruoshang quickly climbed down from the cave, found a burning piece of wood in the fire, and stood nearby to provide light for the two.

As the torch approached, the ram’s roar grew more agonizing. It wildly rammed with its only remaining horn and frantically kicked its four legs.

But none of this helped—it only made the wooden fiber ropes binding it tighten even more.

The three stood together in front of the ram, exchanged a glance, and couldn’t hide their excitement.

“Do you know what a terrifying two-legged ape is?” Zhang Liu shouted, raising the wooden stick tied with stone, then slammed it hard on the ram’s already broken horn’s head.

This blow was far more brutal than Anya’s “stone-version Noxian Guillotine.”

“Waaah…” The ram let out a miserable scream when struck on the head but didn’t die on the spot.

Its vitality was incredibly strong; it stiffened all four legs, struggling hard enough to make the ropes creak and crack.

Zhang Liu panicked immediately.

If the ram escaped now, he would regret it for life!

Fueled by adrenaline, he ignored his exhaustion and kept hitting with the stick.

Even when the stone tied to the stick shattered from the force, dropping a little away, Zhang Liu didn’t stop—he kept striking upward.

Only when the wooden stick broke with a crisp crack did he realize what happened.

Out of breath, he dropped the stick and sat down on the sand, silent.

Looking at Zhang Liu, Anya’s eyes showed a flicker of fear.

She had seen cattle slaughter before, but even she was unsettled by the bloody scene in front of her now.

The ram’s head was a mangled mess, its brain matter mixed with broken bone fragments stuck to the sharp stone piece at the end of the wooden stick.

Only its limbs twitched, a last sign of life.

“…” Qin Ruoshang pursed her lips and said nothing.

Being someone who gets dizzy at the sight of fish blood, she was naturally very uncomfortable with this heavy scene of smells, colors, and sounds all at once.

Suppressing a churning nausea in her stomach, Qin Ruoshang walked over to Zhang Liu and asked with concern, “Are you okay?”

Since earlier, Zhang Liu had been leaning back on his hands on the sand, gasping for breath.

“I’m fine!” he shook his head hard.

But that was all the strength he had left.

That burst of energy had completely drained him.

Watching him worriedly, Qin Ruoshang couldn’t help but feel his breathless “I’m fine” was far from convincing.

“He’s probably just exhausted. Sitting and resting for a while should help,” Anya said as she pinched Zhang Liu’s painfully stiff arm and asked, “Does this hurt?”

“Yes… it hurts a lot,” Zhang Liu obediently nodded, then excitedly looked at the ram’s corpse on the ground and said, “I really didn’t expect…”

Although they didn’t know why, these goats were completely unafraid of humans, but the result was that the three of them had just gained a huge amount of meat!

This was meat!

Full of protein and fatty aroma!

But now he faced a new problem.

In his seventeen years of life, Zhang Liu had never handled meat on this scale before. And his only tool was a piece of metal that wasn’t even sharp.

But he understood one thing clearly: the meat had to be processed quickly. In this environment, it might spoil in just a dozen hours.

Struggling to stand, Zhang Liu used the firelight to examine the mangled goat and began recalling hunting and butchering videos he had seen in documentaries.

He also remembered that Anya’s family seemed to run a cattle farm producing that special kind of beef.

So Zhang Liu decisively spoke up and asked, “Classmate Anya, do you have any experience handling this kind of thing?”

“I…” Anya was about to answer but then realized how he addressed her. She immediately turned her head away, pretending not to hear.

“???” Zhang Liu was momentarily stunned, then caught on. He hurried over to where she’d turned and, wearing a fully apologetic smile, asked again, “Anya, do you know how to do this? Because I don’t.”

“I still have some experience. I saw the butcher at home cutting and working on cows.” Anya said proudly, lifting her head after hearing the respectful address. “Surprised, right?”

“Really? No way!” Zhang Liu nodded seriously, as if seeing a savior. “Tell me quickly, how do they hang it up?”

Anya fell silent for a moment.

But seeing Zhang Liu’s earnest expression, she reluctantly spoke up.

“Actually… I… I don’t really know. I just saw it once.” When pressed for the key details, Anya lowered her head and mumbled, “I only remember they hung the cow upside down, and then just sliced it up… really fast.”

“Pfft… cough cough cough…” Qin Ruoshang, who had been watching their conversation, couldn’t help but laugh out loud at Anya’s tone.

She quickly coughed a few times to cover it up.

Hearing Qin Ruoshang laugh like that, Anya hurried to explain, “Qin Ruoshang, don’t laugh at me! I was definitely not going to learn how to slaughter cattle later, so of course I wouldn’t watch the whole process!”

“Mm-hmm, Anya, I wasn’t laughing at you earlier. I just think you’re cute,” Qin Ruoshang said quickly, seeing the guilty look on Anya’s face for not being able to help. “Compared to you, I can’t help at all right now.”

“Who says you’re not helping! You woke me up, so I got the chance to sneak attack that sheep,” Anya quickly reminded Qin Ruoshang of her role in the hunt.

Suddenly, the two started complimenting each other.

“..”

“How about this!” After thinking for a moment, Zhang Liu came up with a plan. “You two go get some sleep first, and I’ll handle the mutton down here. We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow morning.”

“Ah…” Anya and Qin Ruoshang, who had been prepared to stay up late to help, were a bit surprised.

But Zhang Liu added, “I’ll just do some simple processing and then go to sleep too. The dead sheep isn’t going anywhere. We can finish up together in the daytime.”

With Zhang Liu insisting, Qin Ruoshang and Anya took their torches and went back into the cave to rest.

Outside the cave, Zhang Liu got to work.

Even without its head, the sheep’s body was still over a meter long.

He didn’t think he could finish processing it all alone in the dark overnight. The most important thing now was to find a way to preserve the meat.

Zhang Liu’s plan was simple: he would gut the sheep and remove the innards that spoil the quickest.

Although he’d never dealt with sheep innards before, he had slaughtered chickens.

Since “even a sparrow has a liver and gallbladder,” he figured the processing method wouldn’t be too different.

He would soak the intestines, stomach, heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and similar organs in water. The two large giant clam shells he had collected earlier to store water now came in handy.

Though he wasn’t sure if it would preserve the organs, at least it would isolate them from air and the outside world.

The two shells perfectly fit all the innards.

After some thought, Zhang Liu covered them with dry grass and a layer of branches to keep flies away.

He smeared thick layers of wood ash over the cut sheep meat to absorb the blood, then buried it in a dry sand pit to prevent flies from swarming.

As for skinning and cutting the meat into pieces, Zhang Liu planned to do that tomorrow.

With a big yawn, he stoked the fire to burn brighter, sat down beside the pit where the innards and meat were buried, and closed his eyes to rest.

The crackling of the fire, mixed with the buzzing of flies attracted by the smell of blood, was the perfect lullaby.