Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 416: Chapter 257: Green Iguana Killer (2)

Green Iguanas prefer humid environments and enjoy sunbathing. They usually stick to the treetops, though they can occasionally be seen near water sources.

They’re a lot like crocodiles; they spend their lives doing two main things.

Eating and sunbathing.

Mornings are for sunbathing. They only come out to forage after their body temperature has risen. After eating, they go back to sunbathing to aid digestion.

He had specifically chosen to head out at noon, right when the sun was growing stronger and the Green Iguanas were getting ready to start sunbathing.

Previously, when he went up the mountain, his attention was mostly focused on his immediate line of sight; he rarely looked up. Even so, he often saw Green Iguanas.

This time, he had come specifically to find them. He hadn’t gone far before he spotted his first victim.

About ten meters away, on a branch of a seven- or eight-meter-tall tree by the stream, a plump Green Iguana with a slightly yellowish body was lounging lazily. Its tiny, soybean-sized eyes were half-closed, and it looked utterly content.

’Sleep now, sleep a little longer. It’s normal to feel dizzy after basking in the sun for too long, don’t be afraid~’

A confident smile touched his lips. He pulled a slingshot from his pocket and took a relatively smooth stone from a small bamboo basket tied to his waist.

He had collected these stones over the past two days whenever he had free time, prioritizing near-perfectly round ones to use as ammunition for his slingshot.

Round ammunition has a straighter flight path, so he didn’t have to worry as much about missing. Irregularly shaped stones had more stopping power, but the uneven surface area meant they were more likely to veer off course in mid-air.

He had plenty of ways to finish the job, so he wasn’t concerned with stopping power, only accuracy.

He slowly drew back the rubber band, aligning it with his eye. He pushed the slingshot’s handle forward, relaxed his fingers, and let the web of his thumb and the fleshy part of his palm below it take the strain—the same technique used in archery.

He quietly gauged the wind speed In the Forest for a moment. In an instant, when the surrounding leaves all stopped rustling...

SHOO--

He released the rubber band. In his vision, the stone shot forward at extreme speed, heading straight for the point where the Green Iguana’s head met its neck.

When he caught the last Green Iguana, he had specifically studied it. The front part of its head was relatively small, but a ridge started to protrude where the top of its head connected to its neck, running all the way down to its tail.

The neck is a vital spot for all living creatures. Aiming there was never a bad idea.

THWACK.

A dull thud echoed through the forest.

The Green Iguana fell at the sound.

The instant the sound rang out, he was already sprinting in that direction, backhanding his sharp military knife from its sheath.

The military knife might look small, but it was the deadliest weapon in his possession. He made a point to sharpen it every three or four days to maintain its edge.

He arrived just a second after the iguana hit the ground.

Up close, this iguana seemed a bit longer than the one he’d hunted before, though most of that length was its insignificant tail.

The big fella was now lying on its side in the grass, twitching uncontrollably. Its limbs thrashed wildly, but after struggling for a long time, it still couldn’t get up.

Behind its head, around the area behind its ear, a patch of blood the size of the stone was slowly seeping out.

He reached out with his left hand, pinned the iguana’s body down, and plunged the military knife viciously into its neck.

The unlucky creature convulsed violently a few times, then slowly went still. Its body temperature dropped at a noticeable rate.

Green Iguanas, like crocodiles, are cold-blooded animals. They can’t generate much of their own body heat and must rely on sunbathing to warm up.

It was normal for its body temperature to drop rapidly once the blood drained out.

He bled the large creature dry, gutted it by the stream, washed it clean, and tossed it into his bamboo basket.

’A great start! Let’s go, let’s go, onward!’

With a successful hunt right at the start, Lin Chen held his head high and confidently continued up the mountain.

Although Green Iguanas have a fearsome appearance, they are one of the most docile animals in the world. They are also extremely timid and will hide at the slightest disturbance.

The bloody scent of their kin being slaughtered had surely alarmed others nearby. Finding another one in the immediate vicinity would be nearly impossible.

He walked for another hundred meters before the creatures finally reappeared in the nearby treetops.

He hadn’t paid much attention before, so he wasn’t sure. But now that he was specifically looking, he realized he could spot them in the canopy of almost every tree near the river that received ample sunlight.

On one particularly absurd tree, there were more than a dozen Green Iguanas. A few of the relatively thin branches were bent under their heavy weight, looking as if they could snap at any moment.

He roamed the mountain for the better part of the day, repeatedly going up and down along the stream, until both of his bamboo baskets were full. Only then did he have to end his day’s hunt.

After returning to the bamboo house, he laid out his spoils on the ground one by one.

"One, two, three... forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine!"

’No way, how is it forty-nine? This is torture!’

In disbelief, he counted them again. It was indeed forty-nine. He immediately grabbed his slingshot and dashed back into the forest.

Twenty minutes later, he swaggered back, carrying a still-warm Green Iguana.

’Fifty!’

’Haha, that’s much better.’

There was no way he could eat so many iguanas. The heads, in particular, could be used as bait in his fish traps when he went diving at night, or as lures to catch an American Crocodile.

It was a good thing this species wasn’t protected, or he’d be in big trouble.

’The last time I ate this, the meat tasted a lot like chicken. So, is it possible for me to debone the meat and process it differently?’

The program organizers still hadn’t announced the scoring method, so he wasn’t sure if repeatedly hunting the same thing would count for full points. If hunting too many didn’t count, it would be a waste.

Over the next few hours, he butchered all fifty Green Iguanas. He piled the parts with little meat that were difficult to process—the heads, tails, and toes—into one bamboo basket, then skinned all the remaining torsos.

Using the same method as butchering a chicken, he first stripped the meat from the limbs, then moved on to the body.

It was a bit clumsy at first, but as he processed more and more of them, he slowly got the hang of it.

By the end, he even felt that processing these things was no different from butchering a pig or a sheep. The anatomy was the same: four legs and a torso.

Based on his feel, an adult Green Iguana weighed between 4 and 6 kilograms. After being fully processed, the pure meat yield was about fifty percent.

There was still quite a bit of meat left on the bones, but he couldn’t be bothered to scrape it off. He would use it all to lure the American Crocodile.

With the American Crocodile’s massive size of several hundred kilograms, such a large amount of meat was sure to attract its attention.

’I have a lot of sweet potato starch on hand. I could make them into patties like last time, or I could make meatballs. Or maybe I could extract some coconut oil and make boneless fried "chicken." I could also coat it in dry flour and make spicy fried "chicken"...’

The cleaned iguana meat really didn’t look much different from chicken, and the texture was similar too. If he called it chicken, people would surely believe him.

’I should probably just pound it into a meat paste first. That way, it’ll be easy to shape into whatever I want later. I could even make tenderloin patties. It’s just a shame that oil is so hard to come by.’

He had over a hundred kilograms of meat, and after three solid hours of pounding, he was only just over a third of the way through.

He shook his sore wrist and forearm, grabbed some of the meat paste, mixed it evenly with salt and sweet potato starch, and just as the water in the coconut shell began to bubble, he squeezed a meatball through the web of his thumb and dropped it in.

His movements were fast; he could form almost one meatball per second.

As the number of meatballs floating in the water gradually increased, the water temperature remained within a constant range.

"The temperature of the water for the first soak is very important when making these handmade meatballs," he explained. "If you put them in cold water, the meat paste might fall apart."

"If you put them in boiling water, the outside will be cooked through while the inside is still raw. You’ll also lose too much moisture, which affects the texture."

"Poaching them slowly like this in warm water ensures they cook evenly inside and out, while also keeping them tender and juicy."