Chapter 117: Chapter 116: Damned Little Thief

Lemmings reproduce at a terrifying rate. If their natural predators aren’t protected, they could cause permanent, devastating damage to the wild ecosystem.

Lemmings primarily eat plants like lichen, moss, and fresh shoots. Without the protective cover of this vegetation, the soil erodes, and many herbivores are forced to migrate due to the lack of food.

A decrease in herbivores would then cause carnivores to go hungry, creating a vicious cycle.

Beyond the food supply, lemmings also damage the land itself.

They love to burrow underground. If their population explodes, they can hollow out an entire patch of land.

Fragments of information about Arctic Foxes and lemmings flashed through Lin Chen’s mind. He silently lowered his hunting bow and sighed.

"Damn little thief, stealing right from my home. Looks like I’ll have to upgrade the storeroom."

Following the Arctic Fox’s tracks, he quickly found a tunnel dug right up against the rock face.

The tunnel was surrounded by fresh claw marks. It looked newly dug, but digging wasn’t part of an Arctic Fox’s usual behavior. When they hunt lemmings, they typically leap high into the air and come crashing down to collapse the nest from above.

’Wait, digging... could it be?!’

A sudden sense of foreboding washed over him. He rushed into the storeroom and headed straight for the wild mushroom section to inspect it.

He had several pounds of various air-dried wild mushrooms stored away, the morels being the most precious among them.

He grabbed his Hat Lamp and switched it on, and the dim storeroom was instantly illuminated.

His eyes swept across the floor, and he quickly found a trail of snowy footprints.

Following the tracks, he found a hidden hole in the snow in a corner, barely larger than his fist.

’Arctic Foxes weigh about 5 kilograms on average. Their birthing season is from April to July, and they take ten months to mature. For it to squeeze through a hole this small, it must be a juvenile cub.’

’But this hole...’

The entrance to the hole was right next to the pile of potatoes.

He rummaged through the pile. The potatoes were untouched, but the palm-sized piece of dried lichen that had been there was gone.

Near where the lichen had been, he could clearly see a dark brown puddle of liquid on a rock, along with a few strands of grayish-brown fur.

’A lemming? That would explain it.’

The little fox must have followed the lemming’s scent here. It probably found the lemming’s tunnel in the corner and followed it inside for a nice meal.

"What’s the damage?"

Andre asked as he walked in from outside.

"No real damage. The little fella came in to catch a lemming and snatched a piece of mutton on its way out. We’ll just call it a housewarming gift."

A little thing less than five kilograms, about the size of a poodle. He wasn’t that petty.

Besides, the animal was on the protected species list. What was he supposed to do?

"Lemmings? Heh, those things are a real pain."

He glanced at the hole in the corner but didn’t say anything, tactfully leaving the storeroom.

The sudden intrusion threw a wrench in Lin Chen’s plans. He put aside any thoughts of bear paws; right now, he had to plug up this hole.

More importantly, there was likely a whole family of lemmings hiding somewhere in the snow nearby. If he let them make a home here, he’d be the one paying the price.

An hour passed quickly.

Connor didn’t return as scheduled.

"I told you hunting in the snow wasn’t that simple."

Andre didn’t seem surprised. He held out his hand to him. "According to our bet, I’m up first."

By then, Lin Chen had already plugged the hole, even stuffing a block of wood inside. He’d also checked the base of all the nearby wooden walls, only stopping once he was sure there were no other spots to burrow through.

’Good thing I moved the storeroom into the rock crevice. If it were outside, this would be a real problem.’

The crevice was surrounded by solid rock. As long as he sealed the gaps at the bottom of the storeroom’s wooden walls where they met the dirt, there was no way for anything to sneak in.

Having dealt with the thief, Lin Chen finally breathed a sigh of relief. He went to the storeroom and brought out the remaining sheep’s head, bones, mutton, and cleaned innards.

"A sheep’s... head?"

Even Andre, with his thirty years of wilderness survival experience, couldn’t help but shiver at the sight of it.

In some Western traditions, sheep are associated with the devil, mainly because a sheep’s head can look downright terrifying. It’s the kind of thing that makes children cry and gives the faint of heart nightmares.

He had grown up in the wild with his father. The day he hunted his first sheep, his dad had casually tossed the bloody head on the ground, scaring him to tears. The psychological scar had stayed with him all these years.

"You’re afraid of this?"

Lin Chen gave him an odd look and waved a hand dismissively. "Don’t worry, this part’s for me. You can have the mutton soup and meat. Can you eat organ meat?"

"The organ meat is fine. It’s just... the heads. I can’t quite get over that mental block."

"Never eaten it?"

"Never."

"What a pity."

Now that he had two sets of cookware plus a wok, Lin Chen was no longer as constrained as before. The fire pit in the yard with a grilling rack over it made for two burners, and there was also the earthen oven he’d used for the roast duck. If necessary, the stove inside the house could be lit as well.

However, he didn’t plan on lighting the fire pit—that would waste too much firewood. Instead, he found two logs, split them, and quickly fashioned two Swedish torches.

He scooped two pots full of fluffy white snow from the yard, set them on the torches, and brought them to a boil. One pot was for the sheep’s head and offal, the other for the mutton.

Once the water boiled, he let everything cook for another ten minutes before scooping it all out. He dumped the remaining water, grabbed a handful of snow to wipe the scum from the sides of the pot, then refilled it with snow to boil again.

"What are you doing? Why cook it twice?"

Andre had thought that Lin Chen was taking the meat out because it was done cooking, but his experience told him that couldn’t be right. A moment later, his suspicion was confirmed when he saw Lin Chen dump both pots of broth onto the ground.

"This first boil is a process we call *chāo* in Great Xia. It means boiling the meat once to remove any residual blood and impurities, which is all that scum floating on the surface."

"Those impurities affect the soup’s flavor and don’t look appetizing, so you have to dump them. This is the first step in getting rid of the gamey taste."

"The second step is to cook the meat with aromatics like ginger, garlic, scallions, pepper, and wine. This helps eliminate the gamey flavor even more."

"Of course, if you want the soup to be savory and delicious without any gaminess, the most important thing is for the ingredients to be fresh. You can’t let them be refrigerated or frozen for too long. Butchering and cooking it right away is best."

"What about the third step?"

"The third step is mainly for ingredients that have a strong flavor to begin with, like bear paws or fatty intestines. For those, you need to add strong seasonings to mask the ingredient’s natural gaminess."

"But for this soup, we don’t need the third step."