"Wakey wakey, time for food." Jianmen's voice woke Josephine Wong from her meditative state.
An appetizing smell of charred garlic and seafood crawled into Josephine Wong's nostrils, and combine this with the fact that she had been in this meditative state in order to heal herself for at least ten hours, her stomach growled and conveyed her a sense of hunger she had not felt for a very long time.
"Did you get seafood? How can you get seafood?" Josephine Wong asked Jianmen, who was sitting right in front of the fire inside the cave and seemed to be cooking something.
"Well. uh, not seafood, but close!" Jianmen looked back at Josephine Wong and moved slightly out of the way, showing her the full view of what he was barbequing on the fire - it was a dark red crustacean, with four legs and one front claw that looked like that of crabs on each side. From afar, it looked like a roasted crab with the size of a bicycle: "It's actually this - if you don't mind how it looks, it's actually quite tasty."
"Is that… a spider?" Josephine Wong felt like she was about to gag.
"Yes. I know what you think. But think about this - spiders are just crabs' cousins. Crabs are just spiders in the water, and spiders are just crabs on trees, and maybe with a bit of venom. I've already processed it, so you can eat it with ease." Jianmen broke off one of the spider's front claws and threw it to Josephine Wong. Josephine Wong was not ready and jumped off to the side, which left the claw to fall on the bed and left a red mark of spice and oil on the animal fur.
"Yeesh, what a waste! Don't worry, I'll eat it first." Jianmen came over and grabbed the claw from the bed, broke it apart and showed off the steaming white meat inside of the claw before taking a big bite: "See? Better than Alaskan King Crab, and since it's from here, it's much more nutritious."
"Can't you just… make some soup like you did yesterday?" Josephine Wong was indeed hungry, but she couldn't just put her mind to eating a spider.
"Hrm, you should know that vegetable soups are not supposed to be a long term solution. They can help relieve your hunger, but they don't provide much nutrition, not to mention energy for you to regenerate your power." Jianmen sighed and said: "Now, if you wanna get outta here early. You better just find it in your heart and eat this. Come on now - it's better fresh and hot. If it goes cold it will taste like beer corks."
"I… I'm sorry, I just can't do this." Josephine Wong took a look at the spider on the fire, and turned her head around.
"What? Did you not go through any survival training before you came here?" Jianmen shook his head and went back to the fire, after he finished up the first front claw, he put the entire crab aside and put a stone pot on the fire.
"I … I had, it's just… I have a thing against spiders." Josephine Wong felt a bit embarrassed: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"It's okay." Jianmen shook his head again and brought out a stone bowl and poured something from the stone pot into it.
It was vegetable soup, with very small chunks of meat inside.
"Here. Vegetable soup, with a little bit of ground rabbit meat." Jianmen handed the bowl to Josephine Wong: "Drink some if you're hungry. It was quite bad outside, so there aren't many alternatives for food."
"Thank you." this time, Josephine Wong felt that it would be quite heartless of her to refuse or even show any double, so she just took the bowl and started sipping the warm and fragrant soup from it. The soup had a much better taste, now that it had small chunks of meat in it. Not only that, the small amount of spices in the soup also made it quite appetizing, the more she drank, the more hungry she became, so she finished her bowl of soup in less than half a minute and asked: "Can I have one more?"
"Sure." Jianmen poured her another bowl, and left the stone pot right beside the bed: "Here, take the whole pot. I'll have the whole spider for myself since you don't feel like it. And if you are ready, why don't you come out and take a look - I think it will be safer soon."
"What happened?" Josephine Wong finished up half a bowl of soup, then asked: "Did the wasps go away?"
"They finally left the place around four to five hours ago." Jianmen answered while breaking some legs off that barbeque spider and exposing more of the white, fresh and steaming meat: "The huge energy explosion that happened a few days ago - it caused some changes in the environment and shattered a lot of the surrounding landscape. I'm gonna go and check things out after this meal, you wanna come?"
"Yeah, sure. That would be nice." Josephine Wong poured herself another bowl of soup and said: "You've been here for a while - what should I watch out for?"
"First thing is always concealing yourself and trying your best to avoid fighting unless you are hunting." Jianmen dipped a spider's leg into some sauces he made and took a big bite: "The area around here is populated with a lot of insect and crustacean type monsters, so if you are so against eating them you would need to face the fact that you will have very very limited sources of food."
"... understood." Josephine Wong sighed and put her stone bowl down: "Anything else?"
"There's a huge centipede and a multi-tailed scorpion nearby, they seem to have some sort of rivalry going. Both of them seem to have some venomous aura around them, so if you see either one of them, stay away." Jianmen thought for a while and swallowed the spider meat and let out an "ah" of satisfaction: "And if you wanna go up high, you may want to take a detour or choose a spot that is not the highest around here, since the straight route to the highest point is blocked by an occupied nest. I'm not sure what kind of creature occupied it just yet, but I don't wanna find out in my current state."
"Thank you." Josephine Wong nodded and said: "When you went out for the hunt - did you see any other humans?"
"No. But I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your teammates."