Chapter 89 Going Back to the Wetlands for a Joint Hunt (2)
The Fungus sent timely feedback, guiding her to walk a little further and stand amidst the mud.
Deep within the muck, there was a giant frog that was either sleeping or hibernating, surrounded by snow-white fungus, just waiting for her command.
Ye Nai thought about it and did not let the Fungus directly prey on it; instead, she pressed the button on her walkie-talkie.
"All units, all units, come to my position quickly. Let the Earth Element warriors take a look, there seems to be some movement deep in the mud. Over."
Less than a minute after the call was issued, the whole team ran over and slowly stopped two meters away from her.
"Yezi, where is the movement you mentioned?"
"Right beneath my feet."
Several Earth Element warriors simultaneously utilized their superpowers to check and exclaimed in unison.
"There’s really something here!"
"Buried in the mud?"
"No movement, seems like it’s sleeping?"
"Is it a hibernating animal?"
"What kind of animal hibernates under damp mud?"
"A frog?"
"But the frogs that Sister Da Ma and her team hunted were during the day, not hibernating, right?"
"The kind that wakes up to feed when it’s not sleeping deeply and is hungry?"
"Crap, a giant frog that urgently needs to feed because it’s starving?"
"Yezi, slowly walk out from there, Earth Element warriors mark the ground, and let’s retreat to the rocket launcher’s firing range."
Ye Nai tiptoed, stepping lightly back into the crowd, and everyone retreated together about four or five hundred meters. Ye Nai then took out three quadruple rocket launchers as requested.
Three main combat warriors each carried a launcher, standing strategically apart.
The others went straight back to the camp, climbed onto the high-altitude gun, leveled its barrel, and aimed at the markers left by the Earth Element warriors in the distance.
Once everything was ready, the rocket launchers fired one shot first.
With a bang, it hit right on the mark left by the Earth Element warriors.
Dirt and mud flew, and the shell burrowed more than ten meters underground before it exploded.
The first explosion’s vibration had already woken the giant frog, and the second one collapsed its shelter, allowing the evening sunlight to even shine down through the hole that was blasted open.
With its cozy den destroyed, the giant frog was both furious and angry, opening its wide mouth and extending its powerful, sticky tongue through the hole it emerged from.
The warriors carrying the rocket launchers were four to five hundred meters away from its hole, and the giant frog’s tongue couldn’t reach that far, so everyone saw the long, elastic tongue lash out through the air for several rounds before retracting back in.
Captain Liu pressed his walkie-talkie and instructed the three up front to continue.
"Keep firing, drive that frog out."
Soon, the other two warriors each fired one shot, attacking with great precision as both shells flew down the hole.
With two muffled booms, everyone at the camp felt the ground tremble slightly.
This time the giant frog underground was truly enraged, using all its limbs to push aside the mud burying it and leaped out from the hole overhead.
"Croak!"
"Wow, that’s one high leap."
The warriors waiting in ambush saw it all clearly.
"Thank goodness Sister Da Ma had the Earth Element warriors drag the giant frog on the ground last time and didn’t let it jump; otherwise, it would’ve been lethal," Ye Nai admired Sister Da Ma’s tactical command once again.
"Fire!"
Taking advantage of the giant frog still being mid-air, the three warriors with quad-barreled rocket launchers roared in unison and pulled the triggers, firing rocket after rocket directly onto the giant frog.
"Wow...!"
The second cry of the giant frog was cut short halfway, its enormous and heavy body exploded into a shower of blood in mid-air, and its innards rained down in a torrential downpour before the lifeless body crashed to the ground, motionless.
"Whoa, killed by rocket launchers!" Ye Nai clapped enthusiastically.
"Is it really dead?"
"Wouldn’t it be dead with its innards strewn all over the ground?"
"High-altitude gun, hold your fire. A few warriors, grab your weapons and come with me to check. Yezi, wait for us to call you."
"Okay."
Each team leader, along with two main combatants, hurriedly jogged a few steps with their machine guns to join the warriors with the rocket launchers, then together they moved to inspect the giant frog’s condition.
Upon arriving, they saw blood everywhere and foul-smelling innards, plus the corpse of the giant frog, deflated by half and left with just muscles and bones supporting the stretched skin.
"How many rockets are left?"
"Two."
"Three quad-launchers fired ten rockets, let’s try to hunt another one tomorrow and see how many rockets it takes to kill a frog." When away from home, every piece of ammunition counted, they had to conserve what could be conserved, and spend what needed to be spent.
"Yes."
Captain Liu summoned Ye Nai and the others over via the walkie-talkie.
When Ye Nai arrived, she first collected the remains of the giant frog into the Space, then brought out a bunch of thirty-meter-long shrimp cages. The group put on goggles, masks, and gloves, picked up the innards from the ground into the cages, trying to evenly distribute the load. They tied each cage to a long red nylon rope, with two people carrying a cage to the water’s edge, where they carefully lowered it into the water.
The weight of the bait slowly pulled the cages under the water.
Poisonous snakes were valuable for their poison, and since the octagonal cages were too small, they switched to larger cages.
The Earth Element warriors used the materials at hand to form several large, hard mounds of earth on each shoreline where the cages were placed. They made sure the red nylon ropes tying the cage doors were long enough to wrap around several mounds and be tightly secured to prevent the cages from sinking and drifting away.
After collecting everything that could be scavenged from the scene, the Earth Element warriors turned the soil over, burying the blood-soaked mud beneath the surface.
Without Ye Nai having to lift a finger, the Fungus that proliferated wildly in the aquatic grass sensed the direction of food and released massive amounts of spores. The warriors were still making their final checks when the spores entered the soil, feeding on the blood of the giant frogs to grow and multiply rapidly.
Back at the camp, after arranging the night watch shifts, everyone gradually rested.
The night passed without incident until dawn.
After breakfast, everyone gathered by the water to pull up the cages they had set the day before.
Each cage was very heavy, filled with water snakes of various sizes. The bait laid yesterday had all been consumed, and the snakes started to prey on each other, with larger snakes in each cage feasting on smaller ones.
Ye Nai cycled each cage through the Space, where without the special protection from the Fungus, any living thing would die instantly upon entry.
The dead water snakes were taken out again, with everyone helping to open the cage doors. Then Ye Nai pulled out a huge net bag, the kind you’d see at a fish stall in a market, and loaded all the dead snakes into it.
Finally, all the items were collected back into the Space.
The warriors then split into groups, each setting off to hunt for game.
Ye Nai and the logistics personnel stayed at the camp, treating the distant sounds of gunfire and artillery as background noise while leisurely playing games, eating, and drinking.
Aside from Ye Nai who was genuinely idle, the logistics team members had their own tasks; they were responsible for the high-altitude gun. Fortunately, the morning went smoothly, and the only two calls were to ask Ye Nai to collect the giant frogs, with two groups each having killed one.
Just as they had done the day before, they used the innards as bait and sent the cages down into the water to continue trapping water snakes.
Other teams brought back waterfowl and eggs; they had also set many bird traps in various locations in attempts to bring back some live birds.
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