Chapter 43: An Unexpected Joy

At dinner time, with the exponential growth of the tribe's population and some personnel reassignments, they would normally have run into some difficulties regarding food.

Unfortunately for those difficulties, Zhou Xu’s situation was anything but normal.

Let’s not forget that they had killed a spider monster just a few days ago, and to this day, some of the spider legs were still left over. Combined with the fish caught by the Black Moon Tribe throughout the day, ensuring everyone in the tribe had a bite to eat was an easy task.

However, this kind of days could not last forever.

After all, the spider monster only had eight legs...

Once the spider legs were eaten up, their food pressure would inevitably rise.

To solve this food pressure, the most direct and effective method in Zhou Xu’s eyes was actually to upgrade the fishing nets and improve fishing efficiency.

In fact, the work of upgrading the fishing nets had already begun the morning after he arrived at the Black Moon Camp, when he taught the tribe members here how to start making them.

Still, this was a time-consuming and laborious task after all, and completing it in a short period of time was too difficult.

Under this premise, the arrival of Zhuang Mengdie and the others could be said to have brought a huge boost to the labor force here at the Black Moon Camp.

Yet, Zhou Xu had no intention of asking Zhuang Mengdie and the others to help weave fishing nets.

The reason was simple: while inspecting the surrounding environment today, he had spotted wild rabbits.

This caused Zhou Xu to quickly weigh his options in his mind.

As for the idea of wild rabbit farming, it went without saying that from his perspective, the sooner they caught one, the better.

With this as a premise, if the efficiency of upgrading the fishing nets couldn't be raised, it would certainly affect the food distribution after the tribe's population increased, but those broken fishing nets made by the former chieftain were still around.

The people of the Black Moon Camp had survived until now relying on those few tattered fishing nets, and making do with them for the time being was still feasible.

At worst, food distribution would be slightly reduced in stages due to the population increase, but it certainly wouldn't lead to anyone starving to death.

Zhuang Mengdie’s manual dexterity and efficiency, even when compared to the veterans of their Salt Lake Camp, were exceptionally high. As for novices like those in the Black Moon Camp, she completely outclassed them by a wide margin.

From the afternoon until bedtime, after receiving Zhou Xu’s orders and casually putting in some work before sleep, Zhuang Mengdie had already woven three baskets of the appropriate size for wild rabbits.

And this was taking into account that she had spent a considerable amount of time teaching three novices.

No matter what, the enterprise of setting traps to catch wild rabbits could officially get underway tomorrow.

The next day, Zhou Xu woke up bright and early. After handing over the task of plastering the furnace with mud to a veteran transferred from the Salt Lake Camp, he enthusiastically grabbed the traps and headed straight for the rabbit warren.

Their arrival inevitably startled the rabbits hiding in the surrounding area.

This was something that had already been confirmed when Zhou Xu activated his "Eye of Insight" to quickly pinpoint the locations of the rabbit holes.

Because of their approach, several rabbits had panicked and fled back into their burrows.

But it didn't matter; this was something completely unavoidable.

Ignoring this issue, Zhou Xu locked onto the location of a rabbit hole and walked straight up to it to begin deploying their rabbit-trapping device. While taking out his tools, he explained the process to the members of the hunting squad beside him.

"Unlike catching mice, we don't really have particularly good bait to lure these wild rabbits into the trap. However, unlike mice, given a rabbit's size, it is generally able to knock over the support branches of the trap all by itself."

As he spoke, Zhou Xu began setting up traps around the rabbit hole.

"Therefore, our strategy for deploying traps must also change. For these wild rabbits, our traps must win through sheer quantity."

By this point, Zhou Xu had already nimbly set up three cage-style traps around the rabbit hole.

He made sure that whenever a rabbit came out of this burrow, or tried to return to it, there was a high probability it would trigger at least one of their traps.

Of course, the possibility that they might escape through other connected holes could not be ruled out.

With a sufficient number of cage traps, they could completely surround every single rabbit hole in the vicinity with traps.

However, with traps currently limited in number, they would just have to trust a little bit to luck.

"You, keep an eye on this spot."

After assigning a man to watch this particular rabbit hole, Zhou Xu took the remaining traps and walked toward another burrow.

He was indeed full of enthusiasm when it came to catching wild rabbits.

However, as the chieftain of the tribe, there were simply too many tasks waiting for him to handle. Naturally, he could not afford to waste a large chunk of his time squatting in wait for a single prey.

Therefore, according to his original plan, once he taught the tribe members how to set up this trap, he would take his leave first.

To his surprise, just as the traps were finished being deployed, shouts tinged with excitement came from the other side...

"We caught one! We caught one!"

Everything happened so suddenly. Not to mention Zhou Xu, who was just about to leave, even the tribe member who had witnessed with his own eyes a wild rabbit sneakily crawl out of the burrow, knock over the supporting branch, and get trapped under the basket could hardly believe his own eyes!

After being trapped under the basket, the wild rabbit, driven by panic, possessed far greater athletic ability than a rat. With a series of violent jumps, it nearly flipped the basket over.

Fortunately, at this stage, the members of their tribal hunting squad had accumulated a fair amount of experience. They hurriedly rushed forward and pinned the basket down with all their might, completely extinguishing any hope the wild rabbit had of escaping alive.

In just this short span of time, successfully catching a wild rabbit brought an unexpected pleasant surprise to Zhou Xu, while also giving this new day a wonderful start.

Pulling the wild rabbit out from under the cover, Zhou Xu restrained his almost habitual impulse to snap its neck. On the way back, with a wild rabbit in hand, his entire mood was exceptionally cheerful.

As the chieftain of the tribe, his presence was undoubtedly the focal point of the members' attention.

Basically, the moment he returned, they noticed him.

No one had expected that their chieftain had only just gone out, only to return shortly after carrying a wild rabbit.

Especially the original members of the Black Moon Camp.

They had to remember that their previous chieftain—not to mention themselves—had been completely helpless against these wild animals on the grassland.

Right now, their admiration for their new chieftain reached absolute heights.

Conversely, the members of the Salt Lake Tribe were much more calm.

After all, in their eyes, this was already standard operation for their chieftain.

Originally, Zhou Xu had intended to wait until he returned to the camp before starting to build a rabbit hutch, but he hadn't expected to haul a live rabbit back from the field.

With no suitable cage on hand at the moment, he had no choice but to use a basket to cover the wild rabbit for the time being, placing a heavy stone on top to prevent it from pushing the basket open.

Then, wasting no time, Zhou Xu went all out to build a proper rabbit hutch.