Buy a Monkey a Drink

Before they reached the camp, Lu Zhe had already discovered two komodo dragons and several monkey corpses on the high ground.

He quickly pulled Shen Bing's hand to hide.

Under the scorching sun, the stench of the decaying monkey corpses was nauseating.

But to these lizards, they were like delicacies. They chomped down the meat in large chunks.

Shen Bing pinched her nose and frowned, "Why are there still so many monkeys here!"

Lu Zhe calmly explained, "There are several different monkey species on this island, and each species has different groups that occupy different territories. The ones we met before were just the crab-eating macaque groups near the sea and the mangroves. The monkeys in the banana grove were proboscis monkeys, and the ones here are not the same species!"

Shen Bing looked at them and said, "They do seem different. The crab-eating macaques all have bare heads, while these monkeys have flattened hair!"

Lu Zhe smiled, "Very observant! And these monkeys have very short tails and sturdier builds. If I'm not wrong, they should be pig-tailed macaques. Like the crab-eating macaques, they are also Southeast Asian monkeys, but their habitats are more inland compared to crab-eating macaques. I wonder why they came here."

"How did they die?"

"How would I know?"

Lu Zhe joked, "You're a cop, shouldn't you be the one investigating!"

"I can't go to the crime scene now."

"You'll have the chance later!"

Just as they were speaking, the two komodo dragons seemed full and neither could swallow the last monkey corpse. So they crawled towards the shade on the shallow beach.

Under the blazing sun, feasting on the corpses was an enormous risk.

"Let's go take a look!"

"It stinks too much, we need to cover our noses with a handkerchief!"

"Do you have one?"

"Just one!"

Lu Zhe rummaged through his belongings, and indeed there was a neatly folded handkerchief, perfect for covering his nose and mouth.

The two gingerly approached the monkey corpse.

The monkey had been dead for over ten hours, and the body was already decaying with flies laying eggs on it, happily giving birth to offspring on the monkey's body.

In no time, hundreds of thousands of new lives would be bred from the monkey's corpse.

Lu Zhe really did not want to touch the monkey just to ascertain its identity.

But from observing the monkey's mouth, he seemed to notice something amiss.

Its mouth was swollen!

Maybe it was stung by bees from stealing honey, or accidentally ate food contaminated with ghost peppers.

Lu Zhe leaned towards the latter!

Bee venom was mild and would not kill a monkey, but swallowing a whole fruit laden with ghost peppers could be lethal.

Using a stick, Lu Zhe nudged the corpse into the water to let the marine life digest the disgusting monkey body.

Then Lu Zhe stealthily approached the camp.

"They must have lookout monkeys, we have to be careful!"

Shen Bing nodded.

The two of them looked through the crevices between two huge boulders and saw the camp.

Sure enough, this place had become monkey paradise.

Just as Lu Zhe said, this group was not the same as the crab-eating macaques they met before.

But they belonged to the same species as the dead monkeys.

Their group was not very large, and the monkey king was more dignified.

At the moment, it was squatting on the platform of the treehouse, watching its baby monkeys playing and frolicking in the camp, some even rummaging through the tree hollows to catch tarsiers.

Yes!

They had already claimed Lu Zhe's camp as their own territory.

Shen Bing frowned, "Can we just drive them away directly?"

Lu Zhe shook his head, "Once they regard this place as their territory, even if we drive them away, they won't go too far but will secretly observe us, imitate us, and then seize the opportunity to drive us out of what they believe is their territory."

"How annoying!"

"So we can't resort to violence to solve this problem, we have to give them sugar-coated artillery shells."

At this moment, a baby monkey ate something and suddenly started squealing loudly.

The monkey mom roared at it, but it kept on squealing.

The monkey king leapt down, picked up a rock and knocked it on the baby monkey's head. The baby monkey instantly went silent.

Then the monkey king ruthlessly snatched the baby from its mother's hands and threw it onto the beach.

The other monkeys stared blankly for a while, then went back to playing freely and merrily.

Even the mother monkey seemed to have forgotten that her darling had just died at the hands of the monkey king, and also happily joined to play.

"That's too cruel!"

"Perhaps the monkey king believed the noisy baby monkey posed a danger to the group, so it decisively killed the baby monkey to eliminate the threat. The other monkeys may have died the same way."

As Lu Zhe spoke, he walked out to the camp.

Seeing the stranger, the monkeys darted up the trees swiftly.

But they did not run away, just squatted on the trees watching him.

Lu Zhe opened a bottle of wine, took a swig, and let out a satisfied "Ha".

This behavior made the monkeys feel both curious and bewildered!

Then he took out a ceramic basin and poured two bottles of wine into it, before walking away.

The smell of alcohol drifted out, and the monkeys greedily sniffed it.

Soon, some monkeys climbed down and started drinking the wine in the basin.

Shen Bing was surprised, "Monkeys actually love alcohol so much?"

"Like humans, half of them have no resistance to alcohol. They even let fruit ferment in tree hollows before drinking it."

"What an odd piece of knowledge."

Not having drank such strong liquor before, after a short while, seven or eight monkeys including the monkey king got drunk.

Lu Zhe dug a pit and threw these monkeys in, burying them right there.

It was like giving them a proper burial.

Without the monkey king, the other monkeys lost their backbone and scattered away. The camp finally quieted down again.

Looking at the messy camp, Shen Bing couldn't help but frown, "They are such a nuisance!"

"We don't have the energy now. Once the camp is completely stabilized, we'll go monkey hunting and completely eliminate these species!"

Shen Bing nodded in agreement.

Only then could the few focus wholeheartedly on organizing the supplies from the cargo container.

"Seawater is weakly alkaline, after soaking for so long it would corrode the clothes. Use fresh water with a few drops of lemon juice to soak for half an hour."

"Then what?"

"Gently scrub away the salt with soap. Rinse with clean water again, hang up to air dry, beat softly once dried, then sun thoroughly, then they can be worn normally again."

"Is it the same for canvas?"

"Team leader, help me string the clothesline!"

"The downstream area is very dirty from the monkeys, Guo Er come with me upstream to fetch some water!"

When night fell, all kinds of clothes, pants, towels and skirts were hanging on three clotheslines.

It was non-stop work from morning to night, and everyone was dead tired.

After simple washing up and drinking their fill of water, the six comrades fell asleep in the fridge.

August 25th, 77 days after being stranded on the deserted island.

On this day, the girls were busy washing clothes, organizing supplies, while Lu Zhe chopped down large amounts of bamboo to tie to the raft, preparing for the second sea voyage.