Chapter 21 Fight
Xiong He took the warriors of the tribe with him and left to hunt very early in the morning.
They had caught very little prey yesterday and now that they had some injured people, the food that originally already hadn’t been enough was now even more scarce. They had to catch more prey today.
At the same time, the elderly and weak people from the tribe also spontaneously decided to go out gathering–even the warriors from the hunting team had only been allocated one or two kilograms of meat yesterday, and they had gotten even less. If they didn’t find a way to bring some food back today, they would have to go hungry.
Xiong Ye ate the roasted meat that Zhou Ji had cooked for him, then fed the soup Zhou Ji had boiled to Niu Er.
This soup was made up of chopped up elephant bird meat and vegetables and had been stewed for a long time. It was easy to digest and very nutritious.
Niu Er was still in bad condition and couldn’t speak much, falling asleep as soon as he finished eating. Xiong Ye saw this and went off to catch fish after giving Zhou Ji a heads-up.
Zhou Ji also left the cave after Xiong Ye departed.
The atmosphere in the tribe had been very good a few days ago, but it was obviously depressed today. There were no smiles on the faces of the people still in the valley, and several of the children were crying.
The two dozen or so tribesmen who had died included both men and women, most of whom already had children. The children who were crying had lost their parents.
Life in this kind of primitive society was better than how it was during the apocalypse, but it was still full of danger. However, Zhou Ji had seen too much death already and couldn’t muster up many feelings about it.
“Wait.” Someone stopped Zhou Ji. He looked over and saw that it was Xiong Qi, the captain of the salt team.
Xiong Qi’s animal form was a white bear.
White bears were very big and were larger than many brown bears, but Xiong Ye’s animal form was that of a Kodiak bear that could be bigger than white bears after they had reached maturity.
Of course, the barely adult Xiong Ye still wasn’t as large as Xiong Qi at this stage, and his combat power was certainly a little worse than Xiong Qi’s.
Xiong Qi was more than a decade older than Xiong Ye, and ten years of additional combat experience didn’t count for nothing.
Zhou Ji stood still and looked at the other party.
“Who are you?” asked Xiong Qi.
“I am Zhou Ji, Zhou.” Zhou Ji said.
“It turns out you’re Zhou. So you actually look like this.” Xiong Qi looked at Zhou Ji curiously, then asked, “The priest said that Niu Er woke up. Is he alright?” He had seen Zhou Ji go to Xiong Ye’s cave last night after Xiong Ye had brought Niu Er back.
Zhou Ji replied, “He’s fine.”
Xiong Qi hadn’t had much contact with Zhou Ji before, so he didn’t have anything else to say. He nodded to Zhou Ji, then turned to leave.
Zhou Ji went outside and didn’t go to where the gathering team was. Instead, he went in another direction.
He wanted to gather some different plants; healing plants, seasoning plants, or anything delicious; they were all acceptable.
While Zhou Ji was collecting plants, Xiong Ye was busy catching fish.
After the weather warmed up, the fish in the river became more active, and there were fat and delicious fish eggs in the fish… Xiong Ye caught four in one go, then killed them by the river. He scraped off the scales, tossed away the intestines, and cleaned them before bringing them back.
He didn’t usually remove the scales when he ate fish by himself, but Zhou Ji had scraped them off last time… Fish that didn’t have scales in the way were really a lot tastier.
Xiong Ye rushed quickly back to the tribe; he wanted to let Zhou Ji know that he had brought fish back, but he discovered when he arrived that Zhou Ji wasn’t actually there. Only Niu Er was there, covered with a few animal skins as he slept by the fire.
Xiong Ye inexplicably felt somewhat lost.
He hung up the fish in the cave, then went down to the valley where the priest and his three little apprentices were piling up firewood.
Many people from the salt team had died, and the priest needed to hold a ceremony for the dead so that they could go up to heaven and find the Beast God.
When these warriors went to the Beast God, they would become the Beast God’s guards and would henceforth look after their tribe from heaven.
Xiong Ye quietly began to help, and his movements were fast and accurate–he had often helped the priest in return for food in the past.
“Xiong Ye, do you really not want to be a priest?” The priest asked Xiong Ye.
“Grandpa Priest, I want to become the most powerful warrior.” Xiong Ye replied. Although becoming a priest was good, the tribe needed warriors.
“The Beast God will bless you.” The priest said helplessly. He then had Xiong Ye run around to do all sorts of tasks for him, and Xiong Ye was so busy he was spinning around in circles.
Xiong Ye: “……”
The hunting team had traveled out to a relatively far place to hunt today, so they returned very late. They hadn’t managed to catch a lot, but it was good enough.
Xiong He didn’t immediately start to divide up the catch when they returned–the funeral was about to begin.
If they had been able to bring back the bodies of the warriors, the people of the tribe would have buried them next to the tribal grounds after the funeral so that they could help guard the tribe. This time, however, they hadn’t managed to bring the bodies back and so omitted this part of the ceremony.
Zhou managed to return to the tribe before the funeral, so he saw it firsthand. It looked… a little crazy.
The old priest danced beside the fire, then threw some ground up plants into the fire. When the fire rose up, he began to chant…
It was said that this would allow them to communicate with the gods, and the Beast God would be able to hear them, but Zhou Ji couldn’t find the slightest bit of difference when he sensed their surroundings with his spiritual powers.
The Beast God most likely didn’t exist, but both the priest and the people of the tribe were very religious.
After the funeral, Xiong He distributed the salt that the salt team had brought back along with the meat they had obtained today to the people of the tribe.
The amount of meat distributed today wasn’t much, and there also wasn’t much salt, but the belongings of the people who had died were redistributed after the funeral, which improved the atmosphere a little.
The salt team had taken many of the items that the tribe had saved up over the previous year to trade for salt, including animal skins, dinosaur horns, grain that had been collected at the priest’s behest, stone knives made by people of the tribe, and prey that the salt team had caught on the way there.
The salt belonged to everyone in the tribe after it was brought back, so Xiong He divided it up based on everyone’s situation.
Generally speaking, the warriors would be given a bit more, and the elderly and weak would be given very little.
Additionally, some people in the tribe had taken out some personal things and had asked the salt team to help them trade those items for more salt. Salt that was obtained in this way belonged to the individual.
The salt team had set out over a month ago when Zhou Ji was still in a state where he hadn’t understood the language of this place, and he naturally hadn’t asked the salt team to trade anything for salt for him, but Xiong Ye had taken out a lot of things for the salt team to trade with.
At that time, he had already established a relationship with Shi Li and had been worried that they wouldn’t have enough salt to use, so he had wanted to trade for more–although he and Shi Li would be allocated a lot of salt, Yang Su and Yang Ying wouldn’t have gotten much at all!
Now, the amount of salt that the salt team had been able to obtain was very limited, so the amount of additional salt that Xiong Ye was given was also very little. However, when it was added to his share of salt from the tribe, it was enough.
Others didn’t have enough, though.
“We will go to trade for salt again in a few months. The Green Hill Tribe no longer exists, so we will need to find new tribes who are willing to trade for salt with us…” Xiong He began to speak about his plans.
The people in the tribe listened very carefully, and even Zhou Ji was no exception. Only Shi Li was a little impatient.
No matter what Xiong He said now, it would all become meaningless in a month or so. Zhou Ji’s father would come to the tribe to take Zhou Ji away, and then a few days after that, Xiong He would die from a carnivorous dinosaur attack.
No, Xiong He might not necessarily die…
Shi Li looked at the weak Niu Er who was standing at Xiong Ye’s side–some things had changed, and Niu Er actually hadn’t died!
While Shi Li was watching Xiong Ye, someone else was paying attention to Shi Li.
The person keeping an eye on Shi Li was Xiong Qi, the captain of the salt team.
Xiong Qi was already in his thirties and had children, but this did not affect his interest in Lang Yin. Xiong Qi had been pursuing Lang Yin and had given her a lot of things before he left the tribe with the salt team.
And yet, he had left for a trip and returned to find that Lang Yin had gotten together with someone else!
Xiong Qi had been injured when he returned yesterday, and there had been a lot of people around, and many things had been happening, so he hadn’t had time to pay attention to Lang Yin. But now… He could smell Shi Li’s scent on Lang Yin’s body.
Xiong Qi was now in a very bad mood and felt that Shi Li was an eyesore. He had then noticed that Shi Li was unexpectedly still watching Xiong Ye despite having gotten together with Lang Yin, and he was now even angrier.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that the occasion wasn’t appropriate, Xiong Qi would have started a fight with Shi Li right then and there.
At the end of the tribal gathering, some people stayed in the valley to eat roasted meat while others returned back to their caves.
Xiong Ye brought the weakened Niu Er back to the cave, then gave the fish to Zhou Ji, “This is the fish that I caught today. Quickly cook it and eat it.”
“Thank you.” Zhou Ji didn’t refuse and used the stone pot to boil fish soup, adding some freshly picked mushrooms.
He didn’t eat all of it; he only ate about a third, then left the rest for Xiong Ye and Niu Er.
“How can you have had enough after only eating so little?” Xiong Ye watched Zhou Ji anxiously.
“I don’t need to eat as much because I don’t need to go hunting.” Zhou Ji replied.
Xiong Ye looked Zhou Ji over and determined that there was nothing wrong with his body before putting his mind at ease. At the same time, he also thought about ways to bring back more of the food that Zhou Ji was willing to eat.
For the next few days, the people of the tribe continued life as usual.
Niu Er’s health improved very quickly, and he had basically recovered within a few days, which made Xiong Ye very happy. He began to go out hunting again so that he would be able to obtain more meat.
As for Zhou Ji… He brought back a lot of vegetables and boiled them for Xiong Ye to eat.
That evening, Zhou Ji boiled another big pot of vegetable soup, handing a bowl to Xiong Ye when he returned from the hunt.
“We’re not short on meat, so there’s no need to eat vegetables…” Xiong Ye agonized a little when faced with that big bowl of vegetables.
The soup that Zhou Ji cooked tasted pretty good, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t eat it, but he really didn’t like to eat vegetables and didn’t enjoy that green, grassy taste.
“Eating some vegetables is good for your health.” Zhou Ji said. The beastmen of this world could change into all sorts of animals, and some were carnivorous while others were herbivores, but his research showed that these beastmen were in fact omnivorous, like humans.
They had a good digestive system, and it wasn’t a problem for them to eat meat all the time, but if they wanted to be in even better health, it was best to eat some vegetables.
Moreover, the vegetables that he fed Xiong Ye weren’t ordinary vegetables. They were all plants that he had carefully selected, and they all contained a lot of energy. These kinds of vegetables would only do Xiong Ye good and had no disadvantages whatsoever.
Xiong Ye wanted to refuse, but when he considered that Zhou Ji had also drank some already and basically only drank vegetable soup without eating any meat, he felt too embarrassed to refuse.
Zhou Ji didn’t like to take advantage of others and was unwilling to accept the things Xiong Ye gave him, but if he ate Zhou Ji’s things…
Xiong Ye finished drinking his vegetable soup and gave Zhou Ji a few frogs he had casually caught.
Zhou Ji seemed to prefer these kinds of things over dinosaur meat, and most importantly, after eating more of it… Xiong Ye discovered that he also found these little morsels delicious.
It was just that they were too small and weren’t even big enough to fill the gaps of his teeth with. He would normally just taste a mouthful of it, then leave the rest for Zhou Ji to eat.
Niu Er, who was given vegetable soup with added meat that had specifically been made for recuperating people, thought to himself: Xiong Ye was really good to him! Xiong Ye actually ate vegetables and left the meat to Zhou Ji!
Zhou Ji indeed liked to eat fish, shrimp, and other such small things. After all, they were good when fresh, and Xiong Ye had been very considerate in giving him frogs that had already been killed. He simply threw them into the pot and boiled them.
As a result, while the frogs were boiling, roars from a bear and a lion suddenly echoed from the bottom of the valley.
Zhou Ji and Xiong Ye exchanged surprised glances, then went out together and looked down.
Then, Zhou Ji saw a lion and a… polar bear fighting.
He had heard people say that Xiong Qi’s animal form was a white bear. It turned out that this so-called white bear was actually a polar bear…
The largest land carnivores on Earth were bears, and the largest types of bears were the Kodiak and polar bears. Adult polar bears could weigh up to 800 kilograms before their winter hibernation. Not only that, they were very agile and had very strong fighting power both on land and in the water.
Seeing the fight below, Zhou Ji’s first reaction was that the Shi Li was going to get beaten.
Although Xiong Qi’s injuries hadn’t finished healing, Shi Li shouldn’t be able to beat Xiong Qi.
Zhou Ji had a very bad impression of Shi Li, so he was quite looking forward to seeing Shi Li get beat up.
However, things did not develop the way he thought they would, and Shi Li actually managed to gain the upper hand.
While he was watching the two men fight in the valley below, he had let out his spiritual strength out of habit and then discovered that… Shi Li was making use of the energy in the air.
How was Shi Li able to do that?
Juurensha: Zhou Ji sloooowly converting Xiong Ye over to eating veggies.
xiin: snail’s pace, man…