Ch42 – Xiang Tian
The first time Zhou Ji had come here, he had thought that the trees here were extraordinarily tall and could practically blot out the sun.
Now, however… These trees didn’t seem to be so tall in his eyes.
As for that huge millipede that had originally seemed very, very, big to him…
Last time, even though Zhou Ji had changed into his animal form, that millipede had still seemed huge and very long. Now… He felt that this millipede resembled a bug.
He felt like he would step on it and squash it if he wasn’t careful.
With that in mind, Zhou Ji immediately took a step backwards and knocked down several trees. Not only that, the millipede raised its upper body and stared at him for a while, then suddenly turned around and ran away at an incredible speed.
In the blink of an eye, it had already burrowed into the fallen leaves and disappeared.
He had previously thought that the knotted millipede’s IQ was very low, but now that didn’t seem to be the case. At the very least, it knew to run away when it couldn’t win.
Zhou Ji took a step forward, intending to accustom himself to his current body. As a result, that single step of his just happened to land on top of the stone crevice, and the entire stone crevice collapsed under his weight.
Zhou Ji: “……”
He felt a little sorry for the knotted millipede. Not only had he taken its fruit, he had gone so far as to crush its home…
Only, his animal form…
Zhou Ji had already learned that his animal form was very large a while back. His tusks were three meters long, and he was over four meters tall from the shoulder. He was probably considered very big even amongst other mammoths and had weighed at least ten tons.
And now… He felt he was many times bigger than he had originally been, and might even weigh over a hundred tons.
Now that he was like this, he guessed that he probably didn’t need to be scared of any dinosaur and could completely crush them based on his body’s size alone. And while Xiong Ye’s animal form had seemed very big to him when he was in human form, the brown bear seemed really, really small to him now.
It was completely possible for him to hold Xiong Ye in the palm of his hand.
Fine, he didn’t have hands right now. He only had elephant legs.
Zhou Ji was rather helpless as he looked at his own animal form before changing back into his human form.
Previously, he already felt that he couldn’t reveal his animal form in front of the other tribespeople, but now it was even more impossible.
The tribe’s little valley would probably be trampled into pieces by him if he turned into his animal form there.
After Zhou Ji changed back into his human form, he discovered that the original fairytale-like pool and its surroundings were now a complete mess. There were also several huge footprints maring the ground here and there.
However, nature was very resilient. Not only was there no pollution here, there was also a water source, so everything here would grow back vibrantly again sooner or later.
Although Zhou Ji felt that way, he still produced a vine and tossed it out, clearing up the mess he left behind. While he was doing this, he also grew some flowers and plants.
The cave that had been inside the stone crevice had been trampled, but a trickle of water still flowed out. The giant trees that had been destroyed hadn’t been regrown, but the large elephant footprints had been swept away, and flowers and grass grew in the spots where they’d been.
Zhou Ji glanced around, then turned around to leave.
This place was very beautiful. He could bring Xiong Ye here to play in the future.
Zhou Ji’s trip took a total of less than three hours altogether.
Someone in the tribe had seen him go out and seeing that he returned so soon, they thought he had just gone for a walk around the tribe and ignored the matter after seeing that he had come back.
Zhou Ji went back to the cave, lay down on his own bed, and began to eat heartily.
Over the past few days, the priest had followed and stuck so close to him like a shadow, so he hadn’t had time to eat in secret. He could make up for it today.
Zhou Ji continued eating non-stop for a good few hours.
He now had plenty of energy in his body and actually would be fine even if he didn’t eat anything, but if he really did start eating, he would feel that it wasn’t enough no matter how much he had.
Beastmen’s food intake was related to their animal forms. Normally, the larger their animal form’s food intake, the larger the beastman’s food intake would be. As for him…
Zhou Ji recalled that one of the reasons why mammoths had become extinct on Earth was because they hadn’t had enough to eat.
Fortunately, he had his plant abilities.
While he was thinking, Zhou Ji stuffed another fruit into his mouth, setting aside a few for Xiong Ye as he did so.
The hunting team didn’t return until evening. Xiong Ye returned along with them, “Zhou Ji, I’m back! There was another bumper harvest today!”
“You’re really amazing.” Zhou Ji praised.
Xiong Ye felt rather proud when he heard this. He also handed over two bird eggs to Zhou Ji, “I brought back two bird eggs for you to eat.”
“I picked and brought back some fruit for you.” Zhou Ji laughed, then added, “Let’s go and wash up by the river.”
Zhou Ji and Xiong Ye would go and wash up together every night.
The weather wasn’t very warm yet, and the people of the tribe were quite adverse to bathing, but Zhou Ji loved cleanliness, and Xiong Ye went out to hunt almost every day… So the two of them went to wash up daily.
“Alright.” Xiong Ye agreed right away, then said, “Zhou Ji, my animal form is bigger now!”
After the winter, his animal form had originally been much thinner, but it had grown really fast recently. He felt that if he continued growing like this, it might not be long before he surpassed Xiong Qi and caught up with his uncle.
Xiong Ye was very delighted when he spoke of this, but Zhou Ji was reminded of his own animal form.
The size of a beastman’s animal form seemed to be related to the energy contained in their body. Xiong Ye would have more and more energy in his body in the future, so would his animal form also grow bigger and bigger?
Well, that was fine. No matter how big Xiong Ye got, would he ever be as big as Zhou Ji?
Zhou Ji calmly washed Xiong Ye’s hair.
The people in the tribe had seen Xiong Ye’s animal form grow bigger, but they didn’t find it strange. After all, Xiong He’s animal form was also very big.
Xiong Ye hadn’t caught up to Xiong He yet, right?
At this moment, everyone was secretly talking about Shi Li as they all felt some objections towards Shi Li.
Shi Li had been quite unpopular amongst the people of the tribe for various reasons even before the Beast God Sacrifice, but after the Beast God Sacrifice, he had become even less likeable.
The people in the tribe all had relatively good relationships with each other. Zhou Ji was an exception, but Zhou Ji didn’t provoke others, nor did he eat any of the meat the hunting teams brought back. He was also Xiong Ye’s mate, so everyone pretended not to see and let it pass. However, it was different for Shi Li.
Shi Li and his family weren’t from the tribe. They were from outside.
The people of the tribe were still very friendly; they hadn’t rejected Shi Li and his family, and even let them live in the valley and collect plants from around the tribe. The only thing was, they weren’t allocated any of prey that the hunting teams brought back since nobody in their family could participate in the hunts back then.
Later, they even fully accepted the entire family after Shi Li grew up.
What happened after that? Shi Li did very well during the previous two years and tried his best when he was with the hunting team, but he had recently changed and become lazy!
It was bad enough that he was slacking off, he still took the same amount of food!
There was also Shi Li’s mother and younger brother. Reasonably speaking, they were both supposed to join the gathering team, but these two would simply keep any good things they found. They would only go out with the gathering team if they were unable to find anything on their own.
The leader of the gathering team had had complaints about Zhou Ji before, but he later saw that Zhou Ji didn’t take advantage of the tribe at all. Other than being envious of his good fortune as Xiong Ye’s mate, he couldn’t pick out any other faults. Yang Ying and Yang Su, however… What gave those two the right to laze about all day long and still obtain a share of food from the tribe?
The people from the gathering team had objections to Yang Ying and Yang Su, and the people of the hunting team had complaints about Shi Li. Very quickly, this family of three became marginalized within the tribe.
Shi Li naturally knew that all this was taking place.
However, after spending so many years as a Beast King, he really wasn’t willing to please these people… He had already made up his mind to leave the tribe after he became a low level Beast Warrior.
As for his mother and brother, they could follow him and leave the tribe if they were willing. If not, they could simply stay behind!
Recently, he had constantly been criticized by his mother and younger brother. The affection Shi Li felt for them had worn out a long time ago.
He had been over a hundred years old when he died in his previous life. At the time, Yang Ying had been dead for countless years, and Yang Su had also been dead for decades. In fact, he hadn’t had much feelings towards these two people for a very long time.
After thinking this way, Shi Li grew even more passive and idle.
With that, even the good-natured Xiong He began to object to his behavior.
That evening, Xiong Ye had been allotted about fifteen kilograms of meat. He had originally planned to only eat half of it, but after eating it, felt that half wasn’t quite enough. Adding on the fact that Zhou Ji had constantly been feeding him from beside him… In the end, he actually managed to finish off all fifteen kilograms of meat!
“There’s no more meat at home. I have to go hunting tomorrow.” Xiong Ye felt a little helpless. He had originally saved up a lot of meat, but he had become a little lazy recently and hadn’t gone out to hunt as much when he had spare time. Coupled with the fact that he was currently growing and eating a lot, he really didn’t have enough to eat.
“Try to catch a big one.” Zhou Ji said, “Grandpa Priest and I came up with a type of poison that you can take with you and try out.”
“Alright.” Xiong Ye agreed.
While the people of the tribe were eating, the Beast King Xiang Tian had finally arrived at the wild forest. He headed straight towards a certain stretch of forest.
Xiang Tian had been born in the Elephant Tribe.
The Elephant Tribe was a large tribe, and about one third of the tribespeople were large elephants. The position of tribal chief had always been filled by someone whose animal form was an elephant.
In the Elephant Tribe, everyone found pride in awakening as elephants.
However, not everyone could awaken as an elephant. Although people usually awakened as animals they were familiar with, accidents might sometimes occur, and there was also a possibility that they might awaken as some very strange animals.
For example, in the Elephant Tribe, someone had once awakened into something that resembled a fish. They were fat and round, and although they could move around on land, they moved very slowly…
In the past, Xiang Tian had been focused on awakening into a huge elephant just like his father, but something unexpected had happened in the end, and he had actually awakened as an extremely rare dwarf elephant. A mature dwarf elephant only weighed around a hundred kilograms, and he was smaller than many of the immature beastmen in the tribe. It could be considered a type of congenital deficiency.
Since that was the case, he had been extremely lucky to become a Beast King!
However, his good fortune in becoming a Beast King had left behind a hidden danger, and his body was likely to collapse at any time.
Fortunately, when he had come to the wild forest twenty years ago, he had accidentally discovered a divine fruit.
The fruit wasn’t ripe yet, but there were still benefits to be had from staying close to it. For the past twenty years, Xiang Tian had spent most of his time in the vicinity of this fruit.
Juurensha: Oh no, how is Xiang Tian going to react to the fact that his son ate it? Also, was the weird fish thing in the Elephant Tribe really a manatee (looks kind of like an elephant?)
xiin: taking bets, taking bets~