Chapter 55 – Setting Out
Translator: xiin
Editors: apricot & juurensha
Zhou Ji wasn’t making rope. In fact, he was making clothes.
Clothing made from dinosaur leather didn’t feel comfortable to him, and he had now given himself the status as the Beast God’s spokesperson, so he naturally needed to wear better clothes. In any case, he didn’t want to wear anything like the animal hide robe the priest wore.
He had been inspired by the clothing Xiang Tian had worn, so he decided to make himself a similar set of coarse linen clothing.
However, he had been unable to find hemp around the tribe, so he had to pick a substitute––the vines he had previously used to sew together his clothing with.
After the skin of this vine was peeled off, white fiber strips would remain.
These fibers were about the length of toothpicks. They weren’t very soft, but they were durable and could be used like wool to make clothing. It was just a little troublesome…
Zhou Ji lay there on a spread of large leaves, drowsily… weaving a shirt.
He had never learned how to make a shirt before, but it wasn’t that difficult. He held the vine, used his spiritual powers to give it a try, and soon figured out a weaving method. He then slowly began to ponder on how to create clothing.
He was a spiritual ability powerhouse. It couldn’t be that hard for him to figure out how to weave clothing.
After he learned how… Zhou Ji considered trying to weave the wool and making sweaters out of animal fur.
Of course, Xiong Ye’s fur was probably only suitable for blankets… The vast majority of his fur was too stiff.
While Zhou Ji was still concentrating on how to weave clothing, Xiong Ye had left the tribe and gone out to hunt.
Their tribe had picked up a lot of meat a few days ago, and everyone had eaten a lot, but Zhou Ji didn’t eat meat.
Although they had also recently acquired earth eggs to eat, Xiong Ye felt that people should still eat some meat in order to build up their strength.
Also.. He couldn’t tell Zhou Ji about what had happened the previous night. Xiong Ye felt a little guilty and wanted to treat him a little better.
Everyone in the tribe had things to do, so he had gone out alone since he didn’t plan to go far and wouldn’t encounter any danger.
But when he went out, he could feel that something was wrong.
It was too quiet around the tribe…
Before, when he left the tribe, even if he was unable to immediately find prey, he could still smell the dinosaurs in the area. Today, however, he couldn’t scent anything.
It seemed that there weren’t any dinosaurs in the area…
Xiong Ye’s expression changed when he became aware of this point.
The various tribes in this forest lived very far apart because there might not be enough prey for them to eat if they were too close together.
The number of people in the tribe had slowly grown more and more. In fact, they had already had problems finding enough prey before,and had gone out further and further to hunt… Now, there weren’t any dinosaurs left around their tribe!
Xiong Ye frowned as he walked on. He finally found two dinosaur nests that contained around seven or eight dinosaur eggs, but the mother dinosaur wasn’t there. It was unknown if it had been killed by the mystery man or had run away––it was said that when the mystery man had uprooted the trees on the mountain, all the dinosaurs, birds, snakes, and other animals near the tribe had all fled as fast as they could.
Could all the dinosaurs around the tribe have completely run away?
Xiong Ye wrapped the seven or eight dinosaur eggs in leaves and bundled them together with vines to bring them back to the tribe.
When he returned, he first went back to their cave and put away most of the eggs before bringing one to give to the priest.
Zhou Ji was overseeing the planting outside while the priest remained in the tribe. When Xiong Ye came by, he was busy counting how much smoked meat and earth eggs the tribe had.
“This matter…” The priest began, “Xiong He already spoke to me about it. I was originally worried about it, but I’m not worried anymore.”
“Grandpa Priest?”
“Although the dinosaurs have now fled, as long as there are enough plants here, they will return later on. Moreover, we now have smoked meat and earth eggs, and the tribe isn’t short on food!” The priest said, “Thank the Beast God for giving us so many earth eggs! The tribe will definitely be alright this time!”
Dinosaurs could run away, but they would come back. The priest was optimistic about this. What’s more, the Beast God knew that their tribe would encounter a crisis and had therefore given them so many earth eggs, so he certainly wouldn’t let them encounter a disaster!
Xiong Ye looked at the food in the warehouse and also felt that he didn’t need to worry too much about it.
There was so much food to eat. It should be able to last for a long time, right?
Xiong He put aside his worries and went to find Xiong He.
Xiong He had already packed up many things that could be traded for salt. The best items for trade would have been the animal hides and insect shells that couldn’t be eaten, but unfortunately, not only had many of the hides been damaged, but the arthropleura shells had also been broken.
“That powerful Lord’s destructive power is too shocking!” Xiong He said.
“He’s really impressive!” Xiong Ye said.
Others from the tribe heard his words and spoke up too. “Indeed, that person too powerful.”
“I wonder where he went.”
“Why didn’t he come to our tribe? Our tribe is so good…”
……
These people only managed to say a few things before they were stopped by Xiong He, “Don’t talk about that Lord. If he becomes unhappy, you’ll all lose your lives!”
The tribespeople no longer dared to say anything anymore.
Xiong Ye spoke up, “That Lord probably doesn’t have the time to care about such things.”
Xiong Ye still found it a little incredible even now. He found it difficult to believe that that powerhouse would actually looked upon him favorably.
That man hadn’t told him anything last night, and he hadn’t dared to ask, so his mind still whirled with confusion. He still didn’t understand why that person would be willing to teach him.
However, even if that was the case, he was very certain about one thing, which was that he must firmly grasp this opportunity!
“Xiong Ye, you don’t even know that Lord.” Xiong He said to Xiong Ye.
Xiong Ye rubbed his nose and no longer spoke.
That evening, the entire tribe gathered together to eat smoked meat and boiled earth eggs.
Xiong He also didn’t divide up any raw meat for the tribe. Instead, he split the cooked meal amongst everyone.
Zhou Ji never took his share of food from the tribe before, and the tribespeople had been happy that he didn’t, but he was now someone who was beloved by the Beast God and his situation had changed.. Xiong He gave him a big portion of food in a bowl that was larger than the modern frying pan.
Zhou Ji gave it all to Xiong Ye. He felt that this smoked meat and boiled earth eggs weren’t as tasty as simple roasted earth eggs.
When they had first started smoking the meat, the people of the tribe had been inexperienced. They would accidentally burn or char the smoked meat while preparing it, and it took repeated experiments before they were able to make a decent finished product. At this time, what they were eating where the failed goods.
Zhou Ji didn’t like that scorched, burnt taste at all.
Xiong Ye on the other hand was very fond of this food. He polished off two bowls of smoked meat and boiled earth eggs on his own, then said to Zhou Ji, “I brought some dinosaur eggs back, you can eat scrambled eggs later.”
“Alright.” Zhou Ji laughed.
However, Zhou Ji could no longer laugh when he saw those dinosaur eggs.
Xiong Ye was saying, “Help me make a bowl of scrambled eggs in a bit. I’ll keep it to eat later in the evening, is that alright?” In fact, he wasn’t the one who wanted to eat it. He wanted to give something to that mystery man… Scrambled eggs should be good, right?
“No.” Zhou Ji said.
Xiong Ye was really confused. Was Zhou Ji not allowing him to eat scrambled eggs?
“This egg… The little dinosaurs inside are about to come out.” Zhou Ji said. He scanned the eggs with his spiritual powers out of habit and discovered that they were no longer full of liquid egg, but baby dinosaurs.
Elsewhere, the priest had taken out a stone and was preparing to crack open a hole in the egg that Xiong Ye had given him so that he could pour out the egg liquid inside and eat it. As a result…
The egg moved, and a crack appeared on its own.
Even before he cracked the egg, the egg opened by itself.
A little baby dinosaur came out.
The priest: “……”
That night, Xiong Ye ‘went to sleep’ very early and didn’t even ask Zhou Ji to help him out.
He was going to go out and cultivate at night!
Zhou Ji didn’t let on that he’d seen through his act, and lay down as well.
Xiong Ye said, “Zhou Ji, I want to become very powerful…”
“You will definitely become very powerful.” Zhou Ji replied.
Xiong Ye gave Zhou Ji a kiss and felt that Zhou Ji was really too good to him. He believed in him so much!
It was a pity that he couldn’t tell Zhou Ji about his training…
That evening, Xiong Ye snuck out of the cave again while Zhou Ji ‘slept’.
Zhou Ji followed him out and took Xiong Ye away, then watched him cultivate for another night.
With only two short nights, Xiong Ye was unable to achieve any results, but he would certainly become very powerful if he persevered…
The next day, Zhou Ji gave the dinosaur eggs to the head of the gathering team.
“You’re giving these to me?” The head of the gathering team was a woman called Xiong Ping.
However, although she was called ‘Xiong’, she wasn’t actually a bear… her animal form was a raccoon.
Back then, the priest hadn’t recognized this animal, so he had directly classified her as a bear.
Xiong Ping had started out as a member of the hunting team, but she had later given birth to many children and had entered the gathering team in order to make it easier for her to take care of her children.
Xiong Ping did a good job in the gathering team, so she was promoted to become the head of the team, managing this team of elderly, weak, and disabled people.
She was a very diligent person and didn’t like lazy people, which was why she naturally hadn’t liked Zhou Ji in the past. Now, however… Zhou Ji was the Beast God’s chosen spokesperson!
After seeing the matured earth eggs, her attitude towards Zhou Ji had changed completely. Now, she actually felt quite flattered that Zhou Ji was giving her these eggs.
She even felt that she didn’t deserve to receive something like this.
“They’re not for you.” Zhou Ji said. “The little dinosaurs inside are about to come out. You can raise them.”
“Raise?” Xiong Ping was surprised.
“Raise?” The priest who was carrying the little dinosaur that had just come out of its shell, planning to find someone to help him kill it so that he could stew and eat it, was also surprised.
“The small dinosaur is too small. It would be better to raise it up and then eat it later. This kind of dinosaur eats grass. Just give it some grass so that it has something to eat. They’re easy to raise.” Zhou Ji said.
Feeding the entire tribe was too difficult if they relied on hunting alone. If possible, they should farm and raise livestock…
“This is a good idea!” Xiong Ping agreed, then asked, “Where should we raise them?”
“You can use wood to build a fence here and keep the dinosaurs contained.” Zhou Ji pointed to an area next to the valley. Xiong Ye had given him Scelidosaurus eggs, which was a type of armored dinosaur that would grow to be around four meters long and weigh about one hundred kilograms. The armor on their back was very thick, but they were unable to jump very high and were very suitable to raise as livestock.
As for the fact that this type of dinosaur was quite powerful… That wasn’t a problem, since the people in the tribe were strong, too.
“What’s a fence?” Xiong Ping asked.
Zhou Ji picked up several branches and inserted them into the ground in order to demonstrate.
Then, by that afternoon, he saw that the people of the tribe had used sections of wood thicker than a human being in order to make a fence that was about thirty meters long and ten meters wide. They didn’t leave any gaps between the wood.
The wood was so thick, and it was inserted so deeply into the earth… They basically wouldn’t need to worry about the dinosaurs running away at all.
Zhou Ji finally stopped worrying when he saw that all these things had been done.
Time passed by in the blink of an eye.
The little dinosaurs soon broke out of their shells. As egg-laying creatures, they could eat grass from the moment they were born. One of them died soon after because its body was too weak, but the rest survived.
After discovering that it was actually possible to raise dinosaurs, Xiong He specifically found a team to go out and search for any eggs left behind by the dinosaurs who had run for their lives a few days ago––most dinosaurs didn’t need to incubate their eggs, so although their parents had run away, the little dinosaurs could break through their shells and find things to eat on their own. Some of them had been unable to find their parents after their birth and were wandering aimlessly around everywhere, making it easy for the people of the tribe to find and bring them back.
Zhou Ji was very much in favor of this, as long as they didn’t bring back any carnivorous dinosaurs and try to raise them…
Fortunately, newborn carnivorous dinosaurs weren’t very good at hunting, and they weren’t as big as some of the herbivorous dinosaurs, so they ended up starving to death without causing any harm.
Ten days passed by quickly, and it was finally time for the salt team to depart.
This was a big event for the tribe! On this day, the entire tribe came out to send the salt team off on their journey.
When the salt trading team departed, they had a lot of goods to carry. Niu Er and some of the others turned into their animal forms so that they could carry all these things on their backs.
As one of the fighters of the team, Xiong Ye didn’t need to carry any goods, but he felt that he had no way to relax.
Xiong Ye looked towards Zhou Ji, “Do you want to ride a bear?”