Translator: Exodus Tales
Editor: Exodus Tales
The sleep was wonderful, and when Ye Xi awoke, he found that the fatigue that had constantly harried him had been swept away.
When Ye Xi walked out of the cave, blinding light and waves of heat assailed him. Looking up, he saw that the dazzling white sun had just risen, but its red companion remained hanging from the center of the sky, seemingly fixed there.
Ye Xi had gotten up late today. The hunting team had already set out.
The remaining Mud Mountain members were chopping firewood in the clearing or sharpening stone tools on the rocks. Most of the women were busy sewing beast hides or drying out jerky.
Small pterosaurs the size of birds circled above the tribe, eating the flying insects in the air.
The members of the tribe neither drove away nor hunted down the small pterosaurs. They had little meat, and what they did have was bitter and disgusting. Besides that, they hunted down insects, cutting down on the number of bugs bothering the tribe.
After viewing this strange scene for a while, Ye Xi looked around, and when he saw what was happening on the right side of the clearing, he raised an eyebrow.
Where did these naughty children come from? Where are their parents?
The children were using real spears to fiercely spar with each other. These were spears with sharp tips, true killing weapons, and being jabbed by them was no joke. Their sparring was also tinged with ferocity. They were not play-fighting, but fighting with the intent to kill.
The oldest of these children couldn’t be more than nine. The savage aura their bodies exuded and the wildness in their eyes made them seem more like the cubs of fierce beasts than children. It was truly an alarming sight.
Ye Xi felt his heart pounding against his chest in shock.
The adults working around them only paid the children a glance before continuing with their work.
Ye Xi opened his mouth, but in the end, he decided to say nothing.
“Father, come again! The last time didn’t count!” a young yet savage voice roared.
Ye Xi looked over and saw a small carrot-headed child who was only about as tall as his waist covered in dust, his body in a sorry state. But he stared savagely at the iron tower of a man standing across from him.
This adult man had a red totem on his left chest, the sign that he was a Totem Warrior.
“Good! Come again!” Not only was this Totem Warrior not incensed by this little boy’s tone, he was delighted to hear it.
The little boy wiped the dirt out of his eyes, locked on with his sharp eyes, and howled as he raised his bone saber and lunged.
The Warrior was clearly going easy. After ten-some exchanges, he intentionally left a gap, allowing the boy to strike a blow with the bone saber.
But the sharp bone saber’s savage strike left only a red mark on the skin.
“Good kid! This move wasn’t bad! When you run into a beast, remember that you need…” The bulky Warrior began a long lecture, but the boy patiently listened, his ears perked and eyes bright.
“In the future, I’ll definitely become a Level 2 Warrior like the chief and Uncle Calm!” The boy clenched his fists, his eyes brimming with resolve.
His father slapped him on the back of the head with his fan-like hand and heartily laughed, his voice as loud as a bell. “Think about overcoming your old man first before thinking about becoming a Level 2 Warrior. Actually, become a provisional Warrior first.”
The boy staggered from the slap. He stubbornly yelled, “I’ll definitely become a provisional Warrior before the age of sixteen!”
“Oh? The most talented youth of this tribe, Awl, only managed to succeed at fifteen. And you are much worse than Awl when he was eight years old.”
The boy clenched his fists and said no more, but his eyes were even more resolved.
Creeeak! Creeeak!
What was that sound?
Ye Xi raised his head and saw a bear of a Warrior halfway up the mountain. Perhaps because his back was itchy, he was rubbing it against a large tree. The tree was creaking and groaning under the pressure. After rubbing for a while, the Warrior seemed to finally relieve his itch. Ceasing to torture the tree, he looked down toward the ground.
Ye Xi suddenly had a bad feeling and took a step back.
A second later, the Warrior jumped right off the mountain. Boom! There was a massive explosion as he landed, making the ground tremble and a cloud of dust sweep over the area.
The training children were immediately covered in dust. They stopped fighting and all yelled in protest, “Uncle Horse!”
Horse chuckled.
That was risky. I almost got my face covered in dirt, and there’s no place to bathe here.
“Ye Xi!” someone called out, and Ye Xi turned to see Courage.
Horse was tall and muscular, but he was still a size smaller than Courage. As Courage walked over, it felt like the earth was trembling at his advance.
“How did you sleep last night?”
As Courage was too tall while Ye Xi was not even an adult and could only reach his waist, Ye Xi needed to raise his head high to meet Courage’s gaze.
Ye Xi silently took a step back so that his neck was somewhat more comfortable. “Very well. I even overslept.”
“Haha, that’s good. Come on. I’ll take you to look around the tribe.”
Ye Xi’s eyes slightly brightened as he nodded.
Courage first took Ye Xi in a circle around the edge of the tribe.
Several rows of extremely sharp wooden spikes had been planted here. The spikes were speckled with blood. Apparently, quite a few creatures had been stabbed by them in the past.
Next to the wooden spikes were what appeared to be piles of black feces.
“This is the feces of a Tyrant Terror Beast. Intelligent creatures fear the Tyrant Terror Beast and do not dare approach, but we can’t rule out the appearance of creatures that lack intelligence or that are strong enough not to fear the Tyrant Terror Beast.”
Ye Xi knew that the people of this place called dinosaurs Terror Beasts, and as for the Tyrant Terror Beast… Ye Xi pondered. It was probably an extremely powerful and terrifying kind of dinosaur.
Courage pointed at the ground and said, “These wooden spikes are primarily to guard against those creatures that are weak and lack intelligence. Be careful. Some of the wooden spikes are buried very deeply, so be careful not to step on one.”
Ye Xi stepped back a little. As expected, he saw a row of spikes nearby, almost the same color as the dirt, with only their tips exposed. If not for Courage’s warning, he definitely would have failed to notice, and if he stepped on one… he would have a hole through his foot.
“This is the edge of the tribe. In here, you’ll be safe, but you must not go beyond the boundary.”
Not far from here, Ye Xi saw a small mountain of white skeletons, and as he inspected it, he shivered. He had seen a human skull in the pile.
Courage saw where Ye Xi was looking and explained, “The leftovers of the food the tribe has eaten are thrown there. If they’re kept near the tribe, it will make the tribe stink.”
Ye Xi fell silent as he recalled the gruesome cannibalism he had witnessed on his first day of transmigration.
Seeing that Ye Xi wasn’t interested, Courage said, “Come on; I’ll take you up the mountain to have a look.”
The mountain Courage spoke of was the mountain that rested above their cave: Little Mud Mountain.
On the slope.
Courage swiftly made his way through the shrubs and ferns, and Ye Xi could only clench his teeth and pump his legs to keep up.
The sun had risen a little higher.
Ye Xi panted for breath as he struggled to keep up with Courage. He felt like he had reached the limits of his physical strength, his heart madly pulsing, seemingly on the verge of thumping right out of his chest.
He had been running at this speed for about fifteen minutes. In his last life, when he was crippled by heart disease, he would already be lying on the ground. While this body was so thin that he could count its ribs, through pure willpower, he was barely able to keep himself up.
Ye Xi forced himself to run a few more steps before he finally could keep up no longer.
“Let’s walk a little slower!” he called out, seeing Courage about to disappear up the mountain.
Courage came to a sudden stop, and when he saw Ye Xi drenched in sweat and panting for breath, he suddenly came to his senses. “I’m too used to hunting at this speed and didn’t realize I was walking so fast. I forgot that you’re still an ordinary person.”
In what felt like a blink of an eye to Ye Xi, Courage crossed a distance of several dozen meters and appeared in front of him.
“But for you to keep up for so long without making a sound, you’re a good kid! Very tough!” At this moment, Courage forgot that Ye Xi was the shaman’s disciple and treated him like a normal junior of his Mud Mountain Tribe.
“You… you flatter me.” Ye Xi panted for breath, large beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. “But… if you kept that speed, I wouldn’t have been able to catch up.”
When Courage saw how badly his actions had affected Ye Xi, he finally began to feel embarrassed. But then, he suddenly began to wonder if Ye Xi believed that he was intentionally torturing him?! Ancestors above, he really didn’t mean for that!
Gritting his teeth, Courage took a water bag from his waist and offered it to Ye Xi.
Ye Xi thought it was water and didn’t pay it much mind, but when he took off the stopper, the foul stench of blood assaulted his nose.
Courage stared at the water bag with great reluctance, and when he saw that Ye Xi was looking at him, he put on a dry smile. “Drink it. It’s good. But with your body, you can only take two gulps at most.”
This smile… it was even more bitter than the one he had made last night when offering the roast meat.
Was this really something that good? Ye Xi looked at the water bag. While his throat was thirsty, the scent of blood was far too thick, several times more foul than the boar blood he had drunk. He couldn’t help but frown.
It was only after a little hesitation that he decided to take a small sip.
As the blood entered his mouth, it was truly foul enough to make him want to vomit.
This blood was originally cold, but as it flowed into his stomach, it became fiery hot. It felt like there was a little ball of fire burning in his stomach. After that, thin streams of warmth began to flow through all his limbs, and his exhausted limbs were instantly imbued with power.
Ye Xi’s eyes widened as he turned to Courage in disbelief.
“…What is this?”