“Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”
Upon seeing Ye Xi standing at the cave entrance, many members of the Mud Mountain Tribe came up to ask how he was doing.
Ye Xi’s somewhat heavy mood was slowly thawed by these warm questions. Touched, he looked around and spotted many familiar figures in the crowd: Plate, Carving, Pheasant Eye, Quetzal…
But when he saw the taciturn, but also concerned, figure of Mink, he was rather surprised, and he nodded and smiled at him.
Mink had been a man of few words ever since his arrival at Mud Mountain, and he rarely interacted with people. But he had proactively joined the fruit-picking team in the jungle, and he would often return with some small game he had hunted.
Mink was taken aback, and his lips twitched as they tried to form a smile, but he failed. By the time he looked back at Ye Xi, Ye Xi had already turned his gaze elsewhere.
“Everyone, thank you. I’m fine now.” Ye Xi smiled as he spoke to the crowd.
“As expected of our shaman’s disciple! To recover so swiftly!”
“Of course. Wouldn’t that fiendbeast have killed him otherwise?”
“Ye Xi, you’re amazing! You killed a fiendbeast before even becoming a provisional Warrior.”
“What are you saying? Ye Xi is already a provisional Warrior.”
“Right, right, right, I misspoke.”
Ye Xi blinked, finally remembering that yesterday was the provisional Warrior trial. From what they were saying, it seemed he had passed?
Ye Xi turned to ask Awl, “I passed the trial?”
Awl smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah! Uncle Bulrush woke up last night and said he saw you kill a Springbok with his own eyes, so you’re now a provisional Warrior.”
Uncle Bulrush was so badly injured yesterday, but he still remembered that… Ye Xi was touched.
“Right, did we bring back that fiendbeast corpse?”
That was a pureblood fiendbeast. Its Fiendbeast Core was much more valuable than the core of a mixed-blood fiendbeast. It would be such a great pity if it was left in the jungle to be taken by another tribe.
Awl: “We brought it back, of course. We already plucked the feathers, cut off the meat, and threw the remains onto the bone pile at the back of the mountain.”
Ye Xi frowned. “Cut off the meat? You didn’t eat it, right?” That meat was poisoned!
“Relax; we’re not that dumb. Even that bird’s blood was black. Would we still be alive if we ate its meat?” Awl sighed. “But that was the meat of a pureblood fiendbeast. Just throwing it away is too much of a waste.”
Ye Xi also felt his heart ache when he thought about it. But keeping himself alive was good enough. He had not had any time to worry about contaminating the fiendbeast’s meat with poison.
“The Fiendbeast Core wasn’t affected, right?”
“Of course not. By the way, you were the one who killed this pureblood fiendbeast, so the chief should be giving you its Fiendbeast Core in a little while.” Awl’s eyes revealed a faint hint of envy.
Awl was extremely talented and had passed the provisional Warrior trials long ago. The only reason he had not completed the transition to Warrior at the Great Ritual was that the tribe did not have any good Fiendbeast Cores.
Using a mixed-blood fiendbeast’s core was a waste of Awl’s talent, so the shaman and chief had told Awl to wait until they had a chance to hunt a better fiendbeast. But he had been waiting for three years now.
Ye Xi: “Uncle Bulrush should also get some of this Fiendbeast Core. If not for him risking his life to delay it, I would have died long ago.”
Awl: “Uncle Bulrush can’t do anything with a Fiendbeast Core, so it naturally goes to you.”
Even so, Ye Xi could never take all the spoils when Calm Bulrush was the one who had almost lost his life fighting with the fiendbeast.
He recalled the bird’s sharp beak and claws. Perhaps I can make them into a weapon for Uncle Bulrush?
Uncle Bulrush’s bone saber had a large chunk broken from it by the bird’s sharp beak, so it was about time he got a new one.
Hwooo!
The wind rustled the trees of the jungle.
Hearing this, Ye Xi turned to the jungle.
The jungle stared back.
Awl: “What’s wrong?”
Though Ye Xi was uneasy, he smiled at Awl and shook his head. “It’s fine.”
The fruit-picking team and hunting team had not headed into the jungle today, so the clearing was more crowded than usual.
People sat on wooden posts or rocks, avidly chatting with each other, primarily about the bird of prey from yesterday.
The ones talking the loudest were the Warriors who had headed into the jungle yesterday. While talking, they would occasionally glance at Ye Xi before continuing with their nonsensical tales.
The clearing was only so large, and Ye Xi could clearly hear what they were saying.
‘Killing a pureblood fiendbeast with one arrow’, ‘the fiendbeast was such a fool to provoke Mud Mountain’s shaman disciple’, ‘the bird of prey died a miserable death’, blah blah blah…
Spittle flew out of their mouths as they talked, and the audience listened with great interest.
This is a little too exaggerated! Ye Xi blushed. Unable to keep listening, he turned to Awl and asked, “Do none of you have anything to do today?”
Awl hadn’t been on the scene yesterday, so he was also carefully listening to the Warriors. He was taken by surprise by the question, and replied, “Yeah, if they can’t hunt, what else can they do?”
Awl prodded him with his elbow. “By the way, Ye Xi. How did you manage to do it? Is the bow and arrow really that formidable? Can an ordinary person really kill a fiendbeast?”
Ye Xi’s face darkened. “It’s just an ordinary bow and arrow, not a divine weapon. I was on the verge of dying to that fiendbeast! Of course it can’t be that easy to kill.”
Awl chuckled and wanted to say more.
Ye Xi glanced at him and said, “Since you’re so free, you can help me with a little something.”
“What is it?”
Ye Xi’s face suddenly turned grave. “Strengthening the tribe’s defenses!”
“Strengthen the defense?” A deep voice came from behind him.
The two turned to see the chief.
Chief: “How do you plan to do it?”
This primitive society lacked tools, so after some thought, Ye Xi proposed, “We can thrust poisoned wooden spikes into the ground, and also dig pitfalls.”
This didn’t seem too hard, so the chief nodded. “That’s fine. It’s not like we’re doing anything for the next two days.”
The tribe had placed wooden spikes around its perimeter, but they had never put poison on them.
This was because a poison would become significantly less effective after two or three days of exposure to the air. Moreover, Mud Mountain Warriors would usually clear out the jungle around the tribe. While nights remained dangerous, there were generally not any dangerous creatures during the day.
If they wanted to apply poison to the wooden spikes, they first needed to collect poison.
Poisonous plants normally grew deep in the jungle, but the Warriors did not dare to defy the shaman and enter the jungle. Thus, they could only gather up poisonous plants and insects from around the tribe.
They dug up the old wooden spikes and then began to bury new wooden spikes according to Ye Xi’s orders, some of them deeply and some shallowly.
Cunningly, one foot away from the array of wooden spikes, another row of wooden spikes had been buried so deeply that they were barely visible. These spikes were coated in the most lethal of their poisons.
Ye Xi also had everyone dig deep pits in a random fashion on the outer edge of the array of spikes.
The powerful Warriors were able to dig deep pits, the shallowest being at least five meters deep.
Long and sharp spikes were planted at the bottom of these pits to ensure that anything that fell in would die instantly.
There was a limited amount of poison, so none of it was used on the pit spikes. Presumably, the fall and the spikes meant that the poison would not be necessary.
“It looks rather decent. Animals without sufficient jumping ability would not dare to come here.” Carving put down his bone spade and shot a satisfied glance at the pitfall.
Carving thought that the pitfall was done?
Ye Xi: “We’re still not finished.”
Ye Xi cut down some wooden planks and had the tribe’s artisans cut them into long and thin wooden strips. He laid these wooden strips across the pits, creating a crude raft, and then he covered the raft in a thin layer of grass.
Once the pit was covered with these things, one would need to look closely to differentiate it from the surrounding area.
The Warriors who had helped to dig out the pits were all stunned by this disguise.
Wasn’t this too devious?
If they hadn’t seen it for themselves, they really wouldn’t have noticed anything strange about this area. Let alone animals, even members from other tribes would probably fail to see the pits, right?
Ye Xi was satisfied by their reaction.
What did it matter that it was devious? It just needed to work!
All the pits were covered in this fashion.
Worried that the Mud Mountain Tribe members might step on one, Ye Xi had all of them come over and memorize where the pits were.
A tribe member who had not seen the pitfalls being set up curiously pointed at a grassy area that seemed no different from its surroundings. “This is a pitfall?
“It doesn’t look different at all!”
The Warriors laughed as they watched the befuddled tribe members.
Ye Xi smiled at them, and then he carefully maneuvered his way past the wooden spikes to the pitfall. Squatting down, he took off a little of the grass cover and warned, “See this? There’s nothing under here, and the bottom is covered in wooden spikes. You’re done for if you fall in.”
The tribe members jumped up in shock. “It really is a trap!”
The chief was satisfied with their results, and he couldn’t help but praise Ye Xi and the Warriors who had helped him.
The sun had gotten high in the sky.
Everyone laughed and joked as they returned to the cave.