Some people who keep cats or dogs, after a certain stage, will suddenly start trying to use cat and dog sounds to communicate with them.

Song Xu also did not escape this law.

From the day of catching fish onward, whenever she heard Wumu make a hissing sound, she would also hiss along; sometimes Wumu did not make any sound, but when she went near him, she would suddenly hiss twice, hissing until Wumu looked at her in bafflement.

Snakes, including snake beastmen, produce hissing sounds from the vibration of air passing through the oral cavity; basically, they do not rely on this kind of sound to convey information. Especially this kind of hissing, it may be more similar to meaningless sounds humans make in daily life.

So when Song Xu put on a serious, communicative expression and hissed, it was very strange, but she was not strange only for the first day.

When Wumu was resting, Song Xu suddenly came over and seriously hissed at him in a long string of “ssssss.” Wumu had no way of discerning what she meant from those sounds, and could only stare at her blankly and strangely.

As Song Xu’s hissing grew more and more rapid, and an anxious look appeared on her face, Wumu could not help being infected by her mood as well.

If there was an urgent matter, why couldn’t she just speak directly?

Could it be that she could not speak normally anymore?

Wumu worriedly reached out to touch Song Xu’s throat, perhaps fearing that something was stuck in her throat, and then raised his hand to pinch her mouth, wanting to see whether she was choked.

His fingers, like his tail, had a slightly cool temperature; it felt very comfortable to the touch in summer. With her neck and face being examined, Song Xu almost broke character from his touching. She hurriedly pulled his hand down, still frowning and hissing nonstop.

Wumu did not understand what kind of ridiculous things modern humans could do when they were bored. He truly thought Song Xu had encountered some difficulty. Seeing that she simply would not open her mouth to speak, he was forced to take the initiative and ask, “What?”

“Sound… how?”

“Stuck… not speaking?”

An anxious half-mute snake managed to say ten words in a row. Song Xu could not hold it in anymore, her eyebrows flying as she excitedly said, “You said ten words in one go, awesome! You’ve made another breakthrough!”

Wumu: “……” 

Her troubled expression vanished in the blink of an eye, and her voice was as clear as ever, with no sign of any problem. After a while, the snake finally understood that he had been tricked again. He immediately turned his head and lay down, not wanting to pay attention to this annoying squirrel anymore.

So angry that he subconsciously wanted to hiss, but thinking of the strange hissing sounds Song Xu had imitated earlier, he withdrew the tongue he was about to flick out.

Song Xu could tell that the snake was angry, but she had never been afraid of the snake being angry, because he was a cute snake who never stayed angry with her for long, and did not like to bite her.

Moreover, most of the time, no matter what she did, the snake had little reaction. Only when he was angered did his expression become slightly more vivid, and she wanted to see his different reactions.

Song Xu stuck her head in front of Wumu with a mischievous grin and continued, “Ssss?”

Wumu pressed her face and pushed her away. His palm was especially large. With her face being smothered by his hand, Song Xu still struggled and shouted, “My treasure, are you angry? Are you angry?”

Wumu: “…Angry.”

Song Xu giggled. “Then you look really good when you’re angry.”

The poor, inexperienced snake had never encountered such a smooth-talking squirrel before—saying hateful words while at the same time sounding like she was praising him.

Beastmen’s likes and dislikes were all very clear-cut: liking was liking, disliking was disliking, anger was anger, happiness was happiness. But Song Xu could always mix all kinds of emotions together for him.

Song Xu also happily held onto his shoulders and gently shook him, leaning against his back and bending forward to look at his expression, while saying, “I just want to play with you. I can’t fall asleep, and you weren’t paying attention to me just now.”

Was that so? Had he ignored his partner? Wumu looked at the pitiful expression on Song Xu’s face, quickly forgetting his earlier anger, suspecting that he had neglected her and made her sad.

So he sat up, waiting for whatever new way she wanted to torment him with. Was it to go for a walk outside, to catch glowing little bugs, or to go swimming? He looked at Song Xu, waiting for her to make a request.

Sure enough, Song Xu clapped her hands. “Since we can’t sleep anyway, let’s go outside and look at the stars!”

The big snake was dragged by her out of the dark corner to look at the stars. In the dense forest, there were very few gaps where one could see the stars. Even by the stone cave, only a small patch of sky was visible; it was only beautiful in open areas. Song Xu was too lazy to walk too far, so she turned into her squirrel form and climbed up a tree.

Whether snake or squirrel, climbing trees was not a difficult task for either of them. Before long, the two were sitting at the treetop of a large tree near the stone cave.

This tree was relatively tall, and its branches were thicker and sturdier than those of the surrounding trees. The two settled near the top, able to look down over the vast sea of forest.

Tonight, the moonlight was bright, making the stars appear dim, but Song Xu did not mind. “The stars aren’t very clear, but the moon is great too. It’s so bright… Wumu, doesn’t this look like a sea of clouds!”

Dense branches and leaves connected to branches and leaves, stretching into the distance. The glossy green foliage, struck by moonlight, all turned a frosty color. Swaying in the wind, they really did resemble rolling clouds.

Song Xu sat on the tree branch, staring at the beautiful moonlit scenery in a daze. It was rare for her to be this quiet. Something cool suddenly touched her cheek—it was Wumu. He seemed to want to say something, but in the end only flicked out his tongue and hissed once.

Song Xu immediately laughed and responded to him, “Ssss!”

She could not stay quiet for long and began shaking the branch. The branch at the treetop could not withstand her tossing; with a crack, it broke, and Song Xu fell backward. She sometimes slipped when climbing trees, and at first she would be frightened, but now she could skillfully grab other branches and vines during the fall.

This time, she did not get to use her agile technique, because the moment she fell, she was wrapped up and lifted by the snake’s tail.

The snake tail coiled around her waist and pulled her onto a branch beside Wumu. Song Xu tugged at the tightly bound tail around her waist. The tail slowly loosened, but did not leave, still resting against her lower back.

Song Xu took one look, thought of the experience just now, and suddenly leaned back again… After all her tossing, what effect it had on the snake was hard to say, but the crown of the tree was noticeably sparser. After playing enough, she even conveniently dragged the broken branch back to dry and use as firewood.

Song Xu would often run in front of Wumu, stare into his eyes, and hiss twice. If Wumu also hissed in response, she would happily run off. If Wumu did not react, then there would be no peace afterward—she would keep hissing until Wumu responded.

After this happened many times, Wumu was practically conditioned by her. No matter the time or place, as long as he saw her coming over, Wumu would hiss first.

Song Xu laughed outright. “Congratulations, you know how to answer first now!”

And the squirrel’s ways of tormenting others were far more than just this.

She was someone who loved to share. If she found something interesting or something she liked, she would share it with the snake; food too. Whether it was food she liked or food she disliked, she would share it with the snake.

After digging up tasty wild tubers from the mud, this kind of food became her staple for filling her stomach. And she even drew inferences from this, often scratching and digging in various places, hoping to dig up more tasty things.

Anywhere there were wild boar footprints, there would be pits she had dug. Land that other animals had already turned over, she would also curiously flip again. There were even some plants whose leaves she found strange, and she would dig up their roots to take a look.

As long as she dug enough, she would always come across one or two things that were edible.

Song Xu dug out a yellow rhizome in the wild grass that looked like ginger. Avoiding the insect-bitten marks on top, she took a bite from the other side. After tasting it, she fell silent for a long time, then suddenly rushed toward the coiled big snake nearby.

“Wumu, come taste this, I found something really delicious!”

Before Wumu could react, something was already stuffed into his mouth. Song Xu was not doing this for the first time; even the posture of stuffing things into his mouth had become practiced. After stuffing it in, she held her breath and waited.

A moment later, Wumu suddenly flipped over and spat out the thing in his mouth, but that taste still would not dissipate. When he lifted his head to look over, Song Xu instantly jumped up and dove into the grass, and her arrogant laughter could still be heard: “Hahahahaha!”

The stimulating smell in his mouth completely woke him up. The big snake suddenly shot out, his figure disappearing into grass as tall as a person. Facing a snake who had adopted a hunting posture, the squirrel did not escape; soon she was wrapped up by a snake tail and dragged under the shade of a tree.

She tried midway to turn into a small squirrel to escape the tail’s control, but did not succeed.

With her head and two forelegs clinging to the coiled snake tail, her tail and hind legs hanging down naturally, the squirrel whose body was tightly wrapped saw that the situation was bad. She nudged her forelegs toward the expressionless snake and made a pitiful, pleading gesture. “Awoo, Wumu, loosen your tail a bit, it’s too tight, I’m going to throw up.”

Wumu wore a stern, inviolable face, looking as though he was very angry, yet his tail honestly loosened a little. The slippery squirrel seized the opportunity and whooshed out of the snake tail, laughing as she ran toward the wild grass for the second time.

She even provocatively called out, “Come catch me!”

Wumu: “……”

Dragged back again after being wrapped up by the snake tail a second time, Song Xu repeated her old trick. “Too tight, too tight, hurry and loosen it, awooo!”

Wumu did not move.

Seeing that this method was useless, Song Xu changed tactics and looked at him pitifully. “Sorry, next time if I eat something bad, I definitely won’t deliberately give it to you again. Can you let me go first, okay?”

Wumu slowly but firmly said, “You… lie!”

The snake, who had already been tricked more than once, had finally seen through the little squirrel’s incorrigible nature.

Song Xu: “……” Somehow she felt that the snake had become smarter, even able to expose her lies now.

“Alright, sorry, then how about you bite me once to vent your anger?” The little squirrel leaned her head against the snake tail, her eyes round and bright, looking innocent, yet also seeming to be plotting something bad, tilting her head as she suggested.

Wumu coiled her closer, his expression faintly conflicted as he thought for a moment. It seemed he felt her suggestion was not bad. He used his snake tail to send her to his mouth and opened it, about to bite.

Song Xu did not expect him to really bite. She thought that maybe she had been giving him too many bad-tasting things lately, and screeched, “Don’t, don’t bite my head—bite my arm, okay!”

Wumu closed his frightening blood-filled mouth, his lips brushing against the little squirrel’s fluffy head once, or rather… kissing it once.