The beastmen soon left, and the chaotic mixed scents were covered by ice, snow, and the forest’s cold cleanness. On the messy pile of broken stones, only Song Xu and Wumu remained, along with a primitive beast corpse that was gradually stiffening and growing cold.

The snake looked slightly more relaxed, constantly flicking out his tongue to capture information from the surroundings.

Song Xu took the opportunity to move closer again. “Hey, Bao…”

At this moment, the hissing sound the snake made carried an obvious sense of threat, different from his usual casual hissing. Song Xu could hear the difference, so she obediently kept her distance.

She hadn’t seen Snake Snake open his eyes for over two months. He had finally woken up, but seemed to have turned into a silly snake—he didn’t recognize her anymore, even hissing at her. It was really heartbreaking.

But from the fact that he was hissing at her, she could tell that he truly wasn’t clear-headed right now.

Was he awakened in the middle of hibernation and still groggy, or was he affected by the flesh and blood of the primitive beast?

When Song Xu had pulled him out of the primitive beast’s belly, she had noticed bloodstains and shreds of meat hanging from the corner of his mouth, so he definitely had chewed on that thing with an unclear mind.

The sky gradually darkened. Song Xu squatted in the snow, feeling like she was about to freeze stiff. Snake Snake wasn’t in any better condition than her, stiffly staying in place without moving.

Seeing fine snowflakes start to fall again, Song Xu decided not to drag things out. She moved close to the big snake, braving his weakened hissing, pulled off the wolf pelt from her body, and rushed forward to wrap it around his huge mouth, trying to pull him off the rocks.

Such a large snake had tremendous destructive power when struggling. With his head wrapped in the wolf pelt, he wildly swung it around. Song Xu couldn’t hold his head down and was directly flung into the air.

She shifted forms midair. The little squirrel landed lightly on the ground, picked up the wolf pelt that had fallen nearby, transformed back into human form, and rushed over from behind to cover the snake’s head again.

Straddling the icy-cold snake body, Song Xu only felt that Snake Snake’s body was even colder than the snow. He seemed to be acting purely on instinct. Because he was being attacked, he twisted frantically. His tail slapped against the huge rock with loud smacks, sweeping the frozen primitive beast corpse down below, and even sending some broken stones flying.

Song Xu believed that if he hadn’t been frozen for so long, he definitely wouldn’t have only this much strength. She could feel the snake mouth wrapped inside the wolf pelt trying to open, and she pressed down on it fiercely.

She didn’t care about anything else, letting the nearly frozen Snake Snake smash the surrounding rocks into flying debris, and just kept pressing him down. Gradually, the amplitude of Snake Snake’s struggles grew smaller and smaller, until he completely settled down—faster than Song Xu had expected.

Song Xu thought that Snake Snake had finally exhausted all his strength, and because of the cold had fallen back into a faint. But when she quietly lifted a corner of the wolf pelt to peek inside, she happened to see Snake Snake’s blood-red eyes shift toward her.

The big snake had not fainted. He was just covered by the wolf pelt and slowly recalled that the wolf pelt and the scent on her body were familiar, so he stopped struggling.

Song Xu did not know this. She put the wolf pelt back and still did not relax her hold on the snake head in her arms. If she were bitten by the big snake right now, the two of them would die here, so it was better to be cautious.

They were currently on the sloped surface of a tilted giant rock. Because of Snake Snake’s earlier struggling, they were already close to sliding down to the bottom. Song Xu had observed below—there was an opening there that led into a stone cave.

It was just a pity that the stone cave that previously had relatively large internal space had collapsed by half during the primitive beast’s rampage earlier.

Holding Snake Snake’s head and part of his body, Song Xu took him and rolled downward. With Snake Snake’s length and weight, transporting him was quite strenuous. It was better to roll down directly to save effort.

After rolling into the stone cave, the suddenly startled Snake Snake began to twist again. Song Xu hurried to soothe him, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay!” while her hands quickly grabbed a grass-stem rope she had braided in autumn. She wound it around the wolf pelt, wrapping a circle around Snake Snake’s head, and tied it securely.

Letting go of the big snake now wearing a wolf-pelt “hood,” Song Xu bent low and crawled into the stone cave. She swiftly cleared away the broken stones blocking the ground, used her foot to push aside the scattered stored nuts, and then ran over to check the nest she had padded for Snake Snake.

The nest hadn’t been damaged, but a large chunk of stone was missing from the upper side. Now that opening was blowing wind and snow straight inside. With such a big hole, if she tried to block it with stones, the stones needed would be too large for her to move. Using other things to block it would also take too long… Right, wasn’t there a primitive beast corpse?

Song Xu thought of ready-made materials. Carefully stepping over Snake Snake, who was coiled on the ground and not moving, she grabbed the beast-tooth knife and rushed to the primitive beast, cutting off its two membrane-winged wings from the base.

These two big wings were not as heavy as she had imagined. She dragged one wing to the opening and covered it over. It happened to block the big hole nicely. Then she used stones to fix it in place, so it wouldn’t be blown away in the middle of the night.

After solving the biggest draft problem in the shelter, Song Xu picked up the door she had made from the pile of broken stones and blocked another opening. Only then did she return to the dim, narrow, partially collapsed stone cave.

The previous campfire had long since gone out, and even the pile of ashes was buried under a large stone. Song Xu found another dry spot inside the cave, carried over dry firewood, and lit a new fire.

After finishing all this, she went back to Snake Snake’s side again, carefully held his head, and dragged him into the bear-pelt nest.

It was too heavy. Song Xu dragged until she was covered in sweat before finally managing to pull most of his body onto the bear pelt. During the process of being dragged, the big snake did not move at all, like a heavy log, or like a bundle of hemp rope soaked full of water.

Song Xu manually coiled the half of his tail that was still outside the nest around his body, and covered it with another bear pelt that she had pulled out from beneath a rock.

He did not struggle midway or try to bite her, which made Song Xu worry whether he had frozen into some kind of problem. She touched the snake’s body and kneaded it a bit to test whether it had frozen stiff. It didn’t seem like it had, so she cautiously untied the grass rope and removed the wolf pelt covering Snake Snake’s head.

When in beast form, snakes do not open or close their eyes, since they do not have eyelids like humans. Outside the eyeball is only a transparent scale that protects the eye. So Song Xu could not tell whether he was asleep again or awake.

“Hey, Wumu, are you okay?”

“Wumu, are you asleep?”

With the large drafty hole sealed and the fire lit, the temperature inside the cave rose. Song Xu finally felt her body warming up a bit. She lay not far from Snake Snake and gradually moved closer.

Suddenly, Snake Snake flicked his tongue. Seeing that he was no longer making fierce hissing sounds, Song Xu immediately understood that he had regained some awareness. She tentatively stretched out her hand. As soon as she moved closer, Snake Snake immediately opened his mouth and let out a short huff.

Song Xu withdrew her hand. Seeing that there was still blood on it from cutting off the primitive beast’s wings, she understood. First, she went to rub snow on her hand to wash off the smell, then came back to try communicating through scent with the not-clear-headed Snake Snake.

This time, she extended her hand in front of Snake Snake’s mouth. As expected, he no longer huffed, but instead kept repeatedly flicking his tongue, as if confirming and identifying her scent.

Song Xu looked at his snake face and felt that he seemed to be puzzled about something—puzzled about who she was? Puzzled about why her scent felt familiar?

Song Xu had indeed heard snake-keeping friends say that their silly snakes forgot their poop-scooping branch after one hibernation and had to reacquaint themselves. But she hadn’t expected that this kind of situation would also happen to someone who was a companion to a snake-type half-beastman.

The snake tongue brushed against her palm. Song Xu suddenly grabbed the flicking tongue, startling Snake Snake who was in the middle of identifying her scent. He abruptly pulled back his tongue, shrank his head backward, and silently observed her.

Song Xu did not know whether his big head had remembered their identities. But as long as she confirmed that he was no longer in indiscriminate-attack mode, her courage multiplied. With a roll, she transformed into squirrel form and rolled to Snake Snake’s side.

She lay sprawled on her back, both legs propped against the snake’s body, pulled a corner of the bear pelt over herself, and sighed tiredly. “So tired.”

The big snake lifted his head and looked at the squirrel pressed against him. The fire crackled twice. He lowered his head and tentatively placed it on top of the squirrel.

Warm and soft, the furry belly rose and fell beneath his head.

Song Xu poked at the big snake’s snout. “Bao, have you remembered who I am yet?”

The red-eyed snake bao did not respond.

“Sudden disaster! Young husband becomes a vegetable, sleeps for two months! Adding insult to injury! Suffers another attack, brain damaged and becomes mentally retarded! Wife remains loyal, guarding the cold cave for eighteen years!” The squirrel grabbed her own ears as she spoke.

“…Still no reaction. This is bad, he can’t even understand speech anymore!”

“Did you fall asleep again, or what?”

Song Xu chattered with Snake Snake for most of the night and couldn’t hold out, falling asleep.

When she woke up, Snake Snake was still the same, not having transformed into half-beastman form.

If she hadn’t disturbed him while getting up, causing Snake Snake to flick his tongue, Song Xu would have thought he had fallen asleep again. Generally speaking, if the environment was suitable, he would continue sleeping. Was he unable to sleep now?

Looking at the dazed big snake, then looking at the disaster-stricken home, Song Xu wobbled as she got up.

Yesterday she had only done a simple cleanup. Today she still needed to rescue some of her tools that were crushed under rocks, rearrange the scattered food, and also—those primitive beast wings used as an emergency measure couldn’t be used forever. She needed to make a wooden board to replace them.

While busily tidying up, Song Xu picked up the tiger-fang necklace she had thrown aside in her panic yesterday, and only then remembered this matter. She wiped the necklace with snow and carried it back into the stone cave to show Wumu.

“Wumu, look, what is this?”

She had only stayed outside for half a day. When she approached Wumu again, he started hissing at her somewhat fiercely, which in human terms would probably be like saying, “Don’t come over.”

Song Xu: “…”

She stopped in her tracks and slowly moved closer. “Wumu? You didn’t forget me again, did you?”

It really seemed so. He was stupid in a rather unique way—his memory had even declined. After a few minutes, Snake Snake finished sensing her scent with his flicking tongue and probably remembered again that she was a familiar person. The hissing sound got stuck in his throat and stopped, and the tongue he stuck toward her curled into a cute little loop.

Song Xu fiercely rubbed him once, then dangled the tiger-fang necklace in front of his eyes and shook it. Colorful small stones were strung together as decoration, separating four tiger fangs—two big and two small.

Wumu had no reaction.

“This is your mom’s tooth. Stick out your tongue and smell it. Isn’t it this scent?” Song Xu lowered the necklace.

The snake tongue slowly extended and sensed it for a while. Song Xu waited for a long time before she saw him seem to suddenly understand something, and place his head on top of the string of necklace.