Reproduction, in the beastmen’s world, was an utterly ordinary topic. When facing such matters, they treated it the same as eating, drinking, and surviving—there was none of the shyness or veiled avoidance brought by civilized societies. So in the entire scene, only one squirrel was feeling embarrassed because of the words she had blurted out.
The wolf beastmen were quietly discussing whether snake-type beastmen might be better at reproducing, with the conversation occasionally branching toward the squirrel beastman. A day ago, in this pack of wolfmen’s eyes, there had only been dangerous half-beastmen; as for weak squirrel beastmen, they had not even spared them a glance.
A day later, the little squirrel had already left an indelible impression on them. From every angle, she possessed terrifying aspects that far exceeded her beast form.
As for Wumu, his gaze was strange.
When Song Xu had just said that sentence, she had felt a little embarrassed, but she quickly forgot that slight awkwardness and became curious about Wumu’s reaction.
What did this expression of his mean? Regarding her blunt words, he did not seem angry. It was more like he was considering something—there was distress and hesitation, a great deal of confusion and thought, and also a bit of distraction.
In half-beast form, Wumu’s lower body was a snake. Using his snake tail to support his upper body as he moved, he was much taller than Song Xu’s beastman form. Song Xu raised a hand and poked his waist. “Wumu, what are you thinking about?”
Wumu directly told her, “Half-beast form, cannot. You will die.”
In the beastmen’s world, there were countless combinations of different species of beastmen. If they used their original forms, many problems would occur; only when both sides maintained beastman form could accidents and casualties be reduced.
Song Xu covered her ears and suddenly went ah ah ah ah for a while, startling Wumu. Then, under his puzzled gaze, she put on a righteous expression. “Little squirrel can’t listen to this!”
Wumu: “Just now, you said…”
Song Xu continued to play dumb. “What? Said what? I didn’t. I didn’t say anything just now. You remembered wrong, right!”
Seeing that she seemed to really not remember, the look of confusion on her face so vivid, Wumu also became a bit confused and repeated, “Just now…”
“Ah…” Song Xu yawned, rubbing her eyes. “Why am I suddenly so sleepy? Must be because I didn’t sleep well last night. And I’m suddenly so hungry too. How about this, I’ll go eat something first. If there’s anything, we can talk about it later.”
She suddenly became so drowsy and muddled, as if she could not even keep her eyes open, and also clutched her stomach, looking like she would starve to death if she did not eat something right away. Seeing that as she spoke she had already walked off to one side, Wumu went along with it and closed his mouth, not disturbing her while she ate.
In short, the topic was easily diverted. After that, this topic was never brought up again.
During the process of the wolf beastmen following behind to escort the snake and the squirrel away, occasional long-distance quarrels occurred. Only when they got too close would they be warned by the big snake’s hissing; aside from that, no other accidents happened.
They crossed slopes and rocky ground, entered a forest, passed through the forest and then walked into grasslands, and only after three days did they leave the wolves’ territory.
Finally having sent away the two troublesome fellows, the wolf pack, which had not rested well for three days, stood at the edge of their territory and collectively let out howls, venting the complex emotions of the past three days, as well as their current relaxation and joy.
From the grassland ahead came a howl as well—it was the little squirrel. She felt that before leaving the wolfmen were still trying to show off, and unwilling to be outdone, she also followed along with random howling. All by herself, she disrupted the wolves’ rhythm and made them hastily end things.
The head wolf, Lingfeng, glanced at the two silhouettes, decisively shut his mouth, turned his head, and led his clansmen to run toward the direction of the tribe.
The little squirrel who had produced a suona-like effect put her hands on her hips proudly. Seeing that the group of tagalong wolves had shut up and run off, she also felt refreshed. This mutually tormenting journey had actually given her a bit of fun, after all, there had always been someone to talk to.
So now, “We should first find a place to rest,” Song Xu said.
Over these three days, she had only occasionally dozed for a moment, and the snake had not slept at all—his rest had been with eyes open.
Song Xu found a grass nest and let the big snake lie down first. When he lay in the grass nest, it was like being placed into a bowl, coiled into a snake bed. Song Xu busily arranged his body neatly, then transformed into a squirrel and lay on top. Soft, smooth, and cool, lying on the snake bed, then basking in the sun—there was no more comfortable sleeping environment than this.
Wumu woke first. He was awakened by some movement in the nearby grass. He lifted his head and saw a bird fly up from the grass.
There was no danger around, and Song Xu was still asleep. However, from her previous position of lying spread out flat on the snake’s body, she had changed into another, even stranger position: her head and upper body facing downward, burrowed into the gaps of the snake’s body, leaving only a big tail and her hind legs above.
She had appeared in this sleeping posture before as well. When she slept and felt the sun was too glaring and there was no cover, she would subconsciously paw into the gaps and bury herself.
When Wumu saw it the first time, he thought he had accidentally crushed her to death. But once he moved a little, the little squirrel groggily climbed up, combed the flattened fur on her body, and once again became a fluffy, inflated squirrel.
Now that he was used to it, Wumu was no longer afraid. He lay in the grass nest waiting for the squirrel to wake up. His hand, covered in snake scales, touched that squirrel tail. Under the sunlight, her fur showed a brownish-red color.
With the squirrel not making noise beside him, Wumu thought of that topic Song Xu had avoided before. Watching the squirrel run to the side to pluck wildflowers to eat, then spit them out with pui pui because the wildflowers were bitter, he realized—she clearly remembered what he had said; she was deliberately pretending not to.
Half-beastmen generally did not have partners. In the beastmen’s world, half-beast male individuals who could not shoulder the same reproductive responsibilities as beastmen would not gain the favor of females.
He wanted to become a beastman, yet he could no longer even maintain a half-beast form for long. Strangely, Wumu felt that his precarious half-beast form could not be sustained and that he would soon revert to beast form, but at the same time, his thoughts were gradually becoming clearer—clearer than even two years ago, when he could maintain half-beast form for a long time.
He was irreversibly sliding toward complete beastification, yet he had never been this lucid. His physical state and his rationality were changing in completely opposite directions. Perhaps if this continued, in the future he would become a beast that retained reason.
The squirrel ball embedded in the gaps of the snake’s body moved. She pulled out her front paws, propped herself on the snake’s body, and pulled out her head as well, shaking out her fur as a matter of routine. She looked at Wumu, her expression both happy and not quite happy, and muttered, “Why are you still half-beast? Why haven’t you changed back yet?”
She leaned in to carefully examine the changes on the snake’s body. The snake scales that previously only reached his waist and abdomen had, in just these few days, already covered his back and spread to his chest. On his neck and face there were faint shapes of snake scales, and scales had also appeared on the backs of his hands.
After checking, Song Xu did not say much about it, but instead smiled and loudly announced, “We’re well rested, let’s set off. I wonder what we’ll encounter at the next stop!”
The next stop would be centaurs.
Song Xu picked tender grass stems and, without realizing it, walked a bit far, putting some distance between herself and the resting Wumu. In this situation, she suddenly met eyes with a centaur in the grass who had raised a hand to pluck tender tree leaves. Both sides froze.
The lower body was a horse body with four hooves, a black long horse tail. The horse legs were brown, gradually transitioning upward into brownish-yellow, the abdomen white. Where the horse neck connected was the upper half of a human body, with deep honey-colored skin, and brown and black hair mixed on the head… almost exactly the same as the centaur images humans had imagined that Song Xu had seen before!
“There’s a centaur!” Song Xu excitedly turned and ran toward the snake, shouting. Wumu was startled awake and quickly revealed his upper body from the grass. Panting, Song Xu pointed toward the distant grass and said to him, “Th-there’s a cen-centaur over there!”
The wind direction changed, blowing the scent of the resting big snake in the grass toward the woods. The horse-type half-beastman who had been startled by Song Xu smelled it, quickly ran out from the sparse grove, and fled in the direction away from the big snake.
Horses were good at running, and so were horsemen. His figure quickly disappeared. Song Xu let out a regretful sigh—she had wanted Wumu to go take a look.
Centaurs, together with half-snake people and merfolk, were all classic fantasy creatures in certain literary works. How rare. She had not even finished being excited before the person ran away.
The big snake stared at the fleeing horse and puffed air. Song Xu hurriedly jumped up and covered his mouth before he could flick out his tongue. “No, he didn’t attack me.”
The big snake closed his mouth and looked at her in confusion. No attack—then why had she screamed and told him to go look?
Song Xu said, “Aiyaa, that was a half-beastman, like you!”
Wherever they went, people feared and rejected them. Wumu probably had never seen another half-beastman like himself before, and now one had appeared. She had thought the two sides could have some friendly exchange.
Wumu had no particular reaction and could not understand Song Xu’s excitement. He lay back down in the grass to rest, hair scattered, posture alluring. This “alluring” was mainly because he was a soft-bodied snake; any casually arranged pose naturally looked beautiful. It had nothing to do with his personal temperament. Even with a cold face and no expression, he still looked stunning—perhaps even more so because of the contrast.
Song Xu stopped thinking about the horseman. She sat beside the snake nibbling grass stems, cupping her cheeks, and looking at him while letting out a string of ambiguous giggles. Her emotional changes were so fast that Wumu was completely baffled.
Wumu: ?
Wumu detected the presence of horse-type beastmen in the vicinity earlier than Song Xu did. Besides that, there were also deer, antelope, sheep, and cattle beastmen. This area adjacent to the wolf tribe’s territory was clearly land occupied by a mixed-residence tribe.
However, herbivorous animals had always been food on Wumu’s menu, and herbivorous beastmen were not as aggressive as carnivorous beastmen, so when they passed through this territory, no beastmen came out to drive them away.
As early as this morning, when they entered this area, Wumu had already sensed a horse-type beastman observing them from afar, who soon left.
At that time, Song Xu had been busy playing with water in a small roadside ditch and had not noticed at all.
