The stretch of forest and grassland that Song Xu and Wumu passed through did indeed belong to a tribe. The tribe was mainly composed of equine beastmen, with some cervine and bovine beastmen as well. They were herbivorous or omnivorous beastmen, rarely ate meat, and were mostly gentle in temperament. The tribe had several hundred members living together.
A grove of jujube trees with houses built among them was the tribe’s settlement.
A centaur half-beastman named Cangji came galloping from the grassland, the hurried sound of his hooves startling nearby tribespeople who had transformed into beast form and were slowly grazing. A group of cattle, horses, deer, and sheep all lifted their heads to look.
“What’s wrong? Why are you running so fast?”
“Isn’t that Cangji from Huangzao’s family? He went out running a few days ago and didn’t come back. Huangzao was still looking for him this morning.”
Cangji ran home. Their door was much taller than other households’ doors, because there was a half-beastman child like him in the family who could not fully transform into a beast. To make it convenient for him to enter and exit, the doorframe had been heightened.
As soon as he entered, he saw his mother by the fire pit and immediately said, “I just saw a squirrel beastman over by the small thorn forest, and there was also a snake-type half-beastman with her. It’s very dangerous!”
Huangzao was polishing a weapon. Hearing her son’s anxious voice, she did not stop the movement of her hands and replied helplessly, “I noticed it this morning. I even went to take a look with a few tribespeople. Their route was toward the Great Dark Mountain. They probably won’t come into the tribe. I was also going to tell you not to go to the small thorn forest these next few days. It’s dangerous. But no matter how I looked, I couldn’t find you.”
Cangji bent one leg and knelt down, twitched his ears, and guiltily grabbed the bone arrow beside his mother to help polish it with effort. “I’ve been sleeping over by the small thorn forest these past few days.”
Their tribe, unlike many others, did not reject or drive away half-beastmen. For some unknown reason, every generation of their tribe would produce half-beastmen. Sometimes there would even be several. When these half-beastmen lost their rationality and completely turned into wild beasts, they would forget their relatives and loved ones, follow passing wild horse herds, or run off on their own. They would not harm the tribe, and the tribe did not need to drive them away.
The tribespeople’s attitude toward half-beastmen was fairly good. But as one of only two half-beastmen in the tribe, Cangji still often felt out of place here. Compared to staying inside the tribe and facing all kinds of gazes, he preferred to wander alone around the outskirts of the territory, often not returning home for several days.
When he encountered danger, the first thing he did was come back to inform his mother so that all the tribespeople could be on alert. Now, hearing his mother say this, he felt slightly reassured, but he still did not leave and simply stayed here keeping watch.
They were gentle-tempered herbivorous beastmen, but that did not mean they were weak. On the contrary, their tribe was the largest in this area. The tribespeople were united, and even the nearby wolf beastmen did not dare to casually cross the boundary to cause trouble.
They did not take the initiative to harm other beastmen, and they were not afraid of others coming to attack.
Song Xu was still a little curious about the rarely seen equine half-beastman, so she ran back to the patch of woods where she had encountered the centaur. She hadn’t looked carefully before, but this time she examined it closely and recognized that among the trees growing there were jujube trees, walnut trees, and another kind she could recognize as hawthorn trees.
A patch of low hawthorn trees had just started to bloom a little. Small white flowers clustered together. Song Xu even dug out a dried hawthorn from last year at the base of the bushes, and only then confirmed that these were hawthorn trees.
Looking at these small flowers, Song Xu thought of the taste of candied hawthorn skewers—sour and sweet—and her mouth immediately filled with saliva.
She also discovered a small hut in this little grove. It was very small, only a few square meters. It used branches tied to the surrounding tree forks to form a fixed frame. The roof was bundled with a lot of dry grass and covered with leaves. The gaps between the wooden pieces around it were carefully patched with mud.
The small hut had no door. The doorframe was tall. Song Xu lay at the doorway and stuck her head in to look. Inside, the ground was covered with thick, fresh dry grass, the stalks still tinged with green. There was a stone pot to one side, some crude small tools, and various little knickknacks. It looked like someone often lived here. It was probably the home of that centaur who had been frightened senseless and run away.
Song Xu looked around but did not go inside. She ran back to Wumu’s side and told him about what she had discovered.
Wumu was lying on the ground listening. He sat up and looked toward the distant grassland and the silhouettes of mountains. “Should continue. Go.”
Song Xu smiled and pressed him back down. “I still want to play here for a while. You rest two more days.”
After Wumu had come out of the wolf clan’s territory in his half-beastman form, he had been showing fatigue and drowsiness. When she moved around observing the environment, he was unable to follow and could only lie on the grass to rest. Song Xu felt that, in his condition, it would be better for him to rest for a while longer.
But after hearing her words, a faint worry appeared in Wumu’s eyes. “I want to take you, go farther.” They had not walked very far yet, and they had not seen much scenery. They were still very, very far from the traveling around the world that Song Xu often talked about. In her words, this world was very big, and there were also deserts and snowy mountains and such that they had not seen. He was afraid time would not be enough.
Song Xu refused. “I won’t. I just want to stay here. When you’re in better spirits, we’ll move on.” After saying that, she ran around everywhere again, looking carefree.
Wumu had no choice but to lie down and continue resting. When he fell asleep, Song Xu came back holding a big bundle of wildflowers. She stared at him for a while, then pinched off the stems and inserted the fresh flowers one by one all over his head.
Spring was really nice. The wind was so gentle, the flowers so fragrant. Even if Snake-Snake was sleeping, not moving and not speaking, it did not feel as lonely as winter.
They stayed here for one day, two days. It wasn’t that Song Xu didn’t want to leave, but that Snake-Snake suddenly fell back into a deep sleep in beast form. He turned back into that snake-shaped oval head again.
“Well then, looks like we’ll have to live here for a while.”
Song Xu thought to herself, hopefully the friends living nearby wouldn’t come to drive them away.
Last time, the half-beastman she saw hadn’t turned back and brought a large group of tribespeople with him. Most likely nothing would happen now either. Since Snake-Snake had fallen asleep without worry, and before losing consciousness hadn’t urgently tried to take her somewhere safer, it indirectly proved that this area was quite safe.
So what troubled Song Xu more was another matter— the weather.
On sunny days, they could casually find a grass nest to lie in. But once it rained, that grass nest would turn into a puddle, and it would be hard to even find a place to shelter from the rain.
Song Xu looked at the gloomy sky, thought of the small hut she had seen in the little grove, and decided to build one herself.
Building a small hut that could temporarily block the rain was work, but to Song Xu it was also a game. Anyway, she did it quite happily. She had carefully observed the construction method of the centaur’s little shelter and imitated the other party in using branches to build a frame. There were all small trees here, and the trunks weren’t thick. A squirrel beastman’s tree-chewing skills were first-rate, even more useful than an axe.
The clever little squirrel’s brain always learned things instinctively when it came to “playing.” She quickly built a crude grass roof. It wasn’t enough to block wind, but it was enough to withstand a few rain showers.
Cold wind swept over the grassland. The rain had not yet fallen, but was about to. In the gloomy wind, Cangji quietly headed toward the small thorn forest, wanting to see whether the two unfamiliar visitors were still there. Then he saw a female squirrel beastman slowly dragging a big snake toward the inside of the small thorn forest.
Cangji worried a little about whether his home in the small thorn forest had been damaged or occupied by these two. That was a small house he had built himself. He was also a little curious about what had happened to that snake-type half-beastman, and felt somewhat reluctant to watch.
Because that not-very-large female beastman trying to move a huge, heavy snake looked far too strenuous.
A few drops of rain fell onto his cheek. Cangji hesitated over whether he should go over and help.
Song Xu didn’t notice a little horse hesitating and watching in the distance. She hummed “The Boatman’s Love,” feeling as if she were one of those boatmen from long ago pulling towlines along the riverbank. She had already experienced the weight of the big snake back in winter. With the current feel, she could only say that Snake-Snake had, in the end, gotten just a tiny bit fatter than in winter, making him even harder to drag.
The key problem was that the distance was too far, like a Long March of a hundred thousand li. The rain was about to fall, and there was still a long way between where they were and the crude little shelter she had built.
The little squirrel fell into a seated sprawl, feeling that she really couldn’t pull him anymore. She then climbed onto the snake’s body, trying to wake him.
“Wake up, it’s going to rain! Wake up, we should go!” Sure enough, no response.
Snakes have no external ears. They have inner ears and auditory ossicles. The auditory ossicles are connected to the auditory organs of the inner ear. Snake-Snake is far more sensitive to movements on the ground than to sounds transmitted through the air, because snakes usually crawl along the ground, with their abdomen and lower jaw touching the ground. Vibrations from very far away on the ground can be accurately transmitted to the inner ear.
In a sense, snakes are more sensitive to vibrations than to sound.
Song Xu pounded the ground with her fist, thump thump, right beside Snake-Snake’s head, and stomped and jumped, making a big fuss. The deeply sleeping Snake-Snake suddenly lifted his head and vigilantly flicked out his tongue.
Song Xu thought she had really woken him up and felt a little surprised and delighted. “It actually works! That’s strange, then why didn’t it work the previous two times?”
She didn’t notice that when the snake’s head first lifted from the ground, it wasn’t facing her direction, but toward the distant hillside. There, the little horse Cangji—who had hesitated for a long time before finally deciding to go help—had just taken two steps forward. Seeing the big snake wake up, he hurriedly stopped, darted into a small patch of bushes, and hid himself.
Snake-Snake turned his head toward Song Xu. It seemed that every time he woke up, Song Xu was always this happy. She hugged his head and bounced twice, then cheerfully told him, “I made a shelter that can block the rain. It’s in that grove. Hurry, we don’t have to get soaked!”
The rain suddenly grew heavier. Snake-Snake coiled up his proud little squirrel and dragged his heavy body as he slithered into the small thorn forest. Song Xu held onto his tail and pointed the way. “Up ahead, behind a cluster of hawthorn trees. Do you know hawthorn? Hawthorn is a kind of edible fruit. Have you ever eaten it? It’s very sour. If there’s a chance, I’ll definitely let you try it!”
The little shelter Song Xu built was quite far from the other small hut in the forest. When Wumu passed by that small hut, he paused for a moment and took a few extra looks. Song Xu turned his head back. “Don’t envy other people’s house. I’ll make you one too. Even though I’ve only made the roof so far, I’ll make the walls tomorrow.”
Wumu wasn’t envying other people’s small hut. He liked the little crude shelter made by the little squirrel more. Even though a few raindrops still drifted onto his body, the fresh grass bundles she had padded inside were very fragrant, and the patch of hawthorn blossoms nearby also had an indescribable scent.
The little squirrel, exhausted after being busy for a long time, fell asleep, limbs spread out. Snake-Snake habitually rested his chin on her belly, using his lower jaw to sense the vibrations from her body.
