Song Xu and Wumu followed the camel beastmen to the oasis and rested there for a night. Wumu had already finished listening to the squirrel’s story that had undergone a tiny bit of artistic processing, and he had finally become smart enough to guess that there were probably parts that Song Xu had made up.
She might have wanted to talk more with him about his mother, but since she couldn’t get much information, she had fabricated some things herself to make him happy.
Heisen left the tribe on the eve of his coming of age. At that time, he had already decided that he would leave the tribe alone as a half-beastman and live independently, but Heisen felt that perhaps there was still a way, so she left in a hurry. She had only said then that she would come back very soon, and told him to wait near the tribe after he came of age.
Wumu waited for her only to say goodbye to her. Heisen was a warlike tiger beastman who loved to participate in hunting parties and was often away for long periods. From a very young age, Wumu learned to starve himself and go to the nearby forest to hunt small animals to eat, swallowing them skin and bones.
Only during the short periods when Heisen returned to the tribe could he eat cooked food. Perhaps because he was a half-beastman, he didn’t particularly like cooked food, and the chunks of meat Heisen made were not very tasty either.
When the big tiger napped, she would press him beneath her chin. Wumu would feel it was too hot and want to go out and coil himself around the door pillar, but Heisen could pin him down with a single paw.
Later, when he grew up, just like the other young beastmen in the tribe, he also didn’t like being too close to his mother. After all, in the tribe, most mothers would take care of underage young beastmen, but once the young beastmen came of age, they would immediately drive their children away to let them live independently, and Wumu had become independent relatively early.
Upon hearing news of Heisen, compared to him, Song Xu seemed even happier. She gestured animatedly as she described to him the fierce and formidable tiger beastman she imagined, faintly revealing a look of yearning. The big snake, who always appeared slow and emotionally cool, noticed at this moment—was the little squirrel missing her own mother?
Wumu: “Song Xu, mother?”
Song Xu: “What’s our relationship? Big tiger belongs to everyone. I mean, mom belongs to everyone! Don’t worry, we’re heading forward anyway, I’ll definitely ask around more for you.”
Wumu discovered that she hadn’t understood what he meant, and added another word: “Song Xu, miss, mother?”
Song Xu: “Yes yes yes, I want to see Wumu’s mom. She must be a beautiful big cat!”
Wumu discovered that she was pretending not to understand what he meant. And she suddenly began scooping up the sand beside them and piling it onto him.
Wumu: ?
Song Xu laughed. “It’s so cold at night, pile some sand on yourself to keep warm!”
She buried the big snake, leaving only his head outside. Wumu moved his tail slightly and knocked down the pointy mound of sand piled on him. The diligent little squirrel went over again to patch it up, and even demanded, “Don’t move around, don’t kick the blanket!”
Then she piled a sand blanket for herself too. A small bulge lay beside the big snake’s head. Song Xu dug around in the sand a bit and suddenly felt like she was a cat’s eye snail lying buried in sand, and couldn’t help giggling to herself for a while.
The snake quietly moved again, letting out a questioning hiss. Song Xu, however, only looked at the sky and said, “Such bright stars.”
After a while, she suddenly said, “Is it autumn now? When will winter come? I wonder where we’ll have reached by then.”
They had set out from Wumu’s forest in spring, but the farther they traveled this way, the less distinct the seasonal boundary became. If calculated by time, autumn should almost be over, yet here the days were still scorching, the temperature even higher than the gobi they had passed through earlier that was full of autumn colors.
Recently, the problem Song Xu had been thinking about was where they would be when Wumu started hibernating.
A snake’s hibernation was not seasonal—strictly speaking, it was based on temperature. If the temperature was always high enough, snakes would not hibernate.
If they continued forward and the temperature dropped to a certain degree, Wumu’s hibernation would arrive very quickly. She had to consider finding a safe place first so that Wumu could get through this hibernation period.
They stayed only one night at the oasis. Song Xu soon bade farewell to the camel beastman group with Wumu. Before leaving, the big camel told them the direction Heisen had gone.
Song Xu took one look at the direction. Well then—circling back west again. In the end, they were still heading west.
At first, Song Xu had come out to see the world and hadn’t thought much about looking for Heisen. Now that she was gradually hearing news about Heisen, it instead made her desire to search for Heisen grow stronger. Whether they could find her or not, being able to hear more news was also very interesting.
On the road that followed, Wumu saw Song Xu actively greeting every beastman they passed, asking whether they recognized that tiger-fang necklace, or whether they had encountered a tiger beastman nearby. Unfortunately, all the answers she received were negative.
“What do you call this? This is called planting willows unintentionally and they grow into rows, planting flowers intentionally and they don’t bloom. It means, when you’re not looking, news comes to you, but when you deliberately search, you can’t find anything,” Song Xu sighed with emotion.
They passed through the most desolate stretch of road. For a long time they couldn’t find any water, and only managed to cross that barren land relying on the water in the fruit-shell canteen given by the big camel.
Ahead, they saw green again. Although it was only a little, it still made Song Xu cheer nonstop and eat a whole jin more.
Warm wind blew from another direction. Brief rainfall made flowers and green grass bloom across the barren land. There were no tall trees here, and the flat ground stretched endlessly to the horizon.
But this warmth and greenery were only fleeting, appearing in their journey like an oasis in the desert. They appeared suddenly and disappeared just as suddenly, and the road ahead once again became desolate.
The biting winter that Song Xu had been worrying about suddenly arrived when they once more bade farewell to green grass and flowers. On this plain with no shelter—where they couldn’t find a single big tree or even a large rock—the drop in temperature was deadly.
They couldn’t find any place to hide. A layer of heart-wrenching white frost covered the ground. The snake’s body slid over the frost, and his summer-soft scales were cold as ice and iron.
If it got any colder, Wumu would need to enter hibernation, but where was there a suitable place for him to hibernate here?
Aside from being a bit slower in movement, Wumu showed no other abnormalities. He didn’t ask to look for a place to hibernate, and instead stayed by her side, continuing forward day after day. On the barren wasteland, there were almost no traces of animals living there. They couldn’t even find firewood to start a fire.
Song Xu began to consider whether they should turn back. At least the temperature would be a little higher.
“Here, rest,” Wumu said, rarely speaking up.
Song Xu looked at the hole in the ground. It looked like a mouse hole. She confirmed with him, “Are you sure you want to hibernate here?”
Wumu: “Not hibernate. Temporarily, rest.”
“Alright.” Song Xu didn’t object. She just huffed and puffed as she enlarged the entrance a bit—if she didn’t make it bigger, the snake wouldn’t be able to get in.
The entrance section was narrow, but once inside, the internal space was surprisingly not small, and many places connected to winding little tunnels.
Inside the dirt burrow, Wumu tried his best to curl up his enormous body, waiting for the thin layer of frost covering his body to melt away. He watched Song Xu busily look around inside the burrow, checking those crisscrossing small tunnels.
Those little holes were too small for Wumu, but the squirrel could barely squeeze half her body in, so only her fluffy belly and tail were left outside, with just her head and upper body drilled into the hole.
At the last, slightly larger hole, the squirrel completely squeezed inside. After a moment, she popped her head out excitedly and said, “Wumu, there’s a nest of little mice inside this small hole!”
They were ordinary mice, not beastmen. This group of little ones looked like they had only been born recently. The mother mouse had probably gone out to forage. Song Xu looked at Wumu’s huge snake body in the adjacent large hole and thought that the mouse mom probably wouldn’t dare come back. These little mice might starve to death.
Wumu wanted to leave after resting in the burrow for one day, but when Song Xu came back from outside, she pressed him down. “Better not. The wind outside is too cold, it cuts to the bone. If you go out and really freeze stiff, I won’t even be able to move you back. Let’s stay here a few more days and see.”
Song Xu went out two or three times a day. Under the soil, inside the burrow, it was relatively warm, but on the surface it was different—icy wind howled, and if it got any stronger, it could blow the squirrel away. Song Xu searched for food for herself on the surface, and also looked for anything suitable for Wumu to eat. In short, she wandered all around the nearby area.
She came back carrying a string of plant tubers, with something still being chewed in her mouth. She first shook off the frost clinging to her fur, rubbed her hands, shook her legs, and stepped across the snake body that filled the burrow, coming to a small empty space that Wumu had deliberately cleared for her.
“I looked outside and didn’t find any big animals. I didn’t even see a single rabbit,” Song Xu said gloomily as she gnawed on a root. “And you don’t eat this.”
“I’m not hungry,” the snake said.
Song Xu was touched and hugged his big head. “Wuwu, you’re so considerate, still comforting me at a time like this!”
Wumu: ……But I’m really not hungry.
Song Xu: “Nothing happened while I was out, right?”
Wumu thought about it. “Nothing.”
A small snake crawled into the burrow wanting to eat that nest of little mice, but ran away in fright after seeing him. That probably didn’t count.
“As long as nothing happened.” Song Xu heard thin little squeaks—it was the nest of baby mice that were hungry. She glanced at the snake, then carried the remaining tubers and crawled into that hole.
This nest of little mice was really too ugly. Their flesh-colored bodies had sparse fur, their eyes were so small they looked like they didn’t exist, and their teeth even stuck out. Song Xu broke off pieces of tuber to feed the little mice, looking at them eat with a kind and benevolent expression, muttering, “Hurry up and grow big. Get a bit fatter so you can be little snacks for snake-snake.”
Seeing her go feed the little mice, Wumu felt that she really liked small animals—no matter what she encountered, she wanted to play with it, whether beastman or ordinary animal.
After a few days, the little mice that Song Xu had been feeding grew fur. Their growth speed truly shocked Song Xu. She felt that the time had come—feeding this whole nest every day was honestly a bit troublesome. After feeding the little mice, she lifted them one by one into the big burrow where Wumu was, instructing snake-snake, “If you’re hungry, you can eat some little snacks. I’m going out to take a look.”
She went out as usual. And the snake, who had just woken from a short nap, saw the group of little mice and remembered that Song Xu was raising them for fun.
The little mice, already accustomed to the snake’s scent, squeaked for a while and crawled around in this larger space, climbing onto the gigantic snake body.
Wumu didn’t move, letting these little meat balls treat his body like a high mountain to climb. When they squeaked from hunger, Wumu remembered what Song Xu had said before leaving: “If you’re hungry, give them some little snacks.”
The snake tail moved, sweeping a bit of plant tuber from the corner in front of the little mice, then shaking off the little mice that were still climbing on him, gathering them all within his tail so they could eat.
So when Song Xu came back, she saw a group of little mice piled together, sleeping soundly beside snake-snake.
Song Xu: ?
She thought to herself—who would’ve guessed snake-snake actually quite liked these ugly little mice, and even couldn’t bear to eat them.
Well then. If he likes them, she’ll raise them to keep him company.
