“If she ran into danger, is teetering between life and death, and we just happen to rush over and save her, then joyfully recognize each other, that also counts as a classic plot.” Song Xu silently pondered as she followed Wumu toward the forest.
The forest looked close, but it still took quite a while to run there. The commotion inside the forest not only didn’t get smaller, it grew even louder. This time Song Xu also heard clearly the furious roars of beasts, and the sound made Wumu swim even faster ahead. He even scooped Song Xu up, carrying her as he accelerated.
Blocked across the chest by two iron-forged claws, Song Xu’s feet left the ground. She only saw towering trees and dense jungle rushing closer before her eyes. One after another, various small dinosaurs also burst out from the undergrowth.
“Small” here was relative to those twenty- to thirty-meter giant dinosaurs, because even the smallest dinosaurs were larger than Song Xu. The most numerous were a kind of small dinosaur with bluish-green skin, over a meter long. Their bodies were slender, with most of their length made up by long, thin tails. Their two hind legs were strong, and when they ran, they looked a bit like ostriches.
Their yellow-green eyes rolled as they looked toward the suddenly appearing giant snake, and they all veered to both sides, avoiding him.
There were also dinosaurs over two meters long, even three to four meters, with brown skin and armored plates on their heads. Their bodies were a bit more solid. Upon seeing Wumu, they didn’t avoid him at all and charged straight over. Perhaps they were relatively dumb and didn’t know to dodge—seeing companions ahead being tripped and flung aside one after another, those behind still rushed forward one after another.
Wumu was clearly made somewhat irritable by these primitive beasts’ chaotic formation, and very brutally flung them aside. After that, he directly went up onto the trees and traveled through the branches.
These trees were basically all over ten meters tall, and bearing their weight posed no problem. Song Xu stayed quietly in his grasp, curious and nervous, not knowing what kind of scene she would see next.
Wumu suddenly stopped. Song Xu craned her head to look, and hissed as she sucked in a breath of cold air tinged with blood.
In front of them, trees lay toppled in chaotic disarray. Judging from the thick broken ends, they had all been snapped by impact, and the shorter trees on the ground had been trampled into kindling. At the center of this mess, the primitive beast engaged in combat stood over three meters tall, nearly ten meters long. Without even looking at the patterns on its body, just by those two short forelimbs and that mouthful of teeth, even a passerby with no knowledge of dinosaurs could blurt out two words: “Tyrannosaurus rex”!
Whether it was truly a Tyrannosaurus rex, Song Xu didn’t know. But just from this bloody, intense battle before her eyes, she knew this dinosaur was definitely not a herbivore.
And the opponent fighting this ferocious primitive beast to a standstill…
Song Xu grabbed her own ears and turned her head toward Wumu in shock. “I only knew Heisen is a tiger beastman, but none of you told me she’s a saber-toothed tiger!”
Little did she know that Wumu was just as shocked. Although it didn’t show on his face, he was already desperately searching his memory for whether his mother Heisen looked like this. After thinking for a long time, he couldn’t recall her having such long teeth, and her size was also much larger than the image in his memory.
Actually, aside from the two long fangs, the big tiger before them looked quite similar to the big tigers in Song Xu’s memory—yellow fur with black patterns.
What shocked Song Xu the most was the exaggerated size of this big tiger. How could there be a tiger three to four meters tall?! It was like an ultra-large truck!
Just look at the bulging muscles on those forearms—one punch could smash a snake as big as Wumu to death.
While the two on the tree were shocked into a daze, the battle below was decided.
The primitive beast that had been roaring ferociously crashed to the ground. Its hind legs, back, and neck were riddled with holes bitten open, and blood gushed out in streams. They seemed to have been locked in combat for a long time. The primitive beast struggled unwillingly on the ground, lifting its head and screeching toward the sky, but no matter what, it couldn’t get back up.
The big tiger, meanwhile, panted heavily. White vapor poured from her blood-smeared mouth, and blood soaked her cheeks and teeth, dripping down bit by bit as she bared her fangs. The sound of her breathing was like a sports car engine.
The big tiger, having finished the fight, sensed the prying gazes nearby and suddenly turned her head. Her translucent amber-gold eyes gleamed with killing intent. The aura of a top predator made the mind go blank, leaving only instinctive fear.
There was no touching mother-and-son moment where they recognized each other at first sight, burst into tears, and embraced. The atmosphere was tense and unfamiliar—the tiger looked ready to eat someone at any moment.
Song Xu felt like she had stiffened from a squirrel into a pine tree. The snake holding her was the same. This threat triggered his stress response; he assumed a coiled, ready-to-strike posture, as if he might rush out at any second. Song Xu clenched his hand tightly, reminding him to stay calm no matter what.
You absolutely cannot fight this, babe. If you really charge in and get slapped to death by your mom, that would be a tragedy!
The big tiger glanced at them, then suddenly pounced onto the still-struggling dinosaur, stepped on its body, and with a snap of her head, bit its head clean off. After tossing aside the thoroughly dead primitive beast, she let out a sudden deafening roar, turned around, and lunged toward the giant tree that Wumu was coiled around.
Wumu reacted extremely fast as well. He instantly tried to run. Being carried along by him, Song Xu only felt a violent jolt beneath her— the big tiger’s charge had smashed the tree that Wumu was coiled around.
A big snake, carrying a squirrel, fled in miserable panic through the forest, chased by a big tiger.
After a frantic dash for their lives, the big tiger finally did not catch up again, and roared from behind. Even though Song Xu didn’t understand tiger language, she could still translate the meaning contained in that roar, roughly: “Get the hell away, you little bastard. If you dare poke your head around here again and disturb your mother’s hunting and eating, I’ll tear your head off!”
The tiger’s roar faded away. Dangling from Wumu’s arm, Song Xu swung her legs and broke the silence. “Does Heisen… not remember you anymore?”
To be precise, she suspected that Heisen had eaten too many primitive beasts and become muddled in the head, just like Huhu said, turning into a beast that no longer recognized kin.
Wumu seemed to have sensed the current situation from the big tiger’s attitude as well. Somewhat dejected, he patted the fluff on Song Xu’s head twice.
Then he held Song Xu and once again headed back.
They passed the tree that had been smashed by the big tiger and returned to the previous battlefield.
Song Xu: “Thrilling.”
She believed that very soon they would once again be chased for their lives by the big tiger.
Who knew that in the messy clearing, they only saw the corpse of that primitive beast, along with some small primitive beasts lying on top of it gnawing. The big tiger was nowhere to be seen.
She fought that primitive beast for so long, didn’t eat it and didn’t take it away, just left it here. Could it be that she fought primitive beasts not to eat, but simply to vent?
“What now? Should we go look for her?” Song Xu asked.
“Look for her.” Wumu repeated those three words.
But this time, when they deliberately tried to find her, they instead failed to find her for several days.
“This is like playing a gacha game. At the beginning, it shows you an amazing character, then takes her back, then points at the banner and tells you, ‘See? She’s in here—pull her and she’s yours.’ From then on, the player, full of anticipation, pulls themselves to death and still can’t get her.” Song Xu tastelessly chewed on a leaf, doubting whether her identity as a lucky gamer who once got three golds in one ten-pull had expired.
What worried Song Xu the most was that Wumu had not eaten a full meal for a very long time. Relying only on the one or two mice she occasionally fed him, plus some fruit and roots, was merely a drop in the bucket.
During these days of searching for Heisen, they had traversed the forest and never seen any animals slightly larger in size besides primitive beasts living in this place.
Perhaps this was also why Heisen had eaten primitive beasts until she lost her sanity. If being trapped here meant starving to death unless she ate primitive beasts, then the current situation was inevitable. Now Wumu was facing this crisis as well. Instead, it was Song Xu who, in this place, had edible things everywhere.
“Search this way today?” Most of the time Song Xu walked beside Wumu, holding his hand. She couldn’t smell Heisen’s scent at all. Right now they were relying on Wumu to lead the way—he could still catch traces of the tiger’s lingering scent.
The troublesome part was that the big tiger seemed full of energy and liked to run around everywhere, so many places carried her scent. Occasionally they would even see what looked like freshly leftover primitive beasts she had eaten, yet still couldn’t find her.
They passed by an enormous primitive beast, over fifty meters long, a herbivorous dinosaur that ate leaves. Like elephants and giraffes, few predators would think of hunting it—after all, there was too much meat to finish, its hide was thick and hard to bite through, and it simply wasn’t a preferred food source.
With no natural enemies, these creatures always lingered in one place, slowly chewing leaves.
Song Xu and Wumu passed beneath its feet. The huge creature didn’t even lower its head. To sustain the consumption of its massive body, it was almost constantly eating, with no time to bother about the small animals underfoot. Song Xu had gotten used to seeing this over the past few days and was no longer so startled. When passing by, she even treated the primitive beast’s leg as a tree trunk and gave it a couple of pats.
“Over there.” Wumu once again picked up the big tiger’s lingering scent.
This time, it was finally not in vain. Before they even got close, they heard the sounds of fighting. Drawing nearer, they saw the big tiger once again tearing at a primitive beast, the two colliding like trucks, the scene earth-shaking.
This time they were relatively far away. Song Xu clutched Wumu’s arm and peered through the gaps between leaves, sighing, “Wumu, I’ll never say again that you like fighting. Heisen is the one who truly likes fighting.”
After finishing the fight, the tiger slapped the bitten-to-death enemy once and then viciously charged toward Wumu and Song Xu.
“We got discovered even from this far away!” While fleeing, Song Xu summarized the lesson from their failure. “Next time, we need to hide even farther away.”
When the tiger stopped chasing, Wumu brought the squirrel down from the tree and followed again. They watched as she lay there and ate half of the primitive beast, then cleaned her fur, and afterward padded off in a certain direction with catlike steps.
“Is she going back to her nest after eating her fill? Hurry, hurry, follow her. If we find her home, it’ll be much easier!” Song Xu urged excitedly.
They followed all the way, passing through layers of forest, and arrived at… a stretch of seaside?
The big tiger, clearly familiar with the place, jumped onto a reef by the shore and gazed into the distance at a small island with a faint, hazy outline.
