“You’re talking about a way to turn a half-beastman into a beastman? Yes, there is— isn’t it just the Tiankeng?” the orca beastman said.
Song Xu had only asked casually; who would have thought she would get an answer so easily. She became a little excited and hurriedly asked, “Tiankeng? Can I go take a look?”
The orca beastman answered very casually, “Why not.” It was just a place in the tribe used to collect fresh water and for the cubs to play.
Song Xu followed several orca beastmen toward the Tiankeng behind the tribe. Along the way, she chatted with them, trying to find out news about Snake and the tiger. Unfortunately, the orcas had never seen them.
Among the three islands, only the orca tribe was not a mixed tribe. Aside from orca beastmen, there were very few beastmen of other races here. Song Xu followed a group of young orca beastmen into the tribe, then swaggered along with them straight across the tribe toward the Tiankeng. The orca beastmen they encountered along the way all took a few extra looks at her.
Fortunately, look they did, but no beastman made things difficult for her. They either showed curiosity and friendliness, or directly ignored her.
The little squirrel who was not together with a dangerous snake was deemed harmless, her treatment skyrocketing. She was easily accepted and could walk freely through someone else’s tribe without any obstacles.
Even when they were almost at the Tiankeng and encountered a female orca who looked rather old and fierce, the little squirrel was not given a hard time.
The group of youngsters shrank their necks and called out, “Xi Ni.”
Song Xu blended in and followed along, calling, “Xi Ni!”
The fierce-looking female orca reached out and patted the squirrel’s head, revealing a terrifying smile. Looking at the rows of large teeth in that wide-open mouth, Song Xu also shrank her neck together with the young orcas.
Grandma, when you smile, you look like you’re about to eat a child.
The bored young orcas brought Song Xu to the Tiankeng inside the tribe. This Tiankeng was even bigger than the ones on the other two islands. An orca beastman picked up a stone from inside the pit that emitted a faint pale-blue glow. “Look, this stone—half-beastmen can devolve after eating it.”
Song Xu took the stone that sparkled under the sunlight. At first glance, its base color was black, but with a casual turn, she could see tiny specks of fluorescence on its surface.
Looking around inside the pit, almost the entire ground was covered with this kind of stone. The largest ones were even several meters long, their surfaces radiant and brilliant, like the night sky and twinkling stars.
“So… you just eat it and that’s it? It’s that simple?” Song Xu thought that even when Tang Sanzang and his disciples reached the Western Heaven to obtain the true scriptures, it wasn’t this simple. Weren’t there supposed to be some trials and procedures or something?
“Simple? It’s not simple for you land beastmen to come to our place, is it? On the other side of the sea there are also primitive beasts. Many beastmen died there.”
Right now, Song Xu felt like she had reached the end of a game, standing in front of a high-level treasure chest with no monster guarding it.
“Then such an important place, why don’t you leave some people here to guard it?” How could a place with treasures have no guards? That wasn’t reasonable!
“Why guard it? This place isn’t important,” the orca beastmen—muscles gleaming with oil, mouths full of sharp teeth—smiled simply and innocently. “These stones just look a bit nice. They’re useless to us.”
“Yeah, and we still have to go hunting and playing. Who has time to stay here? It’s very boring here.”
Got it. These things were treasures only to half-beastmen. The locals didn’t take them seriously at all.
“Then can I pick up a few stones and take them with me?” Realizing this, Song Xu made the request.
She had already planned it out—pack more, give some to Snake. She didn’t know whether the big tiger needed them or not, but she would give him some too, and also keep some for herself. She could even share them with half-beastman friends she met along the way. And since this counted as a local specialty, she could bring more, in case they were useful in the future.
Song Xu had everything planned out, but who knew the orca beastmen would shake their heads.
“These stones become useless once they’re taken away.”
The orca beastmen talked over each other in explanation. Song Xu automatically skipped over the parts where they started arguing and cursing at each other, extracting only the key points.
This kind of stone only worked inside the Tiankeng. Once it left the Tiankeng, even if it was still somewhere else on this island, the glow on it would slowly fade. When the fluorescence completely dissipated, the stone would turn gray-white and crumble into powder at the slightest touch. This powder would no longer have any effect on a half-beastman’s devolution and transformation.
Moreover, the speed at which this kind of fluorescence dissipated was very fast. Just how fast? Song Xu picked up a stone and stood outside the Tiankeng to test it. The result was that after only a short while, the pretty stone lost its glow and crumbled into dregs. That dissipation speed was definitely faster than the speed at which she could run off this island.
With this, her plan to pack up stones and take them away completely fell through.
Song Xu was extremely disappointed. She stared longingly at those stones she couldn’t take with her, her heart full of the torment of facing treasure she couldn’t use.
No wonder half-beastmen could only brave hardships and cross the sea to reach the islands, and there had never been circulation of this kind of stone. So it turned out it was because transportation was difficult and preservation was not easy.
Perhaps because of the magnetic field or geographical reasons of this Tiankeng, Song Xu became curious about the environment here. Unwilling to give up, she walked several circles around the pit, trying to find the reason why this kind of stone could not leave this place.
At the bottom of the Tiankeng, near the freshwater, Song Xu discovered several black stones with carved marks on them, forming stone carvings.
“What is this?” When Song Xu wandered toward the bottom of the Tiankeng, several orca beastmen who had followed the squirrel to satisfy their curiosity had already left. She heard them discussing where to go catch fish to eat. Only two orca beastmen were left here—the same two who had first discovered Song Xu.
These two were clearly young, and they were brothers. Hearing Song Xu’s question, one of them said, “That’s been there for a very long time. It was already there when I was little.”
The other said, “You idiot! She’s asking what that is, not when it appeared. You should answer that it’s a stone with carvings on it!”
Song Xu: “……” She could tell it was a stone with carvings.
“That is a set of paintings passed down from a very long time ago. It’s said they already existed at the very beginning of our tribe.” The elderly female orca called Xi Ni, whom they had encountered earlier, walked over.
The quarreling orca brothers squatted off to the side and continued their argument in low voices. Xi Ni pointed out one of the carved stones to Song Xu. “The meaning of this carving is that the moon in the sky fell down and smashed out this Tiankeng.”
Song Xu couldn’t understand those marks at all. Only after Xi Ni explained did she suddenly realize—so that big circle referred to the Tiankeng, and the small circle inside the Tiankeng referred to the fallen moon.
Of course, that definitely wasn’t a real moon. Song Xu guessed it might have been a meteorite.
She moved closer to Xi Ni and asked obediently, “Then what about this one? What does this mean?”
She pointed to a carving that contained something she was interested in—figures with human bodies and fish tails. Mermaids! Although the human body part was drawn very abstractly and barely recognizable, and the proportion of the fish tail was so large it was a bit horrifying.
Different from her fierce-looking appearance, Xi Ni was fairly patient with her questions. “This carving means that the moon caused the sea beastmen to undergo evolution. They obtained the forms of beastmen. At the beginning, it was human body and fish tail. Later, it changed into completely beastman forms……”
She also talked about the tribe’s legends of the stars, the sun, and the moon: the sun guides direction, the moon is the beastmen’s homeland, and the stars are those who have left.
Song Xu had heard similar legends before. It seemed this legend was shared by both sea and land. Perhaps hidden within it was information she didn’t yet know.
The sentence “the moon is the beastmen’s homeland,” combined with this vague carving, could roughly be understood as a meteorite from the moon falling down and causing the surrounding marine creatures to be irradiated and turn into today’s beastmen. Or perhaps beastmen originally came from the moon?
But no matter what, the “moon” in this legend was definitely not the same moon as the one in her previous world.
After finishing looking at that row of carvings, the two young orcas who had been waiting at the side also couldn’t stay any longer. Young beastmen of this age were always unable to remain in one place quietly. After saying goodbye, they hurriedly slipped away.
The squirrel who had lost her guides suddenly had her stomach growling in dissatisfaction. She leaned closer to the commentator beside her and revealed a cute smile. “Xi Ni……”
She had been drifting on the sea for so long that she was about to starve to death. No matter what, she needed to get something to eat first.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
On the first island, the big snake was unable to sense the squirrel’s and the tiger’s presence in the Tiankeng. He irritably slapped the ground, and the wound on his tail was torn open by his violent movements, fresh blood snapping onto the rocks beside him.
He wanted to leave this place. This behavior made the great blue shark mother and daughter watching nearby curious. “Is he trying to leave? Not eating the stones anymore?”
“Really strange. Is he looking for something?”
Just as the big snake was about to crawl out of the Tiankeng, a great white shark with sharp teeth appeared at the edge of the pit. With his two companions gone, he walked a little unsteadily. Standing at the edge of the pit with an unconvinced face, he shouted, “You think you can just eat the stones of our tribe whenever you want? I don’t allow it. Get your ass out here!”
The big snake was already in a violent rage. Hearing the loud provocation, he immediately rushed over and began to attack.
A great white shark, on land, transformed into beast form and tried to use his body weight to crush the big snake to death. As a result, he was coiled up by the big snake until he couldn’t open his mouth, and two holes were bitten into his body.
They rolled all the way down along the slope of the Tiankeng and into the freshwater lake at the bottom.
The great blue shark mother and daughter who were fetching water witnessed everything: “……”
“That idiot Jianchi, what was he doing just now? What the hell, the water’s all muddied now!”
“Alright, stop complaining and hurry to help separate them, or something bad is going to happen.”
The older great blue shark entered the water and pushed the two guys who both looked not quite clear-headed to the shore. On the shore, the younger great blue shark grabbed the great white shark and dragged him to the side. She accidentally got hit by the wildly struggling great white shark, and immediately flew into a rage, opening her mouth and biting him, leaving several bloody holes and finally making him behave.
The older one skillfully used her thick, sturdy arm to lock the big snake’s head. When he subconsciously opened his mouth and hissed, she conveniently picked up a large stone beside her and stuffed it into the snake’s mouth.
“Ka……” The big snake was firmly jammed by the stone, and a bulge even appeared on his neck.
The older great blue shark released him and looked at his neck, pondering, “Is this stone a bit too big?”
