This winter, Wumu’s hibernation time was greatly reduced. Most of the time, he simply became less active and liked to lie in the nest, but he would not fall into deep sleep like the first time.
Song Xu guessed it might be because he had already beastman-ized, leaning more toward being a beastman rather than a beast, so he was not as strongly affected by his beast form anymore.
This was also a good thing for Song Xu. She was not as bored in winter, and could drag Wumu to talk with her.
It was just that in winter, being clingy together in a warm house, it was very easy to develop into a certain kind of activity. Winter Wumu was slow at doing everything, but the snake species’ coiling skill was really formidable. After experiencing it a few times, Song Xu became even more accustomed to going out to run around on days when it was not snowing.
After all, once she was coiled up and dragged by Wumu, she would not be able to get free for a long time. Some things really could not be blamed entirely on King Zhou; demons that could turn into animals more or less had some extraordinary natural talent.
Ever since that activity, a new question appeared in Song Xu’s mind.
About beastman reproduction.
There were no reliable contraceptive measures here, and beastmen basically did not have reproductive isolation, so it was only natural that she and Wumu would have children—it was just unknown what they would be.
Regarding this question, she had once curiously asked beastmen she met on the road. The answers she got were varied. Simply put, having children in the beastman world was like opening a blind box.
You did not know in what form you would give birth, nor what kind of child you would give birth to. But what was beyond doubt was that the body would automatically adjust according to the mother and the child’s species, and when it was close to delivery, it would maintain the form that was easiest for giving birth.
If you lived long-term with the same species, and both partners had the same beast form, then the child born would very likely be the same kind as them. If not, the situation became complicated.
The more probable situation was inheriting the stronger of the two parents’ abilities. A small-probability event would be atavism, and you would not know what it was until birth.
Song Xu calculated according to this probability and felt that her next generation would very likely be a snake.
A chubby little mini snake—so worth looking forward to! Thinking about being able to raise a little snake from a young age, Song Xu looked at Wumu with eyes shining.
By spring, Song Xu indeed felt changes in her body. Wumu also felt it. This specifically manifested in that every morning when he woke up, he would swim over in beast form to her side and sniff her abdomen, and then he would no longer casually use his tail to bind her into a ball. If he bound her, he would only loosely hook her feet.
The warden snake’s control strength greatly declined, which caused Song Xu to be quite arrogant for a while.
Then one day, she laid an egg.
“Squirrels laying eggs—Darwin would look at this and shout miracle!” Song Xu sat beside that egg and observed it. It was white, without patterns.
“This should be a snake egg, right?” she asked Wumu.
The big snake coiled her and the egg together in the nest, using his snout to rub against her sweat-damp hair at her forehead. Song Xu perfunctorily let him rub her a couple of times, then went to pay attention to the egg again, saying excitedly, “Next is incubating the egg, right? What temperature does it need? You incubate it or I incubate it? Do squirrels incubate eggs?”
Then she watched as the egg grew bigger day by day, so big that even the little squirrel beast form could not cover it. The squirrel sat on the egg, like sitting on a chair.
“Looks like a large snake,” Song Xu nodded, moved the egg to the side of the snake’s abdomen, covered it with dried moss, and ran out to get some air.
The squirrel who had previously sworn that she would incubate the egg herself could not hold out after a few days, handed the task over to the big snake, and said righteously, “You’re a snake—snakes incubating snake eggs is only natural, right! You must be more professional than me!”
The novice snake dad could only coil around this small little egg and sleep with it every day.
Finally, the little creature inside the egg showed signs of hatching. Song Xu stayed up late watching the egg hatch, even developing dark circles. Influenced by her, the big snake also focused intently, resting his head beside the egg and watching.
Under the gaze of two pairs of eyes, the egg cracked, and out came a creature with sparse little fur…
Song Xu turned into a whole question mark. “What is this? This is… a chick?”
An oval body, two small wings, a pointed little beak, two claws stepping on the ground—wasn’t this a chick? Song Xu clasped her hands together, her expression heavy and complicated. “We’ve encountered a small-probability event.”
She didn’t draw the card she wanted in one pull, but from a probability standpoint, her luck halo was still working. Otherwise, this kind of atavistic small-probability event wouldn’t have happened.
The “chick” chirped softly twice. Unable to stand steadily in the nest, it fell into a sitting position.
Song Xu had no research into poultry and didn’t know what this little guy was. The big snake didn’t know either. Song Xu very open-mindedly said that once the child grew up, they would know.
“Since it took all night to break out of the shell, let’s call him—Ye!”
As the “chick” grew day by day, thicker feathers appeared on his body, black-and-white patterned.
Song Xu was certain. “It’s a speckled chicken!”
Of course she was joking. From this little guy’s harder-than-a-chick beak and his two big claws, it could be seen that he had been assigned to the raptor group.
Still a fledgling, the chick liked to step on his long big-snake father, and from time to time would lower his head and peck at the scales on his body, like a chick pecking rice.
This point might have been learned from the squirrel mother—she also often treated the big snake as a cushion to step on. The stepped-on big snake let them step however they wanted, not moving at all.
The chick was an energetic chick. This point might also take after the mother. Once he was a little bigger, he liked to run all over the cave, the da-da-da sounds crisp, claw prints visible everywhere on the ground. He even tried to squeeze out through cracks. The big snake, shouldering guard duty, could only use his body to circle him inside the nest.
But this method stopped working once the chick’s wings grew a bit bigger. He could flap and fly out of the snake’s encirclement. Only when resting would he quiet down.
The squirrel squeezed her head under the big snake’s body, her tail resting on her chick. This energetic chick would obediently lie beneath her fluffy tail.
Song Xu took him out to forage, wanting to see what he liked to eat. The chick drilled into the grass, and his fluffy little body disappeared in no time.
Song Xu: “Hahaha, I feel like I’m raising chickens… eh, where’s the chick?”
The big snake swam into the grass and circled off a patch. Song Xu searched inside this patch of grass and finally dug out the runaway chick.
He was firmly pecking at a little mouse and refusing to let go.
Song Xu: “……” You’re still a baby, why are you already catching mice? Is this the growth speed of children in the beastman world? Even modern babies would look at this and say it’s too competitive!
The chick was good in every way, except in the matter of speaking he took after his father—also a little mute. From the time he was born, Song Xu had not heard him say a single word. Worried, she taught him pronunciation every day. As a result, the big-snake father, who hadn’t been taught in a long time, also had to relearn how to speak.
Student chick sat in the nest with his two claws spread apart, looking at the squirrel mother who kept talking nonstop in front of him. In one whole night, he chirped three times in response.
In Song Xu’s impression, the first child, the chick, seemed to grow up in the blink of an eye. When he learned to fly on his own, Song Xu finally confirmed that he was a gyrfalcon—that is, a Haidongqing.
Before he could fly, the chick could already step around with his little claws to catch mice. When he had just learned to glide down from trees, he could go catch rabbits. By the time his wings grew to two meters wide, Song Xu and Wumu went back to the fierce beast tribe once. He grabbed the tribe’s little beastmen and, with an innocent face, stopped on a high tree branch, looking down at a group of little beastmen crying and digging at the tree.
The chick, who had never experienced collective tribal life, did not know that those were ones he could not catch. He only knew that he could not randomly grab Mother, otherwise he would be tied up by Big Snake Dad and wouldn’t be able to fly for an entire day.
“Chick!” The raptor who had a proper name but had always been called by his nickname and so defaulted to thinking his name was Chick, upon hearing Mother call, flapped his wings and flew down from the tree. He landed behind Mother and turned into a little boy with white hair, black eyes, and black-and-white feather clothes, with palms and clawed feet that were slightly sharp and hooked.
This trip back to the tribe was because Song Xu wanted to visit Big Tiger Mama, but they came at a bad time. Heisen had left the tribe again. She liked to run around everywhere, and at this time nobody knew where she was.
Only Uncle Weishan saw them and told them about some of the commotion Black Forest had caused when she previously returned to the tribe.
She unreasonably beat up all the tribe members who had driven Wumu away back then. The lion beastman who had advocated killing Wumu was beaten by her several times. In the end, that lion beastman left the tribe in order to avoid Heisen.
Weishan also invited them to stay and live in the tribe, but Song Xu refused. She was not accustomed to this kind of complex and chaotic mixed-tribe living situation, and with a second child with Wumu, she had recently been troubled over this child.
This draw was still a rare atavistic card—a fluffy snow leopard.
Their return to the tribe this time was also to see whether there were any snow leopards in the tribe, and to ask what kind of environment snow leopards should live in.
There were no snow leopards in the tribe. Snow leopards were accustomed to living on snow mountains at higher altitudes, and this point was quite troublesome.
“Since it’s black-and-white colored, let’s call you Wuchang!” Song Xu said to the newborn little snow leopard, then called his nickname, “Little Cat.”
From the coloring, Little Cat and Little Chick were both black-and-white, truly worthy of being brothers.
“Let’s go, to the snow mountain!” Song Xu made the decision.
A snow leopard and a snake—one would want to hibernate once it reached places that were too cold, one was accustomed to living in the cold, but the two of them got along quite well. The big snake was very tolerant toward these two children who were completely different from himself. This specifically manifested in that no matter how they stepped on him, he didn’t mind. Little Chick pecked him, Little Cat bit him—he didn’t care.
Eating, sleeping, stepping on Dad—this had since become the traditional skill of Song Xu’s family.
Because of Little Cat, they moved to the foot of a snow mountain and lived there for a long period of time.
The big snake stayed at the mountain foot. The mother and three children slept at the mountain foot every night, and during the day they ran up the mountain to go crazy everywhere. When Song Xu took care of the children, it inevitably became the children taking care of her. The snow leopard learned at a very young age to search the snow mountain every day for his lost mother.
This child with a tender little cry liked to bite his own tail, and also liked to bite Mother’s tail while sleeping. Father’s tail was also acceptable. As for big brother, who didn’t have a tail, he didn’t know what to bite, which made him very troubled for a time.
He had a pair of blue eyes, also white hair, and was born with thick eyeliner, making his eyes look especially large.
After they grew a bit bigger, the ones running around everywhere on the snow mountain became the Little Cat–Little Chick brother pair, because their mother needed to go accompany their father. After all, because they went out to play every day, Father, who slept alone at home, bravely climbed the snow mountain out of longing for them and almost froze to death halfway. Just hearing it sounded too pitiful.
In the beastman world, after children reached adulthood, they were usually driven out by the mother who raised them. Some who had no ability to raise children would have the children go hunt on their own once they could run and jump, and then gradually separate from the family.
In Song Xu’s family, there was no such habit. Everything depended on themselves. Little Chick never strayed too far from them. Even after becoming a large raptor with a wingspan of nearly three to four meters, he still stayed near them, making a bird’s nest in a tree to live in.
As for Little Cat, who had been extremely clingy as a child, perhaps because of the snow leopard’s nature, he remained in this snow mountain and did not leave.
But separation was only temporary. One day, when Song Xu saw the snow leopard suddenly come home to visit them, her happiness was beyond words.
Many years later, Song Xu had a third child.
This time, it was still a rare atavistic card. The third child was a girl, and also the only child who was born in infant form. Three days after birth, the child suddenly turned into her beast form—a fish, several meters long.
At that time, Song Xu was in the nest, watching with her own eyes as the child suddenly turned into a fish. That size was much bigger than her. With one tail swing, it directly smashed apart the nest she had made.
She instantly jumped up like her butt was on fire, rushed to the doorway, and shouted Wumu, incoherent: “Wumu, fish fish fish! There’s a fish! What do we do!”
Song Xu, who had collected land, sea, and air, looked at her youngest daughter being dragged by Wumu into the lake to swim.
Why did this fish look so much like a blue whale? This definitely had to be raised in the sea.
“So big, it’s almost filling up the small lake. Let’s call you Tianhu.”
Unsurprisingly, the name Tianhu was never acknowledged by the person herself. The blue whale was more accustomed to Mother calling her Big Fish.
No choice—Song Xu once again announced: “Let’s go, to the seaside!”
Calling Little Chick, passing by the snow mountain, Little Cat also proactively followed along. Together, they escorted the youngest child toward the seaside.
This time there were more people, and the journey was even harder than the first time. When they were extremely short of water, Little Chick flew back and forth dozens of kilometers, without a single complaint, carrying water for Big Fish, so that this sister with enormous water needs would not die of thirst on the road.
When they reached places that were too hot, the snow leopard also collapsed, and could only let Big Snake Dad carry him forward.
But there were also many happy moments.
Big Fish, who should have been living in the sea, learned from Mother what it felt like to roll around in the grass.
When a heavy rain fell, Big Fish turned into a fish and lay on the grass, slapping her tail again and again. The others hid inside a tree hollow to take shelter from the rain, watching her.
With too many members, even suitable tree hollows were hard to find. They squeezed into a group, or simply all stepped onto Big Snake Dad.
On more clear nights, they casually found an open space. The big snake used his tail to encircle all of them, drawing a circle to rest.
Big Fish envied that Little Chick Brother could fly in the sky. She wanted to fly, but Little Chick Brother couldn’t carry her. Song Xu watched the two siblings’ futile attempts—Little Chick being pressed down so he couldn’t fly—laughing until her stomach hurt.
Big Fish envied that Little Cat Brother could run very fast on the ground. She wanted Little Cat Brother to carry her on his back to run, but Little Cat Brother also couldn’t carry her. Song Xu watched Little Cat’s four paws trembling as he dragged his sister along the ground, laughing until tears came out.
But when Big Fish reached the seaside, she discovered that the self who, on land, couldn’t even walk without being in beastman form, could carry Mother and her brothers across the vast ocean. And so she knew—this was her territory.
At the end of the journey, they waved to each other and said goodbye.
“Parting will certainly come, but I’m very glad to have met you.” Mother said this, and kissed her on the head.
Lovely children came one by one, and left one by one. In the end, only the squirrel and the snake remained. They hid from the rain in a tree hollow. The squirrel hid beneath the snake’s body amid the thunder, and the snake tightly coiled around her.
Many years later, in the sky, on the snow mountains, and in the ocean, their stories were still continuing.
